Chapter 63: Chapter 54 – Its Complicated

A male voice, that held humor, spoke behind me. I whipped around only to see that the place that was empty five seconds ago now had a fat man. He was standing behind the desk as he continued to speak in that same cheerful voice, “Greetings and welcome to the Great Folly Inn. Will it be just you, milady, or will more of your party be joining you?” His spiel was probably something that would be said to every guest but when he addressed me as if I was alone, I looked around only to see that I really was. The spots where everybody stood were now empty.

My mind began to race. I was alone! That could mean a number of things like teleportation, illusions, mental attack or something else I have never heard of. The fact that I might be in a mental landscape while something crept up to slit my throat made me shiver. I turned back to exit out of the door we came in from but, while it was there, it didn’t budge. “Madam, would you be staying the night? Or will you be leaving sooner?” His voice lost the jolliness it had when he asked, as if my leaving would be an affront to him. Since I was currently trapped, I decided to play along. Maybe I could find my companions. Either way, I was pretty sure the pictures that were etched into the key boxes needed to be found if I was ever going to escape from this inn.

“How much is a room?” I asked trying to keep a smile on my face but failing. I was too nervous. I had gotten used to being around people. People that were tougher, stronger and were willing to put their lives on the line by standing in front of danger for me.

“Ha ha, I knew you would want to stay in our humble inn. Of course, a young lady such as yourself would not want to sleep with the rougher gender. A private room for just you would only be three silver. Of course, you could sleep in the common room for just five copper but the inn is not responsible for any missing items or body parts.”

Body parts? “I will take the private room then.” I would be alone but that was better than waking up without a kidney. I’ve seen that movie.

“A very good choice, that will be three silver. Meals will be served in the main room. Feel free to visit whenever you are hungry.” He finished talking and held out his hand. I reluctantly passed him the money. He rang a bell once he had the money in hand and a ten year old boy came out of a room off to the side. “He will show you to your room.”

When I looked back, the man was gone as if he had never been there. The kid made a gesture for me to follow and led me up the stairs to the third floor. I staggered about half way up when I got a notification saying *Silver Conversion to DP Twenty Seven DP Acquired* making me want to curse. I was planning on somehow taking back that money!

I followed the kid up two flights of stairs that led to an area that held only two rooms across from each other. My room held a bed with an empty steam trunk at the end of it and a tiny bathroom. The bathroom was set up in such a way that I could wipe down but not bathe. It even had a tiny mirror. I suppose it was for the men to shave and it was then that I noticed my once sky blue eyes were now emerald green. When I say emerald, I mean they sparkled like the actual green gems. When I looked closer I could see a golden light beneath them. It was amazingly beautiful, as if a sun was lighting up my eyes.

I walked back into the bedroom and looked around. All in all, it was a cozy room but none of the items I was looking for were in it. I was pretty sure that this level seemed to be set up like some kind of morbid scavenger hunt, to waste as much time as possible. The cleaver was more than likely in the kitchen. The reins were maybe in the stables? Did they have a stable? But where do I find a hand, an eye, and a round object that looked like a ball or globe? Did I have to mutilate the shopkeeper? I hoped not. Even if this was all fake, I could not really see myself hurting a friendly shopkeeper.

I left my room, and as I shut the door the floor creaked from behind it! The noise came from inside my room! I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. At least Pumpkin was still here. Although she still seemed tuckered out from her battle. I got the feeling that she was sleeping from my mental link with her, but now that I knew she was super tough, I was going to wake her up if some big monster showed up.

I walked down stairs. Yes, I left whatever was in the room alone. Cowardly perhaps, but I classified it as tactical. There weren’t any items in that room that I needed so why weaken myself in a fight? I kept looking around as I made my way to the dining hall. This place really was nice. They had hung candle sconces along the walls to give their guests enough light. Their glow danced playfully along the light blue walls, making he inn feel bright and cheerful.

I was going to the kitchen first. The cleaver seemed to be the easiest to guess where it would be, so I might as well test my luck. I made my way down to the now silent main floor. The fat man that was at the desk was nowhere to be seen. I walked through the giant dining hall. Long tables ran through the center of the room for the common people to eat at while several tables were placed along the outer area for the richer patrons. Half-eaten meals were on the tables. The emptiness made them appear more like decorations than actual real food, a visual that you might see on social media.

