Eramith
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Book 2: Chapter 36
🕑 Added 2023-05-15 13:01:01 +0000 UTCAt the conclusion of Felix’s tests Nova decided this was far too boring so they mentally told Felix they were going to fly back to the city and find something to eat. He was worried at first, until he felt how confident Nova was that they could find their way back. Felix wanted to go with them, but he felt like he needed to figure out what had or was happening to this undercity and the Devoured within.
Nova departed and Felix chose the building that was the least damaged right on the edge of town. It was two floors tall with the top one overhanging the front of the building and providing cover from the rain to those passing through the door. There were 4 pillars of what appeared to be wood holding up the overhang that were somehow weathered and beaten but otherwise structurally sound. Felix crept towards the building and tried to avoid interacting with any more Devoured than necessary. He walked around the door and peeked through the windows managing to spot a handful of Devoured inside. One was mindlessly moving a rag across the bar, one staring through a window at the back and the other three sitting at a table perfectly still.
Felix decided to move on and looked into 4 buildings before he found one with a sunken in roof that appeared empty at first glance. He extended his soul sight outwards from his own soul and peered through the building, looking for the faint flicker of a Devoured’s soul but finding nothing within.
Can I use this to find normal people?
Nope.
Why not?
Sorry, yes you can. It’s much harder though. These are easy to sense because their souls have been ripped from their bodies. All that’s left is barely hanging on and not hidden by the body anymore. You can train to be able to sense normal people but it’s very hard, then they can also train to hide their souls. Then obviously it’s just a game of who is better at what they’re doing.
Felix hopped up through the collapsed side of the building onto the second floor and found himself a room that was entirely intact on the opposite side of the building. He wasn’t sure what the building was originally, but the room he had found was clearly a bedroom. The bed was still standing, though lopsided as two of the legs had collapsed along with a cabinet, a chair and a table. The bedding and sheets had been reduced to dust along with what were likely clothes.
Felix looked around the room but didn’t manage to find anything of value inside. He continued searching through the rooms on the top floor but found much of the same in the other two rooms. He did manage to find a hole so he could drop down a floor though and figured out the building was at some point a leather worker’s shop and home. Some of the leather was only slightly decayed but none of it was of particularly high quality or of any value. Felix searched through the shop and found a book under the desk at the back that appeared to be largely undamaged from the passage of time. It was crusty and a little fragile but Felix opened it and found a ledger of sales, rather surprised he could read it at all until he remembered the tongues skill he had picked up.
He had no use for anything in here though so he hopped back up to the second floor and out of the building, through the large hole in the roof. He continued on to the next building that was mostly empty but this one was completely ravaged inside. There was nothing left whatsoever, not even a ledger. Felix suspected it was once a general store, food store or something else that sold perishables as there were many shelves and none of the goods had survived. Felix continued on and found a blacksmith’s where most of the goods had survived, though none of them were usable.
There was a book that was essentially a research journal with notes on different metals they’d used along with armors and weapons they had tried to craft. Felix stowed the book in his inventory figuring it may have some value and proceeded to the next floor. Upstairs there was a storage room with multiple sets of armor and weapons a few of decent quality but all were damaged from time to some extent. Felix did find a bedroom with bedding that hadn’t rotted, likely because it was made of some sort of thick fabric. It had a couple of holes but was overall fairly usable. Felix didn’t trust it not to give him an ancient disease though so he wrapped it all up in a corner.
Normally he didn’t sleep at all but today he was slightly injured and it had been a while. He didn’t sense anything in particular that was going wrong, but he was worried he was missing something and that if he didn’t sleep every once in a while, he might go crazy. He vaguely remembered something about how sleep was supposed to flush chemicals your brain produced over the day. He also knew it was supposed to be good for recovery of muscles and injuries. Felix pulled out one of the meals he had bought back in Atalus and quickly scarfed it down, hoping the smell didn’t attract the Devoured. Felix wrapped himself in his cloak and slept while Grim stood watch on top of him.
Felix woke up feeling fresh and rejuvenated, though he didn’t know if that was just placebo or if the sleep actually had any effect. Nothing of interest happened while Felix slept, according to Grim, so Felix left the building and flew back into the cave with the mine. Felix pulled out his plates and placed them on his staff then proceeded to spend an hour working out then an hour practicing the steps of the Dragon Dance. Once he was done, he used the river to wash himself as best he could, using no soap so as to not make himself smell unnatural.
With his morning routine complete, Felix continued headed back to the city and continued what he had started before resting. He skulked through the city, avoiding the Devoured and looking for buildings that might hold a piece of the city and it’s people’s story. That or treasure, Felix was open to any treasure that may be hidden within.
Unfortunately, Felix didn’t have a great idea of the layout of this city as it was still completely pitch black. He was using a light spell, which the Devoured seemed to entirely ignore, but he still couldn’t see very far. Just a few buildings into his search for the day, Felix came across a building that was entirely destroyed, with it’s pieces scattered around in the adjacent streets and alleys. The interesting part of this building, was that where it used to be, there was now a massive pillar multiple meters in diameter.
