"Do you think it'll work out?" Ish asked.
We both were on the obvious opinion that we should do further research on the possibility of me having magical abilities. This is why today we decided to go visit the room once again.
"I hope it will..." I told Ish.
I sat on the floor in what I was starting to call "a meditation chamber" (I was currently under the assumption that the Woman was a practitioner of magic and that she had used this place to concentrate herself when performing more complex spell, creating the first undead and other similar things. It would make sense that having a place, where energy is who knows how many times more condensed than the normal, would be advantageous for a sorcerer, right? I also wanted to learn more about the limits of magic for me. Probably not much.) and closed my eyes.
I could sense the incredible amount of energy. I did believe that I was capable of controlling it to some extent in the most rudimentary way possible.
"Are you ready?"
Ish was currently carrying a small pouch full of wooden scobs (we wasted almost the whole morning making them). The plan was to imitate whatever methods we know Freyr used. The least complex spell of his, or at least that we knew of, involved the simple ignition of wooden scobs, which would lead to an explosion. Technically most flammable materials did the trick (supposedly gunpowder was the best for that, which was why Freyr wanted it when that merchant had come). Our plan was just for me to ignite some of the scobs that Ish would put on the ground.
Initially we planned for Ish to throw it in the air and then I try igniting it, but we decided not to after realizing that the difference between whether the scobs are just a pile on the ground or a small cloud in the air is the difference between a small fire and an explosion, which we can't control in size.
"Let's do this!" I said and then mumbled "... because I am already starting to get sick just standing here."
I concentrated and thought of the same fireball as yesterday. I imagined it in the middle or top part. I thought of that and then felt a steady flow of energy from the chamber to what I was targeting and through me.
I didn't know how much I could stand this thing. I opened my eyes. A small ball of energy, two to four centimeters in diameter, was floating less than ten centimeters above the ground. Its light made it quite easy to see in the dark, but it didn't seem to react with the scobs.
"Huh?!" we both exclaimed.
I could feel feel the ball being powered, but from I saw, it looked like the chamber was containing so much energy that there was no noticeable power intake. I also didn't feel strain on myself either.
"Let me see..." Ish moved herself closer to the ball and... touched it.
"No!" I was going to shout at her (we had no idea what exactly we were doing).
"Nothing..." Ish said.
Her hand moved through the ball of energy as if it wasn't there at all.
"It's seems like I am just making light." I stated.
"It really appears so. But, Stri, isn't light supposed to be... warm? I felt nothing."
I nodded "What is that you're thinking of?"
"Try making it more intense. Maybe that could start fire?"
"All you say sounds nice, but what do you expect of me? To make the light more intense? I might just as well make the ball purple!" I said in frustration.
In that brief second, though, the thought of the purple ball had actually formed in my head. And it, "obviously" became what I wanted.
"See! You can do it."
What followed was a series of experiments where I colored the ball of energy in varies colours. Eventually, while playing around with red, for a brief second, sensed the energy consumption shifting (actually I had noticed that earlier with purple and blue seemingly the most intense, although still barely noticeable) and then I saw a small flame. Then the ball collapsed and I felt sick. Then collapsed, I assume, fueled the ignition of the scobs even further, so Ish had to deal with that first before helping me.
"How are you?!" I was asked.
Ish seemed worried, her voice trembling.
"Yeah, yeah, I am alright." I said and after a short pause continued "I'm going to stop with that thing for a bit and check what else might be here."
"Okay, I'm gonna do that too."
And after a few minutes, after I had got better, we split. To be honest, all we had looted yesterday was one big desk. There was quite a lot more to see here. The room was half empty. While there were many various pieces of furniture on the side we had entered from, the other opposite one was half empty. I found that strange so I decided to investigate. Some doors could be seen there. All, but one appeared, to be just like the one we had entered through, expect for the fact that they were closed. But this one door seemed different, I could see that it was fully open from afar and after getting closer, I noticed stairs going upwards.
In a short while I got on "the second floor". It was ring-shaped, encapsuling the lower one. An extensive glass window allowed me to see what was going on the lower floor.
"Hi, Ish!" I shouted and waved my hand.
After a bit of confusion Ish noticed the light of my torch and waved back. She was searching a bookcase, I believe.
While all that was going on I tried to experiment using magic and the limited energy of the natural world. Eventually, after several dozen tries I made the well known immaterial magic sphere. I tried tinkering with it, this time to increase the brightness. Unfortunately the brighter I made it, the harder it was to keep it. Still I did reach a point where I could have a second source of light.
I wonder... could I make a variation of this spell, where the energy construct is kept only for a very brief period of time, but have it insanely bright, thus blinding any creatures around me. That is an idea I shouldn't forget.
The next hurdle I overcame with the spells was having them move. Energy expenditure rose with the distance from. That was easy to understand and feel, but then I wondered distance from what was measured. The heart? The head? The middle toe of my right leg? That would obviously matter a lot, since maybe it would be much better to make my spells in a specific location in relation to my body. To my surprise distance was to be measured from the point of rhe body closest to the spell. Therefore having myself stretch my arm would be a likely occurance before casting a spell.
Soon I had my energy construct, that sounded so much more sophisticated than "the ball of light, move at roughly my pace. That was also taking up some energy, so I decided to decrease my "lamp's" intensity. I wasn't confident in my abilities and didn't want to risk fainting or getting sick.
I was going to explore a bit. This floor appeared to be something like a dining hall, there were several long tables with chairs around them. From that (my logic being that the creators of that place obviously wouldn't have a chair for a person who had already become undead) I determined that the place used to be inhabited by 150 men at its peak. Still at the final moments of that place, they were much less. In all my extensive search I found about thirty utensils in total, roughly equally spread between knives, spoons and forks. It's not exactly like I was used to eating with utensils, but I assumed that there weren't much more than ten men when this underground keep fell to disrepear. I gladly took everything, especially the knives. My spell, by the way, had collapsed about seven minutes after I had cast it. The result was quite good.
