GLORM
It had been a good fight, the group against the stone statues. No, stone Golums. Hmmmm... Iron Golums? Deadly Iron Golums, with the fires of hell burning in their eyes? Yes, deadly Iron Golums, fast as quicksilver, harder than mitherial armor, fires of hell burning in their eyes, speaking curses in the dread old tongue, brandishing swords of unspeakable darkness...
His reverie was broken by El Sid, just as he was beginning to form the skeleton of the tale of his friend's death. Skeleton? Iron Golums, fast as quicksilver, with their skeleton army brandishing axes the size of...
"GLORM, DAMMIT, PAY ATTENTION" shouted El Sid.
Startled, and a bit miffed, he did. Didn't El Sid realize how serious this situation was? They needed to get the story down before the details were lost in the haze of time.
"You and I are on lead" continued the man. "Krinn is second rank, and fire support. Delrin and the Don are carrying Fuji. We'll go as far as we safely can." Glorm stepped on a spider.
"Then we get eaten by spiders, right?"
El Sid grimaced, face contorted by emotion and the flickering torch light. Flickering torch light? "Hey" said Glorm, "there be a breeze here!"
Krinn suddenly spoke up. "He's right. I can feel it, smell it... fresh air."
"This is the last level" threw in the Don. "If there is a way out, it should be here."
"What about Tanaka, Aron, and Tristan?" asked Krinn. El Sid just shook his head.
"Take what we can from the bodies. I think they would want it that way."
Glorm moved quickly. He had recognized the glimmer of mitherial in Tanaka's armor and sword early on. Aron had nothing significant except the Urakai sword with the inset gems. Tristan had the party's funds, and the gold was quickly split amount the survivors.
They moved on. The room exited to the east, a narrow corridor that took them fifty, sixty feet before turning south. To the south was a large room, covered in wispy spider webs, the small insects more numerous that stars in the sky.
Torches barely illuminated the far walls. Blood red agate, with streaks of darker mica running through it, gave the area a grim, ugly look. The room was actually three separate areas, segregated by ridges. Three domes, each larger than the last, each intersecting the one before it in a simple arch. Eight tunnels lead off of the two more distant, larger areas. "Spider motif again" commented El Sid. Others nodded in agreement. In the center of the middle area stood a large chair, throne-like in its appearance. It was empty. El Sid motioned, and they moved forward. The breeze was strong enough to register on the skin.
SID
As much as he hated to admit it, this charnel house was beginning to get to him. Death, in its many shapes and forms, was no stranger to him. Sudden, violent death was just short of commonplace. But this... best to leave the workings of the ghods and racial destinies to those who believed in them. "Urakai." He thought shaking his head, "Seemed good at the time, but what a boneheaded idea it turned out to be". Sid scanned the room. He noted the torch smoke wafting away from a corridor as an incoming draft of fresh air showed that, indeed, this strange temple breathed.
He eyed the throne. Motioning to the others, he paced around the chair scrutinizing its every line, searching. He looked at Krinn and raised an eyebrow. She shrugged. "One step at a time", he thought, "I didn't get this far by being careless."
He still was annoyed with himself that he hadn't taken the bowl when he had wanted to initially. Best to trust his instincts. No more relying totally on the judgment of the dwarf. "Too short", he mused wryly, "No perspective". Might have saved the life of one of his comrades if they had the bowl with them. Not that their losses necessarily bothered him overmuch: you paid your money and took your chances. But sloppy work and the loss of manpower resources did: it was professionally embarrassing and, more to the point, Sid and Dom's personally-precious hides weren't out of this hole in the ground yet. "Hmmm... first secure the retreat" he determined.
Sid sent Rosebud up the corridor from which the fresh air welled. His eyes defocused as he concentrated... concentrated... images slowly overlaid the room before him, images in some ways sharper, in some ways oddly blurry than his own eyes. The smell of the place took on more significance, although he knew this was more psychological than real; he had experimented with tracking things by scent with Rosebud, and never had much success. He closed his eyes for a moment to get a better idea of what the cat was seeing, but Rosebud's motion confused his sense of balance and he quickly opened his eyes again, stomach threatening to loose some of the slim rations he had downed.
