78: Word Salad

The tunnel was mostly packed dirt and rock, with ageing wooden supports that appeared to be barely a few months from failing utterly. The tunnel only continued a few metres around the corner, where it suddenly ended in a metal-framed wooden door. Just like everything else so far, the workmanship was very good. Unlike everything else so far, it was perfectly preserved, but still very obviously old. It was like the creeping decay couldn't pass the threshold.

“You know, we should probably be asking why your friend is so interested in us exploring this place,” Paisley said as we approached the door.

My eyebrows rose— I was surprised I'd forgotten to ask that. “Good point, why on Earth would a fourth-wall mutilating NPC care about a hidden area inside an old dungeon.”

Paisley nodded absently, then stepped forward abruptly. “I'm gonna open the door.”

Keeping my hand on the tsuba of my sword, I watched as she carefully turned the heavy iron door handle. It swung open easily on oiled hinges.

The room beyond was large and circular. The walls were wooden, although there were gaps big enough to still see the packed earth beyond. Lining those walls were shelf after shelf, each one containing dozens of scrolls, books, and other random paraphernalia.

The centre of the room descended half a metre, so that the edge of the room was more like a terrace that ringed a work area in the middle. Scattered randomly over the central area were work tables containing tools for a dozen or more different crafts. A loom was resting pushed up against the step of the terrace, while near the middle, a small furnace and anvil were sitting atop a sturdy wooden table. Above the work area, another glowing yellow orb was fitted into a gorgeous filigree cage.

Paisley made to step inside, but a faint white outline on the floor spooked me,and I grabbed her hand. “Stop! My passive is highlighting that loose floorboard.”

She looked down, then crouched and inspected it more closely. “Huh, that is weirdly loose. Everything else is perfect, but that is just…”

In contrast to the walls, the floor was entirely wooden, and each board was perfectly fitted. They weren't laid down in lines, either, but a tessellating pattern of diagonally fitted planks.

Paisley wasn’t looking at me, but I nodded anyway. “I feel like if you were going to all the trouble of a floor pattern like that you’d, A, nail down the loose board, and B, put some sort of finish on it. This is all raw, unvarnished, unwaxed timber.”

“Let's step over the board,” she said, after taking a second to look around again.

Carefully, she began to reach her foot out, then I pulled her back. “Wait… if they were this good, they wouldn't leave such an obvious trap.”

Without further explanation, I shifted her slightly to the side, drew my katana, and very carefully, reached out to poke the loose floorboard. It was solid as a rock.

Even more carefully, I reached out and poked the plank beyond it. Two huge arms made of wood slammed inwards from either side of the door, while a series of vicious metal spikes swung down and through the door, right towards us.

Well, not right towards us. By barely two inches, they cleared Paisley's head— for me, it was more like three and a half. Our tiny statures had saved us from a very quick, very efficient death.

“Ho-lee-shit,” Paisley squeaked, enunciating each syllable. “I think they might've anticipated the, ‘poke it with a stick,’ strategy too.”

“We were saved by being short,” I breathed, brushing one of the spikes with a hand, in an attempt to convince my heart to stop thundering so fast. It felt like there was a tiny cavalry charge happening in my chest.

“Another win for the short races,” she agreed. “The elves are malding right now.”

“Malding indeed,” I said, and taking a chance, I stepped under the various different death-limbs.

Getting past the doorway and into the room, I waited with bated breath. Nothing happened— no ominous clicks in the walls, no sudden splatterment by hidden traps, nothing.

“Is it… okay?” I asked rhetorically. “I think I'm okay.”

“Okay…” said my friend, as she followed me inside. Looking around, she wondered at the incredible workshop. It looked like a crazed inventor had run rampant in here. “This is crazy…”

“No encounter, either,” I said, taking another chance when I wandered over to one of the many bookshelves.

If this had been a combat side-dungeon, we'd have run into our first pack of monsters in this room. Instead, we got a metric fuck-tonne of lore.

Picking up a scroll from a shelf, I began to read through it. It was written in English, of course, because this was a game.

“The best materials for tools intended for use in working the wood of the xeden tree, are thrice-folded pampan oil tempered iron, sharpened with stone from the Ampheiquin hills,” I read aloud. Then, looking at Paisley, I said, “Gibberish. The rest of the scroll is nothing but made up nouns describing a super niche crafting process.”

“Don't be so judgy,” Paisley said, scowling slightly. Walking over, she took the scroll from my hands, tapped me once on the head with it, then read through it herself. “This probably makes perfect sense to a woodworker.”

I opened my mouth to protest, but she shot me a glare. “Shush, Keiko. I bet your tone will shift when we find one about smithing— ah, look. This shelf is marked ‘carpentry’. Let's walk around and find smithing.”

And so, on a mission to prove me wrong, she dragged me from shelf to shelf, until we found the metalworking one.

“Okay, let's see,” she said, pulling a prominently placed scroll off the shelf. “‘Experiments in the application of funeral rites as a means of imbuing metal with unique properties.’ There! That sounds like it might be useful.”

