C1E17 — Hunting the Husband pt. 2

Orentha's Account
The structure that we had found ourselves in in the tunnels under the city proved to be a very curious place. After we defeated the Troglodytes, we discovered several rooms that indicated this place was somebody’s home long, long ago. There was a library filled with books so ancient that they crumbled at our touch, a room with what appeared to be a teleportation circle inscribed on the floor, and even an abandoned bedroom and bathroom.

We continued exploring until Milady and I found a large set of double stone doors. There was no handle or any visible way to open these doors, and the two of us with our (mostly Milady’s) considerable strength were not able to open them. We had to call the rest of the party over to help us with the Boss Door, and it must’ve taken us at least ten minutes to figure out that we just had to hit it with enough magic to open it. If only the monks could see me now - one of a bunch of idiots trying to outsmart a door.

The room inside was an atrium with two hallways leading in opposite directions. The recently placed decor in this space and the security measures at the door made me think that the man we were looking for had taken to living here. Nix and I led the group down the hallway to the left and came upon a locked door. I didn’t hear anything on the other side of the door, so I unpacked my new lockpick set and tried to break in. Unfortunately, I think I need a bit more practice with those tools, and Nix had to take over after I nearly damaged the lock. They looked entirely too smug about it.

Evidently Jamra grew tired of us trying to get in the quiet way and sent a blast of flame at the door. The magic created a jagged hole in the wood, through which we could see the man we were seeking standing over a dead body - his wife’s body. The door began repairing itself and Jamra threw more flame at it. I kicked at the damage and the door flew open - just as the body on the table sat up. We piled into the room and began attacking the couple. The husband didn’t put up much of a fight, but the golem seemed unphased by most of our attacks. Since my fists weren’t doing any good in this fight, I decided to search for the man’s spellbook while everyone was distracted. I may trust Nix to a degree, but giving a book of golemancy to the Nicto Kurasis was out of the question. If I found the book first, I could hide or destroy it before anyone had the chance to hand it over.

But I didn’t. Agate found the book first, and unfortunately she didn’t see a problem with giving the book to the Nicto Kurasis. Her sense of morality is often concerning to me, but she is still young. She had time to gain new perspectives, I hoped.

Jamra of course wanted to inspect the book before we handed it over. He only wanted to do this in case he could learn something from the book, but I appreciated the opportunity to gauge how dangerous this item was. I leaned over Jamra’s shoulder to read the book, and was surprised to see that it was written in Common. As my mind took in the words on the page, I felt what seemed like a gravitational pull towards the book. I found myself getting lost in the words as all my other senses began to dim, before a searing pain filled my consciousness completely and everything went black.

Someone must have brought me back to consciousness, but I didn’t notice who. All I could think as I sat up was: There is no way in hell they are getting that book. The thing was clearly evil - what kind of book hurt the people that read it? I also noticed that I was the only one who had read the book that experienced this. Was it because I didn’t have any magic?

I tried to grab at it, but my body was still moving slower than usual from the effects of the book. Milady, of all people, snatched the book out of Jamra’s hands and put it away in her bag. It seemed like the only people that had a problem with handing the book over to the Nicto Kurasis were Trindak and I. I couldn’t understand why no one else saw the danger in this. The one thing we knew about the Nicto Kurasis was that they profited off illegal smuggling in and out of Guavira. There was nothing to make me believe that they would use this book for good, or that they even possessed the power to responsibly wield such an item.

But we were outnumbered. I couldn’t fight everyone to get the book, and I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t be able to convince Jamra and Agate that the book was evil, because they were able to read it without being harmed. I felt so powerless. Nix took the book and passed over the extra 500 gold we got for retrieving it. It felt just like when we sold the spider egg sacs to Butters. We keep handing over dangerous items to questionable people, and one day the consequences were going to catch up with us.