Chapter 162: 9.5 – Secrets of Tarin-Tiran

‘It’s no use,’ Robin sighed. ‘They’ve done too much damage.’

The illusory construct he had been trying to stretch across the chamber collapsed. Robin massaged his temples. He;d strained to focus and make it work, but even without running out of magical energies thanks to [Visual Phantasm] being free to cast, it was too much.

He only had so much mental energy and imagination to burn at any one time.

The party was back in the chamber their quest had directed them to. Unfortunately, the damage was more extensive than Robin had initially estimated. No matter what he did he was unable to conjure enough illusions to cover the damaged sections.

Fucking Gis.

‘Not much of use here, either,’ Jhess complained from where she had been rummaging through the packs Gis and his party had left behind when they pursued Robin’s party to an inevitable and hilarious pit-trap-drop.

Well, hilarious from Robin’s perspective anyway.

‘I mean, sure, there’s a bit of food, some rope and other dungeoneering supplies, but it looks like all their best gear was on them.’

‘Any journals or maps?’ Vance asked.

‘Not that I’ve found,’ Jhess said, kicking the rucksack nearest to her.

‘Let Ruprecht eat it,’ Robin suggested. ‘he can recreate anything useful and maybe there’s a secret inside his assimilation finds that we missed.’

‘So what do we do next?’ Drev asked, practical as ever.

Robin watched Rerebos flitting throughout the chamber in search of shinies.

‘I think we try to find one of the other locations Nilsiir gave us and repair it,’ he said.

With a sense of sick dread, Robin pulled up the quest log and looked over it. His heart sank when the relevant lines flickered into being before his eyes. It was not ideal. The lines pertaining to this location had been crossed out. A clear failure. There was no way he was going to be able to fix this place, even with help from Ruprecht, assuming the dungeon managed to assimilate all the territory. There had just been too much damage.

But maybe not all was lost.

He brightened a little when he noticed the the quest itself didn’t seem to have failed. That meant that there were other locations they could find and repair to complete it! They just needed to get to the next one before something else happened to it. Then Robin and his team could repair it, they could talk to Nilsiir, and get some alternate options.

He suggested as much to the party, sans the bits about his personal quest.

‘We have what, two other options?’ Jhess asked. ‘Flip a coin,’ she suggested with a shrug.

As one, the party looked at Savra. The seeress had already tossed the coin into the air, it spun, glittering, before coming down in her hand. Twice more she flipped it. Three times flipped. Three questions answered.

‘Either one,’ she said. ‘There is great danger and great opportunity in each direction. I can’t see much of a difference.’

Great danger and great opportunity in every direction. Sounded like Tarin-Tiran to Robin!

He conjured an illusory map for them all to consult.

‘The closer one is almost directly below us,’ he began, before Ruprecht interrupted him.

It is possible that your pursuers from earlier survived their fall, and if so there is a chance that places them substantially closer to that location than we are.

‘And the other is further away, an on this level.’ Robin followed up smoothly, though his stomach flip-flopped a bit at the thought that Gis might be both alive and beating them to their next target as well. There can’t be that many places left that suited Nilsiir’s needs, not without trying to wrest more territory from Silinir, and Robin certainly didn’t relish that idea

‘Go for the one on this level,’ Jhess said. ‘Less competition.’

‘It’ll slow us down a great deal, though,’ Drev objected. ‘Look how we’ll have to travel to avoid Silinir’s demesne.’ The mage pointed to the route Robin had marked out as the safer option.

‘Still,’ Jhess said.

The party began arguing the merits and flaws of each option. Robin wasn’t really happy with either option, but found himself coming down in favour of the slightly slower option. It was safer, and they definitely needed a win where they could speak with Nilsiir.

In the end, the party agreed to go for the slower but safer route. No one really fancied another go-round so soon with Gis and whichever of his party members survived.

And there was no way Gis at least didn’t survive.

