Stepping through the large hole in the wall and almost tripping over a small section of wall that is still up, but I managed to straighten up at the last second before moving to the levelled stone floor. The inside of the fort is in the state that you would expect to find in an thousand year old fort to be and quite dark, luckily at the moment my eyes are still somewhat adjusted to it, though a torch or something still might be good right about now.
A tapestry with what looks to be a moon emblem of some type and its covered in holes, cuts, dust and mould. While the hallway on my right had the upper level collapsed into it, blocking me off from going that direction. The hallway on my left is still walk-able at least, some of the stones from the floor above had fell into the hallway and following the hall, I made my way down towards some of the old rooms, hopefully to find a good place to rest for awhile.
Coming across the first set of rooms, the wooden doors are surprisingly still standing but falling apart like the rest of the fort. The metal on the door is rusted to the point where the once strong metal is just barely hanging onto the wooden door. Wanting to not touch the either the wood or the metal for health reasons. I push my shoulder against the door to push it open, but suddenly the door decided to snap off its rusted hinges and smash into a thousand pieces after hitting the stone floor causing dust to scatter upwards into my face.
“Ah shit” I said, before feeling a sneeze tickling in my nose and ended up letting out two loud sneezes in quick succession into the open, hearing them echo throughout the fort. Once finished and feeling that no more sneezes were going to pop out of the blue, I finally check out the room I’m in and it turns out it used to be a small sleeping area filled with five cots along with five small leather chests. I doubt the chests would have anything useful since it might be full of very old and very likely useless clothes. It also didn’t help that there are locks on each of the chests and they still look to be in excellent condition with only a small bit of rust on it, despise the condition of everything else here, Magic maybe?
I left that room and try the room next to this one. The door to this room was already open but the door was still on one of its rusted hinges. Taking a quick peek inside, it’s pretty much the same as the last room, five more crappy looking cots and five more chests that still can’t be open. The next two rooms are the same; door either open or fallen off, five dirty cots and five leather unopenable chests in both rooms.
There is one more room before the hallway before hitting a corner and goes off into different direction. The room door is open like the last three rooms, but when I peeked inside through there wasn’t any cots or the same type of chests as seen from the previous rooms, instead it’s filled with weapons.
The armory this close to the sleeping area is good idea, luckily who ever design this fort was smart enough to do that at least. Deciding to go further into the room for a better look and finding that most of the weapons were missing from their racks. Weapon racks made of both wood and metal are basically covering the entire room walls, even a few racks are still standing in the middle of the room. Like the armour corpse graveyard, most of the weapons that are still here range from; swords, axes, maces, spears and a few bows and crossbows, and whatever is left of the arrows are only their metal heads. Looking at the weapons, I notice that they’re still in somewhat in good condition despite the little rust that are on them, compare to the ones in the graveyard maybe it has something to do them placed in their weapon racks. Other than the weapon racks that are in the room, there is some more leather chests. For what’s inside though, my best bet is either cleaning stuff for their weapons or items to maintain their weapons or both, it makes some sense, but I can’t check since they’re lock like the others before. While looking around the rest of the room however I found that two of the chests have their locks missing.
I walked over to one of the unlocked chests and started opening it. The top half of the chest is a tat stiff to lift up straight away, maybe because of the hinges since a thousand years will do that to it. With one last lift, the lid went up and hiding inside were guns.
Shit, they have guns here?!, they weren't modern day guns like I know of, but I did somewhat recognize the overall design of them. They basically look like a pirate flintlock pistol from what I could make out. The flintlock can only fire one shot at a time and takes forever to reload unless you’re really far away from whom you’re firing at, you’re more likely be dead before you can fire off your second shot. It’s too dark to tell how many flintlocks are still in the chest, but from what I could feel around, it wasn't that many left and along side of them I managed to find some small canvas bags each filled with small round balls, ammo and gun powder more likely. The second chest was more of the same; more flintlocks and ammo bags.
It’s weird that they would still used the bows and crossbows if they have guns on hand, although seeing how that these two are the only chest that are unlocked, maybe they only had a small supply of them and only let the guards that have being trained to use them or commanding officers; it better than just letting anyone use a gun and end up getting shot by some idiot who didn’t know how to use it. With the fact that this universe now has guns, I’m now starting to wonder how far they advanced since then and that I should be more careful once I head back to town in case their gun laws are lot more lacks than what my universe gun laws are.
