Sofia pushed forward to see if she could find the Necrotic ooze. As expected, it wasn’t there. There seemed to be a large room at the same emplacement, but it was behind a closed set of stone doors.
This… How do I even make a map?
The general layout doesn’t change, but everything else does? Are there several different versions of the same rooms and corridors that are exchanging places with one another when I’m not looking? Or am I the one being teleported to another similar but different maze every so often without realizing it?
Ugh. I liked the moving walls better.
With things being that weird, Sofia gave up trying to rush things so much and patiently let the last bits of her mana refill before summoning her birds and putting on a rune. She also started to annotate the places on her map.
For the room in front of her, she marked :
1- Necrotic Ooze
2- Closed doors
3- ?
Depending on how this works, I could use this to my advantage to avoid unpleasant stuff like the Ooze by crossing the room in one of its less putrid versions, if that’s a thing. I’ve yet to understand what prompts the change, though, and how far it extends.
After the ten minutes of channeling required to activate [False immortality], which felt like they lasted forever, Sofia summoned the graveyard crew to phase Pareth through the door.
I feel safer now. Let’s see what we have got in there this time.
As Sofia guessed, the ghostly skeletons couldn’t get through the walls and floor, but they could still phase through the door. They slowly carried Pareth through, and Sofia got to see the inside of the room.
This was some kind of large living quarters, with tables, a fireplace, a kitchen counter along a wall, and shelves scattered here and there. Like everything else in the maze, it all was old and decrepit, a thick layer of roots entering from who knows where had even grown all over the floor. It was very militaristic, not only due to the blazons decorating the walls but also the many weapons and shields lined up on racks everywhere. That and the twelve armored knights.
As if stuck in an eerie painting, twelve fully armored knights with closed helmets were frozen in place doing everyday things. One of them, for example, was sitting at a table, in position to polish his rusted, broken-in-half sword with an invisible rag he was holding. Another was getting ready to eat out of an empty bowl with his wooden spoon. Some were relaxing on chairs, sitting around a table, and some were leaning against the walls.
Did they die and get stuck in place for eternity? Some kind of petrification curse?
Wait…
Sofia was about to tell Pareth to channel his [Sanctified grounds] as soon as possible, but it was obvious he already was from the instant he was getting ready to enter the room as it instantly activated.
The reason for Pareth to be ready to fight was a simple detail that Sofia had discarded at the beginning. As she looked around, the roots on the ground seemed connected to the knights' armor. She asked Pareth to stab the roots he was walking on to make sure of her assumptions. His sword of light cut through a thick root. Thick, bright-red resin splashed out.
In a terrifying cacophony of otherworldly screeching and grating metal, the armors moved, turning their head toward Pareth in unison.
The fake tree monsters from the spirit forest.
Is this maze another secret buried beneath the forest?! That could be why I can’t get through the walls if it’s not just a limitation of the trial.
Sofia observed from the safety of her spot while Pareth rushed toward the armored wood monsters. There was no reason for her to take any risks, which conveniently gave Pareth a perfect way to escape should he need to by teleporting to her.
The armored trees gave Pareth a good challenge, not so much because they hurt him. In fact, throughout the whole fight, Pareth lost no health, but because they were so many. The root monsters’ strategy was to dogpile on Pareth and punch him, piercing him with wooden tendrils. Even without his armor, this wouldn’t do much to Pareth, who had not much to be pierced through, but it did limit his movements.
The monsters were very resilient; Pareth struggled as they latched onto him. His usual weapons were useless in the messy melee. He grabbed them and tore them apart one by one, ripping off the parts of steel armor and the writhing wood beneath as they did their best to dig their roots around and inside him, latching unto his bones as if he was soil to be planted into, nutrients to be consumed.
Bones might make for good fertilizer, but this soil fought back. After a few minutes of struggling, only Pareth was left standing in an ocean of red sap, splintered steel, and broken roots.
Of course, there is nothing in the kill log.
These things are a bit scary, but they’re not very bright. Also, these ones were nowhere near as fast as the one that tried running away from the giant blind boar; lower level, perhaps?
Now is it safe to walk into this room?
Sofia had Pareth open the door from the inside after she took some steps back. The red sap essentially covered the whole floor of that room now, and some of it overflowed into the corridor. Sofia walked up to the red puddle. Terrible that I cannot identify anything…
The red sap was very rich in mana, but she could feel that it was quickly losing it and drying up. I wonder if that counts as sap or as blood. Still wearing her armor, she touched the liquid. It was not as sticky as she expected. I guess it’s more like blood; the color is so bright, though, that it would probably make some great dye. Doesn’t smell like much of anything, either.
