Zilo stares down the hallway examining his surroundings. Unlike the tunnels at the entrance of the hideout, these ones are much more runic, like this room with the former golem. Zilo stopped a minute and hunkered down with his legs crossed and began talking to himself,
"Okay, no trapI can see, so we are on a good track. This room's rune probably released the others and I'll bet that I can find them if I go further in."
The bard turns his head toward the turn around the corridor and continues, "But this magic hallway is probably far more dangerous than just some spikes. Maldrek always told me that rune masters can make explosions from enough study so now I need to wonder." He closes his eyes and furrows his brow before speaking,
"How explosion proof am I?"
Zilo spends some time weighing his odds and determines that he is probably more explosion proof than Leo, but less so than Sparky. That little goblin earned a whole heap of points from being exposed to fire daily, and Leo had been knocked out from the necklace of fireballs fiasco, unlike Zilo. So this guess was his estimate.
With his guess settled he stood back up and continued down the hall. Luckily for him no more traps were around the corner, and Zilo found an ajar door with the sound of metal on stone and faint whistling from behind the door.
The curious bard stealthily moved the door open to see a man hunched over a desk of shaped stone with the sounds echoing around the room. The interesting part of the room was the other objects in the room. There were wands, staves, clockworks, magical relics, and a numerous amount other fascinating objects.
Zilo became immediately distracted by how cool all the items looked and opened the door to look around some more. The man at the desk had not looked up from the desk, but remarked his entrance with an indifferent grunt.
Once Zilo had examined all the cool inventions he made his way over to the man at the desk and looked over his shoulder at what he was working on. He was working on staff that was honestly more like the size of a rod, but curved with a lantern-like iron container hooked onto the end of a scythe shaped curvature at the end.
"What's that there?"
The man became tense for a moment, and after a moment or so he turned his head to see Zilo. He had a chin covered by a jet black beard that trailed up to his balding head of medium length hair. His eyes had a yellow tinge of a spark that blinked staring at Zilo. His voice trembled as he spoke,
"Uh um I call it the Trailblazer staff."
"What does it do."
"Who are you?"
"Tells you who you are? Weird ability for what it's named"
"No tell me who you are."
"Oh! My name is Zilo Realms, the Master of Strings, pleasure to meet you."
"That guy who's staying with the Rai family?"
"The very same"
"Ah... say want me to show you what the staff can do?"
"But you already told me. "
"No I, but."
"What's your name friend?"
"I...I'm Ryoji the Tinker. I'm an Artificer"
"Neat, I have a bestfriend who loves to make magic stuff. He made me a lot of the gear I have."
"How did you get past Mamoru?"
"Who?... The golem? I disconnected the magic from room with a bit of magic counter songs."
"Fascinating, I didn't know a bard was among the invaders we caught."
Zilo snaps his fingers and says, "Oh yeah, I forgot that's why I was here. Can you please surrender?"
"... Yeah sure, but first let me show you how the staff works."
"Fine but I'm pretty self assured so I don't know what it will tell me." Zilo takes a few steps back and the artificer stands and twirls the counterclockwise making a full rotation and making it come to rest parallel to the ground.
The man immediately takes off toward the wall that opens with a quick motion of his hand. As the staff moves a trail of hovering fire occupies the space that the iron container was in as the artificer moves with it. This leaves a snaking trail of fire behind as the artificer makes his escape.
Zilo is stood there silent for a moment before remarking, "Okay that is a much more appropriate ability for a name like that." Zilo examines the trail and works his way around the hot streak of flames left in the air. He finds that he isn't able to move at full speed as the trail spirals and zigzags all around the hallway forcing him to need to pull some fancy acrobatics down the hall to proceed.
Eventuality the hall came to a stone staircase that made its way upward with the fire trail still streaking along. Zilo eventually is slowed down enough that the fire trail begins to retreat along the air trail and leave the hall behind. It seemed there was a limit on how far the trail can extend from the staff.
With a much more clear pathway Zilo began running down the hall again and eventually came to a doorway that had a door that was burned through as it looked to have been closed on the stationary trail, leaving a horizontal burning chuck left in it.
The door was locked, but thanks to the hole in it, Zilo easily could reach through and unlock it. Once the door opened Zilo looked about the room to see two guards pointing bows at him, and behind them was Maldrek, Cruxis, and May connected to the wall, trapped in irons. The bard looked disappointed and shouted,
"How did you get caught guys!? come on!"
Cruxis perks up to see the bard and says, " Ceiling trap, it fell and I had to hold it up, but then some poison gas made us all weak."
May interrupts, "It didn't make us weak, it put us asleep. It was Dreaming Death gas"
Maldrek grit his teeth and cut off May saying, "Enough! Zilo, take out the guards and get the keys already."
Zilo nodded with a quick sidestep to dodge two arrows. Zilo darted forward and in a devastating flash of speed he halved the wooden arms of both of the guard's bows. The guards stepped back in hesitation before Zilo spun about again and knocked one of them in the head with the flat of his blade. This forced the two helmeted guards to collide heads and fall to the ground.
As he unlocked his friends Zilo remarked, "How did this much happened in such a short time."
May looked to Zilo quizzically and said, "Its been like an hour since you went down that hole? What were you doing that whole time?"
Zilo throws the keys over his shoulder to hit one of the unconscious guards in the head as he asks, "If you guys had to say, just how explosion proof would you say I am?"
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