Sun Kingdom - Relic

Slayg grumbled a bit under his breath as he was dismissed with barely a note of concern from the "Emperor" of this portion of Earth. The magic was something interesting, using cards as focuses to summon constructs, but it wasn't anything that Slayg hadn't seen before. Oh well, at least disguising himself had netted him a guide to... wherever this artifact was.

Slayg narrowed his eyes as he studied the door. It looked... old. The design was one that Slayg had seen in use right before he had been imprisoned. However, a wooden door with an iron knob should have been destroyed by time long ago, if it was built in the distant past. The wood should have rotted away without maintenance and paint and varnish, and the iron knob and its inner workings should have rusted and fallen to pieces. If nothing else, the mechanism of the knob and the lock should not have still been intact and useable.

And yet, when the strange knight disarmed the trap, the door opened easily. Without so much as a creak of the hinges.

The room that the door opened to was stranger still. It looked like the common room of an old tavern or drinking hall. The tables and chairs were all made of wood that had almost gone extinct in the Rocky North, a species of hardy linden that had once been used commonly for the making of furniture and other wooden surfaces that needed to be tougher than pine... But the last of those trees were preserved in a single valley by Earth's central government, who had not yet made good on plans to re-introduce the species to its former range. Stranger still were the liquor bottles and the barrels of ale and mead. A few had the symbols of notable Northern brewers... from millennia ago. The cork in the bottles should have disintegrated centuries earlier, releasing vapors as the alcohol evaporated to nothing. And yet, it was there.

Slayg took a bottle from a table and sniffed it for magic. Then he sniffed the table. Then a chair... Yes, everything had a spell of preservation on it. Keeping everything still and undisturbed, allowing not even a grain of dust to fall or move until a mortal, or really anyone moving normally through time, came and broke the enchantment. Slayg chuckled and swiveled his pipe about to the other side of his face with some lip and tooth movement. Then, he opened the side of his mouth, revealing very sharp fangs that should not have been in a man's mouth, and bit at the cork of the bottle he'd picked up. After spitting the cork to the side, without losing his pipe, Slayg took a swig from the bottle.

The alcohol did not quite burn going down Slayg's throat, his gullet was too strong for that. However, it did warm his belly a bit and he gave a pleased belch of flames before looking back around the well-lit room. The knight was still searching.

"Fool..."

Slayg wandered behind the bar counter and swept the area with his eyes. Barkeeps always had secret ways out into the cellar or through a wall, so they could restock without crossing the floor. Such secrets also helped when tax men came calling from a king...

His eyes noticed the "lid" of one of the barrels at the bottom of the stack of shelves and nooks had a lid whose color did not match the planks that made up its body. He punched a hand through the wood and YANKED it free, revealing... a hole. Just wide enough for a fat man to crawl through. It went to a tunnel that appeared unlit and cramped... Best to let the knight take point on that.

"I found something."

Slayg let the other knight climb through the barrel and drop down the sheer tunnel that it led to. It appeared that, if there were ever any handholds or ladders, they had long since been removed. Once he heard the knight splash down, and did not hear any screams or chittering or feel any buzz of magic... Slayg followed the other fellow down. He squeezed his shape a little, slimming down here, moving fat and muscle there, forcing his rotund false form to FIT into the little tunnel and then drop down next to Yung's servant with a loud *pop* before he slammed down onto the stone where the knight had once been. Slayg had been hoping to crush the little construct beneath his rear end, just to turn him to scrap or force him to make a noise of exertion. But... no... The knight had smartly moved to the side to give Slayg room to fall without taking any injury himself.

With a little growl of frustration, Slayg walked alongside the other knight through the dark. He puffed on his pipe, and kept his senses primed. And then... with a twitch of his whiskers, he felt the low buzz of magic a few moments before the golden door came into view. Now, Slayg knew magic. He knew the power of spells. And he also knew that, while many spell masters CLAIMED that their enchantments were "impervious" to mundane damage, these spells often fell before enough force or ki. The sort of force or ki that a dragon could employ in his true form.

But, Slayg preferred to let the knight work and do the hard part of the spell that banished the barrier. This was quite the construct... Slayg could have drummed up the right spell from memory, of course, but that would have taken some thinking and a bit of remembering an old dead tongue and trying to get it to sound right in his fake mouth.

"Hmm... a summoned specter that knows magic and carries capsules? If I did not know any better, I would think you were a real knight, bound to the service of the Emperor..."