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Nine hells, Robin wouldn’t be surprised if Gis turned out to be the only survivor, but somehow managed to use the bodies of his compatriots as bait or bribes to dominated a whole replacement party of monstrous beings.

Seems like the sort of thing Gis would manage to do. Especially since Urkhan seemed to value him so much more highly now.

The party moved slowly toward their destination. Jhess and Rerebos scouted ahead and lured various weak monsters back to fuel Ruprecht’s expansion. More challenging foes were dealt with by the party together.

There were old traps, and deadfalls, and in one instance a cloud of living crystalline spores flowing on the subterranean breeze.

That one got away.

Probably a good thing. Robin had limited healing and he wasn’t certain Savra’s powers extended to dealing with fungal infections or other parasites.

Eventually, however, they found their way to the section of city marked on Robin’s illusory map. It was a place of red brick and slate, of iron lampposts with shattered glass still clinging to them like jagged and decaying teeth.

Most of the buildings here had more extreme levels of obvious decay. Brick, unlike stone, didn’t weather the aeons so well.

Robin wondered what that said about how intact or not the runic structures that maintained the city were in this place. This much obvious decay argued there would be a lot of degradation in the magic to compensate for.

‘This way,’ Robin pointed left. ‘There should be a sort of town square or something down there, over that pile of brick.’

‘You’re going to have to be more specific.’ Jhess moved nimbly over the fallen bricks all around them. ‘Seems like it’s more brick pile than street, honestly.’

Robin just pointed, attention on his own footing.

Jhess shrugged and moved ahead of the party, Rerebos circling her head. The rogue had little problem with moving through the uneven terrain.

Robin considered shifting to a form better suited to it, but then decided to conserve his magical energies. There was no way wherever they were headed wasn’t the lair of something. it wouldn’t be a quest if it were a simple move-and-repair job. No. Something nasty would be lairing there. He was cure of it.

Better to conserve his strength for now.

‘Oh you have got to see this,’ Jhess called form ahead.

Robin quashed the urge to hurry. He’d get there soon enough. It could wait.

But then he got there and he mentally kicked himself for not being able to see it sooner.

The building the party was staring at sat in the centre of a spacious square. Four roads—one on each side of the square—led in to it, with what looked to be row houses in varying states of decay lining the sides and corners between. Though none of the houses were as bad as others the party had passed so far.

But that alone wasn’t the remarkable thing. No, that honour went to the soaring gothic stonework of the building in the centre. It looked like a very large church or a very small cathedral. In aesthetic, if not in layout.

The stone was blackened in places, to be sure, but there were also glorious stained glass windows in a riot of reds, purples, and golds. Without light from within, Robin couldn’t make out what the images might be, but he could at least catch glimmers of colour by Drev’s magelight.

And it was intact. Pristine. Robin couldn’t see any decay at all, in fact. Either there was a very good illusion in place, or the magic here was still going strong after all these centuries.

Very strong.

‘It looks like a church,’ Jhess sais, stating the obvious for everyone.

‘Doesn’t feel like one,’ Savra murmured thoughtfully. ‘Doesn’t feel like one at all.’

‘Are we close enough to be sure, though?’ Robin asked, even though at his core he agreed with the seeress. Something about the place didn’t feel sacred, or holy. Though it might have done at one time. It did have that air about it. He’d been to enough bars and stayed in enough hostels in converted church grounds, so he added, ‘Or it might have been deconsecrated and given over to another use.’

‘I suppose that is possible,’ Savra conceded. ‘It’s not common, but it does happen. Places change. Gods leave.’

‘So what do we think it is now?’ Vance asked, eyes avid with curiosity.

Robin grinned. So what it there was a monster waiting for them inside? This was Tarin-Tiran! This was an adventure! And once they sorted that bit out, they could have another audience with Nilsiir and get him one step closer to the completion of his quest!

‘Why don’t we find out?’

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