Mazerine had begun to hear mutters of strange happenings back in Canelux, just as she had Douken were about to make arrangements to sail to Abed from Iria. Normally, she would have just let the comments bounce off and paid no mind to them, as the two were very focused on the mission at hand, which was to find out more about the piece of the relic they had found, and possibly find another piece that would match it. The reason that Mazerine allowed these particular rumors any attention at all was the mention of a particular place in Canelux – the Ancense Ruins – the very location of the Occultatum that had brought she and Douken together on their first expedition in the first place.

She had looked at Douken to see if he had noticed any of the things that had been whispered around the pair, and it was clear that he had heard something at least. ”We have to go see,” she had urged. ”The mines… they’re right below the ruins we found the first piece in, if I’m hearing correctly,” she added. ”What if there’s something more down there?” she asked, and she could see the gears turning in Douken’s head, as though he were weighing the pros and the cons of deterring their current travel plans.

Her urging seemed to work, as an hour later they were on board an airship headed for Canelux, with their destination as the mines that had been rediscovered beneath the Ancense Ruins. When they arrived, they stopped in town and gathered some supplies, and soon they were off on the path that they had once ventured down before, toward the ruins. This time, however, there were a lot more people travelling in that direction than there had been previously.

When they were only a short distance from the portion of the ruins that they had previously explored, they saw it – the entrance to the mines. The pair made their way in, Mazerine taking note that currently there were not too many people present. She was not sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing, but it certainly made travelling easier for them.

”You know, some of the people on the way here were saying this place is filled with shambling corpses,” she said, her tone of voice giving way to the fact that she was not entirely pleased with that concept. The path ahead of them now that they had descended was dark, and strange noises emanated from the darkness. ”I was hoping they were wrong, but I am starting to think they might have been right,” she added, as the sound of a rattled breath drafted towards them. In the distance up ahead, she could make out movement, though she was unsure what the movement was caused by.

Mazerine conjured a small fireball that began to float over the pair’s heads, lighting up their surroundings and a small distance ahead of them. ”That should help a bit,” she said as the pair pressed on further in the darkness – but soon, the fireball began to light something up – a shape, something that appeared human but did not move like a normal human – moving towards them at a slow rate, with a strange sound coming from its mouth, its eyes glowing red in the darkness…

Certainly, Douken had heard the gossip that had spread across the ocean as they made their preparations for Abed (and to sooth the migraine from so much Dwarven Ale). After all, it was not exactly unheard of for an explorer to have channels and connections with other explorers. True, it also meant talking with your "competition," but most of the time it was formed as leads, seeing as such talks came because of impossibility (like being on a completely different continent). Still, the connections on the where was what stuck in his mind, thus having it stick to him, so when Mazerine brought it up, he was in no objection. "Not like the other part of the relic will be going anywhere any time soon," he stated, hoping their map was the only one.

Certainly enough, the rumors drew forth quite the crowd. Some were hardened explorers who were making sure they had their gear covered while others were more sparkly-eyed in terms of the treasures and not the dangers. Oh, it reminded him of his early days. Still, at the very least he actual entrance was pretty light. At the very least camps were made for resting spots for travelers and for those who tried to sought out additional hands last minute.

"You know, we were actually pretty lucky last time we were here," Douken chuckled, despite Mazerine's shakes towards the idea of the undead. "If the Occultatum was a temple for Life and Death, then it would partially make sense that the first mixture of the two would be necromancy." Raising the dead after so long… it would clearly have been a different result than when his elvish partner followed up with the rite. "The fact that we saw no kind of undead, looking at it now, was pretty shocking." Still, the threat of danger was in the air, so Douken moved over to a wall, sparking his finger with mana before tracing a circular rune, opening up into a small portal to a storage plane, in which he pulled out not only his spear, but a few other trinkets as well, just in case.

With Mazerine's light aiding their way, the pair pushed forward until they had their first encounter: the glowing eyes of the undead. Its bones creaked and echoed as it turned over to the pair, Douken stepping forward with the spear at the ready until a pulse of color flowed through the hallway, the red eyes soon turning to match before bowing to Mazerine, with an echo of, "M-Maaasteeer…" echoing in the air.

A feeling of calm washed over Mazerine as she watched Douken draw his runes on the wall, drawing out his spear as well as a few other useful items before closing it again. She knew her magic would be able to keep them safe, but not having to drain all of her power would be helpful if it were to come to that. Sometimes, something with a pointy end was all you needed!

