"My definition of an expert in any field is a person who knows enough about what's really going on to be scared." ~ P. J. Plauger

  We’d loitered by the hammer for a while. Sir Milback having apparently decided that he’d best have some lunch before attacking the main quest, and if he was doing so, it might as well be while he basked in the glow of a divine artifact. While he dined on what I was beginning to recognize as standard adventurer fare of cheese, bread, dried fruit, and jerky washed down with water from a small canteen, I was deciding that I should likely run him through the cathedral and show him the catacombs, in case they meant more to him than they did to me.

  To that end, I led him back out of the administrative building and into the large church or basilica or cathedral – there was no real way of telling its importance within the religion, but it seemed clearly the most important church in the city, at any rate.

  Sir Milback drew up before the large bronze doors, eying the iconography with a judicious eye. “Engineering and Skyships, eh? No real surprise there, given the location of the city and the focus on trade and technology we saw in the museum, there. Wonder which gods, exactly, they worshipped? Is this the location of the quest?”

  I hadn’t spawned a mana light into the facade of the church, so I made one of the plaza lights behind him flare a bright red.

  He turned to face it. “Just something else you wanted me to see?”

  **GREEN**

  “Well, I suppose we can spare a few moments to take a look. If it’s waited this long, I expect Lord Zymther won’t begrudge me a few more minutes to indulge my curiosity.”

  In response, I simply threw the bronze doors open in a smooth, steady, and nearly silent movement. I could sense the paladin shiver, and I wasn’t quite sure if it was awe, or if I’d simply creeped him out – self-opening doors in abandoned spaces being an ominous trope in the entertainments of both worlds, I expected.

  Either way, he mastered the reaction quickly and strode boldly into the main dome, eyes immediately fixed on the paired altars. He let out a low whistle, took a quick, precautionary look around, then fell to his knees in prayer. It was a silent prayer, and I was unclear as to whether he was communing with his own deity or with the deities this place had belonged to millennia ago. He wasn’t distracted for terribly long, rising from his knees with the ease of long practice, even in plate mail. “Klilkivest and Morweeth, eh? Gods of engineering and flight – not ones I know personally, but akin to my own gods. Likely the first is an older name for Klickvestus, the name’s too similar to be anything else, I’d guess. My duty to you both.” He swept a gracious bow in the direction of the altars but left no offering.

  Unwilling to spawn mana lights into the church proper, I formed a house mouse to help direct him towards the catacombs. The paladin followed along, willingly enough, but once he’d seen where he was being led, he shook his head and said, simply, “Nay, Sir Dungeon. ‘Less there’s some dire need of it, I’d as soon leave the dead to their rest. Is there a need for a paladin below? Unquiet dead, perhaps?”

  I had the house mouse shake its head and turn back towards the entrance.

  I offered no further detours, leading him to the library, where I paused to let him gather his thoughts and make any preparations he felt necessary. In the end, that didn’t amount to very much, as he’d come with pretty much whatever he’d had on hand and was trusting in his lord to provide, should anything more potent be required. He’d taken a long drink of water, performed some ritual ablutions, and burned a single stick of incense – smelling of sandalwood and sage to the mouse’s shared senses – and rose, marching towards the main entrance.

  It became clear that he no longer needed my guidance, and from the expression on his face and the wrinkling of his nose, I guessed that he was literally smelling the wrongness radiating from the book in the cellars below.

  He verified that for me in passing as he entered the main hall. ”You'd think that a paladin’s ability to detect evil would take the form of some sort of visual aura, wouldn’t you? But no, no, I just get the oddest directional sense of smell - like I know that there isn’t really a pile of rotting fish guts and raw sewage roasting in the sun up ahead and downstairs, but that’s the closest analogue. The worst part is that I have to march towards the funk. This one’s an odd brand of evil, as well. There’s no guidebook for the smell, of course, but after three centuries I’ve developed a pretty good sense - it’s like being a sommelier of evil.” He sniffed cautiously, “It’s not a purely mortal evil, nor is it any evil divinity I’ve run across, not demonic, not devilish.”

