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The blood on contact with the gate glows and the metal screeches and begins to blacken and turn to ash. The gate like the rest of the room is made of that lattice of golden metal. What starts at the lock expands quickly turning more and more of the lattice to ash the ceiling and windows and even the latticework in the floor turns black and withers. But it isn't done. the blackening of the metal seems to flow across every piece of metal in the tower.
As you watch the tower begins to buckle and the massive tentacles crash through at every point the metal turns to ash. as you escape the tower heading up the stairs you see that a thicker stem like seem of the golden metal flows along the ceiling and it seemed that it was directly connected to the gate and from the gate the rest of the tower. the metal is growing out of this tunnel and from it the rest of the towers. The blood has severed the rest of the towers off from the source of the metal coming from the central tower. The metal isn't alive but seems to be some kind of spell.
You continue up the the stairs. the tunnel is made completely of the golden metal a woven tube . At the top is what looks like a cage made of the metal. a ten foot high space between the woven floor and ceiling. At the top of the stairs you find the way barred by a gate that is already beginning to turn to ash. The Cage like area is almost 30 feet across and seemed to be connected to other cages by tunnels. The entire area is in open air the tower descending into darkness and raising into the dark interior of a tower except there is a central cage that has a beam of light raising into darkness. The middle cages seem to have green glowing runes along their edges in the center of those cages are floatings crystal glowing green like the runes.
The entire area seems to have snow falling through it obscuring the far side of the tower and the further cages
There is a scream and clash of blades across the tower and the vibrant white flash of lightning lashing out of the gloom as it strikes someone. Then it is quiet again as the gate falls away into ash.
The Herald once again calls out to you. "you must fight your way to the center only the strongest of you can ascend the path of light. The crystals they -"
A glow seems to pulse out from the crystals and the runes and his voice it cut off.
The gate now gone you see the cage clearly. The mesh that makes up the floor is covered in blood and pieces of armor and broken arrows and a hundred other bits of battle. But what stands out most are hands. Four or five hands with the Herald's rune blazing in the palm. There are no signs of the bodies just the battles. You realize that the rune may not whisk the looser away. Someone wants you dead, for good.
What do you do?