Since it didn’t seem like the liquid was corrosive or dangerous, Sofia stepped into the room, Paladin skeletons in tow. There wasn’t much to be found there. The curtain-like cloth blazons on the wall were all in terrible shape, but since they were all the same, by piecing together the different pieces, Sofia managed to recreate a depiction of the whole thing on her bone slate near the map. It was a coat of arms representing two horse-riding knights protecting a giant tree with a divine halo made of a bunch of swords.
I have never seen anything like that before. The tree kind of looks like a black primus, but not quite. One more thing to look up later; again, maybe Zerei will know more, or Valeure.
Ah, but we can’t speak about the trial… Well, maybe if I don’t say anything about where this comes from. Hmm. Annoying. I’ll see when I get there, I suppose.
The only other thing of any interest in the room was the book on which one of the knights had been hunched over before they all took life to throw themselves at Pareth.
Unlike the other book she had found, some text survived. Due to the unclean handwriting inside and the lack of a title on the leather cover, she guessed it was some kind of journal. She read the passages that she found. It was a real pain to make sense of because they were all in Ancient Human and very faded. That and the worse-than-usual calligraphic skills of the author…
“Our liege again in his sleep. There… no stop– … uncovered artifact.”
Many lines are missing, even on the better-conserved pages…
“Deeper… thousands of workers all for… care despite…”
And that’s it for this page. The mention of an ‘uncovered artifact’ is intriguing, but that doesn’t say much without context. Maybe the goal of the trial is to find the artifact? There are two more with readable words, so let’s hope they hold more information on this place.
It was around the middle, I think… There.
“– extending to no e– … Since the Sculptor recrea– … madness.”
That’s all there was? I might have been a bit too optimistic. Last usable page then, near the end… Hey, that’s at least three readable lines, kind of.
“Only the ever faithful and the desperate are still inhab– … of our liege.”
“– and these doors are the last bastion of our sanity. We guard them day and night. Only nightmares await on the other side.”
“We can no longer leave even if… no signs for weeks, probably dead, or worse… pagan rituals from the twis– … consumed by the encroaching… too late.”
I do not know what I expected, but not that.
Very reassuring.
Sofia pushed forward to see if she could find the Necrotic ooze. As expected, it wasn’t there. There seemed to be a large room at the same emplacement, but it was behind a closed set of stone doors.
This… How do I even make a map?
The general layout doesn’t change, but everything else does? Are there several different versions of the same rooms and corridors that are exchanging places with one another when I’m not looking? Or am I the one being teleported to another similar but different maze every so often without realizing it?
Ugh. I liked the moving walls better.
With things being that weird, Sofia gave up trying to rush things so much and patiently let the last bits of her mana refill before summoning her birds and putting on a rune. She also started to annotate the places on her map.
For the room in front of her, she marked :
1- Necrotic Ooze
2- Closed doors
3- ?
Depending on how this works, I could use this to my advantage to avoid unpleasant stuff like the Ooze by crossing the room in one of its less putrid versions, if that’s a thing. I’ve yet to understand what prompts the change, though, and how far it extends.
After the ten minutes of channeling required to activate [False immortality], which felt like they lasted forever, Sofia summoned the graveyard crew to phase Pareth through the door.
I feel safer now. Let’s see what we have got in there this time.
As Sofia guessed, the ghostly skeletons couldn’t get through the walls and floor, but they could still phase through the door. They slowly carried Pareth through, and Sofia got to see the inside of the room.
This was some kind of large living quarters, with tables, a fireplace, a kitchen counter along a wall, and shelves scattered here and there. Like everything else in the maze, it all was old and decrepit, a thick layer of roots entering from who knows where had even grown all over the floor. It was very militaristic, not only due to the blazons decorating the walls but also the many weapons and shields lined up on racks everywhere. That and the twelve armored knights.
As if stuck in an eerie painting, twelve fully armored knights with closed helmets were frozen in place doing everyday things. One of them, for example, was sitting at a table, in position to polish his rusted, broken-in-half sword with an invisible rag he was holding. Another was getting ready to eat out of an empty bowl with his wooden spoon. Some were relaxing on chairs, sitting around a table, and some were leaning against the walls.
Did they die and get stuck in place for eternity? Some kind of petrification curse?
Wait…
Sofia was about to tell Pareth to channel his [Sanctified grounds] as soon as possible, but it was obvious he already was from the instant he was getting ready to enter the room as it instantly activated.
