Bloodfallen: Curse of The All Knowing

“My name is Aelia, and I have been doing this for 15 years now. If I tell you to do something I expect you to do it, it will always be in your own best interest.”

A short silence followed before Aelia continued. “Today we will be one of the groups exploring the first floor, specifically we will be following the northernmost corridor. Arthur, you will be drawing a map for us given your lack of combat experience.” Aelia handed Arthur a blank parchment of paper and an ink pot that was filled about half way.

“Umm, how am I supposed to use the ink without something to write with?” Arthur asked as he held the ink.

“Can’t you use water magic to move or something?” Aelia asked as if it was something that should be trivial to him.

“That's a thing?” Arthur hadn't herald of anything quite like that from Cassia or Lyra.

“Yes it is something that can be done with hydromancy.” Cassia spoke up. “Think of it like moving heavy water, although you won’t need to manipulate all that much at once.”

“Thank you Cassia.” Aelia nodded. “Now for the rest of you. Hambel and I will be at the front of the group, Cassia will be at the back and the other three will stay in between us, I will let you all figure out how things work best for you. All I am giving you is general guidelines are to where you will be in the formation. You all have 15 minutes to do what you need to before we meet up at the gate.”

While everyone else double checked their equipment Arthur went to talk to Cassia.

“Hey Cassia.”

“Hello Arthur.”

“I have a question for you.”

“What is it?”

“Why didn’t you tell me what all can be done with hydromancy?”

“Well…” Cassia paused for a second. “I didn’t expect you to be learning so fast and I simply forgot to tell you. I will buy you a book that details all that can be done with hydromancy when we finally leave the cave.”

“Alright, but if there is ever anything else you think I should know do tell.”

“I will.”

********

Fifteen minutes later everyone in the team was ready at the gate and in a rough formation based on what Aelia said. Arthur had gotten a bit of practice with using hydromancy with ink and could say that he knew what he was doing.

“Alright you lot!” Aelia shouted to her team as she drew her large two handed axe. “I certainly hope you have everything you will need as we won’t be getting a chance to be back here for several hours. Now let's move out!”

The team entered the fortress and navigated through the hallway of old and used traps. Looking at the traps brought a few memories back to Arthur.

‘I remember the first time I walked through here, it almost feels like that happened yesterday.’

The group continued downward one level and passed the other groups that were assigned to guard duty. They had some basic fortifications along with a few wooden structures with many pointed ends.

“Hey Aelia, what took you so long.” A human in similar armour to Aelia called out.

“Final preparations for the day.” Aelia replied without even looking in his direction.

“Well good luck then.”

“I don’t need luck.”

The group passed through the fortifications and entered the northernmost corridor, Arthur looked down the other three corridors as they passed and saw nothing of note.

‘This place is just as much of a maze as I remember it to be.’

Soon the group found their first door, located on the right side of the hallway with some dried up blood that had turned black.

“Did any of the goblins set up traps?” Aelia asked Arthur.

“No traps but they used overturned tables for defense.” Arthur answered as he tried to figure out what Aelia was planning.

“That's good, that will make this nice and easy.” Aelia drew her axe. “Everyone draw your weapons and be ready to fight.

Albeit surprised Arthur followed everyone and drew his longsword, not even a second after Aelia kicked the door open and rushed in, the others followed and so did Arthur after a moment of hesitation.

On the other side of the door was a fairly large room that was likely used as a craft hall, for what would require a thorough inspection. There were about ten goblins inside wielding mostly old and rusty equipment. Aelia was the first to draw blood by splitting the skull of the first goblin she saw.

Everyone else quickly engaged the rest of the goblins giving the few near a door in the back an opportunity to run.

Arthur, seeing that to kill at least one goblin he would need to act fast, leapt over one of the tables and stabbed a goblin hiding on the other side. Unable to put up much resistance the goblin fell to the floor where Arthur stomped on its head repeatedly.

