Miasmora & Wisric's Grand Meridellian Misadventure

     "We need those!" he protested, pulling out of her grip. He snatched up the nearest page before a faint spectral light appeared in the growing gap.

     "We need to move!" the Swamp Gas Skeith insisted, reaching for her companion again.

     Despite her urging, Wisric reached for another sheet.

     And something else reached for him.

     A pale, translucent arm extended from the widening opening to the secret passageway and grabbed hold of Wisric.

     Miasmora pulled one of the two Glowing Pebble Potions Wisric had gotten for her from her belt and lobbed it into the darkness beyond the passageway.

     A flash of bright light from the potion was quickly followed by a yelp and a swirl of darkness. The ghostly arm's grip on Wisric broke, and Miasmora yanked him away from the passageway.

     "Now is not the time!" she shouted. Whatever was beyond that door was too big to make it through now, but that wouldn't last for long.

     This time, Wisric got the message.

     Miasmora ran out of the chamber, turning back the way they had come, and Wisric followed her, his hoof-falls echoing through the stone corridors. She followed the hallway until they reached the turn where she expected the cistern to be, and then she stopped dead.

     Ahead of them was an archway that looked like the one they had come through, but beyond it--

     Wisric stopped beside her.

     Miasmora raised the lantern higher.

     Beyond the archway was a small, circular space with passageways branching off in six--no, seven--other directions.

     Misamora glanced at Wisric, then looked behind them. She was certain they'd turned the right way out of the chamber with the secret passage. The corridor behind her looked like the corridor they had traversed previously.

     Her first instinct was to go back and find the right way out, but if she had just turned the wrong way, they'd have to pass the chamber they'd just escaped, and she wasn't sure the second Glowing Pebble Potion was going to be a sufficient deterrent for whatever specter had very nearly gotten its claws in Wisric. "Please tell me you have an idea," she said.

     Wisric shook his head.

     Miamora's stomach lurched. She surveyed the circle of passageways beyond the arch, and two new details stood out to her: there was water dripping from the ceiling, and there was a ring of eight symbols carved into the floor in the middle of the room.

     "Wait," she said, stepping forward through the archway to get a closer look.

     "What are you--" Wisric called out behind her, his frantic eyes darting to the archway's stone, engraved with the same kind of ancient spellwork they'd seen elsewhere.

     Miasmora glanced back in time to see his mouth close silently over words she couldn't hear.

     So this archway was enchanted like the other one, she thought. She crossed back over the threshold to Wisric, just to make sure she could.

     Nothing bad happened, but uneasiness still lingered in the Skeith's gut.

     "I think we're under the cistern," Miasmora said, pointing to the ceiling.

     "That's impossible. We were running up. I definitely felt it," Wisric said.

     Miasmora realised she had too--her muscles were more accustomed to mad dashes than his, so she hadn't paid much attention while they were running, but now that he mentioned it, they had fled uphill from that chamber. She had led them in the right direction, and they should be back at the cistern with a way out (a grueling way out, but a way out nonetheless) in sight.

     Instead--

     --instead, they were here.

     Wherever here was.

     "Well, I do have an idea," Misamora said. "And I'm pretty sure I'm right. Come look at this."

     Much to Wisric's chagrin, she stepped back into the circular space and stopped at the ring of symbols on the floor. Reluctantly, he followed.

     Miasmora pointed to the passageway they had come through. "Remember how Isoldeia's instructions told us to look for that eye symbol?" She pointed to the floor.

     The symbol under Wisric's feet, the one that aligned with the way they'd come, was that same stylised eye.

     "But the symbol we were really meant to follow was a shield?" She pointed to another symbol on the floor, and then to the dark corridor three to the right of the one they'd entered from. "I bet if we go that way, we'll eventually find another chamber with a shield carved into the doorframe."

     Wisric circled the symbols on the floor. "I feel like I should know what these mean," he said. He leaned closer, pawing at the eye with his hoof. "Like a watcher, or something. I don't know." He looked up at Miasmora again, exhaustion evident in his face. "When I first read those notes about Isoldeia, I did wonder who had left them for me, but I didn't think about it very long because I was too excited. A scandal in Meridell's early history, a princess--one of Meridell's most powerful sorceresses, an incredible asset to the land--was locked away by her own family. Imagine the headlines. The acclaim for finally getting to the bottom of such an old mystery. But I should have asked. That's one of the first things they teach you when you're studying how to be a scholar--always question your sources."

