Standing on top of the ziggurat, which is where the entrance of the temple was, the group looked in at the mass of webbing and eight legged bodies. Many of the spiders were the size of large dogs, while others were more normal sized. Xander didn’t know if they were juvenile giant spiders or just regular ones cohabitating with the giant spiders, and quite frankly, he didn’t care. He’d swapped his wings into his inventory for the large tank that accompanied his flamethrower as they were climbing the stone steps and had asked Atrax if he could test it out on the webs first before the man incinerated them with his skills.
Xander turned the knob on the flamethrower to the ‘ON’ position, and the pump in it whined into life. The nozzle began to spray out dragon’s tar at high speed, which was ignited by the flame rune sticking out in front of the nozzle. The webbing, and spiders, were doused in the sticky, flaming substance, flaming spider scattering as their webs began to catch fire.
Xander laughed, crying out, “Burnnnn! Burn you fuckers!”
“Wow, you really hate spiders, don’t you,” Frazay commented.
After several more seconds of coating the entire entrance in flaming tar, Xander turned the flamethrower off. “Yes,” he said to Frazay. “Yes, I do.”
Once the dragon’s tar had finished burning, the five of them stepped inside, Freyja hesitantly following behind the group. The was no furniture in the room or at least, there was none now. It was just a simple stone entryway which led deeper into the stepped pyramid. The walls depicted many scenes of spiders descending upon men from on high, or weaving complicated webs, often with human victims caught in them. They warily eyed the staircase leading further into the monolithic structure. Traps were on their minds, and each of them was already pulling out light sources. Xander once more unshielded his light rune, Atrax conjured a small ring of flames that followed him around, and Frazay still had her glowing bundle of mushrooms. Gabrelle revealed that she had purchased a small ever-burning torch. The way she explained it made it sound like it was really just a sturdy stick that had been enchanted with illusory flames. Graffus, of course, didn’t need any light.
“So, how do we proceed?” Frazay asked. “We already know there’s traps from the last group. Xander? Any solutions?”
“Uhh, if you can spot them then I can definitely peel the walls back to get at any mechanisms or just seal over the holes or pressure plates… but that depends on us seeing them first. Let me think…” Xander sat and thought for a couple of minutes. He could roll a bunch of metal balls down the stairs… but if they started bouncing then they might miss a pressure plate or some other mechanism. Ah! [Ferrokinesis], that could work. “I think I’ve got it. I’ll make a plate of metal the size of the stairs and use [Ferrokinesis] to press it down on each step to trigger any traps before we get to that spot. How’s that sound?”
The group agreed that it would be their best option for the stairs, but that they should reassess when they reached the bottom or came to a larger area. So, Xander led the way, levitating a rectangular sheet of steel as far in front of him as he could, which was significantly farther than he was previously able to, thanks to [Improved Ferrokinesis]. Before they went down the steps, Xander pressed the plate down on as many of the steps as he could reach, and then, as he took his first step down, he pressed down on the step that had previously been just out of the reach of [Improved Ferrokinesis]. He heard a small click as he pressed the sheet against the floor and a large spike shot out from the side of the wall. The hole it had been concealed in was cleverly worked into the carvings of the wall, making it look like it was supposed to be there. The spear slowly cranked back into the wall, whatever artifice that powered it clicking and whirring.
“Welp, there’s one…” Xander said. “Let’s see if we can neuter this.” He made his way down the steps, continuing his routine of pressing new steps with the metal sheet as he did. Reaching the set of steps right above where the spear would deploy, Xander activated the pressure plate again. Once the spear shot out again, Xander reached out and placed his hand on it, using his manipulation ability to sever the spear at the wall. “There,” he said.
There were three more traps on the set of stairs, two more spike traps in similar configurations to the first, and one that shot an entire line of spikes up through the step. That one had been startling, as they’d deployed and hit his steel sheet with a loud clang, forcing it upward. All were similarly de-spiked by Xander. The next room of the temple, which Xander reckoned was a quarter of the way down the ziggurat, was lined with fresh scorch marks. Covered in a tiled floor, it struck him as stereotypical. I suppose there’s always space for the classics, he thought to himself. “So what do we want to do now?” Xander asked.
“I suppose we should see how the trap functions,” Atrax mused.
“Mmm… what if… I did this, instead?” Xander placed his hands on the wall outside the room and began using [Improved Manipulation] to push the stone out of the way, creating a tunnel. He was able to manipulate material several feet away from him at this point, though he still struggled to do so without touching some portion of it. His teammates followed him as he simply carved a tunnel around the room. Breaking back into the hallway that could be seen on the other side of the room, Xander dusted his hands off. “You ain’t trying if you ain’t cheating,” he said. “No fire traps for us today, thank you very much.”
Graffus laughed, “You’d make a good miner, ya know? You’re almost as fast as a high leveled [Miner] moving through raw stone.”
“Almost as fast?” Xander asked, impressed, though not at the complement from Graffus, but at the idea that someone could really mine through solid rock at that speed.
“Almost,” Graffus returned, with a smirk on his face.
