The Tears of Kas̆dael

After finding the two dead guards, Ihra and the others rummaged through a few more of the crates, finding a mixture of arms, potions, and food in them, before moving deeper into the reclaimed outpost.

The second room had been the dining hall and still had a few rickety tables arrayed around a large hearth. Beyond that lay the barracks, although the beds it had once hosted had disintegrated into piles of rotten wood. From there, a short hallway led to a few smaller rooms whose purposes were not so easily guessed, and then the building ended, with no sign of a tunnel.

“Are you sure the wood you spotted under the River led here,” Ihra asked, as she searched through the rubble of a collapsed ceiling that clogged the final room in a vain attempt to find a trapdoor.

The scout paused and closed his eyes in concentration before replying. “Yes, it’s still below us.”

“Where is it exactly?”

After a moment’s pause, Erin headed back to the hall and walked three doors down, leading them to one of the other small rooms. The ceiling remained intact in this room, and though part of the outer wall had crumbled, allowing the verdant overgrowth of the jungle to push inside, the rubble had been cleared away. The room was empty, however, with nothing of interest save for the partially broken wall.

“I think it ends here,” he said, surveying the barren room with a frown.

“Maybe there’s a secret entrance,” Asâta offered, and Ihra agreed.

“It wouldn’t be the first we’ve found - spread out.”

The two began examining the walls, searching for any signs of a fissure and tapping on them to see if they rang hollow, while Erin focused on the floor. After a few minutes, he beckoned them over. “The entrance is here. I can’t find a switch to open it though.”

Despite her excellent vision, Ihra could detect no sign of a gap in the stone tiles that covered the floor. She bent down, running her hand over the grout in between the tiles, searching for a hinge, a seam, a depression - anything at all that would allow the floor to open, but there was nothing.

With a sigh, she stood up and brushed the dust off her hands. “I’m sorry, Erin, but there’s no way there’s a trapdoor here. Maybe whatever you’re seeing isn’t a tunnel.”

“No, I-” His denial fell silent, and his shoulders sagged. “Damn. Maybe you’re right.” He crouched down and ran his hand over the floor, but like her, found nothing. “I guess it was all a red herring. Sorry for wasting you guys' time,” he apologized.

“Well, I…” Ihra had been about to tell him ‘I told you so’ when she noticed his downcast expression. The scout always seemed a bit uncertain of his place on the team and that was a feeling she understood a bit too well. “It was worth a try,” she said, swallowing her criticism. “And coming here wasn’t entirely a waste - there’s something strange going on in this outpost, and I bet it's connected to Sarganīl’s plans.”

“It doesn’t get us into the city, though,” he said glumly. “Should we check the other buildings? I know they’re mostly overgrown, but maybe there’d be something that would at least tell us why those guards were here.”

“We might as well,” Ihra agreed. The three left the room and turned to head back toward the excavated entrance, but as they did, something caught Ihra’s eye. There was a slight bulge in the outer wall of the room, a bulge she could have dismissed as the warping of the old wood in the humid heat of the jungle. But beneath the wood, she could see the tiniest sliver of metal. That’s odd.

She stopped and turned to face the wall, running her hand along the bulge. Her hands caught on a seam, the wood swollen beyond its former borders, and she pressed down. With a quiet click, a small panel swung open, revealing a metal box behind it, with a chain dangling from the top.

The ground began to shake as she pulled the chain, followed by the rumbling, grinding roar of metal against metal. She glanced around, trying to identify the source of the sound, and then she saw the room they’d just left through the door frame. The ground continued to shake as the stone floor - in its entirety - was slowly lifted toward the ceiling by a massive, turning screw.

“Holy crap!” Erin halted beside her, shaking his head in disbelief as he watched the floor click into place. “It’s like something out of National Treasure.”

“Looks like you were right,” Ihra said, pointing to a gaping hole in the far corner of the room where a shaft led down into the earth.

A pleased grin spread across his face. “I told you so.”

The shaking ceased as the floor clicked into place against the ceiling, leaving an open path to the shaft. Ihra couldn’t shake the sense of unease that hovered her as she walked over to the opening, sending a nervous glance at the massive stone floor suspended above them by nothing more than a single giant pillar, but the floor held.

At first, they made slow progress down the shaft. The tunnel plunged into the darkness at such a steep incline that it was actually tricky to descend. And though they had torches to light their way, Ihra - remembering the traps they had discovered elsewhere on the island - insisted they move slowly, searching the ground and walls of the tunnel for any sign of tripwires, pressure plates, or other traps. It seemed, however, that the guards had felt the secret entrance was enough of a deterrent. After progressing several hundred feet down the tunnel without detecting anything suspicious, she finally agreed to pick up the pace.