As they drew closer to the figure that had appeared down a way from them, the fireball still burned above their heads to guide the way. Mazerine had also conjured one in her hand, floating in her palm, ready to strike at the creature that was shambling towards them. Her studies had taught her that fire was the most effective towards the undead, and lucky for her, she was quite adept at fire magic. She held her arm at the ready, prepared to expel the flame from her palm towards the creature – when something wholly unexpected happened.

She stared rather incredulously at the shambling corpse in front of her as it… bowed? Now, that had not been something she had been expecting. Wait… now, it was speaking as it bowed! ”Did it just… call me master?” she asked Douken, though she did not look at him as she spoke, instead keeping her eyes fixated on the bowing corpse.

”Maaaasssstteerrrrrr,” it groaned again, keeping its form hunched over. Mazerine’s jaw dropped, and she turned to looked at Douken, though her expression was nothing other than confused. She looked to the creature again, back to Douken, and back to the creature, repeating the process a few times as she tried to evaluate what was happening.

Just then, she felt something almost vibrating in the pack she held on her back. Quickly, she pulled her pack off her back and opened it – the piece of the relic they had obtained was vibrating with energy, giving off a faint green glow. She pulled it out, holding it in her hand, and the corpse in front of them immediately shambled forward. ”Maaasster… the keeeeeyyyy….” it moaned, bowing again, though this time its attention seemed focused on the piece of the relic, rather than Mazerine herself.

She stood frozen to the spot, and looked at Douken again. ”Of course,” she said, as though it had started to dawn on her what was happening. ”Edelweiss is below Occultatum. This relic… they’re reacting to the relic, not to us,” she said, holding it tightly in her hand. ”Do you think we might find something else down here?” she asked him, the excitement back in her eyes as she realized the undead in front of them wasn’t going to attack them. ”What do you think? Should we venture further in?” she asked, hoping that Douken would have some sort of suggestion as to how to proceed.

If it were only up to her, they would venture deeper into Edelweiss, to see what they could find – perhaps something that would tell them a bit more about the relic, or what it was for… or perhaps even another piece of the relic… maybe there were more pieces than they thought. Either way, there was most likely something for the pair to gain by going deeper into the mines.

Watching how Mazerine and the undead tag this mental tug-of-war of confusion, Douken stepped back and tried to process things over. When Mazerine have her theory, that the "master" was the relic itself, Douken shared his own two cents. "Maybe. Its also possible that the relic itself is the sign of being the master to them and the holder itself is the master. After all, we couldn't just walk in there and pick it up, right?" His eyes glanced over to her stomach, where she had inflicted a vital wound upon herself, the dangerous and risky rite performed to summon the relic itself. If done wrong, whether physically or mentally, it was a good bet it would have failed, and she would not be standing besides him to this day. "We never actually looked deeper into the culture of those that made the Occultatum, no?"

Still, the idea that there could be more down here was of obvious interest. If what they explored was their temple, then maybe this was where the followers lived? Even if it did not lead to anything new about the relic itself it could still be valuable data for historians they could sell off to help pursue research. Finding the right customer was always the trick, but it was what came with the territory.  Either way, a curious fire was in Mazerine's eye, which was fueled further by Douken resting his weapon on the wall before reaching for one of the relics he summoned. "Mind if I borrow the light for a moment?" he asked as he also pulled out his tome of runes, muttering to himself as he flipped through the pages before finally landing on one. "This should do the trick," he said as he rested the slim box with a handle along  the wall before sparking his fingers with mana, working on a new rune upon the relic itself. When completed, the rune pulsed, fading away, leaving the pair in silence for a bit before pulsing alive with energy: a blue hue washing quickly over the walls not only around them, but further inside with lines forging upon the face of it, quickly revealing to be a detailed map of where they were, hovering over the item itself.

"Now let's see, if his notes were correct on this, then…" he held his index finger over the illusionary map on the Wayfinder's Widget, sparking mana in his finger and moving it left and right, causing the illusion to move and reform itself to where the relic was. Then, he charged his thumb and hovered over it as well, performing a pinching motion with the two charged fingers and the map drew closer, finer details inside one of the rooms he had centered upon getting more detailed with old benches and rubble coming to form. Opening it up again,, and it zoomed out, showing a simple, basic outline of the floor they rested upon. Finally, a tap on the relic caused it all to center back to where the pair stood.

"With this, finding our way forward should be even bigger help," he grinned before scooping the spear back into his hands. "So then, shall we?"

”No… we didn’t,” Mazerine said, as Douken mentioned that they hadn’t really looked into the origins of the ruins that they had explored. After all, she had sort of attempted to murder herself while they had been there in order to learn the secrets that the place held. The history of its actual creation had not exactly been at the forefront of her mind, though upon looking back it certainly should have been.

