A few steps down the hall from what Cal was starting to think of as ‘the summoning room’ there was an iron banded wooden door on his right. It looked old but not disused and Cal stepped up and put his ear up to the door to see if there was any sounds coming from behind the door that might indicate if anything was inside.
After a minute of silence Cal thought to himself Ahh fuck it. Before putting down the skein of water, setting his shoulder to the door and drew his dagger. He took a few quick breathes to psych himself up then barrelled open the door and through the threshold hoping to startle anything that was on the other side.
What greeted him however was a glorified cloak room and he had to pull himself up short before he face planted the stone wall. Grateful that no one was around to see him make an utter arse of himself, he took the rorch out of his pocket and with a flicker of will cast some illumination around to see if there was anything of interest.
What drew his eyes first and foremost were the lumps of what looked like clothing set on a row of pegs plus some shoes and other basic personal items that had been set underneath the bench. Cal was betting that this had been the room where each of the cultists had gotten changed right before they had gone into the other room to do whatever it is they were doing in there.
He re-sheathed his dagger and put his rorch down on the bench seat so he could go through their clothes with both hands when the light blinked out.
Ughhh…..that’s going to be so annoying if I have to hold it all the time. Surely there’s got to be a way to just toggle it on or keep the effect going without touching it.
Cal first tried to actively channel his will at the rorch from a distance but that didn’t seem to work.
If I can’t remotely activate it, can I contain or imbue the rorch with a set amount of will?
Cal picked the rock back up again and pictured his will encompassing the rorch but not touching it not yet. It took him a few goes to get the hang of this mental image and get it to stick in his mind without it wavering or just feeling wrong. Once he was satisfied he started contracting the image until his mental image of the sphere touched the rorch.
He pushed a little further until the ball contracted until it was fully inside the stone. A thought came to him and with a slight flex that felt like tying off a thread he hardened the ball and then set the stone down and held his breath for a moment as he took his hand off the stone.
Well fuck me…..Cal thought as the stone kept shining. He then turned and started to rub his hands with glee. Roit…..time to loot me some shit. Not as if they are going to have any use for it.
Cal plunged into the assorted clothes, pulling one article after another and held them up to his body, quickly sorting through what was available into what might fit and stuff that had no hope in hell. He also found a couple of small sacks that could only be money pouches. He stopped guesstimating whether some of the stuff would fit and pulled the few pouches that he found and then emptied their contents out onto the bench.
There was a mixture of coins and a couple of small gems of various cuts and colourings in the pouches. The gems went straight back into a single pouch but the coins drew his eye and he held a few up before reaching to where he set the stone down and bringing it closer so he could get a better look at them.
He was no coin expert but it looked like there was a mix of coppers, silver and a single gold coin. The coppers were interesting in that they weren’t marked but there was differing designs. A few were round, one was square with a hole punched in the middle and some had a raised edge to the coin.
The silver ones on the other hand looked stamped and had the emblematic dude’s head on one side with words either wrapping around or on the other side in one case.
Huh, well at least the dude on the coin looks fairly human though that doesn’t really mean too much at the moment, I can’t rule anything out.
Another half hour and he had gone through and found everything useful, which amounted to a couple of sets of clothes. A little baggy but nothing he couldn’t fix by utilising the arming belt from which hung his dagger. The shoes were a total write off though as by the look of things they were designed to hold to be form fitting to each owners foot so unless he wanted to hobble everywhere he would have to keep his own shoes for now.
The one thing that he was particularly struggling with a bit was getting used to the ubiquitous cloak. On Earth cloaks had long gone out of fashion and had been replaced by the overcoat for at least….. well Cal didn’t know exactly when but he was willing to bet that it had been more a hundred years.
Cal squirmed a bit after putting on the cloak, it was cloying in a where it sat on the back of his arms. It was a heavier garment which was why he was bothering to put up with it because he had started to notice a bit of a chill. At first he thought it had been cause he must have been deep underground but no it was colder then if that was the case.
The cloak rode on the back of his arms in an unfamiliar way and every step forward was a reminder of that sensation. It was annoying but he was cognisant of the fact that this entire situation was so surreal that he couldn’t stand around a bitch about how the cloak wigged him out, besides he was sure he’d get used to it eventually.
Right…..onto the next door. And this time Cal, try not to look like a total tit by going through the door like you’re in a bad 80’s action movie. Yeah….that’d be good.
The last thing he did before continuing was he tied the money pouch to his belt as it didn’t have much weight to it. He then left two of the water skins in the cloak room and used a bit of string that he had found in his search of the room to rig up a sling for the third skin. He then slung it over his neck and pulled one arm through and rotated the skin around so it was sitting fairly comfortably at the small of his back.
It wasn’t the best of solutions but it was what would work for now with what he had on hand while still ensuring he had water to hand. He was on the lookout for some kind of pack or harness getup that he could stow all three of the skins in or tie them to in a way that didn’t throw off his balance.
He then pressed on, the path outwards looked like it had been hewn from the bedrock. It continued upward on a noticeable upwards slope and turned, mostly in a carving arch leftward and Cal could see the ambient light increasing in brightness so it wasn’t surprising when after a sharp hand turn Cal exited out into a sunlit area.
