For the better part of an hour, Liirah combed the ruins for any sign of her mentor, living or dead. The courtyard was searched first, in the hopes that she might find some sign of boot-tracks in the snow, but either the wind had smoothed them over, or nobody had treaded these stones for weeks. When the outer quarters yielded no results, she shouldered open the grand carved doors of the main hall, their iced hinges squealing loudly as she shoved her way inside. The noise cut through the gloom and silence like a knife, making her wince, but she stepped inside, letting her eyes roam over the soaring architecture. A torch was untied from her rucksack and lit with a bit of flint and steel, to be held overhead as she continued her search. Even time and weather had not been able to completely destroy the majesty of this place, but it was a decrepit, somber sort of majesty. She found herself wondering as to the history of these ruins--the villagers would only mutter that they were cursed, that they had been abandoned long ago due to some great tragedy.<br/><br/>In the business of monster hunting, it was unwise to disregard folktales like that, especially when rumors of supernatural creatures often surfaced in the same area. Liirah had taken them with a grain of salt, however. Whatever had happened in the past, she doubted that any of it lingered to this day.<br/><br/>To her frustration, however, her prowling through the crumbling halls and rooms produced nothing. The place seemed well and truly abandoned, as if nothing, whether mundane or supernatural, had been here in ages. Exhausted, she sat down on a pile of crumbling masonry and huffed, pinching the bridge of her nose in exasperation. If there truly was nothing here, then she had just wasted precious time that could have been spent searching elsewhere. Ignatius could be lying injured somewhere, or even dead, and his supposed student couldn't even help him. Some hunter<i>she</i>was.<b>"Hell,"</b>she growled quietly, rising to her feet once more to continue her search.