Chapter 8: Exploring the Rest of the Camp

August 22

The group investigates the next house. Agnarr thinks there’s no trap in the door, but there is one inside. Agnarr opens the door, and inside reveals a blacksmith’s forge. There’s a lot of ash on the floor, and in the room is one corpse with its head stuffed into the forge. The room smells of burned flesh.

Agnarr doesn’t step inside, and instead Neiia begins to levitate the corpse out through the door, though she bumps into walls a couple of times, etc. Finally, she gets the corpse out. Ertak examines the corpse while Agnarr searches its pockets. Ertak believes the guy is dead. The others agree, because half of his head is burned away. The group moves to the next house.

Agnarr still has the same opinion that there’s no trap in the door, but somewhere inside there’s surely a trap, because kobolds have been here for a long time. Agnarr opens the door and sees woodcutters’ corpses inside. Agnarr looks at them for a moment but doesn’t notice anything other than that at least one corpse has clearly been eaten by bugs. Agnarr continues inside and exclaims happily that there’s a chest here. Kieron doesn’t fully understand Agnarr’s slang term and interprets that Agnarr means breasts and translates it to the others. The others wonder, and Neiia then asks if they’re big, and next Ertak asks if they’re attached to something living. Kieron translates to Agnarr, but he doesn’t answer. Kieron comes in after Agnarr.

Kieron doesn’t see breasts anywhere and asks Agnarr about it, but he doesn’t really answer but is just about to open the chest. He gets the chest open, and at the same moment, he notices that a large log is crashing toward him from the ceiling. Agnarr tries to dodge but doesn’t succeed, and the log hits him, and he flies against the wall. Agnarr bumps into the wall softly, even though there are some spikes sticking up. Agnarr falls onto the bed, and at the same moment, a swarm of grasshoppers attacks him.

Agnarr begins calmly discussing with them, but after that starts slapping them dead, and Kieron also comes to help and tells the others that he has some bugs here. After that, Agnarr and Kieron begin swinging at the grasshoppers with their hands to kill them. Neiia comes into the room and throws a water ball there, but hits the wall. Kieron and Agnarr don’t fly anywhere from the impact, but Ertak, who’s at the door, flies backward, manages to jump over the corpse, but falls to the ground after that.

Agnarr and Kieron continue hammering the bugs, and Neiia tries again with the same result. Ertak tries to jump up but fails, and his foot steps inside the door of the adjacent house. At the same moment his foot hits the inside, the whole house collapses, and his foot gets stuck under the ruins of the large house. Ertak tries to pull his foot out but only succeeds in pushing it further in. Ertak asks Neiia to throw a water form at him.

Inside, Kieron and Agnarr manage to kill the grasshoppers. Neiia transforms Ertak into water form, and Ertak gets out from under the house. Agnarr goes outside and watches in amazement as the water form there tries to grab Neiia’s breasts, but Neiia dodges.

Next, Agnarr starts to give himself first aid. Ertak notices that this is an interesting form, and he runs inside the big house intending to investigate it. When Ertak steps inside, he feels a sense of whether this is a good idea to go inside. Ertak doesn’t care about this feeling but continues inside. He gets two or three meters in when he suddenly feels the weight of the whole world on his shoulders. Ertak flattens to the floor as a thin water sheet. At the same time, his water also changes color to orange, and there are also rainbow colors in it. Ertak is completely at a loss about this change and thinks on the ground.

At the same time, Neiia notices with her magic sight that Ertak is a large stone, five feet on each side, and now that stone is coming toward her. Agnarr notices the same threat because his vision is just that good. The stone is about to hit both Agnarr and Neiia, but both dodge.

The stone continues its attacks. Neiia runs away. Agnarr says that there’s no stone there in reality, so he decides not to believe in that invisible non-existent stone. Neiia finally decides to shoot it with her magic bolt, though again she wonders if this is a good idea, but she still decides to do it. The stone explodes, and fragments fly in all directions. However, Kieron doesn’t know about the fragments, so they don’t hit her. Agnarr, on the other hand, doesn’t believe the stone exists, so he doesn’t get injured either.

Inside, Ertak comes to his senses and continues his investigations. He goes to the next mattress and rips it up. At the same moment, he feels how he might have some problems because he might have breathed something dangerous, but doesn’t care about it in water form because he doesn’t breathe.

He moves to the next mattress. There he suddenly notices that nothing happens. He can’t move the mattress or bed, and nothing happens. Ertak goes outside and notices that nothing happens. He goes in front of Neiia, and she doesn’t react to him at all. Ertak notices that everyone else is also completely still. Ertak begins to think about the matter, but suddenly the world starts moving again.

Neiia and Ertak talk until Ertak turns back to normal. Agnarr tries to do first aid on himself but doesn’t succeed, so Kieron binds his wounds. Since most of the injuries were on the head, she wraps bandages around the head so that Agnarr can’t even speak.