As Miri and Anne continued to explore the keep, they discovered more areas across the keep. In one section, there were several rooms full of iron cages of various sizes, each with the skeleton of a different animal trapped inside. Some were as small as a house cat, some were as large as a bear, but all seemed to have died in a horrific way—the leftover bones of their arms and limbs outstretched beyond the bars of their cages as if begging to escape from its confines.

  From what it appeared, these animals were most likely abandoned after the chimeragon rampaging incident, left to starve and rot in these cages with no one to free them.

  “How horrible…” Anne commented softly, gazing at the gruesome scene in front of her and piecing together the events that must have transpired around here. Miri could tell that this scene had made the cleric quite disturbed, almost to the point of gut-wrenching. “How could someone do this sort of thing—trapping them in cages, using them for rituals, and for what? Just so they could create a beast used for war?”

  “It’s a tale as old as time,” Miri responded with a sigh. “People want power. People commit atrocities to gain power. The atrocities fight back. Countless innocents die in their wake.”

  “Sometimes I wonder… if we should even get these runes…if we should ever deserve them…” Anne questioned, her expression distraught and conflicted. “Whatever valuable runes are lying within this keep are probably the product of some abhorrent wrongdoings. Taking these runes from this place…it feels like we’re benefiting from their suffering.”

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  “Hey, listen, Anne. Listen to me,” Miri said, holding Anne by her shoulders and gazing at her softly in the eyes. “Whatever happened here has already happened. There’s nothing we can do to change that. Even if we don’t take these runes, someone else will. And those people might not be as morally righteous as we are. We’re not just doing this to get money—well, part of it is—but it’s also to prevent these runes from possibly falling into the wrong hands. You understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, I think so,” Anne replied softly, feeling her doubts subsided.

  “Alright, good. Now stay focused,” Miri said. “We gotta keep our minds sharp if we’re gonna make it through this.”

  After wandering around some more through the dark, musky corridors—occasionally fighting some ghosts, performing a prayer to lay their souls to rest, and looting their bodies—they came across what appeared to be an office of some sort.

  There’s a large, wooden desk at the center of the room, towering shelves of books lined the walls, and magical instruments of various kinds were scattered everywhere in a disorderly pattern. There’s even a row of specimen jars at one of the shelves, with most of them broken save for a few—which contained various biological specimens ranging from misshapen embryos to dissected organs of unknown creatures.

  “An office, huh? Maybe we could find some more info about the chimeragon here. Or where the runes are located,” Miri said as she took a random book off one of the shelves and opened it, only to be greeted with a cloud of dust coming from between the pages. This caused her to reflexively cough as she fanned the dust away. “Yep, this certainly looks like a place that hasn’t been cleaned for over a century.”

  “Hey, Miri, come look at this,” Anne called out, gazing at a large painting on the wall. “I think this may be the archmage of this keep, the one who was the head of the chimeragon creation ritual.”