Day 2: Mistakes

After taking a rest I could feel the poison the slavers had given us making its way out of my system. Kino was feeling a bit sluggish but even she seemed to be doing a bit better. It was a good excuse to give her a piggyback ride though, so it wasn't all bad. We journeyed towards the city of Azune. Our old ship captain is travelling with us. He seemed to know the way which was lucky because Hendrik's maps were basically useless, and this land seems to hold a great many dangers and oddities. I must say I am a touch reluctant to put this in writing as if I am unable to make amends for the day's events, I would hate for people to blame it on outsiders as they seem already willing to do.
 
We had heard screaming and naturally made our way towards it to investigate. We saw a woman fighting infernal creatures. The creatures seemed just as happy to fight each other as the woman which was lucky for her as she was looking rather injured. As I am a sucker for a pretty face, I was the one to waste a potion on the girl. Though my cousins would come to be angry at her, I can't say I feel the same, and no its not because she was attractive. Anyway, she had told us some story about her adventuring friends still within the cave nearby and asked us to help her. She had apparently managed to escape thanks to their efforts, and she wanted us to go in after them. We told her we would help and that she should remain outside the cave whilst we ventured in. She agreed and gave us a strange egg like object. She told us how she and her friends were able to use it as a means to turn the beings within on each other. As we had just seen evidence of that we had little interest in questioning further and hurried into the cave so as to save her friends. I honestly expected to find them dead, and we would be the cleanup and bad news crew. I am sorry to say that there were no dead adventurers, instead we had found some interesting art, chests, and a chained up demonic angel being.
 
I know what you might be thinking, what did the art depict? Well, it told a tale of a conflict between celestials and demons. A strange man appeared in the confrontation and attempted to stop them. He however was killed and chained up for being a goody two-shoes and I must say I rather agreed with the depiction. Hendrik was being insufferably naive and perhaps that colored my opinion of the events, but I found I simply lost interest, even though this is an area of study I find intriguing. I will need to disabuse him of this notion that violence isn't always the answer. After we skipped past the art, we found that the room was populated by purple and red entities. Estall made to enter the room and found that at his motion two large incorporeal being made a motion to block him with their oversized weapons. Assuming that this was as good of a time as any we chucked the egg at one of them and watched as the beings within the room all attacked one another freeing our path. One individual managed to survive the carnage and stood in front of us which was rather brave of him. He was killed easily enough again to the disappointment of our resident pacifist Hendrik.
 
We skipped past rather dubious chests which held powerful conjuration magic enchantments. A trap to be sure and we were proven correct in a manner of speaking later. As we traveled deeper into the cave, we entered into a large room that contained to our surprise that winged demon person. He seemed to be breathing, but he was chained and bleeding. He made no motions to communicate with us, nor did it seem he even knew we were there. At the center of the room sat three much larger chests much like the ones in the previous room though this one contained a greyish chest. I paid little attention to those details however as the strange man was bleeding and it was making my mouth water. Scooping up some from my preferred side, he had a magical duality to him, and I chose the side leaning more towards the demonic energy. I took a taste and found myself transported to a battlefield. It became apparent that this was the battle depicted on the wall at the entrance.
 
Strangely enough my very curious cousins seemed interested enough in what I told them about that they too took a drink of the man's blood. They did not grimace or hesitate, and I wonder how much blood they both have consumed. Hendrik being some sort of werewolf makes sense but what of Estall? He was rather large and seemed happy to fight. Perhaps he drinks the blood of his enemies, though I have yet to see him do so. As they recounted the battle, we found that the side where you collect the blood allowed you to see it from different perspectives. Hendrik being the Hendrik drank from the neutral space and got to see that this individual had sacrificed himself to stop the battle. He seemed to be well loved, and many people tried to stop him, but he apparently ignored their council and that's how he ended up in that cave. We didn't know what else to do and figured that it was better not to attempt anything else. The woman outside was likely getting antsy too so we decided to just leave when Hendrik decided to cut himself and drop some blood on the neutral chest.
 
Yes, Hendrik. The one talking about caution and safety took it upon himself to do this. Well, it seemed to do something to the chained individual who moved and fluttered his wings at the inception of our idiot cousin's blood. Now we had a clue to this mystery, we might be able to figure out what was going on here, we might even get to see what was in the chests. It was worth the risk I thought and apparently so did Estall who quickly rushed to the celestial chest to add his blood. The man twinged again. Well, I cannot let celestial forces get any special treatment. I added my blood to the demonic chest. This made the man twitch again but it was clear if we wanted anything to happen, we would need all of our power united. We decided that the neutral chest would be the best choice as Estall and I understood we would not be able to sway the other. As we added our blood several interesting things happened.
 
The chests burst open releasing spirits. We had later learned that we released some very lawful celestials, and very angry demons back into the world. Secondly, we were thrown back into the stone walls by some sort of magic as the winged man returned to life. Apparently by opening the chests we also freed the man who had up until this point been keeping the chest hidden, safe, and closed. He seemed friendly enough for a man who had just been rudely awoken and told that we messed up his work. Estall was standoffish as usual, but luckily the man seemed to be content with punishing Estall for his outbursts rather than us as a collective. Regardless we all shared blame in this instance, and he has since forced us to work for him to collect the souls of the beings we set free. To be honest I think the man was being unfair, especially once I learned that neither the demons nor the celestials were good people and that his interference had allowed them both to survive up until now, albeit in prison. I have little interest in working for an individual with such short sight, but I played my part in releasing them and agree that for now we should at least work together to rid the world of their existence.
 
After some grumblings about not being powerful enough to stop them and wondering how we got the egg or even got into the cave we were free to leave. I didn't hesitate, rushing out of the cave to find that Kino seemed a bit like she was waking up from a sort of daze. Apparently, we had been gone for three days. To us though it seemed like an hour at most. The woman who sent us into the cave had disappeared leaving behind a note thanking us. Estall seemed rather irritated and told me he would kill her if he saw her next. Hendrik of course seemed devastated that he freed such awful things and was also upset at her for tricking him into doing it. I don't feel like it really mattered. I'm sure that having released them will cause some pain and suffering, but I think it will also lead to some interesting developments as well. I hold no grudge against the woman. In fact, I owe her for keeping Kino safe for the three days we had disappeared. We decided to not share what had transpired within the cave with our fellow travelers and instead marched on hoping to get to Azune at some point.