Arc 1 Post 44: In Hollow Halls, by Empty Light
In Hollow Halls, by Empty Light
The Season of Still Stone
If it were not for Gorok there is no way you would have found a way through the muddy slipways that wind down from the surface and spiral into a worm's nest of confusing tunnels. Then again, if it were not for Gorok you would not have to help carve the way through a tangle of what Cob had rightly called 'tumble thorns', roughly spherical masses of blue-black stems and thorns that scatter their seeds with the floods and then absorb all the water and humidity like a cork in a bottle. Thankfully you are only two thirds of the way through the Season of Stone, there is no torrent on the other-side waiting to drown the unwise explorer going up to find a tunnel at a higher elevation, but that does not mean the bloody thorns are any easier to deal with... literally bloody in many cases.
"Must be nice to have skin that can take the scratching," you announce, drawing a laugh from Mina, which cuts off into a sharp breath and a 'darn' that sounds strange indeed in the tongue of your people, though not as strange as the notion that somewhere above your head is a world where cursing at once's ill fortune is softened to similar sounding words.
As you finally make it to a higher elevation Gorok offers the first bit of comfort in what feels like ten-thousand beats. "Upper tunnel, buttressed, northsouth, no more thorns..."
He is as good as his word. The tunnel, just wide enough for Warty to slip through, though without a rider is trying, and thankfully absent the pervasive life you have been fighting so far, though not without the signs of other life. Large round faces with many rows of razor sharp teeth peer at you, their eyes left bare stone. Goblin markings. Even though Gorok had not seen nor heard any trace of them when he had scouted ahead, all of you keep your hands on your weapons.
What you eventually discover is far stranger than any ambush.
Past a barricade of ill-fitting stones with obvious sentry posts behind them, feathered and felted with whatever their occupants could find to make the bare stone more comfortable, the path opens into a long narrow gallery held up by limestone pillars painted even more extensively than the tunnel. Notched and carved with strange art, misshapen spiders whose eyes are bubbles in the stone, thin spires carved into the likeness of spears or spits with meat still hanging off them, rotting.
Pepper paws at a cold hearth, sending a charred bone rattling across the floor.
"Let's get out of here," Mina says anxiously.
"Forward faster than backward," Cob points out reasonably. Even Warty seems to give an approving warble, though come to think of it that may have been contemplative of if there is enough food to bother eating.
The gallery narrows as it moves westwards and after about half a mile the floor falls away into a narrow span of stone with water flowing a good twenty five feet below. As Gorok coaxes Warty over the bridge you notice something in the water. Bodies, goblin bodies. It is impossible to tell what might have killed them unless you want to have a swim, but the grey tone of their skin marks them for Stone Gobblers.
Once you are past the bridge your path is down through what does not seem to be another slipway but a tunnel built long ago by the same hands that had made the straight way, though these walls are far from straight, neat lines. Cracks run like branching wounds along its sides and in places it had even partially collapsed.
"We are level with the magic stone room." Gorok points towards an arch leading off to the side, this one covered in loose rock that in a thousand-beat is enough to clear, especially with Warty's help. The last impediment is... a door, an actual proper door, carved of white marble no less with veins of black that had been integrated into the design by some long gone sculptor who made of them a pair of large bat-like wings that sprout from the shoulders of a woman in the center of the door. You would have to split her in twine to open the way. For a moment Mina hesitates and you wonder if she is going to ask to turn back, but she does not, instead steeling herself to push on the door.
It opens without a sound, spilling crimson light out into the passage to reveal the chamber Gorok has spoken of before. Below polished stone and all around innings in the stone now empty, six in all, above a ceiling set with points of crimson lights in patterns bewildering and strange, but in the center of the chamber is a stature carved of the same marble as the door. The figure is obviously a woman, though not as you have ever seen one, with enormous wings like those of a bat sprouting from her slender shoulders, though the rest of her figure is far from it. Draped in robes clearly meant to reveal and entice far more than their cover, in her right hand is a goblet and in her left what you at first think of as a handful of daggers, but looking more closely you realize the weapons are not held but growing from her hand, nails sharp and deadly.
"This is a temple... and not to any goodly power," Mina breathes. "That looks almost like a sucubus, like the dream the goblins had spoken of."
"Looks valuable," Gorok points out. "We could take lights, sell in Cauldron."
What does Akorian think of this place?
[] It is dangerous, you should not linger
[] It is fascinating, take the time to study every part of the temple
[] Write in
OOC: Rolls would be somewhat spoiler-y to post so they will be added later.
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