Chapter 4: Continuing to Explore the Church

February 9

The group takes the items from the priests, and Ertak and Neiia put on their gray robes. Agnarr tries to put on the leather armor that one of the priests had, which Neiia believes contains magic, but it doesn’t quite fit. He puts it on anyway.

After that, the group goes up to the door. Kieron hasn’t found a trap in the door but says that this lock definitely looks very difficult. Neiia examines the wall and suddenly becomes dazed. Next, Agnarr examines the door and finds a magic trap on his second attempt. That too is apparently a very difficult trap. Ertak tries to use up the power from the trap, and after a couple of attempts, Ertak becomes dazed for a very long time. Kieron explains that these magic traps in walls are usually of a couple of different types. One is where a magic item maker is brought here to create a permanent magic in the wall. The other is a new method, where a separate net-like structure is brought to the wall, and the magic is then fed with a separate gemstone. When the gemstone is empty, the magic shuts down, and the gemstone needs to be replaced.

At some point, Agnarr asks the wall if it could let them in. The wall responds that for seven gold, it will open the door. Kieron states that the wall is lying, as does Agnarr. Both Neiia and Ertak had also already noticed earlier that the wall is lying.

Next, Neiia tries to talk the wall around, saying that you can’t open that door anyway, etc. The wall responds that it’s better that you, as a strong person, go and pull that door open yourself. As soon as Ertak hears this, he starts running away in complete panic.

Agnarr and Kieron also say to each other that it might be good to flee before Neiia triggers the trap. They manage to run a few yards away and get out of the area before cold explodes from the door onto Neiia. Neiia teleports herself sideways but doesn’t quite get out of the area and takes cold damage. Neiia says, well, let’s try again, returns to the door, and properly grabs the door, rips the pair of silver-plated metal doors off with the frames, lifts them over her head, and says that she can’t put this down anywhere, so just drops it behind her back to the lower floor.

Behind opens a room with many doors in different directions and a statue made of masks in the middle of the room. When Kieron steps inside, the statue asks what the right gods are. Kieron answers money and Razmir. Apparently, Razmir was wrong because the statue attacks Kieron. The statue throws one mask at Kieron, but Kieron dodges. After that, the statue attacks Agnarr and tries to push him off the platform, but Agnarr manages to evade. Next, the statue throws a mask at Agnarr, and the mask attaches to Agnarr’s face, after which Agnarr attacks Neiia. Neiia escapes, and Agnarr moves on to attack Ertak. At some point, Agnarr strikes himself in the face with the mace but misses. With the next strike, he hits, and the mask breaks.

A moment later, a mask also attaches to Kieron’s face, but Kieron concentrates and manages to hit herself in the face and cracks the porcelain mask, but it still stays in place. Kieron attacks the others, but Agnarr breaks Kieron’s porcelain mask, as well as the metal mask underneath, but Kieron doesn’t get injured. Kieron attacks the creature, which has meanwhile turned into a cloud of masks and moved to Ertak. Kieron hammers away the flying masks before the golem flies further away and starts throwing masks. Neiia has also gotten a mask on her face, and Agnarr tries to break the mask, but Neiia dodges and blocks too effectively. Finally, Neiia gets herself under control, hits herself in the face with the hilt of her sword, but doesn’t break the mask. Agnarr manages to break both of Neiia’s masks and even bloodied her face.

Kieron moves to fight with the golem, and the golem tries to throw masks at Kieron, but Kieron dodges them all until the golem gets tired and throws one at Agnarr, and then he has a mask on his face again, and Agnarr next attacks Ertak. Neiia joins to help Kieron in fighting the creature, and finally, they manage to break it.

When the battle pauses, the group hears noise from the door downstairs, as if someone is trying to get through it. The group goes into the room, and Kieron examines all the doors, but all of them are locked. Agnarr tries to pick a couple of doors open, but doesn’t succeed. After that, Ertak tries to shoot the door open with his sun bolt but doesn’t even hit the door with his first shot. The next one hits the door and makes a hole in it, but the inside isn’t properly visible. Neiia has made a water portal to the room and has gathered a full bomb of water in her hand. Neiia orders the group out of the room and then throws a large water bomb to the other side of the room. The bomb blasts open the large double doors and one of the side doors. The group goes in to look. Agnarr goes into the side room, Kieron runs into the large room behind the double doors.