To the right

With nothing to lose, she turned to the right, and headed down the tunnel. For a while, all she had to tell her progress was her step count, and her hand trailing along the rough, battered stone walls. Every so often she would stumble over some pile of debris or another, and bite down on a curse as her abused toes protested the latest collision with the stone.

A short while later, she felt a trace of magic in the air, and froze. She couldn't tell where it was coming from, or what it was doing, just that it was present. Suddenly, small sconces inset with stones flickered to light along the length of the tunnel ahead. Venus blinked rapidly, momentarily blinded by the light after so long trapped in the dark, even as her body carried itself to a covered position behind a nearby pile of rubble. As her vision cleared, she risked a look over the pile of debris she was behind, and found she could see a decent ways down the tunnel, to where it seemed to end in a large room.

After several pulse-pounding moments, she carefully left her cover and began walking down the hall towards the room, her bare soles making the faintest whispers of sound against the ruined stone floor. She could see what appeared to be ruined automata laying against the walls. Such things were believed to be ancient gnomish creations, long since lost to the passage of time, and she fervently hoped she wouldn't encounter an active one in her current state.

As she entered the room, she found it as ruined as the hall, with what appeared to be a door in the wall to her left, leading farther into the ruins. A large stone monolith stood, mostly intact, in the center of the room. After carefully examining the room, and determining it to be free of hostiles, she slipped into it, intent on scavenging it for something to use as a weapon, at the least.

As she approached the center of the room, the monolith shocked her as it began to split open, and she stood still for a moment, watching its' surprisingly silent opening. As it opened, it revealed a curved blade, approximately three feet in length, with a mirror-like finish. Faint runic inscriptions could be seen running down the length of the blade.

She moved over to the base of the monolith, where she found a small plaque, but it had not withstood the rigors of time, and was unreadable. Sighing, she reached into the monolith, hoping there wasn't a trap there, but what she found was much more surprising.

As her hand touched the hilt of the blade, she felt...something touch her mind, probing deeply through it. Faint memories of her past flicked before her eyes, visions of everything from Woodsedge to her younger years, after her parents had died, touching on her quests for vengeance for the fallen.

After a few moments, a faint question entered her mind: "Do you truly undertake these quests for the fallen, or are they undertaken for yourself?"

Sensing the answer would be pivotal somehow, she stood there, silent, and let the question settle, before answering.