Chapter 13: The Ruins

Darkness surrounded Fen. Within the first few steps into the ruins the narrow beam from Fen’s lantern barely pierced the gloom. Motes of dust flitted through the air, stirred for the first time in centuries by Fen’s passing. The tiny specks gave the ancient ruin an ethereal air.

The hall was narrow and low ceilinged, and Fen sheathed his sword to inspect the walls. They were expertly carved from the stone of the hillside. It was a long hallway, working its way steadily down into the earth.

The place gave Fen a strange feeling. It was an eerie mixture of fear and melancholy, and Fen realized what it was as the tunnel began to level out and open up. Fen was treading into the past. Preparing to see long lost artifacts of the lives of ancient people churned up this mix of uncertainty and loss.

The whole experience was churning up an anxiety that was normally reserved for the times when Fen was fighting for his life, but it brought with it clarity and focus.

The narrow tunnel opened up into a chamber the size of a house, though Fen’s dim light was too weak to penetrate all the way through the darkness, amplifying the size of the chamber in Fen’s mind. There was a door on each wall, though the ones to left and right had been wood, and they were long since rotten away, leaving open doorways.

The door on the far wall was stone, and unlike the rest of the austere ruin so far, it was intricately carved and detailed. Fen drew closer, letting the beam of his lantern fall on the door. The jumbled mess of carvings pieced together in the light and Fen gasped.

Full of spinning, swirling clouds interspersed with lightning, it was a storm.

Panic seized Fen’s chest, and he half expected to turn away from the mural and find an army of cultists pouring down the tunnel behind him.

The room was as still as it had been before Fen had seen the depicted storm.

Fen took a moment to shake his head and clear some of the panic from his frantic mind.

Then, he tried the handle of the door. It was brightly polished bronze, untarnished despite potential centuries of disuse. It was locked, of course, and the untainted bronze told Fen that it was protected by some sort of magic that would likely render any attempt to pick it impossible.

The realization finally allowed Fen to pry himself away from the door, and he drew back into the large chamber.

The door on the left led to a tiny little closet of a room with a deep, narrow hole in the floor. The door on the right led to a larger chamber with several heaping piles of dust strewn about.

Fen guessed that it had once been a bedroom, with all the furniture long since decayed to oblivion. It was the only place to look for a key though, so Fen walked in and plunged his hands into the dust.

The first pile yielded nothing but a fit of furious sneezing, but as soon as he probed the next pile his hand hit something hard.

Fen pulled out a book, also clearly magical in some way given its mint condition. It was written in Dwarven runes, so Fen couldn’t tell what it might say. He cracked it open and leafed through the pages, but it was all the same. He tucked it into his bag and kept delving into the dust.

A clatter of metal told Fen that he had found something else, and he triumphantly pulled out a ring with several keys on it.

Fen rushed back over to the stone door and tried a couple keys. He felt a fool when he finally noticed the tiny, untarnished bronze key. It fit the lock perfectly and turned with a click.

Opening the door let out a blast of blinding light and Fen recoiled, covering his eyes for a few moments while they adjusted to the noonday level of light pouring from the door. Fen pulled the door the rest of the way open and looked in.

It brought a smile to his face, finally seeing something that he could start to comprehend.

In the center of the room, floating a couple feet off the floor, was a sword made of light with energy gently crackling off its blade as motes of dust floated into it.

Fen couldn’t help himself, he walked numbly forward, reaching his hand towards the glowing handle. He could feel the energy radiating off of it, a warm, gentle pulsing that pulled him in.

His hand made contact, the handle fitting as though it was built specifically for Fen. The pulling sensation grew stronger, tugging on more than Fen’s body. It was calling to Fen’s mind, demanding something of him.

Fen didn’t know what to do, but he was oddly eager, and he felt an acceptance washing through him.

As the feeling overcame him a thunderous boom sounded, flinging Fen back through the stone door and into the large open chamber. The light vanished along with the sword, leaving Fen in darkness as his mind reeled through what just happened.

It took a couple minutes for Fen to blink off his confusion. Something magical had just happened, and Fen had no way of understanding what might have gone wrong.

Either way, he somehow knew that he had found what he was looking for and it had slipped through his fingers, or rather blasted lightning through his fingers.

With a groan, Fen pried himself off the floor and grabbed his tiny little lantern, using its insufficient light to do a quick scan of the whole complex. There was nothing to see in any of the rooms, and Fen cursed the fact that he had fallen for whatever trap the sword had been before he began to limp his way back up the long tunnel.

Light built as Fen rose, letting him know that he was approaching daylight above.

He extinguished his lantern as he came within sight of the open doorway, tucking it back into his bag. The book in there was a friendly reminder that this excursion hadn’t been a total waste.

The sunlight was welcome after so many hours in total darkness, but something about the vibrant white light Fen remembered from the sword made the sunlight feel week and unimpressive, though still enough to overwhelm his unaccustomed eyes.

  Scree tumbled down the hill beside Fen and his sword was drawn in an instant. Tears streamed down his face as he forced his eyes open in the blinding light, and he saw a dozen blurry gray robed figures swarming over him.

Fen did his best to fend them off, but they overwhelmed him quickly, one of them getting in behind him and bashing him in the head with a staff, sending Fen back into darkness.