Miasmora & Wisric's Grand Meridellian Misadventure

     "Is-- Is she right?" Wisric, the Spotted Ixi former-librarian, spoke first.

     Miasmora discovered with a start that her hand had closed around the neck of the Jumbleberry Potion hanging from her belt even though there was nothing to throw it at--nothing she could see, anyway. Not here. She released her grip before the glass cracked, and held the key--the one they'd found hidden in Wisric's old desk--up for the third Neopet, Caelric, to examine more closely.

     Since the key's ghastly transformation, Miasmora knew deep down that she was right, but she hoped, as the Draik hemmed and hawed over the key, that he would have a different explanation.

     "Whatever power it once had has been drained," the Ghost Draik said.

     "Does that mean..." Miasmora trailed off.

     "Yes. As soon as you took this key near the door to her prison, the power it contained was drained to untie the last knot of the lock."

     "How bad is that?" Wisric asked. "I mean, Isoldeia, sorceress, the blight she caused accidentally. But is it possible that since so much time has passed she's, I don't know, realized the error of her ways?"

     "Even if she has realized the error of her ways, the darkness of this place got its claws into her a long time ago, and it will not easily let go," Caelric said, shaking his head. "It will seek vengeance for all the centuries it spent locked away."

     "Okay, so bad. Very bad," Wisric said.

     "Can you just lock her up again?" Miasmora asked. "You did that before, keeping vigil--wait, you were keeping vigil down here so this couldn't happen, how could we possibly have gotten the key close without you coming to stop us?"

     Caelric frowned. "I think, perhaps, I am fading."

     "What? You mean like--" Wisric started.

     Miasmora made a quick gesture to silence her Ixi companion, and glowered at him. That was not the kind of thing you asked someone, especially not someone you'd just met! "I take it that vengeance means a terrible rampage that will probably destroy all of Meridell?" She tried to make her voice sound higher than normal, light, like the statement was half a joke, but she didn't feel like joking at that particular moment--what she felt was a terrible weight in her stomach that tightened with each word, because when Caelric said yes, which he was certain to do, this would be all her fault. She'd found the key. She'd carried it down into the--whatever this was beneath the castle. This ancient, miserable place.

     "Probably," Caelric confirmed. "Though she might seek out the descendants of the original architects of this place instead?"

     "Who are they?" Miasmora asked.

     "No idea. I never did get an answer from the Brain Tree," the Draik replied.

     "So Isoldeia probably doesn't either, which means--yep, Meridell." The Swamp Gas Skeith sighed. For a moment she let herself wallow in self-pity, then shoved the feeling aside. What was done was done, and the only thing they could do now was try to fix it. "So what do we do? Can you make a new prison for her?"

     Caelric shook his head. "Perhaps once, but not now. I no longer feel the magic of this place. I think perhaps I am..."

     Fading, Miasmora thought. She did have to admit a certain curiosity about what, exactly, that meant, but she wasn't going to ask. Maybe one of Wisric's books upstairs would have an explanation...if they ever got out of this labyrinth.

     "Can you teach me how to do it?" Wisric asked.

     That startled Miasmora. Maybe it shouldn't have. Wisric was an insufferable--well maybe mostly sufferable now--know-it-all, so of course he'd ask about something like this. But it was also an incredibly brave thing to do, given the evidence all around them of what rebuilding the evil sorceress's prison might cost.

     Caelric studied Wisric for a handful of heartbeats, as if assessing something about the Ixi none of them could see, and then nodded. "I think so. I think--yes, what I cannot remember, I can find in my books--or rather, you'll have to find it for me, but I can show you where to look."

     "Do we have that kind of time?" Miasmora asked. "She's presumably headed straight for the surface, and if she gets there..."

     "What other choice do we have?" Wisric asked.

     "You could leave," Caelric said.

     "Meridell is my home," Miasmora replied. She was startled to hear Wisric a few steps away echo the same words. The Rubbish Dump, Meridell Castle's turrets and towers, even the Kiss the Mortog pond--Meridell was home, and if they'd let a monster loose, accidentally or otherwise...

