Herald of death

Peering into the Ether, Ethan walks along the hallway to examine each door. Threads of Ether escape one of them, signaling that something powerful lies behind it. He pushes the door open, staring forward with Prescience. Descending stairs await him, their old but pristine stone lit by wall torches.

"Why this one?" Ivy asks from the doorway of the banquet's hall. She breaks into a jog and joins Ethan, stopping as Russ growls. Raising her uncovered, left hand to her chest, she looks into the stairs. "I can feel it to. Why are you going there when anyone else would flee from whatever holds that much Ether?"

'That much?' Ethan repeats to himself. Her group seems to have spent time in dungeons. How can she consider it dangerous when she could emit a stronger aura? She seemed so confident outside, a stark contrast to the look of worry she now shows.

Derek and Grant join her as she watches Ethan stepping down the stairs. He hears six pairs of feet following him. The idea of ordering them to go away crosses his mind. 'Having test subjects might be useful,' the thinks. The awful, intrusive thought makes him smirk.

They enter a wide corridor, its walls holding dusty, moisty books on stone shelves. The poor storage conditions and time washed off the titles. Ethan recognizes some of the spines by their designs; all of them are history books written when the history appended. He pries the driest book near him; its pages fall off, eaten by mold.

Ethan looks back at the small crowd behind him. They stare at him like lost puppies, their eyes begging for him to take charge. As impermeable his mask may be, Ethan's gaze betrays his annoyance at their assumed helplessness. He thinks, 'Why are you here if you can't take care of yourselves?'

Worry etches their faces the longer it goes on. Derek is the first to look away, unable to withstand Ethan's stare. He goes to a shelf and imitates Ethan, his choice equally worthless. He says, "Why store them here? That's stupid."

"This place doesn't make sense – the whole castle, I mean," Ethan says. He grabs a torch and moves further into the corridor. A door lies at the end, caved with a six-armed demonic figure bearing three eyes and fangs. A large snake rests on its shoulder, curled around the eastern-looking creature. "Who would have their dining hall a hallway away from the main gate? It had no door leading to a potential kitchen, and the place lacks any form of defense."

A movement in Ethan's peripheral vision catches his attention, directing it to the door. The snake's eye stares at him; it wasn't before. Ethan leaps back, and the stone snake carves itself out of the door. Ethan catches it mid-flight behind the head. 'Strengthening,' he thinks as he crushes it in his grasp.

The snake grows, bending away Ethan's fingers. He throws it in the middle of the room. Now half a meter thick and twenty meters long, the snake writhes, its tail carving into the shelves.

Ivy, Grant, and Derek tense, the latter moving forward with his sword drawn. The three other recoil in the stairs, looking with only their heads edging out.

Attracting to her the surrounding Ether, Ivy closes her eyes as frost coalesces on her right hand. The hand chain she carries vibrates, flowing in her Ether.

The snake springs at Ivy. its stone fangs collide with the flat of Derek's sword. He's pushes back, his boots scrapping the stone floor until he stops the attack, a meter away from Ivy.

Ethan moves languidly, hiding his strength while still dodging the snake's tail with Prescience. Russ lunges and barks, unable to bite the stone monster as Ethan holds him by the collar. Frenzied, he struggles to absorb and hold Ether. As worrying as it is, it also means that Russ cannot grow and escape from Ethan's grasp.

Ivy unleashes a cone of frost, swallowing the snake's head. While not freezing the stone itself, the spell embeds the monster in thick layers of ice. It loses all flexibility in its upper half and smashes its head into the ground.

Derek pulls out a sledgehammer from his haversack. He consumes his Ether and strikes down, shattering the beast's upper maw.

Grant grabs something from his own haversack, a plastic pipe sealed at both ends with a fuse jutting out. He lights it up with a lighter and shoves it down the snake's exposed esophagus. Grant rolls to the ground, avoiding a tail blow before falling back.

Ethan casts Dermal Shield and turns around, protecting Russ behind himself. The pipe bomb detonates into a cacophonic storm of stone shrapnel. Ethan's ears whistle, the countless echoing sound blasts of the explosion triggering tinnitus. Russ rolls on the ground, pointlessly shielding his ears under his paws.

The snake's tail, now a standalone piece, writhes and strikes at Ethan. He places his shielded forearm in the way, the impact cracking the stone. He turns around, furious at the reckless idiot who detonated an explosive in a sealed environment.

"Whooooooo!" Grant screams, his hands high in the air. Turning to dust, the snake's body leaves behind a headband. It is simple, made of a single curved line covered in carved lotus leaves. Grant rushes to it, excited like a kid.