I continued with my search. Eventually I stumbled upon a strange carving in the wall. It was a pentagram within a hexagon. Other smaller symbols were carved within and around them bellow. A set of characters that were size-wise in between the two main figures and the lesser symbols was carves below the hexagon. That reminded me of a thing Freyr had used.
I touched with my palm and felt like this thing could be.... powered. I didn't have much of an idea what I was doing, but it was obvious that I couldn't get any results if I just stood still.
I soon heard a feminine, emotionless voice:
"Ni den verikarfen geyaery. Arteh siery terneunk zet karnien."
I could understand nothing of what was said. The voice repeated itself several times and I soon became certain that this was a recording. With time I was also getting a better view of... something. A truly enormous network of magic spells was encompassing the room. To be precise, though, it I wasn't seeing a single gargantuan spell covering the entire room, but a network of lesser spells tied together by a common power source and for the most part the same central control location, the place, where I was standing.
Both the meditation chamber and this control panel seemed to give me the ability to see spells made by somebody else and then incorporated into an object. Here I must note that the panel gave me the ability to see everything, while the chamber was more selective.
If you wonder why I thought this was a control panel, the points on shapes carved in front of them... I had subconscious itch to just try sending a small impulse towards them. This is why I did so to the hexagon's tip. That turned the lights on.
"Stralk! Did you do that?" I heard Ish shouting.
"Yeah, I'm trying to do something with this place. Don't worry!" I shouted back.
"Okay!"
"What else could happen?" I wondered and then continued playing around.
Second: opened one of the doors.
Third: the same.
Fourth: hmm, nothing? That was weird.
Fifth: My vision blurred. I heard something in that foreign language. That was all, I didn't get anything else. I wish I knew more.
Sixth: a third door opened.
At that point I decided that I don't need to bother myself with that thing anymore. I was hungry, too.
I went back on the lower floor where I met up with Ish.
"What're you doing?" I asked.
She was standing in the meditation chamber.
"There's not much here." she said "At least not anymore. Eventually I decided to try this magic-y stuff of yours once again. The good news is that abilities might improve with the time. I'm at least feeling something."
"Oh, that's excellent!" I said and hugged her. "And I found a few knives."
"That's pretty good." Ish replied with an honest smile. Seeing the people around me happy, this is what I enjoyed.
"By the way, I'm hungry. Do you want to eat?" I admitted.
"Ok."
And so we rested for a bit while eating whatever food we were carrying. Ish showed me what she had found, some books had caught her attention because they contained magical symbols like the ones she knew Freyr could use. And one that just had a lot of drawings. We chatted for a while. Ish was on the opinion that we should search for the armory before the undead once again become extremely numerous (their numbers were still low after what mother and the force led by her had done here nor too long ago). I agreed wholeheartedly with that, but I was also interested into the founders of that place and magic. Ish did support me on that, but we disagreed on what should take main priority. It wasn't a big deal, though.
And then I heard a step. Another one soon followed it.
"Be ready!" Ish had heard the same as and was ready to fight even before me.
Whatever was coming, I could say that it was big.
And then it reached a closed door (thank the gods I hadn't opened it) that was seperating the room from the corridor it had been walking through. We might not be in danger...
And then the door was hit with immense power several times until IT could enter.
IT was enormous. Three meters tall, clad in a lacking in details (no symbols and no coloration at all) metal armour that was covering the entire body, even the face. IT had a bludgeon for a weapon. The weapon's head was about the same size as... my actual head. The Armored Giant seemed to move its weapon with ease.
IT started to look around (I think) until it saw us. My first reaction was to use the magic chamber like the previous time when facing those undead yesterday. It didn't work at all.
This was one of the those rare cases when the fight-or-flight instinct was kicking in. I, being I, decided to take it down fast and have everyone be fine afterwards.
I charged with scythe. IT rose its mace, ready to hit me. The thing wasn't stupid. Unfortunately. Seeing I started running faster, thus getting behind IT before the deadly swing. I tried stabbing it in the armpit, where the armour should be thin. Futile.
The mace reached the ground. I almost fell over, this is how much strength was behind the impact. A small crater had formed.
In two seconds it was ready for a second swing. I made another futile attempt at attacking before stepping aside to avoid a dangerous swing. That one, though, was followed by another almost without delay. Almost as if it had assumed the previous attempt to fail and was just putting itself in a better position for the next try. Intelligence was a scary thing.
"Leave! Him! Alone!" Ish shouted in anger as she surprised the armored giant by stabbing it several times. Her short sword had penetrated the armour in the area between the neck and the shoulder, just a bit before the place where the pauldron started. IT shook her off with ease.
Ish grabbed me by the hand, shouting "Run!".
Together we escaped to the tunnel we had come from and continued running. It caught up with us, though. And started attacking. We managed to dodge them, somehow. Each time the sides of the tunnel were hit by the gigantic mace. Only six such attacks were needed for the ceiling to start to collapse.
For our luck the falling rocks separated us from the giant.
"We survived..." I mumbled.
"Yes. We did that." said Ish and kissed me.
"We lost our ability to enter those what lies ahead."
All the corridors-offshoots of the paved one were lying behind that pile of ruble.
"We can find another way."
"We can..." I said slowly and quietly, thinking over what had happened.
The best I could say was that Vrag and Gror quite enjoyed the two knives we gave them as presents. The settlement was also technically better defended from undead now.
Even though Ish was there, right next to me, trying to make me feel better, I felt like I was... incompetent and pathetic. That feeling. If there is a thing I hate, this is it.