Even though the room was empty I felt eyes on me. I felt like I was being watched as I walked toward the door to the kitchen. I probably was so I did not let it get to me. I cast as I got closer to the kitchen. I vocally cast my spells one after the other. I did every protection spell I knew; ‘Guardian Angel’, ‘Coat of Arms’, ‘Aid’, ‘Blasphemer’s Detriment’, ‘Golden armor’ and a couple of new druidic spells like ‘Skin of the Plains Beast’ that increased my armor, ‘Supple as the Willow’ that increased dexterity by increasing my flexibility and then finally ‘Animalistic’ that allowed me to take on one aspect of an animal of my choice. I picked a spitting cobra and felt my mouth rearrange itself to accommodate the two tiny fangs and poison sac that sat behind them. It wasn’t painful, not really. The most bizarre thing was the new muscles that were growing in the back of my throat.

It was not by far the most I had up of total spells. I had a total of eight. It sounded like a lot but in reality I generally put up three spells on every group member which generally total fifteen. So eight wasn’t not much of burden, especially with my mana regeneration now up to five per second. I walked to the kitchen door like a glowing sun. It was the type that swung both ways. I just pushed it open and walked in.

The kitchen was a mess. It looked like a picture find game gone horribly wrong. The first thing I saw was that the walls were lined pots, pans, and racks upon racks of various sized containers. Herbs were drying on the ceiling, and a huge fire pit took up most of the center of the room. On the left hand wall were nine wine barrels laid on their sides and beyond them were slabs of meat hanging on hooks that wrapped around to the far wall. They ended a little before a clay oven. Wooden, bloody tables with knives and a few cast iron cauldrons sat between the fire pit and the oven. The right hand wall started with small racks with birds hanging above them, then water barrels, more racks that held plates and bowls and finally tables that I assumed were used for plating.

That's what I noticed at first but, the more I looked the more things I noticed. Like the fish that hung above the plating station, the trap door that was between the oven and the bloody table, the jugs below the plates and so on. There was so much stuff crammed into the room that its large size seemed small. I get why sausage links and a butter churner would be in a kitchen but why would boots, capes, travel pouches and other random items be tossed in here? Especially since space seemed to be an issue. The only thing that seemed to be missing in the room were people.

I walked through the room. I figured the cleaver was near that bloody table. Getting there made me glad I upped my dexterity. The table was six feet long with straps at the end to hold the meat in place. Long sharp knives laid scattered on it but none of them were cleavers. While I was moving about, I heard moans of pain coming from the trap door in the floor. The door had a metal rod near the handle locking it from opening. I opened it after spending some time dealing with the bolt. I had all my spells up and, while I could hold them for quite some time, there still was a time limit.

I opened the door to find a pit. Inside there were three naked people blinking rapidly to compensate for the sudden light. Two men and a lady were tied up and had pieces missing from them. Precision cuts had removed one of the lady’s breasts, all the muscles of a man’s leg had been removed, but they were not the worst off. The last guy was barely alive and was missing almost everything; eyes, nose, tongue, arms, ass cheeks and so on. I looked at them, then the bloody table and knew what was being served at this inn.

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I was trying to figure out how to get them out without going into the pit. My imagination had visions of the door slamming shut once I was inside, locking me in, and me becoming some fat nobles lunch. There was no way I was going to go inside. Instead, I let go of my spells and broke my aura into ribbons. I sent two to wrap around each of them only to see all six bands go right through them. The door slammed shut as those people faded away. The metal rod, I had tossed to the side, was now back into the lock.

Cursing the dungeon core in my heart, I searched through the mess to find the cleaver. It took hours to find it half sticking out of a basket of apples. The thing that I found the most odd was, where was everybody, why an inn, and most importantly why were they wasting time.

***

After joining the big fight with the stitch horror we decided to end this mission by helping Alice. We stayed together until we got to the third floor portal. Bill had told me that it looked like an Inn’s door. Any magic, such as the illusionary inn, was negated by my ability. My family was ‘cursed’ long ago so that magic would never flow through our veins and as a side effect no magic actually worked on my family. That meant we had lost our magical legacy and any beneficial magic that affected us including any gear. The fact that dungeon portals still worked was explained but it was all metaphysical mambo jumbo that was just nonsense to me so I just had to accept that they did and leave it at that.

