Quest 'Wizard's Tower' Complete!
Reward - 5,000xp
Lieze could sense the structure's history as soon as she crossed the threshold. Alembics and retorts littered the shelves, each covered with a thick layer of dust. The wooden table in the centre of the floor was so thoroughly scorched with burns and chemical tears that it had been dyed black.
Right in front of the door was a shattered stone plate intended to depress with the application of weight, but it appeared to be stuck. Lieze assumed it was once a trap connected to some esoteric mechanism in the tower. She raised her head to see a single hole drilled into the ceiling surrounded by a complex and meticulous sigil.
"Was this intended to fire something?" She wondered to herself, "Evidently, it wasn't built to stand the test of time."
Her confidence surged. The tower was so old that any traps laid out for intruders had either already been sprung or failed in some catastrophic manner. As she explored the countless solutions bottled on the shelves, Drayya slipped through the doorway and took a long step over the pressure plate.
"This is where a Sage lived?" She didn't seem the least bit pleased, "I was expecting some grandiosity! Some taste! Not a flimsy tower in the middle of a swamp!"
Lieze wasn't listening. She was too busy examining the faded labels of the reagents. A particular bottle containing a runny, platinum solution caught her eye. She recognised it as quicksilver - the very same liquid metal she had discovered in the laboratory beneath Tonberg.
Lieze had come to understand that there was something miraculous about it. When combined with Mercuria, it could be used to create something that bore a terrifying resemblance to life. It was precisely the sort of thing an alchemist would gush over, but she had the strange feeling that its properties were only known to a select few besides herself. Its presence in the laboratory of a Sage intrigued her.
Drayya peered over her shoulder, "What's that?"
"Quicksilver." Lieze replied, "I discovered some when we were beneath the castle on our way to kill Alistair. It can create life when combined with Mercuria."
"Life?" She repeated, "How do you mean?"
The squirming, repulsive kind. A sort of existence that could only be called a 'homunculus'. The 'life' Lieze was able to create in that laboratory was nothing more than a writhing mass of flesh. But if the process behind its creation could be honed or improved…
"It's the goal of all alchemists to seek immortality." Lieze jostled around the flask, watching the silver solution clump and cling to the walls, neither completely solid nor liquid, "But what form does 'immortality' take in the eyes of those who busy themselves with theology and philosophy? This may be what they were looking for all along - a method through which life can be extruded independent of reproduction."
Drayya paused, unsure of where her next words would land. "Like you." she said.
Lieze thought nothing of it in the moment, but the more her mind dwelled on it, the more truthful it became. She was a child of alchemy herself, gestated in an artificial womb. Sokalar had pooled his knowledge into a masterful understanding of sterility and biology to ensure that she would develop properly.
"Yes…" She replied, "Like me."
Life borne beyond the warmth of life. Was that possible? For the first time, Lieze questioned not only the authenticity of her familial connections, but her status as a human being. Certainly, she was alive - she could speak and breathe and hate just as well as any other human. But it was clear that she lacked something compared to others of her kind.
Drayya pinched her cheek, and she was brought back to lucidity.
"I can tell you're overcomplicating things in your head again." She said, "You came here to find information on the Light in Chains, didn't you? There's nothing worthwhile down here, so why don't we head upstairs?"
The Void Beast, having slithered through the door at some point, nuzzled up to Drayya's leg. Lieze didn't recall ever telling it to display affection. "Have you been messing around with that cat, Drayya?" she asked.
"Oh, so it's a cat now, is it?" She grinned, "I knew you liked it."
Lieze didn't reply, and instead wandered over to the alcove hiding the curled stairwell leading up to the next floor. Drayya and the Void Beast followed after her, the former with a cheeky expression plastered across her face.
Yet more dilapidated and useless traps awaited them in the tower's centremost layer. Lieze noticed a rusted grate running along the grain of the far wall and a shattered portcullis above the doorway clearly designed to trap someone inside. The room she'd wandered into was a study lined with bookshelves that didn't quite fit the tower's curvature. Perched upon a lectern in the centre of the room was a bright yellow tome that captured one's attention as soon as they walked in.
Lieze stepped on another pressure plate as she stepped forward. This one was intact, and caused the rusted portcullis behind her to strain against the stonework before crashing down, causing Drayya to recoil as the metal disintegrated into crimson dust. An inaudible hiss drew Lieze's attention to the grate, which belched out a tiny cloud of colourless smoke before some ancient contraption in the walls gave up the ghost and ceased its spewing.
"A gas trap." Lieze muttered, "-And not a very good one, at that."
She was thoroughly disappointed. If someone like Sokalar had owned that tower, he would have rigged the entire structure to collapse as soon as someone other than himself set foot in it. For the alleged home of a Sage, it was quite the underwhelming welcome.
The book had to be a trap, too. Lieze stepped up to the lectern without fear and lifted the sickly binding before opening it to the first page. Her eyes were greeted with a complex sigil of interlocking runes which seemed to have been penned with someone's blood.
