Truly Evil?

The jars freely floated over to Ician as he lifted them in his telekinesis, the only resistance offered was their negligible weight and quantity. The jars themselves had few legible labels, most were worn off by time. Their contents however seemed to vary between some mundane things like various pickled plants and food to some on the more macabre side of the spectrum. One jar was even unmistakably filled with various eye balls.

The furnace itself seemed rather simplistic in design. A single source from which heat was vented to various parts of the house so it'd keep warmer in the winter months. A peculiar note of study however was the grated opened seemed more for show upon closer inspection. The hinges only there to give the illusion that it could be opened. This, in combination with the layer of dust that covered the pile of wood, showed that this grate had likely never been opened.

While the three did their various studies of the room, something did stir. The sound of creaking wood sounded out along with a clacking sound not too distant from the sound of hoof falls. Curious-er still was the table that was now bent upwards at about it's middle as if rearing up, and the raised table leg that was soon in the process of being swung downward at Ician and Jon.

"Eyeballs? Ugh." Ician closed the container with a disgusted grunt. "I'm never-"

He paused. "Hold on. What's that noise? Is something... creaking?" He turned around. "What in the world...?" Instinct, driven by years of practice, snapped his armoured right foreleg up to intercept the blow.

Dusk heard the creaking and saw the table just after Ician did. Seeing it both moving and rearing up was rather startling, but he managed to keep calm. He both raised his sword and charged a fire spell up. However, he couldn't do much since Ician was in the line of fire.

Jon raised an eyebrow at the smells in the room.  "Is this food storage, alchemy, or a just to freak out intruders?"  He froze and turned around at the noise, and his eyes widened in surprise behind their mirrored lenses.  He put all of his not-very-much muscle into moving backwards, away from the table, to try and avoid being hit.

It was a good thing that Ician's hoof was armored because the table brought it's limb down with a surprisingly terrifying amount of force. The impact from the attack leaving a dent in the metal armor but the crackle of wood also signaled the breaking of the table leg over the limb. Despite the broken in half limb, the table wasn't done yet, instead now shifting so that it could bring down it's other limb with what would appear to be a similar amount of force.

"Ah, damn it!" Ician gritted his teeth in pain. He took a step back and brought his sword to bear in his telekinetic grip, bringing it downwards in a quick slash that he hoped would take the table leg off before it could hit him.

Okay, so it's not that sturdy. My sword should do the trick, Dusk thought. He let his spell dissipate and he rushed up to it with his sword ready, aiming for one of the back legs.

Jon stayed back, watching the fight with a frightening intensity. He knew he was useless in a fight, with his height and lack of muscle mass trumping any real level of skill. But that didn't stop him from watching and trying to absorb any information about fighting styles, and he tried to figure out how the two other explorers fought.

Ician's downward strike in conjunction with the downward strike of the table leg led to the two colliding still in the early stages of the swings. Ician's blade cutting into but not through the table leg since there wasn't time to build momentum and power for the blow, but it did stop the table from attacking. Dusk's attack however, given the fact that it was undefended and from a full swing, managed to cut through one of the back legs of the table.

Now down 2 legs completely, and with Ician incapacitating a third, the table fell over which wrenched the leg free from Ician's sword. Once on the ground, the bottom of the table was exposed and for a brief moment, a rather complex rune glowed only long enough to be seen before disappearing completely back into the wood. The line work and symbols far too complex for the brief look to really provide any insight into how it actually worked. After the flash, the table began to flail about, trying to flip back over or strike anything nearby with it's two remaining limbs.

At the sight of the glowing rune, Jon unconsciously moved closer to try to get a better look, bending down to study the build of the rune.  The part of his mind that told him to stay back had been silenced long ago.  The movement quickly became a few steps back when the table began flailing, and Jon jumped away.  "Okay, please kill the table now.  I wanna see that rune again."

"The rune must be controlling it, somehow or other." Ician said as he took a step back and lowered his sword, staying out of range of the table's flailing legs. "Does anyone know anything about runes? I certainly don't know enough."

His horn lit up, and with as strong a telekinetic grip as he could muster he pushed the table onto the floor, trying his best to keep it from getting up.

