The "Best" RPG Ever-53

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The room to the right of the one with the door glyphs seemed to have shelves built into its walls. There were some bits of mostly-rotted wood around that could have been more shelves, but if anything had ever actually been on those shelves then it must have rotted away a long time ago.
Mira walked along the wall the door was on, and found just two glyphs there. "Hey, you see any connections from these?" she said quietly. Nora came closer and looked.

"Th-they're the two doors in the room. Um...the one we came from, a-and that one," the elf said, indicating an open door on the wall to the left of the direction they had come in from. "Th-the armor must've gone through there."

"Yep," said Rayna. "Maybe we should try the left branch before going any farther in."

It didn't take long to identify which glyph opened the door on the left. Mira activated it, and then they waited back in the entry chamber for the armor to pass through and go back inside again. Shortly after it left, a distant roar of thunder echoed from upstairs. Curious, Rayna walked back over to the stairs. "Say...how's this place not flooded, with that open door straight in here?" she said, looking up the stairwell. "More importantly, do we need to worry about getting flooded out right now?"
Nora followed, and went about halfway up the stairs, watching carefully. "I-it isn't even coming down this far," she reported. "It l-looks like the water j-just goes right through this 'concentrated earth' i-into the ground beneath it..."

"Well if it does that, shouldn't the roof be leaking?" said Rayna.

"Um..."

"Some kinda 'channels' built into the walls and ceilings, maybe?" Mira suggested. "I guess you wouldn't be able to see that if it was there."
"R-right..." She came back down.

"Well, the point is we probably don't need to worry about drowning from the rain," said the fox-girl. "We were planning to be here a little longer anyway, so maybe the storm'll be over by the time we finish up here. Let's go see what we opened."

The room on the left was about the same size as the one on the right. It had no shelves, but instead there were blocks of the building's material raised up similarly to the one in the glyph room. These were fairly short, narrow, long, and placed at regular intervals around the middle of the room, nine of them total.

"What do you think...beds?" Mira suggested.
Rayna put a hand on one of them. "Pretty uncomfortable ones. I guess if you stuck a mattress on top, it might work..."

Nora noticed something not made of the walls' material in the corner, and made a beeline for it, gently picking it up. "H-hey! I found a book," she said.

Rayna came to look at it. It was thick but just barely small enough to fit in one hand. "That looks...really intact, considering the state of the library we were in earlier. What's written in it?"
The elf tried opening the book to see. It was full of scribbles in symbols she didn't recognize. "Uh...I-I think it's in another language," she said, offering the book to the fox-girl.

"Hmn..yeah. My hud identifies this lettering as 'ancient elvish'. I wonder..." The illusionist closed her eyes for a moment. "..Yes! I have a 'translate for me' skill! Let's see how much I need to invest for this language."

She took a moment opening and closing her eyes, buying one point at a time until she was able to "see" the translation to one side of the book's actual writing. "There! Not too expensive, I'd say. A little bit off-build, but I think it'll be worth the ability to just read anything. Heheh, I could even get a job as a book translator if the adventurer thing doesn't work out."

"Enough about you. What's it say?" said Mira, coming up to look over her shoulder. Of course, the witch couldn't read the ancient writing either.

"Hmn...here's one of the first entries." She read aloud, still softly enough to avoid detection by the place's patrolling guardian:

"Although my colleagues are doubtful, I am still well convinced that this place was constructed by the gods themselves. The material of which it is built is incomprehensible to our best mages on how to replicate. A shame, as our generous patrons would be more than happy to have such sturdy walls in their abode's construction. I cannot say for what purpose the gods would need such a place, nor why they would have left it so intact and empty for us to find. I almost suspect it a gift from them to us, considering how well its facilities suit the needs of our research. We have already activated an Iron Guard to keep us safe, but I am doubtful whether that will be sufficient on its own. The monsters are many in this land, and there are reports they are often larger and more dangerous as well. But that is why we are here, after all."