Giving her an indulgent smile, I took the long, heavy scroll from her and began to read. The more I did so, the more I felt a sense of jarring déjà vu. The scroll was written by an ancient fae, who'd spent ten years throwing metal into funeral bonfires in the hopes of giving the metal interesting properties. He'd largely failed, but his experiments ended up confirming that the concept was at least viable.

When I was done, I rolled it back up and stared at it. “You weren't wrong, I understood some of the silly names… but… Paisley, this scroll is talking about an early attempt at Spirit Forging.”

“That's the niche crafting skill you were learning, right?” She asked curiously.

I snorted. “Yeah, before I got sidetracked building an inn on top of a tree.”

“Well…” she said, then shrugged and picked up another, much smaller scroll. She began to read it aloud. “‘Kess’ Log. Day eighteen of the Fort Gleinshieth expedition. The carpenters have finished setting up the refuge. Meanwhile, several promising specimens have been captured by the Troubadour Knights we hired for this expedition. I will begin setting up my field-forging equipment soon. The rest of our order will be doing likewise, I imagine. If our theories are correct, we will all have a great deal of work to do.’”

“That… what? Was this place some sort of scientific expedition? I am very confused,” I said, picking up another of the smaller scrolls.

It was another log by Kess, detailing how she had helped another ‘Anelestian’ gather bones for their enchanting work.

That scroll went back, and I took another, then another. Reading through, I began to get a better sense for things. Meanwhile, Paisley wandered over to the shelf for enchanting, and was now engrossed in her own scrolls.

These people had called themselves the Anelestians, or the worshippers of Anelestia. They appeared to all be crafters of some discipline or another, and at some point during the twilight years of the Ascendant Empire, they'd put together an expedition out to this valley. The fort had been destroyed in a battle about thirty years before they arrived, so it was within human controlled lands. They had to sneak in, bypassing border patrols in the mountains.

Their purpose here had been to investigate the cursed region and possibly learn how to weave power from the Lands of Death into objects that could be wielded. To some extent, it appeared they succeeded, because by the end of Kess’ logs, she was beginning to lay the groundwork for Spirit Forging.

Unfortunately, the logs ended abruptly— something had cut the expedition’s time short. There wasn't any sort of indication as to what it was, however.

“Paisley,” I called softly. “These scrolls are all about this woman called Kess and how she basically invented proper Spirit Forging. The logs stop without any reason. What about you?”

She looked up from her scroll and gave me a thoughtful look. “Similar thing here, although I think the enchanter dude had less success. His last logs mention human scouts poking their noses around. Maybe something happened with them?”

“Maybe,” I replied, while looking around at everything. Whatever had happened, it didn't happen in this room. It was like suddenly, all the Anelestians had just rushed out the door. Oh! Wait!

Suddenly excited, I abandoned the scrolls and headed for the metalworking table. If this was an old fae workshop, then there must be ancient fae tools that I could—

The metalworking table had already been looted.

Every other crafting workbench was fine, except for smithing. Someone had removed a larger anvil from the table, by the looks of the imprint in the chunky wood. Now that I was looking, I could also see marks on the floorboards, where someone had dragged something heavy a few feet before the tracks just abruptly ended. There had been a proper forge there, at one point— although, how they'd deal with the smoke in this enclosed space, I didn't know.

Thankfully, whoever had come before us hadn't taken everything. There was still the smaller anvil, some smaller scale tools, and what looked like a jewellers forge— no full sized hammers or other hand implements, though.

Giving the anvil a closer inspection, I pulled up its tooltip.

Adept Anelestian Spirit Anvil: Small.

An anvil left behind by a mysterious master smith. Their maker's mark is visible on the side. It has lain here unused and unloved for centuries.

This anvil has been imbued with spiritual power, although the methods used to do so were crude and only marginally effective.

+6% to the quality of the items created using this tool.

+10% to any Spirit Forging attributes imbued into items created using this tool.

Heck, fucking, yeah! Clenching my fist in triumph, I immediately got to work unbolting the anvil from the table. It was basically an upgrade to my current anvil, except that it wasn't as easily portable. Still, judging by what I'd read in Kess’ logs, Spirit Forging could still be done in a proper workshop, but the quality of the items would take a penalty. Kess had been starting to have ideas for maximising the quality of smelted spirit metal before the logs ended. Those ideas had, for the most part, been correct, at least according to Whisperwill’s Spirit Forging diary.

With all of this information, plus my new anvil, small tools, and jewellery forge — which, I mean, they all had that master smith’s mark, so of course I pocketed them — I was definitely keen to get started again with the smithing. Screw copper pipes, I wanted to make myself a spear!

“Keiko…” Paisley called suddenly. “Uh… two things…”

I looked over at her where she was ransacking the enchanting table.

Clearing her throat, she nodded towards the wall opposite the entrance. “First, I think that wall has a door in it. There's just suddenly no gaps between the wooden planks for a specific section. But, probably more important in the long run— uh, why did Mheitai want us to find this place?”