The Wandering Spire

From the top of the stairwell, Jeze extended her light, and she was able to make out clawed tracks that scurried up the steps in the dozens. The teenage Initiate readied a hand ax and crept down the staircase and it ended in a more expansive chamber similar in shape to the one above. This room had four exits, one was filled with rubble, two were closed with steel doors, and the fourth was opened and led to a wide, dark stairwell going down. The Howler tracks came from the ominous stairwell.

"What would cause this damage?" Jeze wondered as she studied the rubble.

"Time? This place is old, and I do not like it. It makes me feel ill," Ziplocke groaned.

'You'll be alright," Jeze said and patted his head.

Ziplocke looked nervously around the chamber as he licked up paste from the jar. The Goblin stayed close to Jeze's legs as she explored the room. Both doors were locked, which meant her brother probably didn't even bother with them. She snorted at the thought of Daverius marching down the stairwell with sword and Earth magic in hand. He didn't bother with exploring and just muscled through hordes of Howlers. She was different, and she examined the closed doors.

"Locked doors are locked for a reason," Ziplocke said as Jeze tried to open one.

"Like protecting treasure," she added.

"Not what I was going for," muttered the Goblin.

Jeze studied the door for any hidden protective Runes. Her eyes widened when she discovered a thin line of glyphs that ran along the edges of the doorframe. They were faintly etched into the steel.

"Keep a lookout," she told Ziplocke as she sat before the door and studied the Runes under the glow of her magic item.

The Runes reminded Jeze of the protections the Old Crones had around their campus. They were equally complex, so she was confident she could disarm this set.

"I just need to figure out what these Runes do so I can negate them," she wondered out loud.

"Affliction aspect. They will make your skin boil. Nasty stuff," Ziplocke said from over Jeze's shoulder.

"You were supposed to be on the lookout," the teenager scolded.

"And you want to have your skin boiled?"

"How do you know?" Jeze asked.

"I'm a Goblin from the Abyssal plane. Affliction is one of the aspects native to my kind," Ziplocke stated.

"You never told me this!" Jeze exclaimed.

"Well, you never asked!" Ziplocke retorted.

Jeze thought about that for a moment. Having a Goblin Familiar could be more beneficial than she imagined. Ziplocke taught her the Darkness aspect, and Jeze wondered if she could learn Affliction as well. Placing curses on enemies had a lot of utility, she thought. But that was for later.

"Boiling skin is a Shaping and Control foci," Jeze muttered out loud as she placed the globe on the ground and retrieved the jar of resin and the pointed stick from her backpack.

Knowing the focus of the Runes allowed her to disarm them. Jeze altered a line of Runes using the resin and channeled her Will. Ziplocke backed away from her. The Goblin did not fancy the idea of having his skin boiled. The Runes flashed, the Goblin yelped, and Jeze celebrated with a whoop.

"The door is still locked," Ziplocke observed.

"I get to test my lockpicking! This is great!" Jeze exclaimed.

She was having a lot of fun. This was what she lived for. This was her calling. She used her bracelet channeling tool to summon dirt, which she shaped into stone and shaped again into a thin steel pin. Jeze inserted the pin into the keyhole and shaped it to push the pilings in the right order. Ziplocke was right! This was much easier than trying to shape the pilings themselves. Initially, Jeze felt that this process would take too long, but it was significantly more effective. It took thirty minutes for Jeze to pick the lock, and her brow was covered with sweat.

"I did it!" She said in a tired voice that came out more of an exhale than a cheer.

"Yay, more dungeon to explore!" Ziplocke said with as much enthusiasm as a rotted log.

The door Jeze picked opened and led to a hallway that traveled left and right, with a second door visible on the left. Across from her was a human skeleton in rusted metal armor that sat with its back against the wall and its legs splayed out in front. A rotted spear rested across its lap, and a gaping hole marked its breastplate where cracked ribs were visible.

"I'll bet you a jar paste that I know how he died," Ziplocke said with a giggle.

To their right, the passage turned and continued out of sight. Here, the walls were marked with gauges and scorch marks. Some sort of battle, perhaps? Jeze wondered.

"What could be strong enough to leave such rents?" Jeze asked.

"Nothing we want to meet," Ziplocke muttered over her shoulder.

A large iron helmet rested on the floor to her right. One that would fit a giant, but there were no skeletal remains. It was as if the owner had removed and dropped it. Jeze moved toward the helmet in order to see what was around the corner. Ziplocke yanked at her pants.

"Wait, maybe we are out of our league here, don't you think? Maybe you go back to town and return with a team?" The Goblin suggested.

Jeze paused for a moment. That would be the smart thing to do. But she was having too much fun!

"We will be alright," she said and continued on.

Jeze peeked around the corner and saw that it opened into a wider room. The walls here were darkened with scorch marks, and charred skeletal remains littered the floor. Some remains had the tell-tale claws of Howlers or other such demons. The other bones appeared human. Jeze guessed that the room was at one time a barracks, for it had rotted cots and steel racks that held a few rusted spears. A weird iron cage-like contraption was against the wall. The door was opened, but it was empty inside. It was enormous and had the same color as the giant helm on the floor. Jeze wondered if there was a connection. There was nothing else to see in this room, so she backtracked to the closed door.

"No traps," Jeze said after she studied the frames.

"No magic traps. You don't know how to find regular traps," Ziplocke pointed out.

The teenage Initiate tapped her chin and shrugged. "I have good reflexes," she said as she attempted to open the door.

Ziplocke scurried down the hall, but nothing happened. Jeze clapped her hands together. The door was locked. This was so much fun!

"I think I am getting better at this," Jeze observed after she picked up and opened the door.

The door led to a small room with a curving stairwell that climbed down. It was littered with rubble, and the wall was partially collapsed.