"Iron Guard, eh?" said Mira. "I guess that's our armor friend. Some kind of powerful magic must animate those things for them to be working after however long..."

"I wonder if their 'patrons' lived in that castle Lynn and I started in," Rayna suggested.

She looked over the next few pages. "Uhh..hmn. There are personal entries like that here and there, but this is mostly a lot of technical jargon I don't understand even after translating. Something about correlating energy flux...some notes on the behavior of dire bears, a rough sketch of one..." She flipped ahead a little. "Oh, here's something:

"The extraction process was a success, yet a failure.

After all of the trouble to capture that wretched beast alive, we mostly succeeded just in killing it anyway. The magic that inhabited it could be torn out and channeled briefly, but it refused to be contained by any of the usual methods; it is like a well-oiled snake in our hands. Where it went our best sensitives could not say; it was as if it immediately scattered to the four winds. Well is it called Chaotic Magic. But head mage is still convinced we can find some new method that will tame this untapped source of power. I think her dreams a bit grandiose, personally."

"'Chaotic magic', huh?" said Mira. "This sounds like the setup for a horror movie. 'Those scientists are meddling in forces they don't understand and cannot possibly hope to control'," she intoned ominously, drawing a half-stifled giggle from the fox-girl.

"Based on the context, i-it sounds as if this chaos magic is r-responsible for, or inherent to, m-monsters somehow," said Nora. She closed her eyes. "I-I don't remember feeling...anything specific or d-different from normal animals in any of the monsters we encountered, however. S-so it must be different from the natural elements in s-some fundamental way..."

"Well, let's skip ahead a little more," said Rayna. She turned to a bit past the middle, and paused, showing the others some complicated diagrams. "My Sophol, it's covered in technical jargon," she said, flipping through the next several pages and finding much the same thing. "It's like the magic-science equivalent of Galois' final letter...I think I even see 'not enough time' scribbled in the margins right there," she said, pointing. "Where does all this start?" She flipped back a few pages at a time until eventually coming to the last pair of pages devoid of diagrams, a likely candidate for a 'personal' entry. "Aha...now let's see......mm-hm, this looks like our smoking gun. Listen:
"My strident objections, and those of others in our group, have been silenced.

Chaos Magic refuses to inhabit anything other than a living body. Putting it into animals, even a well-trained tame one, just creates wild, uncontrollable monsters. Logically, that leaves only the option of using a sapient being for storage. It would be unethical to take a volunteer who did not understand the risks as well as we now do, an objection to which the head mage responded with an offer to be the test subject herself. This kind of thing never goes well, and I don't think it shall here, either. The magic of people, the gift of Sophol, seems to naturally repel Chaos Magic, so her aim is to deliberately burn herself out first and then we use some carefully-tuned nullification charms..."

"Well, that sounds bad," said Mira. "At least we've got a half-genre-savvy person here. Wonder whether he got away."

"Well, uh..." Rayna continued:

"I'll be clear: It is not that I think this won't work. It's that none of us know what the result will be if it does—funneling chaotic magic into a person this way. She is certain she can control it, but if our studies here so far has taught us anything, it is that control is the very thing which Chaos Magic abhors the most."

"And the other page says..."

"I have been using this book as a research journal, and in the capacity of reminding myself of things I should already know, nobody has ever objected to its use. But I will spend tonight filling the remaining pages with as many of the details of our work as I know. After that, I will use the best preservation charms I know to attempt to ensure this journal survives the ravages of time—"

"—which explains how this survived and none of the other stuff or furniture that should probably be in this room," Rayna interjected. "Anyway...

"Our patrons would not approve; my colleagues would also be aghast at their life's work being recorded in this way, with such great risk of a leak. If things go well tomorrow, I swear I will burn this book. But I don't think they will, and in that case I will leave this behind so that something of what we have done remains, even if I myself die.