  He took a longer sniff with a distinct grimace. ”At a guess, some sort of extraplanar evil, but from the space between planes - some sort of void dwelling, eldritch thing? Don’t get those often, mercifully. Can’t kill ‘em, can only push them back out of our plane. How am I doing dungeon? Sound about right?”

  I puppeted the house mouse into a quick nod and a thumbs up. Probably looked remarkably cute for what amounted to confirmation of the presence of an eldritch horror. Certainly the gnome paladin snorted in amusement.

  “Right then. Point me towards the shortest path?”

  I had the house mouse scurry behind the counter to the entrance to the staircase, where he turned and looked back at the gnome with a beckoning wave.

  He chuckled wryly. ”I'm coming, my adorable little guide. I’m coming.” To be fair, the mouse was the equivalent of a mid-sized dog for the gnome, but clearly he’d spent plenty of time around larger creatures.

  He fell immediately back into a more serious mindset, as the scent of evil clearly started to become more concentrated. I was guessing that fifty millennia of evil soaking into the surroundings wasn’t something he ran into every day. I wasn’t really sure if the book was all that much more evil compared to the usual target of his quests, but I was fairly certain it had been here longer than most – inaccessibility having presumably been a significant aspect of it being neither destroyed nor put to use.

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  It was tempting to assume the book had something to do with the abandonment of the city, but the evidence didn’t support that. More than likely, the book had been successfully sealed away by some long-dead paladin or cleric and simply forgotten about by the time of abandonment. That had left it festering here like a sore, or perhaps some kind of cyst that I’d just lanced in my ignorance.

  He entered the main reading room with his eyes already fixed in the direction of the book, concealed though it was behind both the secret door and a fair bit of stone that I’d used as a temporary seal.

  I triggered the secret door for the paladin, taking advantage of the dungeon ability to manipulate multiple things at once within my domain. He nodded in appreciation, apparently unsurprised.

  “Why people think evil artifacts can be hidden by secret doors is beyond me. The stink is metaphysical, not literal. I suppose it had a better seal on it at some point, or everyone in this room would have felt its call.”

  I let him take the lead, no longer needing the mouse for even limited guidance purposes. He strode into the concealed space with a grimace at the overwhelming stench of evil, sighing at the iconography on the walls. ”Oh, lovely, an entire den of evil. Long abandoned, at least. Terrible things happened here, but so, so long ago. Barely echoes remain, except for the artifact I’m here for.” He pointed at the ceiling where the book was stored away. ”I can feel it there; I’m assuming you blocked it off.”

  I made the house mouse nod and back away from the corner containing the book.

  He cracked his knuckles and rolled his shoulders, loosening up as though about to engage in strenuous physical activity. ”Alright, Sir Dungeon, go ahead and let me at it. We’ll see what I'm working with.”

  I wasn’t quite sure how best to do that, as I didn’t really want to just drop the oversized metal book on his head. I opted to just slowly remove the stone from beneath it, so that he could at least see it coming. Then I slowly raised up a set of steps from the stone of the floor until he could approach it.

  “Ah, I see. Yes, I don’t think dropping that would be a great idea. If the binding chain has lasted this long, it’s likely too durable to be broken by a fall from this height, but better safe than sorry. Can you shine a light on it for me? Probably a bad idea to put the divine light spell right on top of it without examining it first.”

  I emplaced a mana light directly adjacent to it, inset in the surrounding stone, while he evidently cast some sort of protective spell on his gloved hands. He’d apparently done something like this before, though I’m sure the specific threat was different. If disposing of evil artifacts was something paladins were tasked with, and I was getting the sense that it was not exactly a rare occurrence, then some protocol for handling them must be in place.