     Caelric smiled. "Good," he said. He turned his attention on Miasmora. "You'll need to lure her here. It will be better if you take a roundabout way, to give your friend more time to work on the inscriptions and learn the incantations."

     Misamora spluttered. "Lure her?!?" But of course that's what needed to happen, and the Swamp Gas Skeith grit her teeth. "Please tell me you have an idea of how I might do that?"

     "I do," Caelric said. He explained, and Miasmora spluttered again.

     "Can't you just do it yourself?"

     "I am bound to the archive," Caelric said.

     "And Wisric needs to... Fine. Fiiine. I don't suppose you have extra..."

     ***

     Caelric's clothes were drafty. Miasmora had been surprised they were proper clothes at all, rather than some spectral remnant. They were tattered and threadbare, and the cold of the ancient chambers beneath Meridell Castle seeped through them into her skin as she made her way back to the circular way-chamber, with its eight branching corridors.

     In addition to Caelric's clothes, Wisric had managed his first incantation in the moments after Caelric explained his idea, and though Miasmora's new appearance wouldn't stand up to any close scrutiny (the gas rolling off her might look spectral, but it was still Swamp Gas) from a distance, she resembled the Draik almost entirely. Including his shorter stature.

     And Miasmora hated being short.

     Caelric had promised her that change was just an illusion, but the ground seemed much closer than it usually did, the ceiling much farther away. Both he and Wisric had insisted it was a necessary part of the illusion when she complained back in the archive, but as she made her way across the round chamber to the tunnel marked with the eye symbol, she wondered if they hadn't played a terrible joke on her.

     Caelric had been convinced that Isoldeia would want to destroy him, her jailer, most of all. That tracked with what Miasmora knew from stories of evil sorceresses, and, she begrudgingly admitted, so did his plan.

     She just had to find that terrible clawed figure, and then make her way back to the archive. As she followed the sloping corridor toward the chamber where they'd last encountered Isoldeia, she remembered with a sickening drop in her stomach how this very hallway had led them to different places. Her thoughts flashed to what would become of her if that happened again--an eternity running through passageways that shifted or changed with a very angry, very ancient sorceress chasing her.

     That probably would have happened anyway, Miasmora told herself. Even if they hadn't hatched this absurd plan.

     It wasn't a particularly comforting thought.

     Miasmora's potions were hidden beneath Caelric's tattered tabard, and she resisted the urge to reach for them as she rounded the last bend in the corridor and the room where they'd encountered Isoldeia before came into view.

     She stopped short and took a deep breath, straining her eyes to survey the shadows ahead of her.

     Nothing moved. The ever-present drip, drip, drip broke the still silence of the ancient passages, but nothing else.

     She inched forward, peering cautiously into the chamber.

     The secret passage in the wall was fully open, and beyond it, Miasmora could make out a cramped space. She raised Wisric's lantern higher, flooding the space with light.

     The room was maybe half the size of Miasmora's own bedroom, and it was entirely empty. Not a scrap of furniture, nothing to suggest there ever had been--no scraps of cloth or rotted bits of wood, no broken glass. The only notable thing about the space were the markings on the walls.

     At first Miasmora mistook them for the texture of the stone here, but when she looked closer, she realized there were shapes like letters in the pattern of it, and then, finally, that the entire pattern was comprised of letters. Thousands of letters. Thousands of words scratched into the wall by a spectral claw.

     She shivered, grateful she couldn't make sense of any of what was written here.

     She'd tell Wisric later, but Isoldeia clearly wasn't here anymore, and the Skeith retreated quickly out of the unnerving chamber.

     At the doorway of the larger room, she lingered a moment, looking up and down the passageway outside. To the right, she would find the round chamber. She thought. That was the way they had come originally too, and should have led up to the cistern chamber if the strange magic of this place hadn't taken hold of them that first time.