If this book still exists, then it exists as a warning not to follow in our footsteps. There are some things more dangerous than even courting the power of demons. Monsters should be killed, and if studied, only to the end of killing them more efficiently. The magic that makes them monsters is inherently dangerous in a way that nothing else in this world is. I tremble to say this, but from what I have seen here, and what I understand of their nature, I do not think this magic is the work of the gods at all. I don't know what that means, nor do I have the courage to pursue that inquiry further. Anyway, I have only a few hours left to write down the details of our research.

"...And then the technical jargon starts," said Rayna. She put the book into the party's inventory. "Well, I'm sure this will mean something to someone, at least. We'll bring it back with us for safekeeping."

"Uh, y-you're absolutely sure th-there's nothing else here but the armor, r-right?" said Nora.
"Well...I haven't heard anything else. And I'm pretty sure the armor would attack anything else here if it knew that it existed," she said.

"What's wrong?" said Mira, noting that the elf had a more genuinely nervous expression than usual.

"I...I'm not sure. J-just, something about what the journal said they were trying to do fills me with d-dread. Or, horror..." she shook her head. "I-it's been such a long time since this place was occupied. Rationally..th-there's no way, even if that experiment was a disaster and c-created some kind of super-monster, it sh-should be dead by now, right?"

"We can only hope," said Rayna, nodding. "But hey, like you said, it's been a long time. Why would a super-monster hang around a place like this with that armor trying to attack it all the time? If it were here then it would've destroyed the guard already. So chances are that if it's even alive, it's on the other side of the world right now and completely and totally not our problem. Though of course..."
"Yeah, our own sense of genre-savvy suspects otherwise," said the witch. "Still, I don't think we need to worry about it right now. Let's get back to looking through the rest of this place, and figuring out how to dispose of an 'Iron Guard'."

---

A loud clap of thunder startled Clera from an unintentional nap. She jerked into an upright position in the easy chair, looking around briefly in confusion before remembering where she was. After that, the next thing to occupy her mind was the location of a certain shapeshifter. "Aria!" She had been laying across the nearby couch before.

"Ye~es?" her voice came from the library, and she walked back into the living room.

The winged girl glared, pushing herself up onto her feet. "You should not be wandering around unattended until the vertigo clears up completely," she said.

"Sorry..you just looked too cu—uh, comfortable there after you dozed off," she said. "I didn't wanna wake you. But I get super restless sitting around not doing anything. And I can't even take a nap—without Kath around, sleep is even more dull and annoying than being awake. So I went looking for a book I could read or something." There was clearly not a book in her hands; she hadn't found anything worthwhile yet, apparently.

Clera was reminded: She had been reading a book before. After looking around briefly she located it on the floor nearby, and picked it up, dusting it off a bit. "Just wake me next time—if there is one," she said sternly.

"Yes'm," Aria nodded, and collapsed back onto the couch for the moment. The winged girl followed suit, taking a much gentler approach in returning to her prior perch on the chair.

"...Clera—the one from here—brought up something in my dream we had not yet considered," she said.

"Yeah?"
"Your 'final skill', to merge entirely with the demon...does its description say anything about what happens to the demon's mind, relative to yours?"
"Uh.." Aria took a moment, closing her eyes to review the description in the menu. "Lessee here..no, no, it just describes what happens to my stats and how the other skills're affected."

"Is not the demon in your sword asleep right now, its consciousness and full power locked away?"
"I guess? That is the impression I get from the way things look in my dreams," she said, opening her eyes again.

"But if you were to merge with it, and your minds become one, then its mind may hold as much sway as your own. Possibly more—the demon has lived far longer, and so has more memory of being itself."

"Huh. I hadn't thought of that. I mean, I'm already worried a little about not being me with this Ares stuff going on..."