With the rest of the fort left to explore, I thought about taking a weapon with me for protection but I decided against it for the moment. No point in taking a gun, since I don’t know how to load it, plus it might just blow up in my hands since it hasn’t being maintain in so long. But at least I can use a bow and arrow since my year nine class did it one term for sport, just don’t ask me to bulls-eye or snipe an apple off someone head and the whole point of a crossbow is for easy use with little skill. But the both of them would be dead weight without any arrows or bolts for either of them. As for the other weapons, they will be too heavy for me to lift... maybe. I know I’m a Avatar and should be able to lift anything up without a problem, but not even a minute ago I had trouble with lifting up a lid of a chest, so at the moment I’m doubting myself in carrying these weapons let alone using them. Then you got the whole “I’m also not trained in using them” thing and hell I might just end up hurting myself first before who or whatever attacks me. Now if there were some knifes around here that would be a different story all together since they are easier to use then the other weapons and lighter, but as far as I can tell there is none in here. Hopefully I can just out run whatever comes for me.
Walking out of the armory, I went across to the other hallway and found that one the right side walls had collapsed, letting in moon’s light into that part of the hallway. Walking further downwards showed that the hole leads into the fort’s empty courtyard, well empty in terms of guard corpses. At the back of the courtyard are a few training dummies that look to be made out of canvas sacks and hay. Some of the dummies looked to be hacked in some areas from where the guards used them for weapon practice, while the rest are filled with rusted metal bolts most likely from the crossbows training and if I was to look closer at them they might have arrow heads in them. Near the front of the courtyard where the portcullis is are about six or so high wooden barricades that formed in a half circle around it. There isn’t much else here besides a few opened doorways into the courtyard from this floor and the level above. Other than that and this hole in the wall, there isn’t anywhere else anyone can get into the courtyard without going through the portcullis. I’ll come back here later if I need to up a level making a metal note to myself before leaving the giant hole to the courtyard and continued down the hallway.
Most of the rooms down this hallway were either the same as before with the cots and chests or whatever was on the level above had collapsed and buried whatever was in the room. By the time I reached the end the hall, the only new room I found that was anyway different was very small room filled with very old cleaning supplies.
The next hallway had the portcullis in the middle of it and the entry into the courtyard of the opposite side of it. When I got closer to the portcullis I noticed that on both sides of it are two small stone like booths areas. The stone booth the furthest away of me had collapsed on itself at some point blocking anyway for me to get in, but the other booth is still standing at least. On the inside of the three sided booth is a small stone seat in the middle of it with a counter attached to the window in view of the portcullis and facing the other booth while next to said window is a large wooden lever and on the wall is a small wooden hatch opposite it. It doesn't take a genius to figure out what that’s for, thinking to myself before I walked into the booth and pushed the lever down, only to have the wooden part of the lever to snap off in my hands.
Just after the lever broke, the sounds of metal started coming from the hatch on the wall. I looked out of the window waiting for the portcullis to start moving upward, but it stop and went back down before trying to go up again. “The hell?” I said out loud before I opened the hatch and inside is large metal chain jerking for some reason, Isn’t there suppose to a counter weight or something here? I wanted to stick my head inside of the hatch to look for it, but since I just pushed down on a lever that was possibly last used a thousand years ago and the fact that if there is a counter weight up above somewhere [unless it has already broke and fell before I showed up] I don’t want to stick my head in case it breaks and takes my damn head off. When I looked back out at the portcullis, I looked back over at the other buried booth and had a theory as to why this lever didn’t work.
“There must be another lever in that other booth and both of them have to pulled at least at the same time to raise the gate” I muttered out load, afterwards letting out a sigh “Fan-bloody-tastic” With the other booth collapsed on its self and the lever buried under it, I doubt the this gate will be coming up any time soon. So much for an easy way out of here I thought since I wanted to avoid going back the same way I came in earlier, before leaving the booth I grabbed whatever was left of the lever and pushed it back up where I found it, stopping the chain from it jiggering.
