AUTHORS NOTE

Thanks for the author follow/favourite: king axolotl, Yuu igdrasil,

Thanks for the story follow/favourite: Yuu igdrasil

Havok22 - Sorry for the long wait. Real life :( This will be a dungeon crawl, I don't know if you'd consider it a good one... all a matter of perspective I suppose ;-)

Archer1Eye - Oooh, you might have some sort of idea of the origins of the ruins after this chapter and more in the next :) Mwahahahahahaha! This story isn't going to be an Othello, but it'll be close!

Chapter 84

? Day of High Summer? 768 n.c?

I looked up from Garth's lifeless body to see Gorgrim dispatch the last of the skeletons. Damon walked over towards me, but didn't even ask me how Garth was.

"Stupid boy," he spat and I looked at him in shock, he sounded so angry and resigned. The tear running down his cheek sat in stark contrast to his anger though.

I felt Karalin come up beside me and put her arm around me to pull me close to her side; more to comfort herself than me, I wondered.

Gorgrim leaned over Garth's body and closed his eyelids, which were still open, and snapped the shaft of the arrow off.

Damon turned to me, suddenly blank-faced and asked, "are you able to find magical items?"

I nodded and pushed aside any concerns I had for his sudden lack of emotion, "yes, I'll cast it now."

When I cast detect magic, I noticed quite a number of items glow on Damon, Karalin and Gorgrim, as well as a couple of things glowing on Garth's body; but our main focus was on the treasure pile in front of us.

Two swords emitted a soft glow, along with a shield and a pile of leather armour. The soft glow from these things was matched by a glow seeping out from the gaps in one of the chests. Damon pulled out the shield, swords and armour from the pile and set them on top of the stone bench behind us, while Gorgrim eagerly began to open the chest.

"Ow!" The dwarf exclaimed suddenly and quickly followed by, "got it!"

"Are you okay?" Karalin asked him, but he waved her off, "I'm fine, just cut my finger on the lock."

He opened the chest to reveal a silver necklace threaded through a round silver charm that had a round flat piece of dark stone embedded into the face of it.

He picked it up and held it out to me, "can you see what this does?"

I looked at the back of the necklace and could see the runes engraved there. Without Malkarov's experience, or any of his books to research through, all I could do was guess at some of what they said.

"Something to do with… protection? Armour?" I guessed.

"You probably need it more than us," Gorgrim said to everyone, "I'm sure Karalin will take that armour and a sword, I'll take the shield and Damon can have the other sword?"

The others all agreed, so I slipped the necklace over my head and felt it's slight weight settle around my neck. Karalin and Damon both swapped their swords for the magical ones.

"It will be a relief to not have to sharpen my blade so often," Damon said as he felt the sharp edge with his thumb.

"Why not?" Karalin asked as she looked at her new blade in awe.

"Magical weapons dull much slower than normal blades, if at all," Damon explained, "some never need to be sharpened."

Karalin was impressed by this information and I recalled the enchantments on my own blade. Damon dragged Garth's body back to the main area and left him next to the barrel. The other chest proved to contain a number of old coins, which Gorgrim carried to place with our growing pile of things to take back up to the surface.

We found ourselves standing in front of the final door, Damon looked behind him at the body of our companion and our treasures and sighed, "knock out the wedges Gorgrim? Let's get this over with."

The dwarf knocked out the metal wedges that kept the door shut, the sounds of metal striking metal echoed around the large room and we prepared ourselves in case something was on the other side.

The door opened up into a dark corridor that stretched forward for quite a distance. I was about to step into the corridor when I realised that there was something odd up ahead. The walls of the corridor were rough, not at all smooth, and up ahead two columns stuck out from the walls to narrow the corridor a little. They were oddly shaped however, smooth in places and not quite symmetrical.

"Gorgrim?" I asked and the dwarf moved next to me, "does something seem strange about those columns?"

The dwarf pushed me behind him and raised his axe into a defensive stance, "those aren't columns!"

The two rock coloured protrusions separated from the walls at the dwarf's shout and stood out to form two lizard-like creatures. Troglodytes! They appeared to be larger cousins of a kobold, slightly bigger than human sized lizard creatures. They had wicked looking claws tipping their fingers and sharp sharp teeth in their mouths.

Damon moved up in front of me and blocked the doorway with his shield. With him and the shield in front of me I lost sight of them and with that the ability to cast any spells at them. Karalin was likewise blocked from any action. We both stepped back and readied ourselves as the two lizard creatures crashed up against the ex-guard's shield. He swung his sword down through the doorway and managed to do some damage to one of the creatures if the high pitched squeal was any indication. With that vocalisation through, came an unexpected smell. It was terrible! Possibly one of the worst things I had ever smelled. Karalin bent over double and emptied her stomach onto the ground and Damon backed away from the door and did likewise.

"Ha!" Gorgrim barked as he stepped forward to take Damon's place, "I've smelled worse than you after a night eating Gandarschard and drinking Gut-rot!"

I felt bile rise in the back of my throat, but managed to swallow it back down again and cast Elemental Projection over the dwarf's head. The spell knocked down one of the troglodytes and the dwarf's axe then managed to catch the other above its hip, almost cutting the creature in half.