/- - - - - -\

+ 50 Exp

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The few remaining goblins that were unable to retreat quickly joined their allies in the abyss they were born from. Aelia had the human in the group who brought a large bag to carry all the weapons that were looted from the goblins before the group continued into the next room.

Since the goblins were expecting them Aelia opened the door from behind cover to see their reaction before she would make a move.

Several small rocks flew through the open doorway and hit the rock floor with a crack as they rolled off into the room. Aelia dashed through the door and raised her axe as everyone else did the same.

The goblins were standing on a few tables wielding a few slings with a few small piles of pebbles by their feet. Unfortunately for the goblins there was only one door out and the heavily armored outsider and her allies were blocking it.

The battle was short and not in the goblins' favor, the few that weren’t frozen in fear were able to fire off about one shot each but they made the mistake of targeting Aelia in some of her most well protected places.

The group first gathered all of the weapons and other valuables and then piled all the corpses into a pile.

“Should we burn them?” The human who was carrying all of the loot who as Arthur had recently learned was named Lycus, asked.

“No, we are underground and have a limited amount of air here. If we were above ground I would consider it but down here we could suffocate from the trapped smoke.” Aelia quickly shot the idea down.

The next several rooms the group entered were for the most part quite similar, all from what Arthur could tell were rooms dedicated to a craft. The first was most likely woodworking based on the tools and a few trinkets in the back room, the second was definitely dedicated to clothing and other such fabric related items based on a few broken looms. There was also a metal and stone working craft hall before a room with three sets of double doors.

The group tested all the doors and all but the last one were barricaded from the inside so much that the door didn’t even move. Aelia placed her ear to the door for about a minute while everyone else waited.

“I don’t hear anything on the other side, but we should still be careful just in case.” Aelia addressed her team. “The door here is open and we will try to maintain the element of surprise so in the event of more goblins we will have the upper hand.”

Everyone nodded and drew their weapons. Upon entering the room everyone was shocked by what they saw. There were thankfully no goblins but several large areas full of large amounts of wood and metal with several tables covered in parchment. The room itself was easily ten times as large as any of the other rooms they had been in, including height.

The group chose to spread out so that they could cover more ground and find what was being built here. Arthur looking over the schematics could clearly see that it was a siege weapon of some kind.

‘Whatever this is, it is designed to throw a large rock into the air that would then utilize gravity to give it a large impact. Arthur looked through a few more schematics that were underneath the first and found something horrifying, the dwarves that lived here made improvements to their contraption, big improvements. They made the payload large, go faster and farther. They came up with the idea to use several smaller rocks like in the first one and throw them all at once.

At the corner of each of the drawings was a name written in the dwarven language that with the spell Comprehend Language he could understand.

‘Bergina Goldrock. I think that is a name for a woman and she was most likely a dwarf given the location. I wonder if she made any other schematics for things like this.’

Arthur checked through the rest of the parchment pile and found a few interesting devices but nothing else from Bergina Goldrock.

‘A little unfortunate but I expect that Lyra will be very happy with what I found here. Based on what little I have heard about that Yolan empire this may find itself a use.’

“Hey Aelia, come look at what I found.” Arthur called over his leader to share his discovery.

“Well well, what do we have here?” Aelia looked over the schematics and even though Arthur could not see her face he expected she was impressed.

“If we turn these in with Lyra I think she will reward us very nicely.” Aelia turned to Arthur as she handed them to him. “Here take these, you can be the one to hand them in. After we search this place we will be returning, we have done our part for today.’

Not much else that was of much value was found, a few trinkets and a handful of old dwarven coins whose only value came from the metal they were made from. The group returned to the camp and Aelia took Arthur directly to Lyra’s tent to share his discovery.

When the two entered the tent they saw the main room where Arthur was questioned was blocked by a curtain and Citro was standing guard.

“Lyra is busy right now, if it is important you can wait until she is done. If not, come back later.” Arthur could see that Citro was curious but he followed his duty and kept Lyra from being disturbed.

“We will wait then.” Aelia chuckled. “Lyra will definitely want to see what Arthur here picked up.”