The incline continued longer than she’d expected, but eventually the passage leveled out, and she knew that they must have reached the portion that stretched below the River. If she’d had any doubts about that, they were quickly erased, as large portions of the tunnel began to be covered in shallow pools, fed by precipitation leaking from the ceiling.

The feeling of claustrophobia grew, as visions of the raging River breaching through the ancient wood flooded through her mind, but Ihra knew this was her best chance of finding a way into the system, and she was unwilling to turn back. Besides, she reasoned, if the guards were using it as an outpost, the tunnels must be reasonably safe.

Still, she was relieved when the water began to dry up, and the tunnel started a gradual ascent. When they reached a portion of the tunnel that had no water dripping from the ceiling, she called for a halt.

“Any idea how much further we’ve got,” she asked Erin. “Not sure what to expect on the other side, but I don’t want to pop up in the middle of the barracks.”

He concentrated for a second, then shrugged. “I’d guess we’re a hundred feet from the end, maybe? The wood kind of peters out after that; can’t tell you what’s on the other side, though.”

She hid her sigh of relief and nodded her thanks. “Then it sounds like we’re almost there.” She paused as something caught her attention in the shadows just behind the halo of her torch, and swung her light in that direction. A rat stared back at her, its black eyes burning with the reflected flames, and scampered off as she took a quick step forward. And as she stepped forward, she heard a faint click.

She spun to the side as a large beam with an iron spike perpendicular to its ends dropped down from the ceiling, missing her by an inch. “Selene’s grace! So much for not trapping the place.”

Their progress slowed down to a crawl again, and this time she and Erin detected several traps. Fortunately, none were particularly sophisticated and were easy enough to circumvent once spotted, until they reached the end of the tunnel, where a weathered oak door awaited them - a door covered by a faintly shimmering silver sheen. “Is that a ward?”

The healer pushed past them to look closer at the glowing, opaque veil that stretched across the tunnel. “It’s a ward,” she confirmed after a brief examination, “but it’s pretty weak. I don’t think anyone has maintained this one in a long time.”

“Can we bust through it,” Ihra asked.

The healer tapped the silvery sheen speculatively. “There are three types of wards - spells, glyphs, and runes. Since the barrier is obviously weakened, we can rule out runes as its source - an expertly crafted ritual could theoretically power the ward for centuries,” she started to explain.

“Wait, you’re saying these wards can be powered by runes,” Ihra interrupted her.

The healer looked perplexed. “Well, yes - everyone knows that. At least in Birnah,” she amended as the realization that neither of them was familiar with wards slowly dawned on her. “But we rely on wards more than most cities these days, thanks to Stryn.”

But Ihra was barely paying attention any longer, as her thoughts turned to Aphora’s grimoire. If the wards could be constructed by runes, than it stood to reason that they could also be destroyed by them. Grabbing the book out of her bag, she sat down and, leaning against the wall, began to thumb through it.

An hour later she found what she was looking for, a runic circle that Aphora said was to break ‘seals.’ She could only hope that was another word for wards.

With help from Erin and the healer, she sketched the circle into the ground in front of the door and poured her fast-depleting supplies of iron fillings and other crushed powders that Aphora had provided her into the crevices; then she took her seat. It had been a while since she’d tried to channel the strange power into a rune, and it seemed the void had missed her. The foreign energy flooded through her body faster and thicker than ever before, and the darkness of the tunnel was driven away as the circle exploded in a lance of light aimed straight at the ward.

A concussive blast knocked her out of the circle as the light touched the ward, tossing all three of them to the ground, but the effect on the ward was far stronger. A spiderweb of cracks spread from the site of impact, rapidly expanding and multiplying across the surface of the ward until the whole thing collapsed in a shower of sparks.

Ihra didn’t bother to keep the smile off her face as she dusted herself off. She’d succeeded - and while Erin had certainly been invaluable to their expedition - without her help, they would have been forced to turn back. She had nearly allowed herself to stop practicing her runes - they were slow to use, expensive to fund, and required parsing through Aphora’s often dense and arcane notes - but they also did things that spells just couldn’t match. Maybe there is a path forward, she thought, but with practiced skill, she pushed her thoughts aside. She’d have time to think over them later, but for now, they still had a mission to carry out.

“Everyone alright,” she asked.

“Fine.” “Just a little shaken up.”

Satisfied no one was hurt, she turned her attention to the door, the door that was no longer warded. She touched the handle hesitantly, just in case there was one final layer of traps, but neither magic nor blade rose to meet her and with a click, she twisted the knob and gently cracked it open.

“Selene’s grace!” A voice shouted on the other side, followed swiftly by the sound of a pot shattering.

So much for stealth.