"If we do not know how it works, then it is too great a risk, is it not?"
"You're right. We just need to..ask an expert on demon swords or something. Hey, maybe the Captain would have some idea! Or Mira can explain how she eats demons without, like..." She made a vague expression with her hands.
"The demons a witch or warlock eat are already dead," said Clera, pulling from the native personality's knowledge. "Their souls are consumed for power, so expecting anything of their former memories or behavior to persist is like expecting the smoke from burning a log of wood to reveal how old the tree was." She paused for a second. "...Granted, there may be some way for science to determine that, but..."
"I get your point, yeah. But hey, it's a long way off before we're even to that point in the first place. I'll start asking around with people who might know, and maybe we'll stumble on the facts of the matter before we even need to worry about it. And...if we still aren't sure when the time comes, then I just won't take the skill until we are totally sure. Or we...find some way to 'kill' the demon's mind before I merge with it, or something."

"That seems best," Clera agreed, nodding.

Aria flipped around on the couch until she was halfway across the armrest, leaning Clera's way. "So hey, what were you reading?"
The winged girl showed her the cover of a basic primer on magic, something like a textbook for first-year students at a school of magic. She then halfway offered it over.

"Uh, no thanks...I don't think I'd understand much of it," Aria waved it off, and it was set down on an end table. "The 'other you' drew you to that, you think?"
"More the opposite...I was curious to read the sort of book she would have been highly familiar with. However, she memorized this one a long time ago and gave me that knowledge as soon as I fell asleep."

"Oh yeah! So, having your magic burned out doesn't mess with your link to the other you, even though she's supposed to be the source of your power or whatever?"

"Uh..the link is directly between our souls, which runs deeper than our magic," she said, her tone of voice and cadence slightly different from usual. "She has to use her power to channel mine, and that's where the link is broken." The winged girl paused, blinking a couple of times. "I mean...wait, how did I..."

"That's new...I think the 'other you' came out and answered," Aria said. "She's not starting to take over or anything, is she?"
"No...she explained to me in our first dream that the 'extra soul' of an Empath takes on a purely submissive, supportive role, usually not even affecting the person as much as she had been then. We are...entertaining the possibility that things are different due to the nature of what happened, since I took on much of her appearance." She frowned slightly. "While awake, I usually cannot tell the difference between her actions and my own unless I really think about it."

"Is it..scary, being two people at once?" said Aria, with a serious expression.

"I...a little, I'll admit. We...have not really disagreed yet, at any fundamental level. While awake, the cooperation and communication occurs without either of us consciously aware of it. It's all very convenient, and yet..it doesn't really feel, 'normal'," she said. "I doubt I'll ever get used to it."

The shifter nodded, pulling herself back to sitting on the couch. "Honestly, I'm asking because it seems like I'll have to deal with something like it soon. I guess Ares is something different, though—not another soul, just a collection of memories I have but can't remember. I want to say 'false' memories, but..."

"You don't feel as if they are," Clera said quietly. "Is that it?"
"Yeah...that's what bugs me. I mean, I know what life I lived, and who I really am, and with the gods possibly involved any amount of evidence can be planted to make it 'real', up to and including someone remembering 'me'. But I can't shake how it feels..how it felt when I almost remembered that night..."

After staring into space for a moment, Aria jumped onto her feet. And instantly regretted it, falling back onto the couch again and holding her head. She took a moment to recover, then looked at Clera, nodded, and got up again—slowly this time. "I can't keep spinning this around in my head. I want to go write those notes for Loren, so that I'm doing something, and then maybe I'll actually find a book."
The winged girl nodded, and stood up also. "I think a distraction would be best for me as well, at this point..."

---

Rose was glad she hadn't missed a storm back in her forest. The rain always made the plants so happy, and she didn't particularly mind it herself. A small fragment of her mind wondered if it was going to hurt the new dress she had on, but..well-made clothes usually weren't particularly damaged by just getting wet. She could take it off after the storm ran its course, change into something dry from her inventory, maybe hang it out to dry and it'd be good as new by sometime the next day. A vague memory insisted that it was mostly snagging on thorns or getting too excited with her claws that had destroyed previous outfits, and likely represented the greatest risk to the new ones as well.