Reacting to the disturbance, the sigil came to life, glowing with a crimson hue. Lieze dropped the book just in time to avoid a jet of flames emerging from the circle. Her face warmed up as the room was illuminated by fire. The pages of the book went up in smoke, causing the spell to fail as the bloody sigil was slowly burned away.
"Lieze!" Drayya put on her best impression of a worrisome mother, "Don't go activating every trap in the tower just because you can!"
Lieze ran a hand down her bangs to make sure nothing had been singed off.
"I was interested in seeing what kinds of defences a Sage would rely on." She replied, "To say I'm disappointed so far would be a vast understatement."
After confirming her hair was intact, she wasted no time plundering the bookshelves for anything resembling a lead on the Light in Chains. Again, she found herself disinterested in their contents, brushing over grimoires and fables in the hope of discovering something authored by Sigmund himself. The sheer mundanity of his collection - as well as the seemingly innocuous state of his home - was beginning to frustrate Lieze.
Drayya must have sensed her worry. She quietly perused the shelves on her own merit, sourcing a tome of minor interest before lowering her arms over Lieze's shoulders to place the book right in her field of view.
"Look here." She said, "It's bound in flesh. You know what that means, don't you?"
Lieze sighed, "One of Kazor's spellbooks?"
She feigned disinterest, but a grimoire penned by Kazor Nict himself would be full to bursting with necromancy spells of every persuasion. It was a truly spectacular find, especially since they couldn't have been further from the Deadlands.
"You haven't been focusing on your necromancy lately, have you?" Drayya asked.
Lieze was somewhat offended, "What's left to learn?"
She puffed out her cheeks, "Everything! What kind of attitude is that?"
It was a good question, though Lieze wouldn't admit that. She had become so comfortable with the linear nature of her growth that the concept of relying on the teachings of others had become somewhat alien to her. Even if she was a powerful necromancer, widening her perspective on the school could only be a good thing.
But it wasn't what she was looking for.
"...I'm not sure there's anything here." Lieze admitted, "The Light in Chains sounded like a taboo subject when Furainé and Alistair spoke of it. Taboo to the point of heresy. How likely is it that anyone - even a Sage - would risk committing any of their knowledge to paper? Assuming they had any knowledge of it…"
"We've still got one more floor to check!" Drayya wrapped her arms around Lieze's neck and pulled them close, "We'll find something."
Lieze wondered if that was true. She dropped the grimoire into her Bag of Holding and headed upstairs, followed by an optimistic Drayya and her feline companion. The room at the tower's pinnacle was flooded with sunlight and the humid scent of pond scum. A hole had been punched into the inclined roof, exposing the cloudy afternoon sky.
Compared to Sigmund's other haunts, it was a mess. In fact, there wasn't a single piece of furniture that hadn't been blown apart in what seemed like some sort of catastrophic explosion. A layer of soot extended from the middle of the floor all the way to the walls. In the centre, a pair of footprints had been imprinted into the stone, as if someone had been dropped from a great height and landed on their feet.
Lieze sighed, "Nothing."
No bookshelves, no journals, and certainly no Sage - although the latter she at least expected. There weren't even any meagre traps to stand in her way, most likely triggered long ago by whatever incident had covered the floor in soot. A knot was forming in her stomach. She felt listless and encumbered, suddenly reluctant to chase any leads on the Light in Chains.
Drayya wandered over to the imprint, "Look at this. Someone must have been standing here long ago. Do you think it was Sigmund?"
"I suppose." Lieze felt the need to answer for fear of appearing silent.
"Is this where he died?" Drayya kicked away some of the soot, revealing the grainy brickwork beneath, "It almost looks like he… exploded, or something."
Another unsolvable mystery. Exactly what Lieze desired. She had already turned around and was well on her way downstairs when Drayya noticed her absence, poking her head out from the doorway, "Lieze!"
Perhaps there was no answer, she thought. The Light in Chains may very well have been a hoax designed to throw her off the beaten track. If a Sage - someone who reputedly communicated with the Gods on the regular - had no idea what it was, then she wasn't about to waste time chasing ghosts when she had a habit of pointless murder to be nursing.
When she reached the bottom floor, Drayya caught up and extended an arm to prevent her from leaving, "Lieze! What's wrong?"
She swatted Drayya's hand away, "Do you really need to ask? There's nothing here. I was a fool to think that the word of an enemy should be taken seriously. There is no 'Light in Chains'. The Sages were recluses, madmen, alchemists - anything but useful. It's all pointless."
She gave the thin table in the centre of the room a kick, causing it to slide across the floor. Then, with a light shunt, it suddenly came to a halt. The clink of something metallic and loose rang out from somewhere on the floor, though Lieze couldn't spot anything that it could have been.
"...What was that?" Drayya cast a glance over her shoulder.
Lieze tilted her head, "I don't know…"
She took a few steps forward and placed her foot against the table's corner. When she pushed, she could feel something resisting her attempt to move it, accompanied by that same sound of something heavy hitting the floor. She shoved her shoe against the bottom of the table leg, and was surprised to feel something encircling it - something invisible.