Vagabond Fantasy

You know you are probably loosing your mind if you willingly submit yourself to a couple months of solitude reading boring textbooks on magic some of them so dry I swear my eyes were burning by the second page but I stuck to it sadly in all that time spent I learned actually very little and also allot it was frustrating and I was seriously considering a career change maybe I could be a wandering laborer or something. I'd gained much magic related theory and a single spell to go with my short list of spells (minor illusion, minor restoration, and force bolt) my newest spell happened to be my most energy efficient but useless spell of all it took the heat from an area around the caster and created a point of flame that could be launched like a fire ball out of fantasy but the drawback was that it would make the surrounding area colder by several degrees while it drew on the heat in the air though it did use about half of what my force bolt spell used for my mana or mental energy either or what ever it is called because the dang books used no less than three different words interchangeably. As frustrating and as fruitless as my studies proved I realized I needed the time to recover and it was surprisingly good to be fully healed though I would have to leave my temporary home soon as I was getting down to the bottom of the barrel for supplies and there was little more than a few small bits of dried meat and hardtack biscuits that you would probably be better off trying to make a soup out of instead of trying to eat it because either had the texture of old shoe leather and was nearly as tough.

The food being so depleted the books being read through and my patience with living in a literal cave all contributed to my strong desire to run away from the place and I figured that I had a decent chance to leave if I simply walked back the way I had come or maybe I could activate the crystals on the table and teleport out though that was a bit of a long shot. After several hours of wandering I eventually came back to the table as I had found a collapsed passage that probably was the original entrance and I doubted that I'd be getting out the way I'd come in so it was down to the hope that the crystals imbedded into the table being some kind of teleport device. After much fiddling around with the odd crystal covered table I managed to activate something and with a bright aqua flash I found myself standing in a room that looked as disused as the hideaway I'd just left and around the room I found signs of a fight in the past including three corpses that had desiccated. Interesting tales could have been learned by studying the room but I had little time for that as I could tell that this end of the portal was drained as none of the crystals possessed a glow nor gave off the feeling of magical energies which meant that this had been a one way trip and worst yet I was even more lost than I had originally been and now I didn't even have my stave though I did have my pack it only had a fire starting kit and my small knife and journal turned spell book.

A quick look around my surroundings and I found a rusty dagger that had just been laying on the floor probably dropped from one of the dead and then I hit the jackpot I found a broadsword in its scabbard and obviously magically preserved things like that could fetch a great deal of money in the right place. I strapped the broadsword to my hip and tried to clean up the dagger to no avail it was entirely too much rust and too little dagger left so I tossed it and scavenged through the corpses belongings for anything I could use. I dug into my scavenging and found very little at all every piece of clothe simply disintegrated when touched and the belt knives the bodies seemed to universally carry were more rust than metal in fact I found a single ring that was in anything approaching useable condition and it seemed to contain a very limited amount of magic woven into it though to do what is hard to guess because what ever enchantment was just about unraveled and the magic was spent. After my looting I started by approaching the only door I could see and put my ear to the frame and listening quietly for several minutes before I tried opening it only to find it bolted on the other side so I tried my luck thinking that if I pushed it hard enough it would snap off assuming that it was in the same condition as everything else. With a quiet pop the door opened and revealed a staircase going up so I started a slow climb only to find that the little bit of light I had been relying on faded to nothing the farther up the stairs I went so I tried my illusion spell and focused on creating a copy of the stairway and then I simply laid it over the stairs that I could see and made the steps go to infinity for the time being so began my climb in earnest.

Climbing the stairs wasn't particularly difficult though it took some hours to finally get to the top which on its own was disconcerting but once I stepped out of the stairway I found myself standing at ground level and my fears that I would be some crazy height in the sky proved to be false though now I wondered just how deep that stairway was. I had escaped a stairway that was pitch black into a modest looking monastery that also happened to be completely abandoned and devoid of even squatters generally not a good sign for someone sneaking around in a monastery it generally implies that something strong enough to chase everything and everyone else off. I couldn't remember any abandoned monastery's any where near where I had been when I had entered the cave in the first place or anywhere near the town this whole misadventure started from for that matter. So there I was lost without supplies in the middle of an abandoned monastery with no idea how I would get anywhere near civilization and no idea even which direction it might be in. I explored my new location for things that might be interesting useful of valuable or simply provide entertainment for me and I quickly found that there was literally nothing in the monastery a few very old very rotten tables chairs and beds but it was all so old and rotten that the slightest touch caused them to disintegrate into dust.

I spent hours looking for any kind of a hint as to what this monastery had been dedicated to nor what deity after several hours I came to the conclusion that whoever had been there had taken everything and moved on though this place was ominously quiet like a tomb. Giving up on the monastery I headed to the main entrance or what seemed to be and looked about for a road quickly finding a trace of one I set out towards the trace of road. I had gotten maybe a mile or two before I had seen my first animal and then it was a sickly looking coyote at the farthest reaches of my sight and I walked another mile before taking a break to set up camp and rest for the night.