She didn’t stick around to see what happened.

No one picked a fight with Hruine because no one won fights against Hruine. This was a fact. Hruine never walked away from a fight until it ended and he won. That was also a fact. There were four of them though. She grinned as she sprinted away. This meant that either Hruine would walk away weakened, or Darger and his cronies would walk away with numbers reduced. EIther outcome would be in her favor.

The thought of Darger and Hruine joining hands did cross her mind. Then she waved it away as unlikely. Hruine did not take well to being attacked from the back. She had seen similar situations back at the Temple, and not once had Hruine stopped to talk or listened to the other side.

Even so, she couldn’t count on herself being safe yet. In the best case scenario, she would find the Diadem before their fight ended, and slip away quietly. In the worst case scenario, she should prepare herself to face the victor of this battle.

Past the hall and through the door, there were two fleet of stairs, one leading up and the other down. The ones going up were in terrible shape, cracked missing entire stretches of steps. The ones going down were relatively whole. Arainthe went up.

She remembered the whispers eavesdropped from Old man Taius’ office yesterday. The sanctum is up.

The shape of this story was clear in Arainthe’s mind. Mistress Moore came looking for an apprentice, but did not announce it as such. Instead, there as an absurd quest to a little-known area in the forest surrounding the Temple. Old Main Taius then took Hruine aside and spoon-fed that rich bastard with information and a magic compass. Only one of them was ever meant to get through this game. The whole situation smelt like a set-up, a scripted game. She fully intended to destroy that script.

Going up meant hopping up a series of circular stairs that grew thinner and more fragile towards the top. There were four floors, and the fleet of stairs stopped at each one. It was unfortunate that her eavesdropped conversation did not yield more details. Arainthe gritted her teeth, and set about exploring each one.

Time slipped by as she carefully shifted her way through each floor. Blood pounded in her ears, blocking out sound. She heard the occasional roar or clang of sword against something else, which reassured her that the boys were still having fun. Soon, she was covered to the elbows with dust, dirt, ad grime, and her boots squelched with more than water.

She did not find the sanctum on the final floor. She found it on the third.

She would have almost missed it, if she hadn’t slipped and fell into it. There was a half-rotted wooden trap door in a small corner of a room, which opened to a musty tunnel. She fell into the trap door and decided to follow the tunnel, and it led to a sunlit chamber.

The chamber was the only spot with natural light that she had found in all her explorations. The walls were still built from rocks, and there were manuscripts engraved on them in a script she did not recognize. Four small statues of a hooded, masked man stood at the four corners, and all of them were carved from some black stone with red jeweled specks for eyes. A large, circular portion of the roof was made from glazed glass, which served to let light in, and also colored the chamber in a reddish, brownish hue. The glazed glass painted pictures of old mysticism, ancient gods and demons with teeth rearing and claws bloodied.

It was a beautifully well-preserved room.

There was a small raised pedestal in the center of the room, and atop it sat a small crown. The blue gem in the center of the diadem twinkled.

The roar in Arainthe’s ears came to a crushing halt. Ah, she thought in absolute silence. The Zaharberritze Diadem