Her armored coat takes the hit as her axe and hammer weave a pattern of blood across its body.
Maerra's armor easily deflects the weak thrust by the creature as Zev's heavy mace crashes into the thing's skull with a sickening crunch, sending it sprawling. Maerra rages against the thing, making sure it doesn't get back up. Whatever it was is now lying in a puddle of its own ichor and gore, unmoving. For the moment you are let alone with your thoughts...
"What is this thing?" Aurica wonders aloud as she watches Zev and Maerra quickly reduce it to a corpse.
Aurica also speaks a word and gives a wave of her hand, causing bright light to emanate from herself.
"It sure looked like a man-eater," says Maerra defensively. She looks around "And I don't mean in any good way. Are those bones over there?" she says hopefully.
Other than the body of the creature in front of you and its weapon, a rather well kept ranseur, the rest of this cave appears empty, even to Maerra's dwarven eyes and Aurica's magical light.
Aurica shakes her head, never having seen anything like this creature before.
Mÿsari steps forward and kneels at the corpse of the creature. She gathers her mystical strength and beings to look into the beyond. The power of arcane energies begins to illuminate her eyes and a bluish glowing mist forms around her hands as the trace over the body. With a pulse of energy that tosses her hair in the aftershock, she begins to divine and detect any magic upon the body or the surrounding area.
While Mysari investigates the body further, you notice a couple of rats come into the cave to start investigating, their noses tasting the air...
Milah keeps an eye on the rats as she investigates the creature's lair, sifting through it to find anything of interest or value.
"Well... this is strange. I'm getting a small inkling of evocation swirling about in the air around the body. I could be misinterpreting it, but it is suggesting to me that an evocation spell may have been cast upon it recently," Mÿsiar ponders over the corpse.
As she is about to continue, she spies the rats. "Eww... I think they're sniffing for a meal!" The incanter pokes at the vermin with her boarding pike from a distance, trying in vain to shoo them away.
"This one was dispatched easily enough, but there could be more of...whatever it is. We'd better be on guard. Maerra, are you prepared to lead the way farther in?"
The rats squeak and squeal at Mysari's poking, running away. They soon return however, a few more of them in tow...
Fireday, 4 Lamashan, 4707, 1:37pm. 52 degrees, no wind.
Leaving the rats to their prize meal, you move ahead, Maerra again taking the lead as you progress through the tunnel, this time more aware that you may not be alone down here.
Just ahead, you can see that the tunnel continues for a ways and then splits off toward the right while right next to you, a tunnel leads to what looks to be a room with rubble on the floor. Other than the echo of your equipment banging against you and your boot steps, you only hear the rats that are now behind you enjoying what you left for them. Something far ahead has a very pungent odor coming from it, as if someone forgot to clean out the horse stables last night...
Milah peers down the tunnel leading to the rubble-filled room. "We don't want anything in there sneaking up behind us. Let's make sure it's clear before we keep going."
"I'd agree Milah. Better safe than sorry!"
"I'll lead again then. Mind your step, rubble could mean the tunnels aren't safe even to walk in." Maerra steps forward, keeping an eye out for loose rocks.
Maerra leads the way as you head towards the next room. This one appears to be manufactured rather than simply carved out of the stone. The rubble on the floor crunches underneath your feet, some of which looks to be broken pottery of some kind. A closed wooden door is to your left.
Aurica casts her glow again to reset its duration, and says, "Ready when you are," looking pointedly at the door.
Milah readies her rapier and opens the door.
Maerra moves up to the door too, hopefully before anything charges through it...
Zev follows the other dutifully, occasionally looking back behind.
He lightly bumps into Mÿsari, as the others had stopped to ready themselves to open the door.
Stepping back with a muttered apology, Zev watches as the door was opened....
The door opens easily to Milah's touch, showing you a corridor that leads further into the complex. You follow it around for a short ways before coming to a split in the hallway. You notice as you walk that every once in a while you catch what appears to be writing on the walls out of the corner of your eye, but when you actually go to look at it, it vanishes as if it were never there. The split in the hallway leads to another door, what appears to be a side alcove and a long hallway that you can't yet see the end of.