  He was, in fact, running through something of a mental checklist as he muttered to himself, and perhaps to me. “First, check for threats in the area. Pretty sure we don’t have any lingering cultists, and the dungeon would have noted any creatures in the immediate vicinity. I’m not sensing evil aside from this thing, but let’s ask the dungeon to seal the entrance, temporarily.”

  Since he was speaking aloud, if under his breath, I’d already begun sealing off the secret door to this room by the time he’d repeated it for my benefit.

  “Ah, thanks, dungeon. I forget how sharp your senses are in your own domain... Let’s see, next up were the precautionary protective spells. I’ve already activated the enchantments on my gauntlets, so that leaves a splash of holy water, a circlet of protection from mental attacks, and the invocation of a major blessing on my holy symbol.”

  He worked his way down the list, taking nearly ten minutes to activate a variety of protective measures that left him glowing uncomfortably with divinity in my mana sight – and with a less daunting, silver glow in the visible spectrum.

  “Next, we lay out a containment circle to hold it while we examine it more closely and consider our options.”

  He removed what looked like an intricately embroidered silk cloth and a set of small wards in the shape of engraved coins, erecting a protective circle and empowering it with a small, but potent, mana crystal. ”Wouldn’t hold it very long, but should keep it suppressed for a few hours, I should think. Once the first ward medallion breaks, we’ll know we don’t have much time left. If it’s sufficiently drained, we may be able to siphon off what mana it has left and secure it so that it can’t absorb more – at least not in a relevant timescale.”

  “I’m guessing that chain had a similar function once, and if we’re very lucky I may be able to simply empower it without ever needing to fight it directly. That’d be the next step – looking to see what options are available. I’d just as soon destroy it, but my instructions suggest that would be bad, and potentially catastrophic. In order of preference, the base options seem to be purify and remove it, drain its mana and seal then remove, seal and remove as is, seal and leave in place for a more powerful paladin, or seal it and hope for the best. In the worst case, we’d have to destroy it, but strong odds that neither you or I survive that, and not great odds for the sky island as a whole.”

  Pretty sure Mayphesselth wasn’t going to approve that option, but I also had neglected to mention the book to her. I’d been unable to see a positive outcome as being likely for that, and I was hoping that if she ever found out, she’d be able to forgive me. I’d be blaming it on the gods, with some justification, in any event.

  He activated the ward medallions, spaced at even intervals in the protective circle, then moved quickly but without haste back up the recently produced stairs to ever-so-cautiously extract the book from its niche.

  Nothing obvious happened in the realm of the visible, as I had the house mouse watching intently. That was most certainly not the case in my mana sight, as the silvery light of his gloves and the wrong and offputting purplish light of the book both flared dramatically when brought into contact with each other.

  A roiling wave of mixed and decaying mana poured off the book as a keening wail within my mind pressed against my defenses, such as they were. Fortunately, I wasn’t the target, and my core was pretty distant, but this was the first real pain I’d encountered since my rebirth as a dungeon core. Sir Milback was taking the brunt of it, but between his divine blessings and his defensive circlet, he appeared to be managing it – albeit with the expression of a man removing three-day-old roadkill from in front of his driveway.

  I was quite grateful, however, when he deposited the wretched book within the containment circle. I couldn’t quite make it out, or perhaps my mind refused to give it a shape, but it appeared that something amorphous – halfway between a flailing cloud of yellow-brown mustard gas and a jellyfish in the midst of dissolution – was battering at the walls of the ward. I resolved to rely mostly on the sight of the mouse for the time being and shut down my mana sight. I already felt as though I’d gotten a migraine, and I refused to suffer more than necessary.

  Sir Milback seemed as though he wasn’t enjoying the process any more than I was, but he showed a clear determination to see the job through.

  He paused a moment to rinse his mouth out with a slug of water from his canteen, then shook out his arms, grabbed his holy symbol, and prepared to give battle. I was hopeful that it would be at least mostly metaphysical.