Quoted By:
Dread pools in your head as you and the others get to work scouring the place! The odor isn’t fresh by any means, but it’s <span class="mu-i">there</span>, and even the slightest hint of those Cartel bastards rooting around is enough to put you on Red Alert!
It must be a storeroom of some kind–in place of any lecterns or seats lies a maze of thick metal boxes and shelves–each one stuffed to the brim with smaller containers of ancient doodads and gizmos. A quick inspection with your hands tells you they’re labeled, but your inability to read the Braille-esque alphabet adopted by Zoral dooms the effort long before it begins!
So you do what any red-blooded human would do and ransack the place! No corner or crevasse goes unplumbed–except, however, for the long, heavy boxes that are easily twice your height and wrapped in thick chains and caked in paragraphs carved into their surfaces… warnings, you assume. You’ll leave those to Toppel!
Seconds turn to minutes, and despite your efforts to ignore it, your search keeps turning you in the direction of that familiar, spicy scent in the corner of the storeroom…
“Stop acting stupid and help me already.”
Toppel, it appears, has been there the whole time. Guess you didn’t need to hurt your back searching under that one box, huh? Rubbing your side, you sheepishly shuffle over to the Sorceress with trepidation in your eyes… she smells it too, doesn’t she?
“Alarmingly astute of you, yes.” She remarks with the usual callousness as her eyes dart to a certain sector of the floor. “Lift that.”
What, the <span class="mu-i">floor?</span>
“No, the <span class="mu-i">AIR.</span>”
With no better plan in mind, you acquiesce as best you can. The boxes shift easily enough–their innards stuffed with what sound like scraps of old parchment rolling around. As you lift the container, a faint wisp of icy mist slips through a crack in the box and stings your exposed wrist! Stifling a yelp, you quickly convey the rest of the relics and pull out your <span class="mu-s">CURVED BLADE to pry up one of the soot-caked slabs on the floor…
The slab fights you, but you win in the end–as the piece of floor rises from its resting place your nose is assailed by the source of the spicy scent!
N-normal ground!? As your hand scrapes an innocuous plot of dirt, Toppel shoves her way past you and chants something beneath her breath!
Something changes in the ground below your palm–a faint trembling, followed by a buzz…
Then a click!
“Magical compartment,” The Durher mutters as she bats your face with her fluffy tail! “You didn’t think we’d just leave these lying out in the open, did…!”
The bluster and bravado flees her voice like rats off a sinking ship as her eyes widen in shock! “Hells…” She mutters as she gropes around in the conjured compartment, “I <span class="mu-i">knew</span> that scent was there for a reason…”
>CONTD.</span>