Ethan grabs Grant by the collar of the armor, lifting him twenty centimeters to make him meet his eyes. Ethan growls, "Are you insane? You are lucky no one was wounded by your stupidity. What if the castle had collapsed on us? What if the shrapnel had killed or even wounded someone? The cowards behind you couldn't have survived overpressure."

Why is he so angry with that untrained man? The thought lingers in Ethan's mind until he recalls a similar conversion he was at the other end of. But there is something else at play; he shouldn't be angry. Could be that just like for gluttony, wrath is encouraged by this place? He lets go of Grant, who falls on his ass. Before the Thief gathers himself, Ethan pries the circlet from the ground, identifying it.

Headband of ??? enlightenment

While wearing the headband, the user feels a profound sense of clarity and heightened awareness. Intelligence +2

???

'It's just like the Ishai fruit,' Ethan notes at the sight of the interrogation marks. The hidden adjective in the title puts on edge; this item may hide a nefarious secondary effect. He calls, "Mikko?"

The Nordic man's head pops out of the staircase. He approaches, stepping past Grant. He stops a few meters away from Ethan, scared of Russ, and says, "Yes?"

"Do you know anything about that guy?" Ethan asks. He moves to the door and shines his torch at the carved figure.

"I'm not sure," Mikko answers, his voice lingering as he approaches. Ethan pulls Russ away to let Mikko have an undisturbed look. His blue eyes scan the sculpture, stopping on its third eye. "I think that's Mara, the demon that wants to stop Buddha's from reaching enlightenment. But why would he be in a place linked to death?"

Ivy glances at the books scattered by the snake. She approaches the pair and says, "If this place represents the death of knowledge, it makes sense."

Ethan glances back at the window generated by Identification. "I'd bet that this headband side effect –" The interrogation marks blur before expanding and turning into text.

Headband of false enlightenment

While wearing the headband, the user feels a profound sense of clarity and heightened awareness. Intelligence +2

For every day the headband is worn, it diminishes the user's intelligence by 1. On the first day, they are charmed by the headband, convinced of their own intellectual superiority. While charmed, the wearer will refuse to remove the headband unless their Willpower allows them to.

"It's a cursed item," Ivy says as she reads the description over Ethan's shoulder. She moves towards the door. "We had to force one off of Grant's finger once before."

"Is that so common?" Ethan asks. Now uninterested in it, he throws the cursed headband to Grant.

"No," Ivy says. She pushes on the door, triggering a clicking mechanism that opens it all the way. Ether wafts into the corridor, sickening Mikko by its density. Ivy grabs him by the shoulder and places him on the side. "We only found one in a dozen magical items. And the people we met didn't know much about it."

"You met people in a dungeon?" Ethan asks, feinting surprise. He manipulates his own Ether to shield Mikko from the threads whipping at him.

"Not quite in a dungeon, but we did," Dereks says. "When Grant was cursed, we had to flee from the dungeon's boss; that's when we found their camp. They are little more than fur-wearing savages who live in tents."

"Communicating was the hard part, but Grant draws pretty well," Ivy continues. "Even though they lacked any notion of what consent is, they helped without asking anything in return. We spent some time with them until we were ready to go back inside."

"We sure taught them what it means," Grant chimes in. Belying of his boastful voice, his gaze, locked on Ethan, is filled with resentment. "Just had to kick a giant jobbie's sorry ass into the ground."

Ivy stares at Grant with her disapproving stare. "There are better ways to say it, but he's right. Don't use bombs indoors; my ears are still ringing."

Grant's gaze snaps to her in surprise, his expression morphing to shame. How long have they known each other for her words to affect him so deeply?

"Fabio, Andrei, come over here," Ivy says. She motions for Mikko to move further away from the door. She stops them at the center of the corridor with her hand. "Sit down and use this place to learn how to absorb Ether. Close your eyes until you sense threads around you and …"

Her voice dies off as Ethan crosses the stone door, entering a large circular room whose walls are lined with smooth obelisks. A statue lies at the center – an obese demon wearing nothing but a loincloth and jewelry. A crater-sized pit surrounds it. Gold coins of innumerous origins, ingots, jewels, paintings, ceremonial weapons, chests, and more.

Ethan steps forward, eyes drawn to the pit of wealth. A deep hum fills the air, louder than anything else. Every glint of a gem, every reflection of a polished surface speaks to him in hushed whispers. His hand tightens on the torch as a magnetic force wraps around his chest, tugging him forward. He has wealth, millions even; he doesn't need anything from this pit – so why is it calling to him?