Even with his eyes open, he had the sense of the tunnel, dark damp walls, small things moving... spiders, not rats... moving at a fast pace. Things were getting darker as Rosebud left even the faintest glimmers from their torches behind, and in the dim light the walls raced passed, blurred with the cat's speed. Again, experience told him that a fast pace was relative to Rosebud's size, and he estimated that the cat had only covered about eighty to a hundred feet before the tunnel banked steeply up. Rosebud's pace slowed; the entire tunnel was thick with webs. It would be impossible for a human to move through there without cutting or burning some of them out of the way. Twenty, thirty, forty feet went by, then a glimmer of light appeared.
Rosebud slowed, and moved more cautiously at El Sid's mental prompting, but it was unnecessary. Ahead was a wall, full of holes the size of gold pieces. A few of holes were larger, jagged edges attesting to collapse rather than manufacture as their source. Rosebud slipped through one, entering a round tunnel through which a tepid stream of water flowed. A short distance away was a opening to sunlight. Probably a sewer system, but it didn't matter. El Sid ordered Rosebud back, had the cat pause for a moment at the crumbling camouflaged opening to the dungeon. Satisfied that they could break through it easily, he told the cat to continue back to them, then released his mental contact with the animal, vision snapping back to the here-and-now.
Having ascertained that, in fact, they had a bolt hole, Sid returned his attentions to the chair. He was determined to make this whole fiasco worth his time and trouble. Absently flipping one of the "spider" daggers, he approached the throne.
Swirls of dust were the only movement as he came closer. There was something on the throne... something small, buried in the dust. He cautiously approached, then gently fanned the dust out of the way. A simple cord, gray with age, tied together at the ends to form a circle of perhaps eight inches to a foot in diameter, greeted his eyes.
Sid pursed his lips, head tilting to one side. "Damn," he thought, "Not more riddles!" The party hadn't done so well in the clever department this venture. He had been trained to perform better than this. His mentors would not have been pleased; Uncle Vic disappointed. He stopped. "Maybe just walk away... cut losses" he mused, "Maybe that's the smart move here." His eyes narrowed. He considered the rope circle. He felt his resolve weakening. It was not just happenstance that Sid could commune with his feline companion. He grimaced, knowing he was about to do something stupid but unable to restrain himself. "Curiosity," he reflected, "killed the cat." He could only hope that he had nine lives as well. And there was that adage about satisfaction, after all...
Of course, there were intangibles to consider. Not the least was the strange sense of time expansion here in the temple. They seemed to have been here forever! Sid tried to remember anything remotely relating to a rope, perhaps a crown. Nada. His mind just couldn't seem to find the data, the clues. "Red is for Madness, Green the color of Honor? No, wait. The blood of children washes the stain of bear grease from the clothes of the Urakai?" No, no that wasn't right either, Sid thought furiously. If only he had read that message from his system's manager, the one concerning yet another attempt to fix their ailing Email system. The one that said that all files in Draft over three months old should be Archived because they would be deleted over Thanksgiving. If only he could remember where he put the hard copy of himself and the party, of his and Dom's abilities... at home in that stack of papers he feed into the fireplace last Saturday? It just wasn't clear. "Oh, well," he decided, "No use whining like a Welfare Democrat. It's time to thin the herd, to punish the dumb. May only the smart, strong and/or lucky survive..." His courage screwed firmly to the sticking place, Sid mentally saluted The Bard and smiled. A Challenge. His cunning versus that of the Reaper. Would this hour be his last? Time to cast the dice...