The reason for Pareth to be ready to fight was a simple detail that Sofia had discarded at the beginning. As she looked around, the roots on the ground seemed connected to the knights' armor. She asked Pareth to stab the roots he was walking on to make sure of her assumptions. His sword of light cut through a thick root. Thick, bright-red resin splashed out.
In a terrifying cacophony of otherworldly screeching and grating metal, the armors moved, turning their head toward Pareth in unison.
The fake tree monsters from the spirit forest.
Is this maze another secret buried beneath the forest?! That could be why I can’t get through the walls if it’s not just a limitation of the trial.
Sofia observed from the safety of her spot while Pareth rushed toward the armored wood monsters. There was no reason for her to take any risks, which conveniently gave Pareth a perfect way to escape should he need to by teleporting to her.
The armored trees gave Pareth a good challenge, not so much because they hurt him. In fact, throughout the whole fight, Pareth lost no health, but because they were so many. The root monsters’ strategy was to dogpile on Pareth and punch him, piercing him with wooden tendrils. Even without his armor, this wouldn’t do much to Pareth, who had not much to be pierced through, but it did limit his movements.
The monsters were very resilient; Pareth struggled as they latched onto him. His usual weapons were useless in the messy melee. He grabbed them and tore them apart one by one, ripping off the parts of steel armor and the writhing wood beneath as they did their best to dig their roots around and inside him, latching unto his bones as if he was soil to be planted into, nutrients to be consumed.
Bones might make for good fertilizer, but this soil fought back. After a few minutes of struggling, only Pareth was left standing in an ocean of red sap, splintered steel, and broken roots.
Of course, there is nothing in the kill log.
These things are a bit scary, but they’re not very bright. Also, these ones were nowhere near as fast as the one that tried running away from the giant blind boar; lower level, perhaps?
Now is it safe to walk into this room?
Sofia had Pareth open the door from the inside after she took some steps back. The red sap essentially covered the whole floor of that room now, and some of it overflowed into the corridor. Sofia walked up to the red puddle. Terrible that I cannot identify anything…
The red sap was very rich in mana, but she could feel that it was quickly losing it and drying up. I wonder if that counts as sap or as blood. Still wearing her armor, she touched the liquid. It was not as sticky as she expected. I guess it’s more like blood; the color is so bright, though, that it would probably make some great dye. Doesn’t smell like much of anything, either.
Since it didn’t seem like the liquid was corrosive or dangerous, Sofia stepped into the room, Paladin skeletons in tow. There wasn’t much to be found there. The curtain-like cloth blazons on the wall were all in terrible shape, but since they were all the same, by piecing together the different pieces, Sofia managed to recreate a depiction of the whole thing on her bone slate near the map. It was a coat of arms representing two horse-riding knights protecting a giant tree with a divine halo made of a bunch of swords.
I have never seen anything like that before. The tree kind of looks like a black primus, but not quite. One more thing to look up later; again, maybe Zerei will know more, or Valeure.
Ah, but we can’t speak about the trial… Well, maybe if I don’t say anything about where this comes from. Hmm. Annoying. I’ll see when I get there, I suppose.
The only other thing of any interest in the room was the book on which one of the knights had been hunched over before they all took life to throw themselves at Pareth.
Unlike the other book she had found, some text survived. Due to the unclean handwriting inside and the lack of a title on the leather cover, she guessed it was some kind of journal. She read the passages that she found. It was a real pain to make sense of because they were all in Ancient Human and very faded. That and the worse-than-usual calligraphic skills of the author…
“Our liege again in his sleep. There… no stop– … uncovered artifact.”
Many lines are missing, even on the better-conserved pages…
“Deeper… thousands of workers all for… care despite…”
And that’s it for this page. The mention of an ‘uncovered artifact’ is intriguing, but that doesn’t say much without context. Maybe the goal of the trial is to find the artifact? There are two more with readable words, so let’s hope they hold more information on this place.
It was around the middle, I think… There.
“– extending to no e– … Since the Sculptor recrea– … madness.”
That’s all there was? I might have been a bit too optimistic. Last usable page then, near the end… Hey, that’s at least three readable lines, kind of.
“Only the ever faithful and the desperate are still inhab– … of our liege.”
“– and these doors are the last bastion of our sanity. We guard them day and night. Only nightmares await on the other side.”
“We can no longer leave even if… no signs for weeks, probably dead, or worse… pagan rituals from the twis– … consumed by the encroaching… too late.”
I do not know what I expected, but not that.
Very reassuring.