"That looks unstable," Ziplocke warned.

It was no less risky than scaling the towers in the Old Crone's school, Jeze reflected. She handed Ziplocke the globe and climbed down. The Goblin hurried to latch on to her back, and there was one moment of panic when a pile of rubble slipped out from under Jeze's feet, but the young Initiate quickly recovered and avoided falling. In moments, she dropped lightly to the bottom of the stairwell.

"We can't go back up," Ziplocke said forlornly.

The pile of rubble that slipped away created too large of a gap for them to scale.

"I need to pack rope," Jeze commented as if she had forgotten the cake for a picnic.

"We could die here!" Ziplocke exclaimed.

"I'm not worried. We can find another way out. Or I may be able to climb this. Come, we have more to explore," Jeze stated.

They were in a small room filled with rubble and a single closed door. It was identical to the room above, and Jeze checked the frame for traps. When she found none, she reached for the handle.

"Wait!" Cried Ziplocke.

"What?"

"What if the trap Runes are on the other side?" Ziplocke asked.

"Well, nothing. It should be written into the Rune structure to only be triggered from one side," Jeze responded.

"And what if they are not? Wouldn't opening the door from this side trigger them?" Ziplocke asked in a squeaky voice.

Jeze shook her head, "that would be a poorly designed trap. It would go off on the other side."

"What if it is an alarm?" Ziplocke asked.

Jeze paused. She didn't think about that, and she glanced up at the crumbled stairwell. She should have explored the other floor more instead of climbing down. Maybe she could have found a ward key that allowed her to travel through the trapped doors.

"Oh well," she said with a shrug and opened the door before Ziplocke could further protest.

She found herself in a hallway with the sloped pyramid wall to her left, and in the middle was a door on the right wall. This passageway was identical to the one above except longer with the end turning a corner and continued out of sight. The steel door was smashed open, and more skeletal bodies that were a mixture of humans in rusted armor and the bones of demons littered the ground. She wondered if they were Howlers, but they looked larger and were better equipped.

"Did the demons invade this temple? If so, from where?" Jeze wondered.

Ziplocke shrugged and said, "It is ancient, and remember it was not underground when the fighting occurred. The temple was buried with time."

Jeze nodded in understanding. She kept thinking that she was going underground into the basement levels, but in reality, she was working her way back to the ground level. What she witnessed was an invasion force working their way up to the top, and then it dawned on her.

"The demons were trying to shut down the weapon at the top?" Jeze asked.

"That could be true. But where are they coming from now?" The Goblin wondered.

"The only way to find out is that we keep exploring!" Jeze exclaimed.

Ziplocke groaned and followed the teenage Initiate as she traveled down the hallway toward the ripped door. Jeze dimmed the globe, peeked through the cracked steel door frame, and saw an enormous rectangular chamber littered with rubble and the remains of humans and demons alike. Across from her was another door, and the wide stairwell was to her left. On the right was a collapsed wall filled with dirt and roots, as if nature was the final invader. Faint noises from Howlers could be heard coming from the depths of the stairwell.

"We should not go down there," Ziplocke observed with a shudder.

"Not yet, at least," Jeze replied with a wink. The Goblin groaned.

"Relax, I learned my lesson," Jeze said.

"Thank the Night Eye!" Ziplocke replied.

"We need to explore everything first before moving on."

Ziplocke groaned and followed Jeze down the hallway toward the corner. It turned into another barracks, this one larger than the one upstairs, and it was empty of bodies and weapons. Jeze guessed the soldiers marshaled and fought in the wide chamber outside the hallway. Again, she saw the large empty cage, and this barracks held two.

"What did the cages hold?" She wondered.

Ziplocke sniffed the cages and hissed with disgust. "Something Holy."

Jeze held her glowing globe near the cage and examined it. She let out a gasp as Runes began to glow red along the steel. She moved in to look inside.

"Be careful," Ziplocke warned.

Inside, the cage was empty, and she stepped back out. When she closed the door, she noticed a sconce behind it.

"Huh? Wonder what that is for," she said.

"Nothing good. Let's go," Ziplocke urged.

Jeze ignored the Goblin and placed the globe in the sconce. The sphere and the Runes along the cage both flared a moment before they dimmed. Jeze retrieved her wand and completed the movements to Summon and Shape fire.

"What are you doing!?! You shouldn't play with magic you do not understand!" Ziplocke cried.

It was too late. Jeze shot the fire at the Globe, and it flared with power. The cage rattled and sparked, but nothing happened.

"I wonder if we need the helmet inside," Jeze reflected.

"What are you talking about?" Ziplcoke snarled.

"The helmet we found upstairs. I guess we could take the stairwell…" Jeze said and planned.

"No! That is where the Howlers go! We should just continue exploring in the hidden hallways where we are safe," Ziplocke said.

The Goblin couldn't believe he suggested that. But he much preferred to not be eaten and ripped apart by the rat-like demons.

"Why are you worried? If you die, you go back to the Abyssal plane," Jeze observed.

"No, I can die here. I only return back if you die first," Ziplocke said with crossed arms.

"Really? Interesting," Jeze replied.

She retrieved her orb and packed away her wand. The sphere continued to glow, and she exited the barracks. She dimmed her light and summoned Shadows to surround her.

"Are you ready?" She asked.

Of course, the Goblin shook his head. But where else would they go? The stairs they used fell apart, and their only options were the other door and the large stairwell that had the sounds of Howlers coming from below. The monsters could swarm up at any moment. It was a long way to the other side of the chamber with very few hiding spaces in between. If anything were waiting in the stairwell, they would be easily spotted. But what other choice did they have?

"Let's go," Ziplocke groaned.

Jeze dimmed the light and dashed across as silently as she could.