DOM
The cat scooted up the corridor. Several minutes later, Sid shook himself and they exchanged a look. So. Then the Sid approached the throne, lost in thought. After a time, his eyes began to light and slowly a small, chilling smile appeared on his face and he stepped forward. "Damn. Here we go again," thought the Dom. He knew the Sid like no other did. Knew he couldn't resist a challenge. Knew that Sid's insatiable appetite for knowledge and power would one day spell his death. But not this day. As he had done before, as he hoped to live to do again, Dom stepped in front of Sid and put a stiff arm to his chest. "No, cousin," he intoned seeking the man's eyes, "No, cousin. Me." Anger and impatience flickered across Sid's visage. He started to shrug off Perignon, who seized his wrist. "No, cousin. Not this time." The silent struggle of wills continued, the men's eyes boring into each other. Finally, Sid shrugged. He handed Dom the spider dagger and stepped aside, folding his arms, taking a wide stance. Subdued, but still cocky and alert. Dom, mindful of all the webs, called for the spider sword. He approached the throne from the side, and trusting his high wisdom to alert him to any previously unseen clues or dangers, used the sword to scoop the rope up and off the seat of the chair. Could it really be a crown? A cursed strangulation device? A magic Portal or Key? He would find out...
GLORM
The dwarf watched as the two black-clad men postured. Hmmmpf. A Rope?? Well, it wasn't gold or gems, but then nothing in this tomb had been what it had appeared to be. Sure it was magic but what to do with it? He watched as Dom eased cautiously up to the large stone chair. Maybe you had to sit in the chair to activate the rope? Why else would it be sitting on the chair? Glorm had always considered himself as healthfully greedy as the next dwarf, but he was beginning to get a bad feeling about this. He didn't remember anything about a rope either...
As the Dom gingerly slid the sword under the rope and lifted it, the ancient material visibly frayed, decayed beyond the capability to hold together. The man tried to return it to the chair, but it was a futile attempt; even as he did, the entire circle crumbled into nothing, raising a cloud of thick dust. Glorm readied his weapon, eyes trying to watch the chair and every other inch of the room at the same time. After a few seconds, during which nothing moved, he suddenly realized he was holding his breath and let it out explosively, not relaxing in the slightest. A few more, and he began to wonder if the circle of rope had meant nothing, an odd remnant of an odder dungeon. The dust raised by the Dom was slowly settling... Glorm's blood froze. It wasn't settling as much as coalescing... a grimy cloud, thick enough to block vision, oddly contained in a shape that he recognized...
DELRIN
He started the increasingly familiar chant to cast his lightning bolt, but the increasingly solid looking figure of a tall Urakai that was forming out of dust, sitting regally in the throne, was unsettling enough that he felt his voice quavering. Why he had ever thought adventuring was a life he wanted was beyond him now. He thought about moving, trying to get a better angle on the thing, but focusing his willpower was hard enough as it was, and he resolved to hold the prep and let fly if it looked like the kind of slaughter they had faced with the statues; he might get some of his comrades, but another attack like the last, and he doubted they would survive it anyway.
The Dom had moved back, and flipped the spider sword to El Sid with a smooth motion. Only the sweat on his face gave away any indication of concern. El Sid was almost nonchalant, snapping the sword out of the air and swinging it through a three hundred sixty degree arc, shifting his grip in mid sweep, ending in perfect form with the point of the sword aimed at the Urakai's heart... if it had one. The man couldn't be that cold... it had to be more bravado and show than lack of fear.
The figure finally took on the hue of a living Urakai, looking almost real but for a slight grittyness about the image. It sat for a moment, a moment during which you could have heard a pin drop, with its head hung low.
"Cha bragut morakun." The voice was odd, with no inflection or intonation, and a dry, raspy element that set his teeth on edge.
"We are... a surprise?" stumbled Krinn, attempting to translate.
El Sid was already casting his read/speak languages spell. "Cha Queguat?" he replied, clearly a request to repeat the sentence.
The Urakai responded. "Not what he expected" echoed El Sid, close enough to Krinn's interpretation. "Cha morakun grunn pradut?" Again the Urakai responded. El Sid and Krinn assisted each other in the translation.
