The blue light, shifting as the sapphire lightning jumped from one shard to another, was unsettling.  That is what he had decided.  It was the way that it played with the shadows, the pale and ghastly pallor that it lent the surroundings.  In the two trips in his past there had been others with him, they had carried lanterns and the animals they brought had carried a supply of oil.  He was alone now.

It was two days into the depths of the Halls of Falden, the mountain homes of the long passed Landian clan beneath the Hendark mountains.  From those past two trips he knew he was two days from reaching the eastern entrances to the halls.  Two days of only the dancing light from the lightning from two of his Shards of Lehn.  Of the light creating a world only ten paces wide.  He had four days worth of food left but it would be a falsehood for him to say that running out wasn’t sitting on the edge of his mind.

A noise chattered off in the darkness and Quartes paused.  The blue light extinguished as his hand lowered to the familiar scabbard at his side.  Old experience taught him that while the light gave him a limited bubble of sight, it created a clear target for the creatures that resided now in the halls of his long dead kin.  From memory before he had brought on the darkness he moved to the side and crouched down.  There he waited, and listened.  He played the noise over again in his mind.  The movement of stone on stone he placed it as.  A piece of rock falling onto another.

It was little comfort.  His passage could’ve disturbed something long precariously balanced.  The rhythmic drips meant water could’ve moved something.

Or a stalking beast could’ve brushed a rock, some sort of dragonkin called not just to the meal it thought he could make but to his very being.  That after all was the consequence of what he was.  Dragon, Hagercs, and lowly Kercs all felt him.  All would come to him.  The choice to pass through here, to leave the western shores of Illithiust, that was all…

He silenced his thoughts, took a near still breath and listened once.  When no further movement came, Quartes raised the makeshift torch and cast the light about him once more.  The long undisturbed stones of the Halls of Falden were illuminated about him once more and the Last Landian continued on his trek.

More time passed, there had been seven branches but he had stayed true.  The Faldenians had known their craft.  The main thoroughfares were wide and straight.  Long ago he had been told that it had been one of their last great crafts before the wars came.  A thoroughfare to connect the greatest of the halls, to bind the clan together and make for safe passage as the world outside the mountains grew hostile and dangerous.  Their solitude in the mountain had long protected the Faldenians, but it had not been enough to save them.  It had proven to be their prison in the end.

Ahead in the limited sphere of his world the walls gave way, they did not return and he saw that he had come to some hall or another.  Where the walls gave way he paused.  Memory searched and he knew this was a small hall, intended to be a spot for travellers to stop between two of the larger realms.  It had offered a place for comfort and company in the past.  A tavern under the mountain.

Now it offered space, and space meant a place where the beasts would gather.  Some of those beasts may well have played a role in the death of the Landians here.  Once more his hand dropped to the familiar scabbard and this time took hold of the worn hilt.  In a silent motion he drew the blade, noted the way the torch’s azure light reflected in it and waited.  When nothing made a noise, nor burst into his realm of light, he backed up a few steps.  Taking a breath, Quartes once more darkened his torch and this time looped the club into his belt.  His right hand free, he reached out to his side until he found the stone of the wall.  Fingers brushing it to his right, sword held before him, he trusted to the dark and his careful footfalls as he progressed once more into the unknown hall.

Measured breaths, a few slow steps, and a pause.  These were his actions, waiting for some sound, a scrape or a vile exhale.  For a moment his mind wandered to think of how dragonkin must find him here, for the tale of the battle in such storied halls would be too much of an opportunity to past.  He reminded himself that only he would know the battle, that such a story would serve little value.  It did little to silence his thoughts and it hovered in his mind, strengthen by every scraping of his boots on the ground, in the small loss of hearing as his own breaths rang in his ears.  Quartes was fighting the thought once more when the wall to his right ended.  He had only made one more corner and knew this must be some small side passage.  He thought and recalled that there had been some rooms off from the hall here.  None that he had ever been in.

Steeling himself, Quartes stepped forward, no guide to his right but confident in his measured steps.  A few steps in though and a sound did reach him, one that faced him with a conundrum.  There was silence for a breath and then the noise again.  The smallest of plips, deafening in the long silence.  There was no mistaking the sound of water dropping into some sort of pool.

Quartes thought to his water supply.  He had known the length of his trek and had brought additional waterskins but running out was the worry.  He had found pools from his memory and topped off his supply.  In his planning he would have enough but that assumed the pools he remembered were still present.  Refilling here at the waystation hall had not been in his plan, unsure from his past treks if there was a supply here.  He could move forward to the next pool that he remembered but this leg of his quest would stretch his supplies.

However, space was already dangerous, a ready source of water made it all the more likely that beasts would reside here.  A scrape to the left ended the Landian’s debate.  He crouched down, waited with breath held and then slowly made his way back forward.  Stone wall met his right hand again, he passed the far corner without issue and moments later turned back down the wide road.