     If space here worked the way it was supposed to, Isoldeia had most likely turned left out of this room. If space here worked the way it was supposed to, that was the way Miasmora should have gone too.

     She lowered her lantern to examine the floor more closely, hoping to find some sign of the dangerous creature's passage; there was only stone and damp and rock dust.

     It will be better if you take a roundabout way, Caelric had said.

     Miasmora glanced between the two paths before her. As much as she hated to admit it, she was certainly in a story now, and in stories...

     She turned right.

     A few minutes later, when she came to the place where the circular chamber should be with its eight branching paths, she found an entirely new space, full of warm, yellow light.

     Sunlight, she thought.

     "Oh no," Miasmora breathed. She remembered how Caelric had described Isoldeia in her youth.

     Sure enough, in the center of the new space ahead, Miasmora made out the dark silhouette of a Scorchio clothed in rich brocade.

     "Caelric, is that you?" a soft voice called out of the light.

     Though her eyes had yet to adjust to the brightness, Miasmora had the faint impression that the space ahead of her was full of growing things--crops, trees. The scent of wildflowers reached her through the damp-wet smell, and the cold that had sunk into her through Caelric's tattered clothes abated.

     "Caelric, could you come help me with this?" the soft voice called.

     Before Miasmora knew what she was doing, she had stepped forward. She was filled with an eagerness to do exactly what the figure asked of her.

     A small voice in the back of her head screamed. You're not Caelric! What are you doing?! But Miasmora was transfixed by the brightness and the warmth and the call of that soft voice, asking for help.

     "Something's wrong with the soil here," the Scorchio said. "The potatoes won't take root."

     Miasmora took a final step forward, and the light swallowed her up. The castle's underbelly vanished around her, and she found herself in a field. She'd never breathed fresher, sweeter air. Never felt the sun's warmth so perfect on her face. A stream burbled nearby. She thought she recognized the rolling hills that surrounded her, but the landscape was empty, apart from the garden and her and the Scorchio bent over a row of seedlings.

     "Can you come take a look?"

     Miasmora nodded eagerly and crossed the short remaining distance to the Scorchio's side. She knew nothing about potatoes--she was no farmer--and the seedlings looked just fine to her. They were green, shot through with tiny veins of black, and--

     Tiny veins of black!? that voice in Miasmora's head intruded in the peaceful garden.

     Miasmora looked around the rest of the garden. There were dark streaks everywhere--the petals of the wildflowers nearby were lined with darkness, the grass black-bladed, the sun itself emitting rays of cold-dark along with its warm light.

     RUN! the voice in Miasmora's head thundered.

     My voice, Miasmora realized, because she was not Caelric.

     Still, she couldn't make herself move. She looked down again and found black tendrils creeping up her legs, rooting her into the land.

     "Well, what do you think?" the Scorchio asked. "Will this cure them?"

     Her. The Scorchio was going to feed her to this cursed garden.

     Miasmora struggled against the climbing roots.

     The Scorchio laughed. "Oh, Caelric."

     Miasmora's mind raced. Almost too late, she remembered the potions hidden beneath Caelric's clothes. She fumbled for them, and threw the first one her hand touched.

     There was an explosion of fire and darkness that seared Miasmora's hands as much as it did the roots twining around her. They hissed and drew back into the ground at the fire's touch, and Miasmora pulled herself free.

     The fields around her dissolved. The sunlight faded into coils of darkness, and the ancient chambers beneath Meridell Castle took shape around Miasmora again.

     Her lantern's light was terribly dim. Miasmora couldn't make out where Isoldeia was--close, she knew, far too close--or the shape of the chamber around them. She strained her eyes. If this was the circular chamber, and she could just find--

     A spectral claw flashed out of the darkness.

     Miasmora jumped back, her upper arm stinging where it had been grazed.

     "Oh, don't be like that," Isoldeia said from the shadows.

     Miasmora picked a direction and ran.

     To be continued…