"He expected Urakai... part of the test was the Urakai colors..." El Sid replied in broken Urakai, speaking Aron's name several times, then the Urakai continued, while El Sid and Krinn puzzled out his words. "It matters not; the test is complete, by who is not of... significance. It is painful... to know that the Urakai have not retaken this town... but his anger is spent. Kolsky... that was the guy that captured the town during the third orc-human war... allowed him to capture the false scrying device, the bowl, tricked him into leaving his position, capturing the town by outflanking him. This was the mark of a cunning warrior... I think he means that this was OK, not the real problem..." El Sid and Krinn stopped translating, listening to a torrent of Urakai from the apparition on the throne.
Krinn grimaced and took up the story. "The Urakai still had a superior fighting force, but could not break the town's fortifications. They settled in for a siege, but Kolsky had the captured children flayed alive on the ramparts, and the women who had not been able to kill themselves, including his wife, raped by squads of men. This apparently drove the Chief mad, and he squandered his forces in a direct attack, almost dying himself in the process. He returned later in the war, recapturing the town. But apparently the madness grew greater and greater until..." and she stopped looking at El Sid in puzzlement. The man shook his head negatively, also clearly not understanding the rest of the speech. She picked up the thread again a few moments later. "Something about the curse of the spider arising when humans came again as had been... foretold to him?... no, wait... the spiders ARE the curse. They are... venomous, driving those bitten to slow madness. The dungeon was a way for a Urakai to end the curse if the town was retaken, a end that has now been exercised... I think he said the spiders are harmless now." El Sid nodded in agreement.
It was quiet for a moment. Then the Urakai spoke in English. "Humans, my hate for you is past, crumbling away like the dust of the ages." Hollow, haunted eyes turned toward them. "I will tell you. There are the ways of the magic to bridge the gap between what is and what is not, the here and now and the might have been or never was. There are older ways as well, older ways that only the darkest heart could think of using. My advice is to die in blood rage, striking at your enemy. The cost for my path is too great. He held out a shaking hand and a perfect sapphire fell out of it to the floor. "One of the twelve keys of Blackheart. Bury it deeply." There was a sudden crash, a gust of wind, and a flurry of dust that quickly settled over a empty throne and floor. El Sid picked up the Sapphire, looked it over, tossed it to Glorm.
"Glorm?"
GLORM:
He had been distracted with thoughts of the fight with the statues . Glorm hadn't felt that good in quite some time. There was nothing like a good death struggle to get your blood flowing in the morning. Too bad Tanaka and Tristan had died so quickly, they had missed out on half the fun. Oh well that was life, or death, or...
By the time Glorm looked up from his adrenaline induced stupor, the two boys in black had been screwing with that rope thingy. Damn, Glorm had wanted to search that throne, before they started messing around. Those two were too curious for their own good; it wasn't as if there was any gold or gems on the chair.
He wasn't surprised when another one of those damn ghosts materialized. It was what you got for messing around in a haunted city. The resulting conversation had been hard to follow. Glorm was trying to pick up the basics he remembered from his short period as a Urakai slave, such as "two beers please" and "die heretic scum", but all he picked up was a bunch of barking and yelling. Then the ghost had switched into common. This was a little more familiar to Glorm.
"Blackheart", why did that sound familiar? Suddenly a perfect sapphire dropped from the ghosts hand. Glorm was quick, but El Sid had actually been paying attention to the ghost and got the jump on the normally quick dwarf, grabbing the gem just as it hit the floor. Glorm eyed the man in black armor, carefully sizing up the situation. You didn't fool around when gems of this magnitude were at stake.
He quickly blanked his features trying to look nonchalant. El Sid looked the gem over quickly and tossed it to the dwarf, trusting the dwarf would never drop such a precious commodity. The sapphire was even more spectacular up close, and such an odd cut. Where had he seen that cut before? It came back to him suddenly.
Glorm stood looking at it for a long time, not turning and inspecting it, but as if in shock. Finally he spoke. "Very high quality, very unusual cut. A very old cut, one that I have only seen once before.
