Tome - A Bitter Triumph

Description

A page from a dusty tome decrying the cost of dealing with the anomalies. Found in a Vault of Forbidden Knowledge in Senedra Forest.

Inspection Text

It has worked!

We have sundered one of the blasphemous, bulbous apparitions, and with it, its wretched snare of ceaseless torment. Gone! Dissolved!

Yet my heart did sink the moment I beheld the price. The poor Hadeans, once ensnared within that infernal cycle, now lay dead at my feet. How can this be? Mere minutes past, as I stepped beyond the accursed bounds of the anomaly, just before the start of the ritual, I turned once more to behold them. They writhed in their ghastly repetitions, still alive.

But now, they are lifeless.

Their bodies lie still upon scorched and flattened earth. Did our Prism bring this fate upon them? Or were they never truly alive within that wretched mirage?

And yet, we rejoice, for we have our answer. The Amine Prisms serve their purpose. The nightmare can be undone.

But at what cost? The poor boy, our chosen courier, has perished within the maw of the anomaly. As one draws closer to its midway, where the unseen venom waxes strongest, survival is impossible.

And Tkez, ever keen of eye, has bid us look to the ground. Where once the monstrous bulb did stand, the scorched earth is left scarred in twisting furrows, spiraling into the soil. A pattern most familiar to us, akin to those we have found amongst the strange compounds we have forged and now wield.