Once we stepped though we ended up in the main cave. A dark green jagged crystal was floating in the center. Standing in front of it was a skeletal lich. Liches were advanced undead. They tended to be tougher, faster, and had a variety of magical abilities. This one was a caster instead of a warrior. I saw a complex formation flash under our feet. As it did, Bill and Alice froze in place. I knew it was a mental attack that locked people in a dream world. They would be stuck there until they could figure out whatever puzzle the caster had set up. They were supposed to be so complex that it could take weeks, months, or even years inside. They had to be since only a fraction of time passed in the real world.

The only exception was of course Frigus. The fact that Alice just opened up a portal that allowed a handmaiden of Death to walk out seriously freaked me out. Death’s handmaidens were unkillable and had enough power to kill cities by just walking through them. Sure! When Alice blasted the ghoul across the room it impressed me, but the fact that Frigus acted as Alice’s maid for an entire day, as if it was the most normal thing in the world, was seriously disconcerting. Was this what Lucas was warning us about? Will another of the three maidens pop out of a portal if she kills something else? That didn’t sound right since she killed other things but maybe it had a cool down. Either way I was treading carefully. The fact that Alice’s magic could affect me already showed that she was more powerful than every caster in the city. I knew from experience that it took over thirteen high powered mages working in concert to briefly override my curse.

I went forward to tie up the lich and buy them some time to break free. Frigus just stood behind Alice saving her from any attacks from the lich. It wouldn’t dare to make her angry. I saw Alice start to glow like the sun, then stop, then her aura fragmented and her tendrils shot out and almost wrapped around the Lich before fading away as her aura became a dome again. Her eyes were closed the entire time this happened which indicated that she was still locked inside her dream and casting inside it. Did the stupid lich put monsters inside her dream or was she doing something else?

As if to answer, I saw her wings, that marked her as royalty, appear and soon after, golden drops of water began to rain down on all of us. The scars I had accumulated over the years from lack of magical healing faded away as if they were never there. I watched the Lich melt like ice on a hot day. I know Bill made fun of her for casting it the last time but it was impressive in so many ways. I looked at Alice as she opened her eyes wondering how I was going to report all of this to Lucas. Should I even mention her monster pet. Between all that was going on, it did not seem all that important plus I did not even know what it was. This easy mission was becoming so complicated.

***

It had been days. I had been to multiple rooms looking for items and wasting my time. This place was like an automated haunted house. If I closed a certain door I'd hear something move behind it, step on a specific board and a holographic image would appear and so on. It was set up to unnerve people and it was working to a small degree. So far, I had found multiple items like the eye that was in a soup, the reins that was inside a hay stack and the cleaver. But I still had more to find and I was getting tired. I had been using ‘Invigorate’ to stay awake but it was becoming less and less affective. I was pretty sure that the noises of things moving inside rooms or down a hall were all fake but I couldn't be a hundred percent sure so sleeping was the last thing I wanted to do.

I was getting desperate and was going to try a longshot. The last time I cast ‘Heavenly Rain’ it trashed the landscape so I went to the inn’s courtyard to try to destroy the inn, and find the way out. I also wanted to reunite with my team. While I did not seem to be in any real danger yet, that did not mean they weren’t. The courtyard wasn't anything special other than it led to the stables and had a well near one of its walls. When you got close to the well, you could hear a little girl sobbing for help from inside. I had almost gone down to save her the first time I had come out here. That was before I noticed that her cries for help repeated as if on a loop.

Now, I just ignored the soft sobs and walked to the center of the yard. The only down side with this plan was that the spell took a lot of mana to cast for long periods of time. However, with my energy almost doubling, I would not be too defenseless.

When the spell finished, golden rain fell down to the earth and like a melting film reel it started to bubble and distort. With a flash of white light and a *+3 Mental Resistance*, I found myself inside a cave that held a two foot gem. My friends were around me. Bill and Phantom Blade were just blinking their eyes while James was close to the gem with both his swords out. I didn’t notice Frigus right away since she was behind me. That was until she moved and drew my attention to her.

‘Thank the Gods everybody was still alive,’ I thought and notice James walking back without breaking the crystal.

“This is your mission so you can do the honors,” he said and made a gesture at the crystal. I did not waste any time contemplating it since Dungeon messages were flashing as it searched for something to stop us. I was not going to give it enough time to figure something out. I rushed forward and slammed my mace down onto it. It shattered into hundreds of rectangular crystals that formed a pile below where it once hung. A neon green energy was released as it broke, hovered for a second, and then shot into me. I heard the clinking of metal on metal, a pain as if somebody kicked me in the crotch and as I blinked the tears out of my eyes, I saw three windows had appeared before me.

*Activate* *Bind* *Take Over*

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