The corridor was silent, with no more movement ahead. Damon and Karalin finished emptying their stomachs of breakfast and washed their mouths out from their waterskins.

"If I had known troglodytes smelled like that, I don't think I would have eaten anything this morning!" Karalin complained.

"I don't think any of us would have," Damon responded, "except perhaps Gorgim!"

The dwarf laughed, "ah, it's not so bad, I've smelled worse comin' out me own backside."

"Ewww!" Karalin declared and I wrinkled my nose at his own off-colour reference.

"Well," Damon said, "now we know what we're up against."

He opened his backpack, removed a couple of handkerchiefs and proceeded to tie one around his face so that it covered his nose. He handed the other two to me and Karalin. They didn't do a lot to stop the smell, but did lessen it somewhat.

"Forward then?" Damon suggested and we gingerly stepped around the troglodyte bodies, being careful not to let our clothes rub against them.

We set off down the corridor, coming across another two pairs of troglodyte guards which were more rapidly dispatched with magic and arrows that didn't require getting up close to them. When the corridor opened up into a large cavern, we saw down below a village of wood and wode. The huts were small circular things with straight walls and conical roofs. Smoke from fires twisted up through holes left in the middle of the roof to gather up high in the cavern. We could see movement down below, troglodytes going about their business unaware of our presence. The whole situation reminded me of the goblin village Malkarov and I had come across on our way to Castlemere. We were up high, above the village, but instead of a path down the side there was a long steep decline ahead of us.

"I…" I started, observing the scene ahead of me and taking in everything, "I could probably kill most of them from up here. If you all can stop anything getting close, I can stay up higher here and destroy the entire village."

"You can destroy the entire village?" Karalin asked.

I nodded, "my Elemental Explosion spell creates an explosion about forty feet across," I explained, "I'll start from the far side of the village and work my way back towards us."

Damon nodded, as an ex-soldier he had likely seen the abilities of a war-wizard; the dwarf looked a little sceptical but Karalin had the most extreme reaction, she stared at me in some sort of awe.

Gogrim and Damon got themselves ready at the front, slightly down the decline and Karalin knocked an arrow and readied her bow next to me.

"Ready?" I asked and the two ahead both nodded.

I cast Elemental Explosion and had another already on its way before the first explosion bloomed silently at the end of the cavern. My black-light spheres lit up the end of the cavern and the troglodytes we could see on our side of the village looked up at the phenomenon and began to run towards the explosions, darting between huts in order to get close to whatever was going on. Spell after spell I cast and I revelled in the power of the magic flowing through me. It occurred to me, after I had destroyed about half of the village, that the feeling of using magic had removed (if only temporarily) the feeling of oppression that had descended upon me without Shard's presence.

The troglodytes had initially run towards my first explosions and thus had run straight into the ones I sent out to follow them. After the first few explosions, they began running away from them and straight towards us. At first it was only one or two, who were killed by Karalin's arrows. Then groups of three or four came running towards us with half of their number making it to the sword and axe of Damon and Gorgrim. When the number running towards us increased into a mass of lizard bodies, all pushing past each other and tripping over only to be trampled upon by their fellows, I cast an Elemental Explosion into their mass before returning to my task. Dry and withered bodies remained on the slope in its wake. Karalin managed to take care of the outliers who were not caught by my spell.

Finally, it was all over. Reluctantly I stopped the channelling of magic and felt the oppressive blanket settle over my shoulders once again. Magic made me feel weightless, like I could float off the ground, and without it I felt myself sink back down once more. There was a sense of stillness ahead of us in the cavern. My seeming did not affect non-living things and so the majority of the village remained below us untouched.

We made our way down into the cavern and everything remained still and silent. The bodies down in the village did not smell at all and we briefly inspected each hut as we passed. The troglodytes were very backwards and used wood and stone to make their tools. Thus it was obvious when we came across the hut that must have belonged to the chief of the village. Inside were collections of metal tools and things stolen from the logging village. Knives, axes and saws were scattered about the floor of the hut, as well as a small collection of coins discarded against one wall.

"They had no use for money," Gogrim said as he collected the coins, "these must have been considered less valuable than a good steel knife."

We left the tools in the hut as we had no use for them and continued our exploration of the cavern. It was large and opposite the way we entered, another tunnel continued on sloping down opposite it. This tunnel was man-made, just like the one we had come down, hewn out of the rock by picks and chisels.

"Do we go down this one a ways?" Damon asked.

"There may be more troglodytes farther down," the dwarf said, "I wouldn't feel right collecting the reward without making sure."

"The village is made of a mixture of wood from up on the surface," I said, "and wode from deeper down in the underworld. There must be more tunnels leading down. We could explore a little way at least?"

"We'll explore a little way," Damon said, "we can always wedge shut the door in the entrance room to prevent anything coming out again."

We all agreed and continued down the tunnel. We did not come across any more troglodytes and the tunnel went down about a hundred feet or so before it opened up into another chamber. The chamber was about the size of the entrance room and contained another tunnel leading further down opposite us. The walls and roof of the chamber had all been painted with something dark, but what drew the entirety of my attention was the thing sitting in the middle of the room.

A large, smooth, black stone altar.