Walking down the rest of the hallway and going around the next corner there is a set of stairs heading up to the next level and some those entryways into the courtyard I found earlier opposite it. Since there wasn’t anything else in this hall and by going around that corner up ahead I would only end up on the other side of that blocked hallway that I first saw when I stepped in here.
I thought about heading up the stairs but I’m starting to have second thoughts and I have every right to be. Parts of the upper floor falling down into hallways or rooms and the very last thing I want while walking around up there is the floor to suddenly fallout from under me. But then again the top floor could fall on top of me at any moment and the only safe place is anywhere outside. I just want to abandon the next level and just go to the courtyard and try to kill time somehow, but then again what is the likelihood that the floor will collapse on me when I’m walking around up there.
I mean besides a random stone or two falling from the floor above, so when was the last time that any of the floor above collapsed down here, I thought for a moment before continuing my train of thought. For all I could know it might have being years since the last time a collapse had happen, so it might be safe... in theory and going from my steak with them, it’s being half and half at best. I let out a sigh before taking stepping up on the first step; I hope that this doesn’t bite me in the ass.
The stairs started to spiral upwards and I’m staying close to the inner wall of the stairwell since the outer wall has a few descent size holes in them, meaning that if I trip or slip here I might end up falling through one of these holes and go ka-splat like Wile E. Coyote but I know better that won’t happen since I’ll just be laying there dead on the ground or at best on the ground with a ton of broken bones. After avoiding some steps that are missing, I managed to reach the top of the stairs and on the wall ahead of me is a lit torch.
Fear shot through me as I seen it, “Someone or something is here!” I mumbled quietly while regretting not grabbing a weapon when I had the chance. I tried to remember if heard anyone or anything on this level when I was down there, but I can’t remember it on top all the other ambient noises coming from the forest and the old fort.
Looking down the both ends of the hall I found another two lit torches at both ends. The small areas of orange light now coming from the lit torches revealed that the doors on this floor are all opened; even some of the doors were placed up against the wall outside of their rooms where they came from. Even I know something is wrong but the bigger question is; what are they looking for? If this was the old royal castle then they would be a number of things they could be looking for; old books, powerful spell books, forgotten artwork, rare armour and weapons, hell anything in there would value even the pillows off either Luna’s or Celestia’s bed will fetch a bit of cash. Here though, besides the weapons there isn’t much here from what I can tell worth of value but then again I haven’t checked up here yet since for all I know there might be treasury up here.
I started looking through the rooms on my left side first in this hallway and found pretty much the same rooms from down stairs; more sleeping areas and a storeroom filled with some cleaning stuff; if I were to take a guess I’ll say that there would be another armory up here somewhere as well. The other rooms in this hallway would probably be the same if I went to look at other end of the hallway. I went around the corner and saw that this hallway has a decent size hole about seven or eight feet across in the middle of it. Walking up close to the edge of it, I looked into it and found that the hole shows the hallway where I first stepped into the fort, not wanting to try and jump across in case fall, I turned back around heading back the way I just came.
When I got to the hallway with the stairs and went straight to the other end corner. When passing the other rooms I missed before, my guess was right and the last few rooms were just more sleeping areas, I’m now starting to wonder why a fort all the way out in the middle of a forest has so many guards stationed here. I mean having say 15 to 25 guards makes sense mostly to keep the fort maintain, sending a few of them to patrol the roads and maybe having a few more on hand just in case whatever monster might attack the fort, but from I have seen it looks like there at least 40 or 50 guards that were stationed here. So my question is why so many guards are stationed here?
As I stepped around the corner I found that counterweight that I was looking for earlier however I also found what might have caused that second booth to collapse. Since the portcullis is down there’s suppose to be two counterweights hanging around up here, but the counterweight over where the buried booth is has snapped off its chain and either fell on top of the roof of the booth or the roof had collapsed on its own and the counterweight fell later.
Besides the fallen counterweight and the one that is still attached, there is another room with its door lying up against the wall outside of it. Sticking my head inside thinking it’s just going to be another sleeping area; instead it looks like an office of sorts, maybe for the captain of the fort? The room was lit by a single torch showing off most of the decent sized room. This office would have looked nice if it wasn’t for the piles of wood everywhere and seeing that in some of the piles are books and in front of them is a large stone chair, Guess those were bookshelves and desk once I thought to myself as I continue looking around the room and finding against a wall near the stone chair a weapons rack which seems to be missing all of its weapons. The only other things in the room are; a painting in a bad state with a un-used fireplace underneath it, something that looks like a steel-looking coat rack [maybe a armour rack?] and windows looking out towards the road, however at the moment it’s hard to see anything out them due to all the build up of dirt and other crap on coating it.
