The mark of [Insanity] was on one of the walls. It was the other half of the light in the room, that faint, ghostly glow. Ceria caught sight of it as she looked around wildly. There. It was on one of the far walls, high up in the pit. She looked away the instant she spotted it, but too late.
That was different. But Ksmvr could still think, as mired in the [Insanity] spell as he was. So he noted Ceria’s actions. The half-Elf had been stumbling towards the pulsing runes, but now she turned back and lay on the ground, laughing and choking on the blood gushing from her lip.
What spell should she use? Ceria was under no illusions. Anyone who could cast a spell like [Insanity] and anchor it here was probably a far better mage than she was, and they would have protected the runes with wards that her best spells—[Ice Spike] or [Fireball]—would fail to overcome. What should she do then?
“So you and Ksmvr eliminated the spell? Most efficacious. Allow me to congratulate the both of you. I was completely subsumed by the enchantment. What was my reaction to the [Insanity] spell, incidentally?”
Pisces looked down and swore. The flailing skeleton had, in its fall, struck the black, encrusted wall of the pit. In doing so, he’d knocked some of the unnamed substance free, and glowing behind the covering was the unmistakable symbol of the [Insanity] spell.
Yvlon lay on the ground, shuddering. She was safe, but not up to any further exploring for the moment. She was still gibbering a bit, but she had stopped assuming different personalities and better, she had regained bowel control. It had deserted her in a rather unfortunate way as she slowly came out of the effects of the [Insanity] spell.
As it turned out, his solution was much the same as Ceria’s. After Pisces built a staircase out of bone, he cast a spell which filled the pit with billowing yellow smoke. Coughing and swearing, the mage descended into the pit and shot clinging mud in every direction. After he’d released the spell and Ksmvr had come down, the Antinium saw the pit was covered, with no sign of the [Insanity] symbols on the walls.
“—Is clearly a relic of a past pinnacle of magical achievement. Indeed, that entire room—the private hidden store room of a powerful mage—was filled with wonders. Putting aside the mediocre traps preceding the door, the pit trap was truly a death sentence even for a Named Adventurer. If all the [Insanity] runes had been active, I cannot imagine any Skill or spell short of…Tier 7 that would have saved you from an untimely end.”
At first, General Rel did not know what he was seeing. The front ranks were turning, and he wondered if it were an [Insanity] spell by the Archmage. But no—it wasn’t bloody. Yet even as he watched, a group of riders broke for him.
“Well, Yvlon doesn’t tell good stories at all. Okay, so—did she even mention getting jumped by a Flame Elemental after running into a nest of Crelers and a trap door that teleported us into a pit filled with [Insanity] runes?”
