More than Monsters
Fifteenth Day of Elnu-Hamba (Elnu Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)
Strange are the battles fought far from the light of day... as the lantern sways and falls in a crash of red and spilled oil you pick up Inge and run by no lght save Durendal's even as you manage to push the monstrous darkness out of the way with your shield as it reached out with a hideous false limb towards Tom. All the while Zaia moves with a nimbleness that belies his age, slipping under the blows of the thing... loosing naught but a piece of his beard. You might have learned some new curse words, some part of our mind that has an affinity to gallows humor notes
The sound of sundering stone echoes in the depths as the thing rears out like a black wave and strikes the lintel of the stone door. It's trying to trap you in here with it, you realize with a surge of fear, not cold but hot as fire in your veins. There is no way you are going to be able to slip by it... but it is not a thing of flesh and blood, neither man not beast nor foul spirit.
With the name of your lost home on your lips you charge though it where the blackness is thinnest doing your best to shield Inge in your arms... the next thing you hear cracking is your own ribs as the thing smashes into them and the sound of chain sizzling and burning from the touch of the thing.
You take 27 Damage
Thankfully the others manage to slip past wit Tom even using his spear as leverage to jam the gap open for Zaia to pass... and then you are out and away.
"Keep away and kill it from a distance!" you shout.
And so you do for though you think there is a mind there in its depths, dark and hungry, it cannot overcome the limitations of its titanic bulk. Like a wave of tar it flows over the stone and like tar it burns, it freezes and it shatters by Inge's magic. For the first time in your life you curse that you have no means to strike from afar, but in the end your aid is not needed. The thing simply isn't fast enough to pin you against a wall or to bar your way in some other way.
It dies with a startlingly human screech, one in a familiar voice, though you had heard it only once before on the field of battle. So dies Unke the Red for he third and you hope final time as his armor crashes to the rough floor with a final deafening clank. Then there is silence beside the sound of heavy breathing.
"That burned remarkably well..." Zaia says as he scooped up some of the pitch black substance under Tom's horrified gaze.
"What in the name of G..."
"Leave him be Tom," you sigh. "It might be of some use to us all later, swords and spears might yet fail against horrors such as these."
"Not
that spear,
that sword," Inge cuts in, her voice soft but firm. "They have a weight to them that other things do not... just like the tomb."
Re-Gained Armor of Unke
Zaia gains 10 lbs of Ebony Vitae
"Not a tomb," Zaia concludes, able to read some of the markings along the side. Snaking along the side of the strange silver vessel is a procession of men and women, all young and fair, their features familiar from the streets of Noomo or Apuku, but their clothes strange to behold, fitting their limbs as a quiver fits arrows, not a stitch or crease on them. The moon that is depicted on the side has a great wyrm coiled around it as though it were an egg for it to guard.
According to Inge the magic upon it, so bright as to be almost blinding is no that of death, but of life and the conjuration of the spheres.
"A vessel for..." Zaia cuts himself off looking almost frightened by his own thoughts. "The restoration of life to the dying abolishing sickness and the ills of old age, but at that terrible price?"
"We have seen it, the guard Unke brought with him at the gate," you guess and yet you cannot help but ask. "Would it remove a curse?"
"I think so... it could perhaps be used in healing as much as darker rites... but I...." the scholar shakes his head. "To think so many fools sought for life unending, this is an old thing, a mighty magic that could be used for healing and for harm, but only ever in one piece, do we trust the lady Aina with it, do we take it as our prize?"
"Break it for the silver, say we found it that way," you have never heard Tom speak that way, almost pleading. He cannot hide his revulsion of the tomb... the sarcophagus as Zaia had called it.
What do you do with the silver Sarcophagus?
[] Give it over to Aina intact
[] Claim it intact
[] Break it for the silver
-[] And give the pieces to Aina
-[] And claim a portion of it: Write in how much
[] Write in
OOC: I did not do a blow by blow since the fight was a bit of a slog once you managed to get into the room, hope you guys don't mind. 
Breaking the word is not good for our alignment and reputation.