"I don't, but we may as well make sure this thing can't get back up," Dusk said. He then raised his sword with his own magic, and cut the last two legs off. He wanted to keep that rune intact.

With the last of it's limbs cut off, the table went still. The rune briefly glowed again before dimming until it nothing more than a scorch marked groove on the tables underside. Now while the base rune for animation of a previously inanimate object wasn't exactly extremely complex, this... thing was another story.

A myriad of symbols and additional line work covered, re-covered, and so on till the symbol had what might have appeared to be 6 additional layers added on top of it which made for something just slightly better than a mess to the exceedingly well trained eye. There was so much additional stuff added to this table that the original rune for animation was almost impossible to make out, where as the rest were so jumbled together that several experienced scholars would have likely just dismissed it as a scribble rather than an exceedingly complex rune.

None the less, the table was no longer moving. The jars, a few cracked from their impact with the floor when Ician's concentration had been broken, did little more than roll back and forth slightly. And the furnace continued it's steady job of providing a comfortable amount of heat to the house. Aside from the three ponies, all was still in the room, but who knows what could be lingering behind the 3 unopened doors still within this room.

Ician examined the rune. "This is... bizarre." He looks around. "If anyone's got a good memory, I advise you use it now. Either that, or someone can trace this on the back of these tax statements." He drew the paper out and waved it around in the air with his telekinesis.

In the meantime, he eyed the nearest of the three doors suspiciously, advancing towards it with his sword raised and kicking it open, prepared for an attack.

Jon smiled.  "I have this, no need to worry."  He reached into a side pocket of his backpack and pulled out a small notebook and a pencil.  He flipped through the notebook, the pages turning for longer than a notebook of that size had any business doing.  He eventually came to a blank page, and placed the pencil in his mouth, making a careful drawing of the rune.  He looked at it, nodded, and closed the notebook, putting it away.  "We can look over it afterwards.  Now, what's behind these doors?"  He turned to a random door, and inspected it closely, sniffing around the edges to try and figure out what was on the other side.

The door Ician kicked open slammed against the wall as it flew along it's hinges, revealing a long hallway the eventually turned to the left after several pairs of doors. The hallway itself was an entirely different story than the furnace room they were currently in. Instead of the stone floor, the hallway was wooden, much like the study before, and was very well lit by regular continuously burning lamps.

Jon would smell the unmistakable smell of some kind of magic at work, but nothing that would give any real hint as to what was behind the door.

"I get the feeling we'll be at this for a while," Dusk said as he looked down the hall past the door Ician just opened, "Who knows how many rooms this place has."

"Some... magic is afoot. I think." Ician peered into the hallway. "I'm not going to step and and be burnt to death by some rune-powered lamps. No, let's see if I can trigger any traps..." He picked up one of the severed legs of the table and flung it into the hallway, "... before we go in."

The table leg flew into the room but never touched the floor. When it started to get close, about halfway down the hallway, the floor split down the middle and fell open revealing a pitfall. The bottom of which couldn't be seen despite the edge of the pitfall reaching almost to the door frame itself.

Ician blinked. "Okay... good thing we didn't step in first." He takes another table leg and throws it into the hole, listening for how long it took before it hit the bottom - if there even was a bottom.

The table leg falls until it fades from sight, and then surprisingly enough something more akin to the sound of a vacuum suddenly filling, or a pop noise in reverse, distantly echoed out rather than the expected thud.

"Uh..." Ician hesitates. "Right... no, I have no idea what that might be. Some more magic, no doubt." He tried to peer into the pit as far as he could without falling in, but not without first latching his legs onto the doorframe in case something tried to pull him in. "Maybe it disabled a spell, or something."

His horn glowed brighter, and another table leg floated over and dropped into the pit.

I think either way we'll need to try a different door, Dusk thought. He'd wait until Ician's curiosity was satisfied before voicing that.

And once again, the table leg simply fell until it could no longer be seen, even with the added light, followed by the sound once again a few moments later.

Ician stood up and took a step back. "Alright, we're not getting through here, that's for certain." He looked around the room. "Maybe... that one." He trotted over to the next nearest door and opened it, sword held in a defensive parry stance.