Door

After wandering in the catacombs for a while both me and Winter were starting to get a little impatient. We had been wandering this place for what felt like hours and had nothing but a few bones to show for it. My ears perked up. From what I could tell, I just heard the sound of grating rocks, but it was hard to be sure. After alerting Winter we started searching for the source of the sound. In the end the only reason we found it was because I noticed that the ground had an arch on it that would only appear if there was a stone door or something that was scratching the floor. And upon closer inspection I noticed that there was something like a door cutout in the wall. It was subtle, but it was there. Now, there was only one problem remaining. How we were going to open the door. It was outward opening from the looks of the scratching on the floor, so we couldn't push it, and there was no handle, key hole, or anything that would allow the door to open. "I got this," Winter said. Even though he was of the artist class he was good at magic. He slowly manipulated the brick into forming a handle. And when he pulled back the door opened. At least that's how he imagined it playing out. His spell failed. "Maybe there's a spell preventing me from changing the rock, '' Winter said dejectedly. "Try pressing in bricks, it might be a hidden unlocking mechanism. It's a classic scenario." I said. "Classic from what?"

"Never mind."

None of the bricks within a quarter mile radius did anything. Not that we actually checked that far, but it was probably the case. I decided that it would be worth it to try putting the goblin claws on and sticking them under the small crack under the door and trying to pull it open. Didn't work. After trying a couple more things Winter sat against the door looking annoyed. He started to fall back a little bit until he was laying down with a dark look on his face. The door had been a push door.

As we walked along there seemed to be some signs of struggle. Gradually we started to be able to hear someone talking around a corner. More of a chant than anything though. Whispering to me, Winter said "I'll take a quick peek." he walked carefully to the corner and peered around it, after a couple of seconds he motioned for me to come up next to him. Past the corner there was a hooded man chanting with his arms raised facing some bound figures that I figured were the missing people. "Looks like he is calling something here, using those people as a catalyst," Winter whispered. "How do you know?" "I Know my magic. I am not sure what he is calling exactly though" "you think its a demon?" "what's that" "it's a … never mind"

"What do we do now?" I whispered. "Watch and learn," Winter said in a very not quiet voice, as he stepped out from behind the wall and launched a fireball at the figure. The figure turned around and evaded the spell, while still keeping his arms in the air and chanting. So Winter grabbed his brush and ink and ran at him. Seeing this the figure lowered one arm and some smoke quickly wove its way over to Winter. Winter simply went a bit to the left to evade it and kept running. The smoke however also went to the left and started to chase after winter from the back. As if he had eyes on the back of his head, Winter threw some ink at it and it stopped moving. By now Winter was close enough to get physical and aimed a kick at the figure's head. He blocked and returned the blow. Winter ducked under it and connected a blow to his chest, or it looked like he did at least. It was quickly made apparent that some smoke had managed to block the blow and was now holding Winter's hand there, giving the man an opportunity to attempt to stab Winter with a dagger that he had had up his sleeve. The smoke vanished just as quickly as it had appeared and Winter evaded to blow. The figure, who had been maintaining his chant this whole time, stopped when he lowered his arm when he tried to stab Winter, and looked quite annoyed about it. Smoke started to pour out of both his sleeves and tried to surround Winter. He started to run around waving his brush. I was sure he was trying something but it looked ridiculous from here. Seeing that the man had his back to me I rushed him, but he must have heard me or something and a mass of smoke grabbed one of my legs and rendered me relatively imobile. I started to hack away at the smoke and after a solid minute or so I managed to get out. When I looked up Winter was holding a long stretch of solid ink in his hand and the figure had been knocked to the floor.

"Impossible! You seem to be only level ten or so, so how are you so good at magic AND art?!" Winter just shrugged and walked away, leaving both of us surprised. "I believe in you Kevin," Winter said as he settled down near the entrance. Standing up shakily the figure looked at me. He crouched and sent smoke at me, but this time it was really fast and I barely dodged it. Right now I had two goblin claws on, Which might not seem relevant but for every attached or transformed part you get some bonus or penalty stats. Goblins claws gave +1 strength (Str) for example, so while +2 strength wasn't much It helped a bit. But even with my +2 Str I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do much and after a minute or so of trying to get closer to him to no avail, I decided to full send it and just run straight at him. Even though this caught him off guard he quickly sent plumes of smoke in my direction and I quickly got caught. "If you put mana into the smoke it should dissolve, he is not great at controlling it!" Winter yelled from the side. I had some experience in projecting mana or whatever, so I tried it out. The smoke had almost completely surrounded me by now and was crushing me. The pressure lessened for a second but there was too much and I couldn't do anything. Just when I felt like I couldn't take it any more the smoke dispersed. Not because of anything that I did though. It was because Winter sent a fireball into the figure's head and knocked him out. "Thanks, wait, why didn't you just do that earlier?" I asked. I mean I wouldn't have had to have almost been crushed if Winter had just ended it. "If you always rely on others then you will not experience any growth." He replied. "k"