Legends of Belariath
Scathien
Revenge of the Phoenix: Chapter 4: Revelations
It was now in the midst of week two. The graduating class had been whittled down from thirty to twelve due to a “freak accident” when a trap in one of the entrance chambers was triggered, causing the room to seal off and the walls within to slide to the center, crushing the occupants into a fine, bloody paste.
Later that night after the mess was cleaned up Scathien relaxed in his room, chuckling a bit to himself at how easy it was to trigger the trap without being noticed. Inside the chamber is a pressure sensitive stone that when pushed into the floor sets off the trap. However, that is not what he used to trigger the trap. In the passages leading into the chamber from both ends is a small, one person sized hole in the wall that is concealed by an illusionary wall. At the back of both holes are levers that are connected. If one moves so does the other. Those levers are also used to trigger the trap, but are mainly used to reset it if it gets triggered.
The previous day Scathien ventured out of the tower, managing to sneak past the guards without detection. He entered the hole in the passage coming from outside of the mansion, knowing that the class was going to head out to the nearby village of Kolight to gather supplies for the coming month. He studied the permanence runes in the stones on the ceiling, attempting to determine how the stone would emerge from the ceiling if the rune were magically erased.
Eventually a suitable stone was found, and Scathien began to work. Carefully around that stone he worked an erase spell, removing parts of the permanence runes around the stone he wanted to work on. Then after several quick calculations in his head he set a time delayed erasure spell that would go off several seconds after enough power was applied to allow it to activate. Afterwards he returned to the tower, once again slipping past the guards unnoticed.
Everything went according to plan. As they left they formed into groups of fifteen apiece, the higher ranking students taking one group with the rest taking up the other group. As they passed through the trapped chamber, the first group exited, with three of them staying behind to talk with a few of the other students in the second group.
Scathien’s plan went in motion as he passed by the magically concealed hole. He focused on his lingering rune upon the ceiling, forcing a surge of raw magical essence to project into the rune. The rune sparked to life, completely erasing the permanence rune on the ceiling and forcing the stone to revert to its natural state. In response to the release of the magic’s grasp on the stone, a stalactite ripped from the ceiling and smashed down into the lever pushing it into its down position and triggered the trap.
Slabs of rock suddenly slammed down into place over the entrance of the chamber and the occupants within screamed as those not trapped tried to somehow open up the slab. Unfortunately they only had about ten seconds and made nothing more than a large scorch mark on the doorway before the screams within halted and sound shifted to a deadly silence.
The teachers ordered several of the students to as quickly as possible melt through the top of the stalactite and break it away. Once that was finished the teacher pulled the lever and reset the trap, allowing the walls of the chamber to pull back and the slabs blocking the entrance of the chamber to rise into the ceiling.
The teacher that was with them worked to figure out the cause of this tragedy. It turned out that the magic had finally simply faded away. It was a weak rune that had never been strengthened. Now part one was complete, as the class was close to the number of soldiers he had brought with him.
That very night he left the tower, letting the guards know that he simply needed some fresh air under the pretense of grievance for his lost classmates and the “tragedy that befell them”. They allowed him to leave and he ventured into the black depths of the dead town with nothing but a torch to light his path.
He entered an abandoned building and lit the fireplace, setting the torch aside as he settled down in a meditative position and started to chant softly as the burning flames before him began to shift to a soft green hue and he spoke to the sergeant back at the campsite, telling him to prepare the men and bring them into the city but to stay out of sight of the tower by tomorrow evening.
Unknown to Scathien, Jared had decided at that moment to cast his own version of the same spell, tuning into the still burning torch just in time to catch the name “Scathien” being spoken. Now he began to more fully suspect that even if Marcus was who he said he was, that he may be working toward more devious ends.
As Scathien extinguished his spell and the burning flames in the fireplace, Jared extinguished his own spell. Scathien was heading back to the tower, and left the confused Jared with a plan that he had to sort out before it was too late...