You have entered the lair of the forsaken guard

Cleanse the lair to claim the outpost

I muttered. “What the hell is a lair?”

Kasidy answered from beside me. “Lairs are like dungeons but you only get one shot at it. And you can’t leave until you complete it. Worse than that they go away once you.”

“Was there any way for us to tell what it was before we came in?”

Kasidy shook her head. “Not that I saw. I guess if we were from around here we would have been told that the outpost hadn’t been used in a long time and they suspected it as a lair. But who knows.”

I hissed slightly as I swept the room with my eyes. The place looked like what I would have expected to see in a guard post. The front area was largely open with two narrow sets of stairs heading up to the next floor. The ceiling was about 12 feet, maybe 14 feet tall. Directly above the doorway were holes from above.

Across the ceiling were large clumps of glowing moss. They gave the whole room a soft white light that reminded me of old 40-watt bulbs. The only furniture in the room were two rows of five chairs facing the other wall and a small lectern. On the far wall were two spots that looked like there should have been flags.

I reached out for Blink through the bond but got nothing, which meant that she wasn’t in the lair with us. “Blink didn’t make it in. Do you have your panpipes with you?”

Kasidy pulled her pipes out from the small bag on her belt. “Never go anywhere without them!”

“Good because I am short on what I normally have for battle. Do you have any idea what is meant by ‘cleanse the lair?’ Or what claiming the outpost is?”

Kasidy slowly walked toward the chairs. “Cleanse normally is used in the ballads to refer to what the holy warrior and priests do. They remove the taint of necromancy… Not that you are tainted.”

I gave a snort. “Sure and what about this claiming the outpost bit?”

Kasidy stopped and turned to me. “What claiming the outpost?”

“Didn’t you get the pop up that said cleans the lair to claim the outpost?”

She shook her head. “Nope, I got ‘cleanse the lair to escape.’”

I sighed and pulled my sword out. “I guess we will figure out how to fight our way through this. You think that this first part is like the entrance into a dungeon where we are safe until we start?”

Kasidy nodded and said. “I… I don’t know. It might be because we haven’t been attacked yet but something about all of this just feels off.”

I walked up to the lectern. “Yeah, I agree. It’s not just that we are in a place that is like a dungeon but isn’t. Dungeons are for training, they push you to fight better. I can’t figure out what this place is.”

When I got up front, I turned to face the door. This room was clearly the meeting room for the outpost. I looked down at the lectern and saw that there were papers still on it with writing. I closed my eyes and sighed. Not reading was going to get old now that there were things I wanted to read.

I called out. “Hey Kas, come over here there’s something written on the papers. I don’t want to move them in case that’s what triggers an attack.”

Kasidy took a nervous look at the stairs as she came over. “Yeah, not knowing is almost worse than being attacked.”

Kasidy moved up next to me and bumped me out of her way with her hip. She flashed me a smile and looked down at the papers. Then she started to try to read the handwritten message. Her smile fell as she read the lines.

She cleared her throat and said. “I’m going to read this to you. It seems like it was notes for the commander. Okay…. Patrol mountain road… light presence of orcs. Recent rumors of abnormal increase in undead. Oh and this next page seems to have some more information. Not much just a ‘muster’ list with names and ranks for the patrol. There’s one here listed as ‘Heal resistant flu.’ That would be bad in someplace like this.”

I stared at Kasidy and muttered. “I didn’t want to pick them up so that we wouldn’t trigger anything.”

Her eyes got big, and she covered her mouth with one hand as she said. “Oops?”

I shook my head and sighed. “What’s done is done. Anything in the item description?”

Kasidy smiled and nodded. “Commander’s last patrol.”

“Well that gives us something to start with. Not much. Let’s head up. Don’t suppose you have anything that will help us to deal with this place?”

“Not until we know more. I have a song that I could play to help reduce fear but I don’t know if it would hurt more than help?”

I nodded and pointed up the stairs. Then I headed toward the ones on my left. I figured that if I was going to have to fight, I wanted my right hand away from the wall. I went up the straight flight of stairs first. At the top was a small landing and rough-hewn wooden door.

I looked over my shoulder and asked. “Ready?”

Kasidy looked at me with a little bit of fear in her eyes but nodded. I grabbed the door ring and pulled. Then I grunted as I didn’t move at all. I shook my head and tried to twist the ring as I saw a keyhole. It still didn’t budge.

I asked. “Ideas?” As I looked back at her.

Kasidy flashed me a smile and pulled a very thin piece of metal out of her belt. “Just one.”

I smiled and had to hold back a laugh. “You can pick a lock?”

She nodded and knelt down next to the door. She blew a few stands of hair up out of her face as she got to work. After what seemed like just a few seconds, I heard a click as she pulled the door open slightly. She flashed me another smile and stood up.

I leaned close to her and whispered. “We don’t know what’s in there so stay behind me. Once we know what we are dealing with you might need to play. Till then we want to stay as quite as we can.”

Kasidy nodded, and I slowly pulled open the door. We passed through the door into a hallway. On our left was the outside of the building, with light streaming in through the arrowslits. On our right-hand side were a series of doors every about four paces, and at the end of the hallway was another larger door like what we had just passed through.

I shook my head slightly in disappointment and tried the first door. Then I sighed as it didn’t move. I pointed at the lock, and Kasidy smiled. She opened this one faster than the first. I opened the door to find a small room with two made beds, a wardrobe, two armor stands, and a pair of footlockers.

I shrugged at Kasidy and walked in. I tried the footlockers only to find that they were both locked. The wardrobe had two tabards and a few plain-looking shirts. They looked like the type that would be worn under the tabards. As I turned from looking in the wardrobes, Kasidy had already popped open both footlockers.

“Nothing much in either,” she whispered. “A few coppers that look old. I don’t know whose face is on them.”

“Let’s try the next one. Maybe we will find a clue as to what is going on.”

We slipped out the first door and hit the second and the third. Nothing changed in them other than the few things we found. I got a high-quality steel hunting knife in the second wardrobe, and we found a lyre in the third room’s footlocker.

Kasidy was cradling the lyre like it was a baby when she pulled it out of the footlocker. “This is beautiful. Not great for playing while traveling but the music I could make with this would be great. I have to find a teacher for it.”

I asked. “Is is a good quality instrument?”

Kasidy grinned. “It looks that way to me. Now I haven’t gotten a chance to play with many of them but I would be happy to learn.”

“Okay it takes two hands to carry it which means that it needs to stay put. If we can we will grab it on the way out.”

Kasidy gave me a little pout and then put the lyre down on the bed. She stepped to the door and then stopped and looked back. I shook my head and pushed past her, heading for the fourth door. Like always, I tried the door. However, this time it opened.

As it did, a great wailing started as soon as the door opened. The cry was so loud that my health bar started to slowly go down. I pushed the door the rest of the way open to see a ghost or a wraith. It was just standing or perhaps floating would be better to describe him. He was clearly a soldier, and unlike the wraith I had seen before, this one appeared to be wearing real armor.

The ghost cried out over and through his wailing. “Free me or perish as I did! Alone! Forsaken!”

* * *