Chapter Four:

The Curious Blaze

The darkness in the ruins was all-consuming, seemingly hungry. Kaita looked around the dark room with a gaze or cold examination and raised her left hand and it glowed with a sudden spark and then into a small flame in her hand, enough to light about two meters around her. She found herself in a small cluster of ruins in the side of one of many hills around her old home. She had discovered this particular small cluster of ruins as a child, after she had gotten lost out in a treacherous part of the Great Swamp after deciding to adventure farther out from her home. Her adventurous spirits sometimes got her into these situations. She had been lost and searching for a way out when she noticed a stone archway jutting out of a large hill. She went to it and discovered it arched over an entrance to a small cluster of ruins, carved into the hill. She never told her father about this site, for fear of loosing her one chance at a perfect safe haven. Selfish, maybe, but it saved her life later on. It is Kaita's Haven, both in her childhood and now. She had never explored much into them, for fear of something horrendous. Her father had told her once that the land land was once inhabited by a cult of Pyromancers, following in the steps of Izalith, trying to reclaim the sorceries of fire instead of simple pyromancies. Then, one day, they simply disappeared. there was no trace left of them. Her father speculates, after much study, that the ruins that dot the landscape around them were their homes or at least belonged to them. She had, though, turned the main entrance to one into a secondary home of sorts. A table, two chairs, a small fire pit and brazier, a small bed of soft swamp grass and a quilt made up her small haven here in this small cluster of ruins. The room as about the size of a small house with two perfect walls on the left and right, the entrance into it, now with a sturdy wooden door that Kaita added long ago, and across, a large stone door, with intricate carvings of fire and other things Kaita didn't understand, possibly a forgotten language. She had searched for a way to open it, for it was far beyond her strength to push open. She found no lever, pressure plate or button to open it and soon just accepted it as a mystery.

It had been a week, a single week, since the confrontation with the Clerics at her now destroyed home, but it felt like a lifetime. When she and her father were feeling from their attack and burning home, he was mortally injured by a blessed knife, thrown into his back by one of the fool clerics. He had been crippled and only escaped by the help of his daughter Kaita, who supported him as they half ran, half stumbled away in the swamps. She could still feel the cool tears on her face, the heat of the roaring blaze, the smell of ash and burning swamp ground, the smell of death and fear. She threw her flame into the brazier, now filled with fresh dry wood, and a good-sized fire started. Kaita stood and looked into the flame a few moments and then sighed and sat down at the chair at her table and pulled off her mud and slime encrusted boots and set them near the fire to dry. She then pulled out her father's sword and her mothers dagger, layed them on the table and began cleaning them of the swamp gunk that clung to them. She had went out hunting for food out in the swamp, without much luck. She still had plenty preserved in jars, salted meat, and knew many ways to purify a good amount of water from the swamps and store them in jugs and her canteen but she want to stock up, if she had to hide away for a long period of time. She had taken a different route back today, one she was less familiar with, and had to trudge through mud and slime. She had done this because the clerics we're still hunting her. Their mission was sacred to them, and they would not relent until it was fulfilled, whatever that mission may be.

Kaita finished her cleaning and pulled her now dried boots back on, then stood and looked at the Brazier. It stood in the dead middle of the room and was made of an odd ebony material, its shape a cauldron but without walls and mad of many intricate arches, some overlapping, with more of the carvings that look like a form of written language. But that's not the strangest thing; ayn fire in the Brazier produces no smoke, none what so ever, and gives off a certain energy. It seems to enhance Kaita's pyromancy when she is withing a certain distance of it, as she has found out. The far left wall is bare and blackened. She had done this one day she had come to her hiding place after spilling wine on her fathers clothes, and was angry she had been punished. She had thrown a, what she thought, small fireball at the left stone wall. It hit the wall and burned the wall white hot. From that day on, she kept her pyromacies in check around that brazier, both once it was lit, and when it wasn't. Kaita made her way around the room to a jar of preserved pickles and started to pluck them out of the jar and eat them, after going back and sitting in a chair, facing the ominous large stone door. She stared intently at the door as she ate, scanning every facet, every carving, and every inch of the stone door. She was running out of options. The clerics kept getting closer and closer with every search, and would be soon that they found her. Over the time she's been there, she's be searching and looking for any way to open the large stone door and she's come to a conclusion. The same carvings on the brazier, that seemed to be linked to pyromancies, were written on the door as well. She stood and followed one of the carvings along the door until it met in a circle near the middle of the door on both sides, just at average height. She slowly raised her left hand, still outfitted with her mothers Pyromancy enhancing glove, and allowed a flame to travel from her hand to the circle. It seemed to absorb the flame, and as Kaita stood back in wonder and watched, the carvings all along the intricate stone door glowed red. Then, something even more amazing happened; The door opened out, allowing entrance into the unknown depths of the ruins...

At the same moment, three clerics, Apprentices Jerom and Jaceyn, with their Master, Diaru, were camped in a relativly dry patch of swamp. Jaceyn was on watch duty as the other two rested. He then saw something strange. It was a dull red glow emanating from a hile that was about a mile away. Jaceyn's eyes widened and he quickly went to wake the other two.