El Sid looked at him curiously. "A similar sapphire?"
"No, just a similar cut. The other one was... an emerald."
El Sid asked him another question, and he suddenly realized the shock had left him dazed, answering more plainly than he should have. He tried to cover his tracks quickly. "Ummm... I think, that is, was very long time ago and all that, you know..." he trailed off as El Sid raised an eyebrow and curled his lip in a disbelieving grin.
"Damn" thought the dwarf, this wasn't working. Oh well time to come clean, or at least partially clean.
"I have seen a similar cut before, back in my homeland. There was a mysterious hermit wore an emerald just like this sapphire. I think it prudent that we investigate this more thoroughly." "There". he thought, "that was just enough of the truth to make it sound believable"
Glorm continued, "I think it would be wise for us to make a hasty exit from this place, much as I like dark dank underground places, this one has a few to many spiders for my taste, not to mention ghosts. Why don't we see if we can find any of the horses, and lazy my pony. Then we can start making our way back to town today. I think a week or two relaxing in even that flea bag of a town would do us all some good."
"The haul from this place hasn't been too bad" said the dwarf hefting the bag of silver in one hand and the sapphire in the other. He thought for a minute, then tossed the bag of silver to El Sid. "Here why don't you keep that safe, while I keep an eye on this little bauble." Glorm carefully slipped the gem in his not so secret money belt, wrapping it carefully in a piece of cloth. "I had one more thought to increase our share by a good bit. This town has a perfect location overlooking the river, and the walls are in fair shape. Of course no one will come here because of the curse. Now no one but us knows that the curse is lifted. For a sizable fee, we could 'remove' the curse for some local lord. The trick will be finding someone honest enough to keep their end of the bargain."
KRINN:
The normally silent elf broke in at this point. "You know Glorm, greed seams to make you think quickly on your feet. I like your plan. I have been thinking we need more information, and the Hcetlac cult is the place to find it. Why don't Dom and I slip back into Kethem for a week or two to look into this Blackheart. I might be able to pick up a spell or two while we are there. The way things have been going, we can use all of the magic we can get. Meanwhile, the rest of you can scope out all of the local lords. It might be worth something to the Hcetlac boys to have a say in who takes control of this place. It would be worth a lot to have them owe us one"
The event quieter Delrin piped in "Yes, and while we are in town, we can look for those crystal harvesters. If we could enter that accursed forest, we might be able to remove that horrible spell. The existence of that place eats away at my soul", and with that pronouncement the druid was quiet once again.
EL SID
Sid searched his memory. Blackheart...Blackheart... nothing obvious surfaced, but he had a nagging feeling he had heard the name before.
Well, he liked the sound of the guy, anyway. Anyone or place with such a gloomy name had to be interesting. The shade's warning he dismissed out of hand. Sure, the Urakai had been a warrior of tremendous force and power to have set up all this and for his will to have survived the centuries. Sure, power is dangerous and care has to be used in seeking or manipulating it. But, bury the sapphire?! The Sid snickered mentally. He thought not. After all, the Urakai had been powerful, but he had been a primitive, a savage, and, more over, a loser. He had been a leader that had been dimwitted enough to be tricked and thereby failed his people. He then had the misfortune to live to see them slaughtered before his eyes. A loser. Powerful, yes. But a broken loser. Certainly a modern, such as himself, sophisticated in the nuances of such matters, would not run afoul of this Darkheart. After all, forewarned is forearmed. This jewel could be useful in conjunction with the other Blackheart Keys, or as a tool or bargaining chip in and of itself. A useful trade item. But it is also possible that this key had more to do with the Urakai's madness than his experiences, mused the Sid. Perhaps. We'll be very careful with this tool, he decided.
Dom Perignon turned and looked speculatively back into the Temple area they had come from. "Well, if the curse is lifted, does anyone think that we should go back and loot anything of value that might be left? What have we got here: a scroll, a few spider daggers, a spider sword, a bowl, some armor, a little cash... anything else? Anything we passed on that someone who's Email Files didn't get erased can remember?"
