Wandering Agent
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Chapter 170 Exploring the Ruins
🕑 Added 2022-08-26 18:44:20 +0000 UTCAs we made our way down the hallway it was eerily silent. The monstrous wolf had separated us handily and it was clear that we were the easier of the two targets now.
"Do we have a battle plan if that thing shows up?" I asked Ulanion.
"Not really, any ideas?"
"Honestly? I'm still unsure on its capabilities, if we could tie that down we might be able to come up with something. Did you notice anything from our interactions so far that might be helpful?"
For a few moments the archer thought, keeping his eyes moving over the surroundings. "It likes to stick to the shadows. Both when it was in the woods and when it hit us before it tried to avoid being in the light. It could be some form of hunting behavior, since it lends in, but with magical beasts, it's hard to tell."
"Not sure what to do with that, what about its injuries, you hit it twice, did you notice how badly it was hurt or anything?"
"I'm fairly sure that I got it good the first time, not good enough, but it was bleeding well. That didn't seem to bother it the second though... some kind of healing ability?"
"Maybe, we might have to see if we can get lights on it and get a good look if we run into it again."
"Let's hope that doesn't happen until after we've met back up with the others." Ulanion upon that observation kept walking. "Something we should do sooner if possible than later."
The hallway here was rather a straight shot. Periodically along it there were rooms, offices of some kind if I had to guess. We popped our heads lightly into each as we passed, opening their still present doors to take a quick look about before shutting them back up. They'd all been clearly stripped down to little ore than rooms with stone desks and sometimes a chair.
I picked a room at random and headed in. In the ceiling there were several small recesses, all pointing away from the desk slightly. My guess was those were somehow connected to making light. The desk had a few cubbies in it instead of drawers, but unlike the one in the main hall this one had been cleaned out properly. I was still weirded out by how clean and well maintained everything was, the wooden chair was still there, I even tested it to find that it was fairly comfortable.
Eventually though we came upon an intersection, a hallway broke off to the side of our own, sadly going the opposite way of our group's direction.
"It's the wrong way, but the only change we've seen so far," Ulanion observed.
I took a quick look, pointing to a sign just off the side. "Says... I'm not quite familiar with that one." The wood there was certainly in the older style of Atali, but it must have been one of the less common ones.
"Gymnasium. A place to work out? Why would they have that here?" My companion looked at it with a quirked eyebrow.
"Maybe they had people living here? And that word is a weird one." For all that I understood Atali pretty well I'd never seen the term for a gym.
"There were a few back in the city, but it's not one you see much anymore."
"Regardless, do we go down there?" I asked.
"I say we keep on and see if we can find something going in the right way."
After another hundred feet or so of boring bare rooms the hallway turned, I smiled as I saw it, but when we came up to the corner I frowned. As it turned it led to a stairway, digging deep down into the depths. There were a pair of signs "Maintenance" and "Laboratories".
"Perhaps the gym?" I suggested.
"What? Even if we can't find the others, if we go down there we might be able to get the lights back on."
I sighed, "Yeah, I know."
"Something wrong?"
"I hate going underground."
The elf looked at me for a solid five seconds. "Seriously?"
"I have history."
"History?" Ulanion looked doubtful.
"Every time I go underground things go massively horribly wrong," I explained.
"Well you're in luck."
"How so?"
"Things have already gone horribly wrong, so we don't need to worry about that," he joked.
"Fine, fine, you asked for it."
We slowly worked our way down the stairs, and like most things here it seemed far larger than was even reasonable. Not only were they probably ten feet wide, but they just kept going, slightly curving to the side to form a gentle spiral down, deeper and deeper. There weren't even any doors or offshoots as we went lower and lower.
"Perhaps we should have passed on these," Ulanion said after a solid ten minutes of downward progress.
"Oh we can't stop now, the only way out of whatever cursed place we're going is through."
"Look, nothing's going to happen." No sooner had the fool thrown up that flag than from behind us came a howling.
Both of us took off down the stairs as quickly as we could, wanting at the least some cover before we got into another fight. At speed we quickly made it to the bottom steps and into another hallway. Unlike those above this one had a number of pipes running all over the walls, pressing in here and there like an industrial complex.
As we fled from the staircase I saw Ulanion turn back to look behind us, and immediately pull an arrow. "GO!" he screamed as he fired, and I didn't need to be told twice.
As I ran I started up a song, pulling energy all around me. I wasn't sure how a being made of shadow would respond to being struck by lightning, but it seemed to do the trick on almost everything else. Before I could start tossing off bolts though I found myself facing a door, big enough for a humanoid, but far too small for our canine friend.
I grabbed the handle and turned to see the umbral beast bearing down on Ulanion, the elf shooting arrow after arrow at it like a machine gun. While each seemed to hurt it none stopped the creature. Gathering what I could I let loose, the blue-white streak of lightning flashing brightly down the hall and into my opponent.
The wolf made a horrid scream of pain as the lightning lashed into its side. If the arrows had been cutting painful slashes this was a gaping wound tearing down its body. As the light faded from my vision I saw the creature quickly turning to make distance as it looked for the source of the pain. Within the span of a blink a pair of hateful red eyes settled on me. Less than a moment later the beast turned and fled, apparently sensing that I was gathering steam for another shot.
Ulanion carefully made his way over to me, seeming concerned as we lost sight of the monster.
"That worked," he commented.
"Big beastie made of shadows, who'd think the big spear of light would sting?"
"Why didn't you finish off?" he asked.
"That spell's not quick, why didn't you?"
"One arrow left, if I'd missed..."
"Fair enough." It was a shame we couldn't kill the creature, but there was no use being mad about it.
I pointed to the door, "Let's see if we can find something useful." The sign beside it indicated that this was the maintenance room.
The door was decidedly too small for the wolf to follow us in, but that was about the only positive thing I could say. This was clearly the source of the pipes we'd seen earlier and some kind of master room for all kinds of processes that would in all likelihood take weeks to parse out. It was also the temperature of a freezer, quickly sending my teeth to chattering.
"What is all this stuff?" Ulanion went over to one of the several ice-covered tanks, looking closely.
If I had to compare this to anything I'd seen in either of my lives it would be like a boiler room, or one of the sealed off areas of larger buildings. "Probably stuff to manage lights and heat, and whatever else they needed for this place."
There were a few clearly active panels in the room, slight lights shining through the ice covering. I moved over to the first and carefully made a small heated area to melt away the buildup. There were a number of knobs and settings, all marked with technical Atali. A few minutes of painful translation, and consultations with my partner later I manage to work out that this was the panel responsible for energy production.
Annoyingly, while it told me that the generators here were making a generous plenty of power it didn't say anything about how, or what was feeding them. As I moved to the next panel I ruminated on the potential of bringing something that could power enchantments for millennia back home with me, and why the elven king hadn't.