Once she had tended to the plants, the dragon-girl took a few more experimental flights. Her old self had never dreamed of being able to do this, and the new self felt a deep sense of nostalgia that made it all the more satisfying. It would be so easy to get to and from town this way, and see all the nice girls she'd met there...! Besides, if any flying monsters got too close to her forest then she could actually chase them down this way. Her human memories said something vague about going high up in the air during a thunderstorm being a bad idea, risking a lightning strike; her dragon memories insisted that it wasn't that big of a deal; the rain and air turbulence was more trouble for sustained flight than the lightning was a risk. Maybe she'd been struck by lightning before and been basically okay afterward? With how sturdy she felt, that almost sounded reasonable.

..She had forgotten all about dropping hints to each quartet of girls that the other was from Earth. But there was probably plenty of time to figure that out, the next time they met. Rose went to work gathering some more of the herbs and flowers that the people in town had liked the best, in preparation for her next trip. Maybe she'd stay here through nightfall and come back the following morning. Being with people was wonderful, but it could be overwhelming after long enough...and she had to keep her 'hoard instinct' in check, anyway.

After a while, she landed, perching herself on a treetop to watch the storm: The distant lightning and thunder, the rain, the wind blowing through the trees. She knew that many people, her old self included, might have found these conditions miserable to be out in, but somehow it now just seemed...relaxing. Like watching waves on the shore, maybe. But she couldn't go to sleep, either—there was a small risk, after all, of a fire sparked by a lightning strike. It rarely ever happened, especially to her trees, and yet...

That was why watching storms always seemed to put her in this attentive yet relaxed state, a kind of quiet meditation very different from her usual excited self. There had been thousands of storms like this, and the smell and sound of it carried more meanings than she could ever coherently express. Some emotions without consciously available sources rolled through her; she could feel forgotten memories from ages past while she was like this...but not quite reach them.

Maybe that was for the best...the person she had really been didn't want to be buried completely beneath eons of memory, and she was happy with the way things were now, ever since Nora had come to her forest. She was out of the confused, animal haze she had lived life in for a very long time, had made friends—again..? For the first time..? It was hard to say. Things just seemed livelier and more fun now; even fighting monsters was more exciting with friends around to help out. There was a whole town of people nearby who at least regarded her as an ally, and not as a freak or horror. That was enough—all of that together was more than enough. Besides, not all of the emotions echoing from those buried, distant memories were pleasant ones.

---

Katherine watched the wolfgirl pet the wolf for a moment. You know, Zack...it doesn't really seem like you need a translator.

What do you mean? Lynn asked.

Whenever the wolf makes a noise, he just seems to intuit exactly what it means right away. Or at least, the emotion behind it, which is usually plenty to understand.

I don't really know when or how I learned it, he said. I guess it's just because I'm 'part wolf'?

The wolf could be like turning into some kind of familiar for you, thought Lynn. Hey, maybe we're a few days off from you being able to see through his eyes and stuff! Zack paused just long enough to give her a brief half-lidded look.

Well, if we really wanted to test your theory we'd need to find a 'normal' wolf, or maybe a dog in town, and see how quickly you pick up what it's thinking, Katherine said. Might be a fun afternoon. I'm sure I saw at least one pet shop in town...

Well, do you understand cats? Lynn wondered. Psychic abilities notwithstanding, did you know what the cats we were just fighting were thinking from their mouth noises?

I think it's pretty obvious they were in pain, for equally obvious reasons, said the catgirl. That isn't really useful evidence one way or another. Maybe we could see whether Nora's read anything about beastfolk being able to understand the related animal species...

The wolf uncurled slightly, enough to raise his head in the air and sniff. "What?" said Zack. "Storm's over soon?" The wolf gave a brief, affirmative bark before laying his head down again. "Well, that's good news at least. This rock floor's not a very comfortable seat..."