Onward: Grand Quest

Chapter 6

Ian and Linda are walking behind Corey as they enter into a main parlor area inside the cave.

"Oh cobweb." Corey says with a chuckle pulling a cobweb out of her mane. She laughs slightly. "Wow look at this!?" Corey picks up some old metal scrap that has runic symbols on them.

"What's that?" Ian asks.

Linda is kind of off by herself looking at carvings on the walls.

Corey laughs. "I haven't seen a runic currency for five and a half centuries." she sets it back down. "Back then it was very popular as a tradable good. Some even believed they had magical properties, but I never saw anyone use them like that." she shuffles through some stuff.

"You're not worried about booby traps or anything?" Ian asks warily looking around.

"I don't think we have to worry about anything like that. Trolls weren't as intelligent back in the day. Before they got educated they basically just swung wildly at anything that moved." Corey picks up some of the runic coins again and studies them. "Maybe I'll keep some of these. They might actually be worth something."

Ian sighs and looks over to see if he can find Linda. "Linda, any luck finding the dungeon entrance?"

Linda shrugs. "I found some old writing on the wall but it's in an old dead language, I can't read it."

Corey steps over to Linda. "Can I see?" She looks upon the wall, eyes wide. "Oh wow this is so old I'm afraid I won't be much help here." she raises an eyebrow at a depiction of a manticore on the wall. "Thorn." she mumbles, placing her hand on the wall near the drawing.

"Thorn?" Linda questions. "Is that somebody you knew?"

Corey sighs. "Thorn was a mighty adventurer. Momma told me stories about him." She smiles a bit remembering the stories her mother told. "She used to joke that they'd have gotten married if they'd been alive during the same millennium." she chuckles again. "He was gone long before my time."

Linda nods. "Why would he be drawn here? In a cave that used to belong to a troll?"

"What happened to Thorn?" Ian asks.

Corey shrugs. "Nobody really knows, he just kind of disappeared. There were so many stories about things he did. Adventures he went on." she kind of frowns at the wall. "But none of them explain where he went or what happened."

"Well he had something to do with this cave." Ian suggests. Using his staff as a torch he illuminates the wall so he can read it better. "He is depicted on the wall over here as well." he touched the engraving and it glowed slightly as it went into the rock wall. "Oh I found a button." He mumbles, taking a step back.

The wall split and slid open.

"Guess this is the dungeon entrance." Corey says, stepping up to smell the inside of the tunnel. "Weird. Smells like nobody has been in this tunnel for years. I definitely smell something alive at the end of the tunnel though."

They carefully continue into the tunnel. The wall stays open behind them letting a small soft light that eventually ends in the pitch darkness.

Ian makes a ball of light at the end of his staff. "Oh that's much better." He turns slightly and a skeleton sticks out of the wall. He shrieks, nearly dropping his staff but he manages to fumble it and get a grip once more. "I think I liked the darkness better." He mumbles.

Corey inspects the bones. "Interesting. These bones have to be at least 4 centuries old. It appears to be troll bones but it's hard to tell."

"What is something like that doing down here?" Ian asks.