Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

Slowly the group of five walked down the hallway watching diligently for anything that might decide to pop out and surprise them, eventually they found a corpse of a goblin that was many many days old rotting outside of a room on the left side of the hall. Aelia took point and slowly opened the door with her left hand while her right hand had a solid grip on her axe.

The door creaked slightly as it opened, but nothing inside stirred at the noise. Slowly everyone filtered inside with their weapons in hand and started spreading out while looking around. Quickly the corpses from Arthur’s first day in the city were found along with the dried blood. Their cheap and old weapons were still on the ground where they had fallen, likely not worth the effort of taking. “Looks like a massacre happened here. Do you think it was other goblins that did this?” Cassia asked while she poked a body with her staff.

“No, these cuts were made with much larger weapons than any goblin would carry. The angle of the cuts also don’t line up with the average goblin height.” Aelia answered while examining the corpse of the goblin leader. “Whatever killed these goblins was at least as tall as an elf or human. The cuts are also clean enough to indicate a well maintained weapon.”

“Could it be the same thing that killed the other goblins on the other floors?”

“Perhaps, but there could also be more than one person or thing doing this. It might even be an illusive race of animal peoples, you never know what the fey might get up to in the span of an entire era with nothing else to do.”

After shifting through all the broken furniture and the kitchen area the group found nothing else of importance and decided to move on leaving everything in the room like the one before. They continued down the hall and eventually found another hallway that led to the left. From what they could see it was a block of several bedrooms and further inspection revealed that they likely belonged to the wealthiest citizens of the city when it still functioned.

“Would you look at this, they even have magic steel built into their doors in these decorations. And to think this has all been untouched since the second era.” Hambel exclaimed as ran his hands across the stone and metal door of the first bedroom.

“We still have the rest of the rooms to take a look at, so why don’t we focus on that before we start salivating over the metal in a door.” Cassia commented on Hambel’s attitude while poking him in the back with her wooden staff. Hambel didn’t say anything in response, but his glare told her that he didn’t appreciate being poked like that.

Everyone started to take turns looking through the rooms and keeping guard from anything coming from behind with four looking in the rooms and one on watch. This allowed the group to quickly search through all the rooms until they reached the last one which was not only the most impressive looking but the only one that was still closed.

“Oh my gods, look at the craftsmanship of this door alone. It looks like it was designed for a king, or an emperor. The person that used to own this room must have been a very powerful person indeed, maybe it was a power dwarven wizard, there aren't many of them.” Hambel said as he was practically pressing his face against the door, his thoughts running wild.

Eventually Aelia had enough and politely but firmly pushed him out of the way before she reached for the door handle and turned it to open it. But to her surprise it didn’t open, thinking that it might have just been a mistake on her part she tried again and again until she had already tried three times. Now everyone was looking at her quite confused and were about to ask her what was wrong. “The door is locked.”

Everyone visibly looked disappointed at the statement and were about to turn away when Aelia suddenly raised her axe, only Hambel was able to say anything before she did anything. “Hey! Just what do you think you are doing!?” Hambel asked with anger in his voice, he looked just about ready to fight his own boss for this transgression.

“The door is locked and it is blocking our way, since I assume none of you know how to pick a lock I will be removing the door and thus the obstacle to whatever is hiding past it.” Aelia said calmly as she lowered her axe and turned to Hambel.

“You will be doing no such thing! That door is a work of art and I will not stand by if you desecrate such a masterpiece!” The anger in Hambel’s voice was evident that he probably didn’t need to yell, but since he was a dwarf he did so anyways out of habit.

“I thought you were interested in finding valuables down here.”

“This door is valuable, the metal alone makes it worth double the other doors and the designs make it a work of art. I doubt that Lyra will be happy when she sees something like this broken into a hundred pieces just so you could open it. We can come back later with someone who knows how to pick locks and avoid breaking down the door.” Hambel firmly said to Aelia with his shield and mace in hand, she and everyone else could tell that he was willing to fight her over the door. ‘He is such a fool, but he does have a point.’

“Fine, we will return later. But just so you know that the person we are bringing along to pick the lock is going to want a cut of what we find, that means we will all be getting less.” Aelia looked Hambel in the eyes as she said this, making sure that he understood what she said.

“I can live with that, splitting things six ways instead of five isn’t that much of a difference.” Hambel’s posture calmed down at that statement and everyone else who was watching the conversation intently did as well. Slowly weapons were sheathed and the group turned around and walked back to the primary hallway and took a left to continue exploring the floor. Unfortunately for everyone they found that the rest of the rooms on this floor were either empty or had a caved in ceiling blocking any entry.

“Looks like the settlers that will come after we are done will have their work cut out for them. All these rooms will certainly need a team of at least five people working to clear this out within a day or two, any less and the time it would take becomes exponentially longer.” Cassia commented as the third door on the far side of the fifteenth floor opened to show a room that was filled with rubble.