Maerra runs a hand over the wall around where she thought she saw the writing. "If this isn't just magic, maybe it's lightly carved in somehow?" she wonders.
Whatever was there, any investigation shows no evidence. Only your memory. The words were unintelligible however, so you have a hard time remembering what it might have said.
Mÿsari stares at the walls in disbelief. "I could have sworn that I'd seen them to, Maerra," the young varasian woman says laying a gentle hand on the dwarf's shoulder. With a flutter of her hair in breeze felt by none but clearly was there, Mÿsari's eyes turn a faint shade of blue as she looks beyond what the untrained eyes of mortals would naturally see.
"There certainly is some protective magic here. I can sense an aura of abjuration, but that doesn't explain the writings appearing or vanishing," Mÿsari says to no one in particular as she examines the wall. Lost in her own little world of wonderment, the incanter seems truly perplexed.
As the others stop and look at the wall, Zev also stops and looks at the wall, smiling slightly, a slightly confused look on his face.
Aurica is as confused as the rest by the vanishing writing. But she steps around the others to stand in front of Maerra. "Just for a moment, Maerra, I want to get a good look ahead."
The rakshasa-blooded tiefling's eyes focus to look far ahead into the long, dark tunnel, far past where the glow of her magical light can reach from her current position.
Aurica describes to everyone that the long hallway seems to widen at the end as it turns to the right.
"It's just a feeling," Aurica whispers, "but I say we explore down this long hall now, since the way ahead is closed off with a door." She steps aside, closer to the wall, to allow the other to pass her by so she can resume her position in front of Zev.
Milah nods, "That makes sense to me. Let's go."
You head down the tunnel, Aurica returning to her place farther back. It widens at the end into what appears to have once been a small shrine, for to the northeast, steps lead up to a platform of gray stone. Sitting atop the platform is an ancient altar, little more than a jagged block of black marble with a shallow concavity on top of it. This basin is filled with what appears to be filthy water. Further to the southeast are a pair of doors made of solid stone with several runes etched in it of unknown origin. Some of them seem to match what you thought you saw earlier in the tunnels...
Milah looks uncertainly at the altar. "Lovely place for a sacrifice..." She then looks to Mÿsari. "Anything magical we need to be concerned about?"
Once again the incenter's eyes turn azure as she perceives the harmonic wave that is the realm of magic. Studying the alter and the surrounding area, Mÿsari moves into the room and takes a closer look at the basin within the black marble.
While Mysari studies the altar, the rest of you watch as some of the runes on the door seem to shift. When you look directly at it however, it goes back to the way it was.
"The flow of magic down here is very disconcerting. I'm afraid I can't seem to see anything right now," Mÿsari admits with a look of frustration combined with mild embarrassment.
Seeing Mÿsari's efforts frustrated, Aurica draws closer to the stone doors to the southeast, drawn by her curiosity and these runes that seem to move at the corner of one's eye. Now standing directly in front of them, she gently reaches out with her right hand, laying her palm flat against the doors to feel them.
Milah moves closer to Aurica, ready in case the doors fly open.
”I see magic!” Mÿsari chirps. ”The altar radiates faint Conjuration magic while the waters radiate faint Transmutation magic.”
"Filthy magic water on a magic altar. Sounds damned unholy, I wouldn't touch it." comments Maerra, looking at the altar and shaking her head. "Some places are best sealed off and their evil forgotten."
Aurica feels the smooth cool surface of the stone and the indentations of the runes that she can see. These runes are foreign, having an almost ancient look to them. Rather than the smooth runes, such as those of Dwarven or even the Giant-tongue, these ones have sharp points at the end of each letter. As you look directly at them, they don't move.
Zev looks sideways at the altar after Maerra's words, thenmakes his way ove to where Aurica stands before the door.
He squints at the runes, asking the tiefling, "What do they mean?"
As Aurica examines the door for a way to open them, she can hear the sound of water dripping coming from behind the doors.
"I wonder what these mean," Aurica said aloud as she ran her hand over the cool, rune-carved stone.
She turns her head to look at the others.
"I hear dripping water on the other side. Let's take a look, shall we?" And then Aurica begins to pull to the sides on each door, gripping the indentations with her fingers.