At the suggestion of going back up the corridor, Delrin visibly paled. "Er...ah...that is...a...NO!" He stated emphatically, shaking his head. "I think we got everything, didn't we Krinn," looking in the elf's direction, "Didn't we?!" The elf appeared noncommittal. Meanwhile, the Dwarf had started to root around the base of the stone chair.
"Hey! Somebody help me try to move this thing... there's got to be more loot around here someplace. Stands to reason, doesn't it?" the little man said hopefully. Sid, still lost in thought, cleared his throat. "People, does anyone recall getting any spider bites?" his boot pivoting to crunch a small crawly thing for emphasis. "Madness came from the spider bites. Maybe lifting the curse isn't retroactive on the madness. If not, some of us could be in trouble." No one could avow that they had been bitten. But then, many of the survivors were sorely injured. A spider's bite might have gone unnoticed amid the greater misery. "If the curse has been lifted, then that old fool in the town should have regained lucidity," he continued. "He might remember things and begin to blab. If there is anything we want to investigate here, we had best do it now." Or 'convince' the old man to remain quiet, he added silently.
They did as thorough a search as their remaining torches would allow without finding anything, then headed up the corridor that the Sid assured them lead to the surface. His black cat waited patiently by the entrance. As they climbed higher, the spider webs became denser and denser. The small (and some not so small) furry black arachnids swarmed everywhere. The Don stopped. "Do we really trust that Ghost that the curse is lifted? Wouldn't it be a good final revenge on the humans among us if the spider's bite still causes madness? That Urakai had a powerful hate. With the end in sight, it's no time to start getting sloppy. I think we should burn our way out of here. What have we got that will do the trick?"
Fuji surprised everyone by answering, obviously having regained consciousness. He rummaged around in his backpack. "These help?" he asked, extracting several flasks of light kerosene. "Best everyone to stand back a bit. This stuff has tendency to 'flash'."
The Sid grinned slightly: he loved a good fireball...
FUJI
He coughed a bit more, clearing the last of the smoke from his lungs. The spider webs had burned away quickly, but with a thick black smoke that had almost suffocated the party. They had retreated for a while, then forged ahead through the still smoldering tunnel, anxious for a breath of fresh air.
They had exited into what had probably been a sewer a long time ago, It looked like it ran under the city to the steep cliff overlooking the Kazat river, but not far from where they intersected it a storm drain had collapsed, giving them access to a street. It did not take long to clear the town, although most of them moved slowly, even he. Tanaka's armor weighed on him with more than the honest poundage of the metal; actually, the strange alloy was lighter than the simpler steel chainmail he normally wore. But it still felt like lead. The sword was a privilege to carry, and he hoped that he could do homage to Tanaka's spirit by giving it a long and bloody history.
The small clearing they had left their horses in was empty. Not surprising; they had been in the dungeon for almost a week. El Sid was craning his neck, looking around expectantly. He gave a short whistle, listened, and looked please as the sound of thundering hoofs penetrated the quiet of the forest. The heavy black stallion El Sid rode broke through a patch of brush on the far side of the glade and trotted over to them, eyeing El Sid reproachfully. The rest of the horses were gone, and while Delrin insisted they stay for half a day waiting for Rascal, the light war-horse never appeared. The only good that came of it was Glorm finding part of his stock, apparently ripped from the back of his pack animal by a thick branch. The tabbac had been exposed to the rain and was rotted, but two thirds of the Brandy and other liquor was still sound. El Sid was all for leaving it behind, but finally agreed to having his charger carry it when Glorm reminded him there was close to 70 gold worth of goods there, seven times more than the silver they had recovered from the dungeon.
Still, they were in grim shape. It was going to take them three days... Fuji looked over the party, recognized weariness, realized that their dungeon rations were gone and that they would have to scavenge for food on the trip back, and mentally made it five days. Five days to get back to Micaforo, and his first opportunity to lift a tankard to Tanaka, as well as his other fallen comrades.