“Couldn’t a mage like you clear something like this out though. You are able to control rocks and dirt, I’ve seen you do that before. So why can’t you do something about it?” Hambel asked Cassia while pointing to the rubble.

“Well I definitely could, but that would take quite a bit of time and mana to do which would leave me unable to help you all if we were to encounter something dangerous such as a powerful goblin. That isn’t even considering that we might not even find anything of value inside those rooms and I would have just wasted my mana for nothing.”

Hambel slowly nodded as he turned away from Cassia and continued walking. ‘In hindsight, that makes a lot of sense. Best to have all hands on deck if we are going to fight goblins.’

The group continued their search of the floor and eventually looped back around to where they started at the barricades where Citro was still standing on guard. “So what all did you find?” He asked as they came close while noting the lack of injuries and blood.

“To be honest not much, most of the valuable stuff is literally just stone doors with metal attached at decoration. There was one room though that was locked that we think might have something interesting inside, that is why we are going back now, we can tell Lyra of our progress and find someone who can pick locks.” Aelia recounted their findings while the rest of her team passed by and started walking up the stairs.

“Well that sounds interesting, good luck with that, and be sure that you tell Lyra about your plan beforehand. She might be able to help you with her magic, or she might know someone who can pick locks. She did, after all, pick everyone for the expedition.”

*********

Back in the camp Aelia gave her report of her team's findings on the fifteenth floor and brought up the locked and expensive looking door as well as that it was locked.

“Hmm, that sounds unfortunate. I assume you are looking for someone who can pick locks so you can get in there and look, right?” Lyra asked Aelia who nodded. “Well I do happen to know a spell that can unlock most non magical locks, but I won't be able to help you with that until after dinner. As you can see I have quite a bit of work ahead of myself with just the reports alone for this expedition.” Lyra gestured towards the pile of paper that she would need to sort through and organize as it was a part of the expedition to share everything that was found there from the amount of rooms to the amount of floors.

“That works for me, as long as Hambel isn’t going to fight me over it I don’t really care.”

“Did you and Hambel get into a fight or something over this door?” Lyra looked at Aelia with great confusion, she knew that Hambel was generally a nice person and didn’t like starting fights unless someone or something he respected was being insulted.

“Yes we did, I was going to break that door down so we could get inside but apparently that door was a ‘masterpiece’ and a work or art. He really didn’t like the idea of breaking it down or damaging it, it must be some dwarven cultural thing because I didn’t see why he was willing to fight over it. Not even most kings would fight over paintings or pictures.”

Soon Lyra was left alone in her tent as Aelia left to tell the rest of her team when they were going to open the door. ‘That must have been one impressive door if Hambel was willing to get into a fight over it. The crown and the new settlers will probably be really happy to have it here if it is as nice as I think it is. If we get lucky we might even find a few magical artifacts in that room, most of the other rooms have been looted by goblins over the years leaving just scraps for us to find.’

*********

Several hours later I awoke in my bed feeling much better and reenergized. Sitting up I stretched out my arms and legs and stepped off the bed as I conjured up some water to wash my face and help wake myself up. Next up was breakfast which consisted of two cut up mushrooms dipped in honey. I conjured up a plate, a knife and a fork from earth and I ate to keep everything clean and dispelled them when I was done.

Next I donned my armor once again which took around five or so minutes to put on all the padding and then the chainmail which was then followed by the actual plate armor pieces across my body and chest. Once I walked around the room a bit to be certain that everything was how it should have been I attached my longsword’s sheath to my hip and gave a few test swings to get a feel for the weapon again.

Unlocked and stepping outside my room I looked around quickly to be certain that there weren't any goblins or anything worse waiting outside for me before I turned my back to close and lock the door behind myself. ‘Alright, for today I will just be collecting everything that I wasn’t able to bring with me after the fight with those stronger goblins on the seventeenth floor.’

Starting the walk I was cautious and looked around each floor as I passed by, thankfully I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary which meant that the group that attacked me were likely out of place which was both good and bad news. ‘Given the armor they were wearing they were likely a part of the group that follows the demon warlock or the goblin warlord. That means they were either sent there for some reason, or they went there for their own personal reasons. I hope that it was just personal for them, otherwise I suspect they will be sending a few more groups to see what happened to them that I will need to deal with.’

Walking up the nearest goblin soldier corpse I first poked it with the tip of my sword, when it didn’t react and sheathed my sword and began removing the armor it was wearing. The first thing I noticed was that the armor was even worse than I thought it was, like I suspected when I was fighting them they wore no padding underneath this metal armor which must have been very uncomfortable on its own, but the armor was literally wore with leather straps that dug into the skin of the wearer.

‘Gods, these goblins are far more resilient than I gave them credit for. I highly doubt that any human, elven, or dwarven armies would wear anything like this with nothing underneath. Then again I doubt that the goblin warlord would care very much about how comfortable his soldiers were while they wore armor, real typical might makes right attitude going on there to do something like that. But given these things follow demons I guess I shouldn’t be all that surprised by how they chose to treat each other.’