Seeing the stone chair in the room I thought about sitting down and relax for a while. I’ve lost track of when I last sat down and with one hallway left, its possibly just going to be the armoury and either some more sleeping areas or even an dining area since I haven’t seen one yet, but then again it’s not like I’m going to find anything edible in there. Since this room does have a torch in here I thought it would be a good idea grab it and look through one of the books that are on the ground to try and kill some time.
After picking up the torch from its holster I went straight to where the books are on the floor. Using my right foot I started clearing away some of the wooden bits that remained in order to get to the books that were underneath it. Getting down onto my right knee I picked up one of the books that has brown leather for the cover and no title; opening it up and bring the torch closer didn’t reveal much as the page is blank. Skipping past a page or two I found a page with writing on it, but either the once black ink has faded too much or the thousand years has really hit this book hard since the pages are a light dark brown almost the same colour of the leather on cover or for all I could know the orange light from the torch could be affecting the pages mixing in with the browns of the pages. I flicked through some more of the book to see if I could find something readable, however the only thing I found was this area near the end of the book where I can still make out some of the writing but some of it keeps fading in and out.
12th Day of the 7th Month, Year 1012
3rd day of holding the eastern fort
The men are still holding back the enemy forces between fort and the main road but we can’t hold them off forever and with the fort supplies diminishing we won’t last until the reinforcements arrive which is in the next four days at the time of writing this. Without the reinforcements from command, we will lose this fort within the next two days, three days if we are that luckily.
I have ask one of our fastest flyers to get my message to command and request that they could use a wrap gate in order to get reinforcements to the fort immediately, but that was two days ago. I fear that Private Storm Front may have been killed or captured.
If the enemy capture this fort, most of us will be put to death while others high ranking officers will be taken for questioning, in the end though I hope that command have gotten my message and send those reinforcements soon.
Without an infirmary here, the soldiers are either going to die from their wounds or be forced to go back into combat with their minor injuries. I will be forced to join the rest of soldiers in battle soon due to our lack of numbers, so this will perhaps be my last entry. Hopefully the reinforcements will arrive.
Captain Cold Snap.
All I could make out from the page is that; there was a battle from the main road to fort [At least that answers the question about why the those bodies are there], something about reinforcements, a message, something called a wrap gate [are they talking about portals?], some guy named Storm Front being captured [maybe the massager for that message], no infirmary in the fort [which is weird for being a fort and all], something about being put to death and questioning and a Captain by the name of Cold Snap [maybe the person that wrote this or the owner?].
This ‘wrap gate’ that mention here, could it be what I’m looking for? I thought while trying to re-read the page for more information about it, however after re-reading it twice nothing more about this wrap gate turned up. I might have some better luck if I look through these other books that are here; hopefully the rest of these books are were made by a painting press and are not hand written. I placed the journal next the stone chair and went off to the other piles of the wooden remains to grab whatever books that are there. After clearing away any pieces wood that was in the way, I picked up the few books that were there and carry them back to the stone chair.
The stone chair is bare; no pillows and no padding, just cold when I sat on it. With the books in my lap, the torch in my left hand, my right hand started flicking through each of the books for information about this wrap gate. And nothing turned up. The books I found must have been older than the journal because either the pages have; aged too far to be readable, pages missing or that the pages started to disintegrate when I touched them which scared the living shit out of me. The only book that was still readable didn’t have anything about wrap gates, all the book talk about was herbalism and potion making which makes sense due to a lack of an infirmary within the fort.
“Nothing” I mumbled as I dropped the last book on the floor next to the chair letting out a sigh just as the book hit the floor. The wrap gate, I need more information before this changes my plan but there is nothing here or if there was its long gone now.
