Part 16

Eirika slammed into the grate with all the momentum she was able to get, but it still wasn't enough, she was thrown backward and hit her head hard on the metal floor. The force of it knocked her out for only a few moments. When she woke up she was so angry that she went over and just kicked the grate a few times, to no avail, the only thing she accomplished was to hurt her foot.

In a rather pitiful manner she sat down, right there on the spot, and tried to think. It was only then that she caught a very faint whiff, one of blood, gore, and several other things she dare not dwell on.

Banishing the smell from her mind she knew that she had to get out of this shaft. Then she remembered something! She dug around in her pack, which fortunately had not been lost, and pulled out a phial of Moonwell water.

She took the phial, opened it, and proceeded to pour a little bit on each corner of the grate. The water acted as an acid, and began eating away the grate, until it fell outward with a loud crash. Hoping that the noise wouldn't alert anyone, or anything, to her presence there, she cautiously crept forward, towards the newly made opening.

The light was so blinding that Eirika was blinded for a few seconds. Unfortunately those few seconds was just enough time for her to fall out of the open ventilation shaft. The drop wouldn't have been very far, if she hadn't have been a gnome.

As Tearie walked through the labyrinth of rooms that is the lowest level of Gnomeregan, she thought to herself about what had just happened, and about how she had failed. As she walked, tears began to stream down her face as she receded deeper into her mind.

She went back to the night that it all had happened, when her summons had gone terribly wrong, and she had unleashed evils into this world. It was then, when his body lay limp on the stone cold floor, that she realized, there was no way of beating these evils. That, even if she tried, there was nothing she could do, she wasn't powerful enough. It was then that she bowed under the control of the most powerful of these evils, that of—

It was then that she was pulled back to the present; she had reached the room she was heading toward, and was just standing there. Some nearby Troggs were watching her, rather intently. Tearie started to wonder if they were thinking about knocking her out and throwing her into one of the furnaces.

Throwing an immolate at one of them, caused the rest of them to scatter, and standing alone outside a pair of huge iron doors, she calmly collected herself, preparing for what lay ahead.

So, with trembling hands, she slowly pushed open the door, and engulfed in the endless shadow spewing forth from the room, she stepped inside, as the doors slowly closed behind her, with a reverberating boom.