When Douken asked to borrow the light for a moment, she willed the fireball to move closer toward him, so it hovered over him rather than in front of him, giving him more light that he required. She watched as he looked for something, and watched as he worked his magic with his runes as he normally did - it was still something she didn’t wholly understand, but whatever magic was behind it had certainly come in handy to the pair on more than one occasion. After a moment, when the runes had sprung to life, its usefulness only became more prominent as she saw what exactly it was that he had conjured.

She watched as he seemed to test the map, as it were, out, and seemed rather satisfied with it. ”Well, I must thank you for that, I wouldn’t have thought of that,” she said, clearly in agreement with him that this would be a useful tool for them.

She directed her attention back to the undead creature that still seemed to be awaiting some kind of order or something. ”I’m not sure what it wants,” she said, her eyes fixing back on the creature but it was clear that she was speaking to Douken. ”A command, maybe?” she thought aloud, her attention fixating back to the fact that there was a chance they could find another piece of the relic, or find out more about what it meant.

”Can you take us to the mine’s source of power?” she asked the creature. She was met with a disconcerting groan, but the creature, in its strange hunched over posture, crooked a nasty wrinkled finger at the pair, motioning for them to follow. Mazerine shrugged, looking at Douken, and when he did not protest, the pair proceeded to follow the creature as it led them further into the mines.

A few moments passed in relative silence. ”You know, we could find out an awful lot here,” she said to Douken, following the creature while he stayed in step behind her. She continued to ramble on about the possibilities of what they could find, to perhaps finding out why it had reacted to them in such a way, that she did not notice the ground slightly shaking as they walked, and as she moved to take her next step, her words cut off mid-sentence and were replaced by a scream as the floor gave way and she fell through the hole that had been created.

Silence crept in for a moment, before Mazerine’s voice drifted up through the hole in the floor. ”Douken, you need to get down here,” she called. She gave no indication on whether or not she had been injured, but she was so taken aback by what she saw before her that she didn’t even think to do so.

Before her was a room that almost exactly resembled the original room the pair had found the piece of the relic they had previously found… though something was slightly different about this one. There were runes inscribed on the wall, much in the same fashion as there had been before that had given the instruction on what to do, but she couldn’t make them out from where she had landed.

She made an attempt to get up and let out a gasp - it was clear that her leg was badly injured, if not broken. She resolved to wait in that particular position until Douken figured out a way to lower himself down to her, and the pair could go from there.

Despite seeing how odd it was for Mazerine to give a command to the undead before them (It almost looked like a Necromancer's first summoning and making absolutely sure it worked), the risen corpse was able to respond, signalling the pair to follow. Maybe that was why things were silent at first (aside from checking out the map he forged). Still, Maz was the first to break the ice by trying to cover what they may be able to find, the glint of a treasure hunter sparkling in her eyes as she went on… though possibly a bit too blinding as she never gave notice to the floor's give until it was too late.

"MAZ!" Douken was quick to call out, leaving an echo of silence between then until she ushered him to follow. He took a moment to look back at the walking corpse, who kept going forward as if nothing happened. "Alright, just give me a moment!" he called back as he threw his bag over his shoulder to dig out a strong, white rope. While the person who sold him this was for, well, other reasons, a good explorer should never be lost without such a simple item, especially one as strong as this. He worked fast to get the rope anchored down before throwing the rest over, hearing the thud from the other end not long after. Not a deep hole, thank the gods. Just a floor or two at most. Readjusting his bag with the spear attached, he worked himself down where Mazerine sat, lit up by flame she conjured.

"You alright?" he asked, his mind washing out the room before him as he headed straight for the fallen elf, hands quickly for the medical kit. By the way her foot rested, it was not exactly in the best of shapes. "Just hold on." Without even asking for permission, he carefully worked to get her boot off, taking pauses when the moves were too sharp and pain flooded her leg before working a splint across the injury, aiming to help straighten it up. Next, his fingers sparked with magic as he drew a crest upon her foot that, when complete, pulse with a soothing feeling, helping to eat away the pain she felt and slowly help the mending process. "Its the best I can do," he told her with a nervous laugh and smile. Still, it would take a bit of time for it to kick in enough to get back up, so he decided to actually take note about what was around them.

"This is certainly an unexpected find," Douken commented, looking at the details of the room. It was almost like the room they found the first relic in, with two entryways connecting to it. The writing on the wall was most likely different, though to him, it seemed just like more scribbles. At the very least, he grabbed a quill and parchment to work on copying it down to see if Mazerine could translate it. "How are you feeling over there?" he called out as he took notes.