There is possibly only one place that might have anything on wrap gates plus anything I might need and honestly I’m not looking forward to it. Grabbing my bag is one thing but going back there to look for a book, it’s going to be like looking for a needle in a haystack covered in sand. The only way I’ll be able to even find it is by either getting Twilight or Spike to help, which is easier said than done. I thought to myself while drumming my fingers of my right hand on the arm of my chair, until I realized something. Spike... what if I get him to grab the book? He hasn’t seen me yet and I doubt Twilight had time before she left to tell him what I look like. This could work.
However there is a problem with my plan. Well... a few problems with my plan. First, Spike needs to be alone in order for this to happen seeing how out of the Main Six, four of them have seen me with the exception of Rarity and Fluttershy who haven’t seen me yet but knowing Twilight she would have told those two what I look like. Meaning that if any of the Main Six are there then I’m screwed, my best bet is for him to be alone.
Next is if I leave now to try and get back to the library to catch him by himself, I have to get past the Main Six search party and as I thought before, is going to be difficult to do with; Rainbow flying around, Fluttershy standing guard at her house and the rest of them doing the ground search in and around the town. But if I wait, like I was going to in the first place then by the time I get back to town, the search party would be called off but Twilight will back at the library which will screw everything up.
And lastly is what to with Spike once I get the book once I get it off of him since I still need to grab my bag from Twilight’s study if it still there and if it’s not then I got to go and find it, that’s if it’s still in the house that is. I could lock Spike in that bathroom somehow but if he has a phone on him then I’m fucked.
I can’t believe how fast everything going to hell. Honestly I wish this is dream or a drunken haze at least, that way I could change the outcome to how I wish.
Getting up from the stone chair, I walked around the room for a bit to stretch my legs. It was only then that I remembered that I am holding a torch in my left hand and the only reason it is lit is due to someone else being here. I lost track of time since finding the first torch and since then I haven’t seen or heard anyone else up here, it could be likely that they left the fort after finding or not finding anything.
Until that theory came back and slapped me in the face, as I started hearing the echo of some footsteps coming from one of the hallways, whoever this person or people are might know that I’m here somewhere and they might be armed with weapons, guns, magic or anything else that I can’t begin to think of. Would have been nice if the bloody Captain had left me with at least one weapon in that rack there, but I can use this torch as makeshift weapon at least. I reassured myself, Although maybe it’s not a good idea to have the torch lit when I start swinging it around for safety reasons, mostly for myself. Remembering the fireplace from earlier I quickly walked over there and poured whatever it was in the torch out into the mouth of the fireplace.
With the unlit torch now safe to use, I quickly moved to the right side of the door and pressed myself up against that wall. The steps are getting louder losing their echo and I could tell they are currently walking down the hallway with the counterweights. I started to ready myself and held the torch like a baseball bat with two hands near the bottom of the torch. I’m trying to keep myself calm but I am finding it difficult to stop my body from shaking. If it was just one person and if he or she didn’t have their weapons, gun already drawn I would have had a good shot of walking away the winner since all I got to do is hit them with the torch a few times [while avoiding the head, since I don’t want to kill them] until he or she is on the floor or until the torch breaks and then run like hell. If they got their weapons drawn, I just got to try and disarm them by hitting whatever out of their hands first before hitting them. With two people, my chances are slim, I might be able to hit one of them or try and disarm the both of them but if I’m not quick enough than the other guy will hit me but I still might be able to get away by knocking them over with a few kicks to their knees if I’m luckily. Any more than that and I’m fucked and not in a good way.
Their footsteps are almost close the door and I can hear them talking quietly but I can’t pick up on what their saying. Once they go past the door they will notice that either I’m in here or that the torch has gone out and will go and investigate. Orange light starts appearing across the doorway causing their shadows to appear tall and thin, They carrying a torch I concluded.
“Hey didn't we light a torch in here?”
That was my clue and like that I quickly spun away from the wall and stepping into the doorway, while at the same time swinged my torch up high over my head as if I was going to split some wood in half with an axe. As I raised the torch, I let out a battle cry along the lines of “YARRRRRRRR!” at the top of my lungs, hoping to at least throw them off their balance and started to bring down the torch to strike the first person closest to me.
But it was at this time that as I started bring that torch down that I notice that instead of three grown adults standing there with a shocked looks on their faces, it was three little girls standing there with shocked looks on their faces while screaming at the tops of their lungs in terror.