     "You think Isoldeia left you those notes."

     Wisric nodded. "I just don't understand why she'd do that, and then try to lead us astray when we found Caelric's Old Paper. If she wanted her story told, why not point the way to Caelric?"

     "Oh, that's easy," Miasmora said.

     "Easy?" Wisric asked.

     "Yeah. The real story isn't the one she wants told. That's a person thing, not a scholar thing," Misamora replied. "Caelric has a different story to tell, I bet. And she didn't want us--you, really--to find the truth. She wanted you to convince everyone that her family turned her into a Ghost and bound her in her rooms forever, or whatnot. Maybe get someone to unbind her. I don't know how Ghosts work--they are usually bound to places, aren't they?" And of course, Miasmora thought but didn't add, King Skarl wouldn't want to admit that his ancestors--Isoldeia's family--could have done anything of the sort to such a notable Neopian.

     Wisric nodded again.

     "We're not getting back out that way, unless you want to find out whether that claw belonged to an Invisible Grarrl. So we might as well see if we can't find Caelric down here--or whatever's left of him. Come on," Miasmora said, striding toward the corridor marked with a shield.

     Wisric followed her.

     Like the first corridor they'd explored, this one was dim and dank; unlike the first corridor they'd explored, most of the rooms to either side were bricked shut.

     "This feels ominous," Miasmora said, running her hands over the brickwork blocking one chamber. The brick crumbled in places beneath her touch, leaving streaks of red across her palms and fingers.

     "I think this brick is very old," Wisric said.

     Miamora brushed her hands on her clothes. "I could tell."

     "No, I mean, very old. I bet this is what Caelric was talking about when he wanted the king to seal off what he found down here."

     "But didn't it sound to you like it was never actually sealed off?"

     Before long, Miasmora felt debris crunching beneath her feet. She paused and examined the stone, brick, and wood fragments that had built up along the corridor.

     "Looks like my street did when they were still building NeoHomes around the corner," she said.

      "Or when they tear them down," Wisric said, a rising note of unease in his voice. "I bet we're about to discover that--"

     They rounded a bend in the corridor at that moment, and Wisric didn't have to finish his thought. Here, the brickwork had been smashed, and a dozen chambers, half on either side, stood open.

     "Good thing we didn't bet," Miasmora said.

     For a moment, they lingered at the apex of the bend. Miasmora glanced behind them, and again, she considered whether they could go back, if they wanted to. Perhaps the claw-monster had given up its pursuit and retreated back into its secret den. Perhaps whatever magic had turned them around or teleported them down a level or whatever it had done to get them here instead of there would work in reverse if they went backwards too.

     "More likely we'll find a way out ahead than behind," Wisric whispered beside her.

     "I was just thinking the same thing."

     Miasmora took the lead, holding the lantern high over her head and treading carefully through the debris, which was thicker here than in the stretch of passage behind them. Before she came level with the first doorway, she stepped to the edge of the corridor, pressed her back against the wall, and inched her way toward the doorframe. She reached her free hand to the potions strapped to her belt just in case, and twisted her torso to peer into the room beyond.

     Nothing moved inside.

     She let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding. It occurred to her, as she stepped away from the wall and repositioned to get a better look, that the light from her lantern would have alerted anyone inside that they had company, no matter how careful she'd been. She shivered.

     The lantern light fell over crates stacked floor-to-ceiling in the space beyond, just like the one the castle cleaners had dumped at the Rubbish Dump the morning before.

     Miasmora waved Wisric over and watched as he clambered through the opening in the smashed brickwork.

     "Is that what I think it is?" she asked.

     Wisric worked hurriedly to open the crate closest to the door, and a moment later, pulled out a stack of papers neatly bound with fraying cord. "How could this survive down here in this mess?" he asked. His eyes had grown wide, excited, and he examined the top sheet of the stack with what seemed to Miasmora to be reverence.

     "Adam Chia," he read. "1494 Meri Acres. That street still exists! Wait. Adam Chia. Wasn't he--"

     A rasping voice sounded behind them.

     Miasmora and Wisric both froze.

     "--a famous adventurer. Last seen leaving Meridell to explore the Faerie Woods. Alas, he never returned."

     Slowly--veeery slowly--Miasmora turned back around.

     In the hallway behind them, wreathed in an eerie glow, stood a Draik.

To be continued…