Shay opened the first door on his left quietly, and the two slipped inside. For all intents and purposes, it looked like they had entered the living room of a small apartment, with a bed in the corner and assorted junk and books lining a shelf along the wall. Mason even saw a box filled with a strange pastry-like item in it on a counter, and a half-empty pitcher of water not too far away.

While Mason looked through the snacks, Shay pulled aside the lichen cover from the bed, and grunted at what he saw. Two bodies lay flat on their backs next to one another, throats slit. Mason moved to look and almost gagged at the sight- their hands were bound in front of them, but even still their fingers were entwined, and their dull, pained looking eyes were set on one another.

“This was an execution,” Shay assessed, his emotions concealed from Mason.

“Why would they be killed in bed, bound? That’s evil.”

“That is a warning, Demon who is called Mason. Someone wanted to inspire fear.” Shay threw the lichen-blanket back over the bodies, and walked from the room, content that there was nothing worth seeing here.

They searched rooms on the left and right, and saw cruelty of a similar caliber all down the hallway. The entire quarters seemed to have been raided, and recently too, as the stench of decay had not yet fully overcome the stench of raw blood.

Mason had avoided looking too closely at the bodies, sickened by the violence done to them, but in time he came to familiarize himself with the subterranean race. They seemed to be the pale green missing link between the dinosaurs and birds, with scaly flesh and sparse feathers down the back of their heads and necks. Their faces came to a point like they once had a beak in their heritage, and their hands and feet were long, thin things with too few phalanges for Mason’s liking.

They were shorter, and smaller too, than even Mason, but their bodies were rich with mana, even dead.

“Shay, should we be concerned by this? I’m beginning to fear that whoever did this much damage is not someone we should be facing. There have to be what, forty, sixty dead already in just these few rooms?”

“We do not even know if there is an opponent here at all. These small beings do not seem strong or fierce, and it is possible they turned on one another, unable to cope to their appearance in this strange world. If I find those that remain, they will fall to my axe. Kinslayers do not receive mercy.”

The two passed beyond the living quarters and into an even larger hallway, two bright blue lights burning at the end before a very large door. Shay marched down it proudly, hardly casting a glance to either side, having seen enough of what lay beside the main path, but a tinge of caution kept Mason to the side of the room, making his way slowly along the stone columns.

Why do those doors look so familiar?

Shay was ten feet off from the large doors when a shout that sounded much like a squawk sounded off to the side.

Mason only had a few points of mana inside of him, but he knew that Mana Sight could be a danger to him. He pushed it from his body and tried to squeeze himself into the shadows, and felt the mana envelop him. His Creativity stat ticked up, and a notification appeared that he told himself he’d look at later.

Shay slashed out with his axe at the approaching birdmen, leaving a deep gash in the arm of one, and a solid bruise on the cheek of another, but a third appeared from behind a pillar near the tall doors and came at him with an impossibly sized mallet. Shay pulled his axe up in time to deflect the blow, but the axe flew from his hand and the creatures began to seize him, the mallet drawn up in the air to threaten a crushing blow.

Mason considered his options, then slipped his dagger out of its sheathe and snuck up on the trio as they began to draw Shay away. Shay, even through his dark features and cloak, looked visibly distressed, panic written in the widening of his violet eyes.

The shadows almost seemed to move with Mason, obscuring his passage as he moved slowly closer and closer, certain that his Sneak was only this effective because the creatures were distracted by the mana-infused presence of his larger companion, and the amount of effort it took to contain him.

He was lunging distance away from the bird with the impossible mallet, but uncertainty gripped him. Could he kill a thinking creature? Bloodlust had said nothing about that.

Then he saw the one on the right drawing a knife, and heard it squawking at Shay that if he didn’t calm down soon, the blade would do it for him. This was not Earth. There were no police to call.

If I want to save my friend, I have to act.

His thought wasn’t even done before his knife was in the back of the mallet wielder, whose strength gave out immediately. The mallet crashed down to the ground but Shay had already pulled away, dragging the knife-wielder into its landing zone. The bird squawked and screamed as its arm bent at strange angles, but he stood, knife-arm unharmed, and began to slash out at Shay as his final companion tried to keep him still.

Dagger put away, Mason drew his staff and smashed the gem of it into the fallen mallet-wielder. He pulled the mana this time, drawing as much as he could at once, then with a wide, arcing swing unleashed the mana blade he had learned the night before. The blade cut and left a large gash in the knife-wielders chest, and he fell to the ground sputtering and bloody.

Shay had taken the distraction as an opportunity to wrench his axe arm free from the third birdman, and with a firm slash left a deep imprint in its shoulder. It fell to the ground, gripping it in pain, and Shay kicked it firmly then put his boot on the creature’s mouth. “Shut up!” He roared, and the creature’s pointed mouth slammed shut, though his eyes were wide and blood pooled beneath him.

“Will you make me kill you for your silence, or will you accept first aid for your information?” He held the axe down toward the bird, and lifted his foot slightly.

“I help!” it squawked, “I help! I not evil. I just not want to die!”

Mason took a deep breath, triggering Focus and Analyze in his accustomed pattern. The creature at Shay’s feet had strength as high as Mason’s, a surprise considering its size, but low intelligence. Mana Vision indicated the creature was magical though, so perhaps intelligence didn’t completely correspond to magical ability like in some scenarios…

He snapped back to attention, looking at Shay still standing over the creature, “Let’s get him back to one of those rooms, quickly.”

Shay hastily bound up the wound on its arm and carried the creature back down the hallway while Mason checked on his notifications from the fight.

Mana vampirism and blade specialization had improved a point.

Sneak has been upgraded into a Mana Art: Shadowstalk.

Shadowstalk: Wrap the shadows around you like a cloak, improving your Sneak ability through the use of mana.

Well that’s a considerably improved ability. It seems like I chose the right challenge this time.

Shay threw the birdman roughly into one of the rooms closest to the main hall, brandishing his axe and staring him down to ensure he didn’t try anything funny. The birdman scrabbled away toward the wall and yelped as he touched something under this room’s lichen-covers. “Sirs, sirs, there’s a weapon. Please, I don’t want to harm you. Take it, take it!” he shouted, throwing both hands in the air.

Mason stepped forward and took the weapon off the bed - another sharp dagger on a belt- and added it to his growing weapon collection.

“Talk, birdman, and we won’t harm you any further. We’ll just lock you up here until we figure out what to do with you,” Mason explained.

“My name is Terk! Terk will talk. Terk will explain. But um, Terk doesn’t know what to say.”

Shay put away his axe and glowered, “What happened here? Why,” he gestured to this room’s corpse, “are so many of your people dead?”

Terk paled, as much as sunless green skin could pale, and seemed to crouch smaller on the bed, “A demon came, and unleashed hell.”

Mason shivered at the succinct description and the intensity in the little thing’s voice. “What do you mean a demon?”

“Terk heard stories! A demon appeared and killed the king for the great staff. He appeared in a mist of blood and everyone exploded. Then he disappeared. The king’s men sealed off the temple, this temple! Then they hunted for the witches that summoned the demon.”

Shay looked confused, and Mason was glad that he could only see his mana form, and didn’t notice the pallor on his skin. Terk continued, “Any strong guard can seal the castle, but the king hated when people betrayed him. He made it so only he could unseal it, with the staff! But nobody could find it. When the guards got angry, they’d kill another servant. They were angry a lot, a lot!”

“And nobody ever confessed to being witches, or had any idea where the staff could be. Because it was long gone,” Mason said quietly.

Shay looked him full on then before shifting his vision to the powerful staff that Mason had always held. “Demon,” he spat, stomping from the room.