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I appeared in a smaller room. Five statues arranged in a semi-circle looked inward at a circular basin. Floating above the basin was a peculiar, glowing crystal. I had only a moment to take in the chamber, since I recognized the burning figure who was present. It was Ignus. The burning rage which he had felt at our last meeting had obviously consumed him, turning him insane. Perhaps not insane, precisely, but the elemental fire he worshipped had nearly burnt all the humanity from him. He immediately moved to attack me.
*"I will burn you, then sset fire to the planesss,"* he cried, casting spells of fire at me. I harnessed my own magical energies to counterattack.
*"The flamesss will consume you,"* he growled, and his growling was the sound of bonfires burning. But my spells drove him back, until he could retreat no further.
"The skies shall be flamesss, and all life shall be as torches," he whispered, just before my spell knocked him to the ground, and put out the last of the fire floating about him. I hurried over to the crumpled form of Ignus. He was dying, almost dead. I kneeled, and gathered his body in my arms. He spoke, so quietly I had to place my head next to his to hear him.
"Master forgive me. I have betrayed your teaching." I had to accept that some tormented figures from my past I could never help; indeed almost all were like Ignus, penned in the dead book and beyond my reach for good or ill. I gently laid Ignus' body down upon the ground again.
Now that I had a chance to look around the room, I realized the statues were of me. I examined each statue, wondering why they were here. As I did, I noticed a peculiar stone hidden behind one statue. The dark stone was covered in dust, as if it had been sitting there for years - it looked like a piece of one of the statues that was chipped away. A tracery of strange runes and markings covered the stone's surface.
It felt strangely familiar somehow. As I touched the stone, a mouth appeared on the side, and began speaking, in my voice; it echoed, as if speaking within a great chamber.
"Dak'kon, Morte, Xachariah, Deionarra - it is I. I have placed a minor messaging enchantment on this stone; listen to it fully, then do as I say." The voice took a breath; it sounded irritated.
"I don't know how we got separated, but I think the portal that brought us here divided us. It's only a minor setback -- when you find this stone, stay with it until I can rejoin you. Based on my divinations, this Fortress is the size of several cities -- the less you move around, the easier it is for me to find you." The voice took another breath, then became more detached, as if surveying something and speaking about it.
"I fought my way through the first of the vaults; this place is *filled* with shadows, way too many to keep fighting - if you encounter any, run before they swarm you; they're much tougher than the other shadows we encountered before; I think the energies of the Plane feed them somehow, make them stronger." The voice took another breath.
"There were a series of great war relics within the vault that shifted me from place to place; I managed to lure the shadows to each machine, then shift while they swarmed where I had been. It bought me some time, time enough to escape: Once I had tripped four relics, it opened a portal out." The voice paused, as if something just occurred to the speaker.
"It strikes me now that the vault I came from might be some strange sort of gatehouse -- the relics seem to seal it off from both the inside *and* the outside of the Fortress. Whatever built this place likes keeping the shadows under guard so they can't run loose; the shadows don't have any substance, so they wouldn't be able to use the machines to escape the vault. Hmmm. I'll have to think about that some more..."
"No matter - I'm in a room with a great crystal in it, and I'm going to examine it more closely before moving on." The voice paused, as if the speaker was looking around. "There are five statues in the room, and they look like me - and they look *old,* too, like they've been here for some time."
"As for the crystal... it doesn't seem like it belongs in the Fortress, and its size and shape reminds me of something I've read in the annals, some sort of dimensional prison that segments the soul. I don't think it's a coincidence the portal from the main vault teleported me here: I think the crystal's a trap, so *don't* touch it until we're together again - I *mean* it, Morte."
"I'm going to try and find you all now. If you find this reader stone, do *not* move from this spot, or I may never find you. I have left some supplies for you in the base of one of the statues. Don't waste them - I don't know how long it's going to take for us to find our enemy and get out, and we may need those supplies later. I'll see you all soon."
I examined the room further. If this was a trap, it had been improved since the last time an incarnation of mine had been here, for I found no exit, or any means to trigger a portal. That left the crystal in the center of the room.
The huge crystal radiated a pulsating, spectral light as it hovered above the crater in the middle of the room. The rhythm of its pulses reminded me of a heartbeat, but slow and sickly. Light from the crystal touched the edges of the room like fingers, each ray of light casting a glow on the ruined faces of the statues surrounding it. I reached out to the crystal.
There was a moment of dizziness as I touched the crystal; then
a slow chill passed through my body, and I discovered that my
muscles had locked, my hand frozen to the crystal's surface. There
was a moment of silence, then sharp pains splintered through my
body like fractures - I felt as if my very BEING had been turned
to ice, then *shattered*...
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