Felix panned his light upwards and traced it’s height with his eyes, all the way up to the ceiling. Up to this point, Felix had assumed the ceiling was a simple rock that had been carved into, now he looked upon it with light and realized it was rock, but it was entirely constructed. The ceiling was made of the same white stone that made up the walls of the city above and was likely mined out of the cave he had entered from. It was made of large interlocking bricks with massive beams running side to side held up by the pillar he had traced. Felix panned his light around and saw that the constructed ceiling spanned in every single direction and was entirely flat. It even spanned outside the walls of the city above, Ky’bel, according to his map.
At some point or another, the city Felix was exploring existed. For some reason it was then completely covered and built over, using the mine to supply the stone. It was possible it was simply an evolution of the same city, but it was also possible this city was conquered and then left behind. There was also the mystery of the Devoured. It was possible the entire city was Devoured and then covered up, but then why not just wipe out the Devoured or live somewhere else? Why remain here?
Felix wanted to figure it all out mostly because he was curious but also for something to do while he also searched for treasure. Felix continued to loosely follow the river which was bordered by two halves of the main road on either side. He didn’t walk along it though, remaining a block or two away at all times as the main street was filled with the Devoured. Felix continued to search shops and taverns as he traveled finding a few interesting books here and there but nothing more than that. Any equipment or items he found were not magical and had been damaged over time.
Felix continued to follow the river, towards the center of Ky’bel according to his map, but today he began practicing with Predator’s Stealth. The skill didn’t teach him anything but rather it muffled the sounds and blurred his image when he was already being stealthy. In theory, if someone were already very stealthy naturally, they would be virtually undetectable. That was Felix’s long term goal, for now, Grim taught Felix two spells, well individual nodes really. The first was a spell trigger based on sound, the second based on motion. Felix connected both to simple light nodes of different colors, blue for motion and red for sound. Then he tuned the sensitivity of the spell so that it didn’t trigger constantly and cast it pointing at himself from about a meter away.
Felix snuck from building to building, searching through the ruins for anything that might be able to help him piece together it’s history. He found workshops, alchemists, apothecaries, general stores, blacksmiths, many taverns and a few brothels. Unfortunately the only thing he had found in them, other than ledgers, was a single diary that contained sexual exploits in one of the brothel rooms. He left that one where he found it and continued on.
He was hoping for either books containing history and stories, which would simply be interesting or better yet, a diary to help piece things together. Felix figured he would have better luck if he found people’s homes rather than just stores but it seemed as though he was in some kind of commerce district currently. Every building he searched was some sort of store or business and the only bedrooms were either for rent or for the purveyor of the establishment. The majority of the rooms upstairs in these buildings seemed to be used for storage and contained nothing of particular value anymore.
Felix’s stealth was getting better though, he had had to adjust the sensitivity of his spell twice now as he had gotten pretty good at not triggering it. The issues he came across at first were simple fixes, step in a slightly different way, place less weight on one area, utilize the shadows more. Those were simple fixes that he just had to make instinctual, muscle memory. Now he was stuck on the harder aspects though, creaky floorboards, rusted hinges and other things he couldn’t expect.
He was getting gradually better at avoiding and mitigating the risks with those surprise elements but unfortunately all he could do to get better was gain experience. Interestingly, the biggest help in his endeavor to be stealthier was actually his practice with the Dragon’s Dance of Death. It’s steps had incorporated stealth into most of the movements so he simply had to adapt some of it’s aspects, which he was already very used to, into his movement.
As Felix traveled inwards, he noticed the shops getting bigger and specialized businesses became increasingly more common. Some of them he couldn’t identify, others he managed to only because the ledger had survived. The buildings were made with thicker walls and more stone which meant they were in a much better state than the buildings on the outskirts of the town. The density of the Devoured population was also increasing as did their peculiarities. On the outskirts of town, Felix spotted almost entirely human, elf or some other race that looked like humans. Here, he occasionally spotted what were once minotaurs, giants, snakes, bears, trolls and lizards among other races that he had no hope of identifying.
The river continued on through the city until it poured into a large lake situated at about the center of the city. Felix carefully approached it, noticing the levels of the Devoured had increased steadily to the low 300s around here. The lake was entirely calm and serene though it was slightly green and smelled of minerals. Right in the middle of the lake, a massive wall of stone rose high up into the air, almost to the height of the pillars. It was like an island as it was surrounded, on all sides Felix could see, by the lake. Off to the right of Felix, there was another river that stretched back into the city and fed into the lake. Felix slowly ascended into the air to the top of the cliff. Looking up, he saw that the ceiling that had been perfectly flat, had a hole in it centered around the cliff. As he crested over the cliff, he realized why.
On top of the cliff, in the middle of the lake, sat a massive medieval stone castle with four walls and a multitude of towers. The hole in the ceiling made way for the castle with another ceiling higher up. Felix quickly checked his map to confirm his suspicions and found that the hole in the ceiling lined up perfectly with where the inner wall was in Ky’bel. He had wondered why the second wall in Ky’bel was a platform rather than just a wall, now he knew.
Within that second wall, under the raised platform, sat the castle of this kingdom that had been entirely covered up. From his flight around Ky’bel, he knew there was a third wall on top of the platform of the second, the highest point in the city. Looking around with his light spell, Felix saw a small hole, just big enough to be a trap door, on this ceiling and suspected that was where it would lead. He decided to explore that later, for now he looked down at the castle and the kingdom surrounding it.
