Exploring Bannagh Macht's outskirts

You crouch down and begin to move slowly and carefully into the ancient city. You probe the ground carefully with every step before committing your weight to it, doing your best to avoid stepping on any loose stones or unfortunately placed dry sticks. A part of your mind rails against the painful slowness of your progress, but the rest of you knows that undue haste will just get you killed for no benefit. The wards actually begin a good distance from the outskirts of the city, and you estimate that it takes you at least an hour before you begin to see the vague shadows of buildings rising in the mists. Curiously, while the mists near the wards were incredibly dense, they thin somewhat as you move towards the center of the area covered by the dome. You're pretty sure that they'll still provide you with plenty of concealment, but instead of barely being able to see your own hands at the ends of your arms, you can now actually make out large shapes about three to four meters out.

The first buildings you come upon are barely more than piles of rubble. Time and perhaps **** -- you're no anthropologist, even on Earth -- have ravaged them quite thoroughly. You think for a moment about digging through the remains, but quickly discard that thought. It would take way too long and you seriously doubt any valuable information is likely to be found in the very first ruined building you stumble across. Instead, you creep further into the city, searching for a more intact building to investigate.

The sun is burning directly overhead when you find the first building with a partially intact structure. The wall facing the street you've been following is still standing, along with parts of the roof, although the door has long since rotted away. You slowly ease your way inside. The mist is much, much lighter inside the building, except directly inside the door and under the holes in the roof, and you can see the entire interior in relatively normal detail. Unfortunately, there isn't much to see. There are lumps of heavily decayed and worm-eaten organic debris, little more than dirt mounds really, where once there might have been tables and chairs. You spend several minutes carefully poking through several of them, but find nothing except dirt and some extremely rusted fragments of iron which were probably nails at some point in the distant past. Curiously, no bugs crawl from the debris as you search through it.

You turn and begin to make your way out, but freeze when you hear a noise outside the vacant doorway. You hold perfectly still and strain your ears until you hear it again.

shshshshthlp. shshshshthlp.

The noise is slowly approaching the doorway, and your heart begins to pound in your chest as you move as quickly as you dare to place your back against the wall near the door. You hold a hand facing the entrance and hover just on the edge of casting Flame Jet.

shshshshthlp. snfffffp. shshshshthlp.

The noises draw closer and you begin to hear a softer noise in between the longer, more drawn out sounds which originally drew your attention. It sounds almost like something dragging across the ground, interspersed with an occasional snuffle like a dog searching for a morsel of food which rolled under the couch.

shshshshthlp. snffffffffffffffp.

The sounds are coming from directly outside now. Your fingers tense involuntarily, assuming the position of the first gesture in Flame Jet.

snfffffffffffp

A desiccated snout covered in dry, leafless vines pokes into the building and you can see the nostrils flare as the creature inhales, searching for a scent. You say a silent prayer to anyone who might care to listen, then push off the wall, swiveling to face the monster in the doorway, and cast Flame Jet as quickly as you can. You get a momentary glimpse of a large, vine-covered boar corpse bathed in the red glow of your magic gathering, and it gets just enough time to squeal out its discovery before your spell completes. Flames pour from your palm and your mind's eye is instantly inundated with prompts.

Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin.
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin.
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin.
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Boar Manikin is afflicted with Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Fire damage dealt to a creature with Burn resets the duration of Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Fire damage dealt to a creature with Burn resets the duration of Burn!
Boar Manikin takes 15 fire damage [5 base, multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] from Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Fire damage dealt to a creature with Burn resets the duration of Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Fire damage dealt to a creature with Burn resets the duration of Burn!
Boar Manikin takes 15 fire damage [5 base, multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] from Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Fire damage dealt to a creature with Burn resets the duration of Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn's Flame Jet deals 17.85 fire damage [5 base, +19% fire spell power; multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] to Boar Manikin. Fire damage dealt to a creature with Burn resets the duration of Burn!
Boar Manikin takes 15 fire damage [5 base, multiplied by 3 due to severe vulnerability to fire damage] from Burn!
Aidan Lostlorn has slain Boar Manikin! Aidan Lostlorn has earned 250 experience.

You're so distracted by the sudden flood of notifications and the surge of adrenaline in your system that you complete a full second Flame Jet cast before you realize that your first cast reduced the monster to a bonfire smelling of rotten bacon and patchouli. You stand there, arm outstretched towards the remains of the monster, panting heavily, mind temporarily blank. This is the first time in your life you have been the initiator of intense ****, and certainly the first time you have ever killed anything aside from the occasional bug. Well, re-killed? You're pretty sure this was some sort of undead or not-really-alive creature.

After a long moment, you remember that the manikin squealed rather loudly just before you torched it. If anything else was nearby, there is no way they could have missed that noise. Unfortunately, the manikin is still merrily burning in the doorway. Fortunately, there are plenty of other holes in this ruined building. As you make your way towards a pile of rubble leading up to a hole in the rear wall, you try to focus your thoughts on minimizing that combat log. You can see how it provides useful information, but having it spam you with prompts like that could have gotten you killed if you didn't have the perfect spell prepared to kill the manikin in a single attack. Thankfully, like everything else involving your HUD, focused intent seems to do the trick and the messages minimize to a new icon along the sides of your mental view.

Making more noise than you would prefer, you scramble up the pile of debris and out the hole in the wall. You move perpendicular to your previous path as best you can, creeping along to the next street over.