The second set of stairs proved much longer. Their pace was slow, as Xander was still testing every single step for traps. He was beginning to feel tense, as he’d yet to find one. The worry that somehow, his method would overlook a pressure pad or tripwire began to gnaw at him. He was almost relieved when he finally heard the click of another pressure pad being activated by his sheet. That is, until it was followed, not by spikes or flames or poisoned darts, or, actually anything that Xander could see, but by a sound. A loud sound, the sound of a large, stone object being dropped on top of more stone, echoing from far up the staircase.
“Aw fuck, they didn’t!” Xander yelled. “I swear to god if this is a giant rock in a tunnel trap I’m going to be pissed. That is so fucking cliché!” He turned to his teammates, ordering, “Everyone, get back up against the wall, I’m going to make us a cubby to avoid whatever is coming down the stairs.”
Working quickly, Xander began hollowing out a portion of wall, which his teammates quickly piled into, squishing together in the relative safety of the small nook. Xander kept eating away at the wall with [Improved Manipulation], providing more space for the mercenaries to get away from whatever it was that they could hear rumbling down the steps, quickly drawing closer. Not thirty seconds later, a huge boulder came rolling down the stairs, passing them in a flash. Another half a minute passed, and they heard a huge, smashing crack as the boulder presumably embedded itself in the doorway at the end of the staircase. The entire temple shuddered slightly, as dust fell from the ceiling in the staircase.
“Stupid fucking spider temple.” Xander grumbled under his breath. “Stupid Indiana Jones boulder.” Louder this time, he complained, “I hate the jungle!”
“Oh come on,” Gabrelle teased him, “You’ve only been once! You can’t judge the whole place just by one… evil spider temple or whatever this is.”
“I can, and I will!”
Despite the fact that a boulder had just passed over the steps, Xander insisted on checking for traps as they made their way down the rest of the stairs. He was gratified by the discovery of several more traps, which, instead of shooting out spears, seemed instead designed to trip people as they were running from the boulder. Various metal rods at shin height were projected from the wall when the trap was activated, spaced far enough away that they would catch the legs of anyone running down the steps.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Reaching the bottom of the steps, they discovered that the boulder had indeed lodged itself in the doorway. Anyone who managed to outrun both the bolder and the trip-traps would be trapped in there, unless they had a way to get through a multi-ton boulder. Fortunately, the mercenaries did. Tunneling through the boulder in the same manner he’d tunneled around the tiled trap room, they were met with the largest room yet. The dry rotted remains of pews and other seats lined most of the room. The only noticeable feature left in the room was a large, stone altar upon a raised dais. Looking harder at the altar, Xander noticed that several large cracks ran down the sides of it, as if it had been struck with a great blow. He felt a tug on his status and opened it.
---[Quest] has been provided with a task---
---Current [Quest] task: restore the altar. Patron: Yrrilm, Goddess of Fate, Weaver of fortunes both grand and desolate. Reward: ?---
Xander held his hand up to alert his companions. “I just got a quest,” he whispered. “Wait, why am I whispering?” Xander asked himself more loudly.
“A quest?” Gabrelle asked, confused.
“It’s one of my [Godsmarked] things,” Xander explained. Sometimes, a uh, a god, will give me a task. Wow, that sounds way more profound when I say it out loud.”
“You get tasks directly from the gods?” She asked in amazement.
“Sometimes, yeah. Just hasn’t happened in a little while. That’s actually how I got Freyja. The patron goddess of cats asked me to rescue her.” Freyja yowled in response to the mention of her rescue.
“I just… wow. Like messages from the gods. Wait, which one is this for?”
“Uhm, I hope I’m saying this right, it’s from Yrr…ilm? Yrrilm? My status called her the ‘Goddess of Fate, Weaver of fortunes both grand and desolate.’
A collective shudder ran through the group. “What,” Xander asked, anxiously. “Is that bad?”
“No, not necessarily bad, exactly,” Atrax began explaining. “But… Yrrilm has a bit of a reputation. It’s generally understood that she is responsible for weaving death into one’s fate. So… there are a lot of stories and myths, most of which end tragically.”
“Oh. That’s kind of scary… I guess I should stay on her good side then, right?” Xander asked his teammates.
“Yeah, that would probably be for the best,” Frazay responded. “What are you supposed to do?”
“I’m supposed to fix the altar.”
“Oh, well you can do that, right?” Graffus asked.
“I mean, I assume so. Still have to make it over there without getting skewered though. But ideally it will be a simple fix.”
Making his way closer to the altar, still probing the floor with his sheet, Xander began to see that the altar would, in fact, not be a ‘simple fix.’ The entire surface of the altar was covered in runes and imagery of a goddess that he assumed must be Yrrilm. It had indeed been shattered, the point of impact in the center of the flat top of the altar spreading cracks throughout the object.
“Okay, this might take me longer… This thing is just… absolutely covered in runes. Come to think of it, I’d bet that whatever was keeping the traps powered might be runes, as well.”
“What do you need to fix it?” Atrax asked him, stopping his casual perusal of the bas reliefs of the walls of the room now that it had been cleared of traps.
“Technically, nothing, as long as I can find all the pieces. I can already see that there are a few missing, maybe scattered across the room. If I can’t find them, then I’ll have to really do some thinking and try to recreate the runes on the altar for the portions we can’t find. Would you all mind looking for any pieces of this thing, while I start melding it back into one piece?”
Xander’s companions thankfully agreed to help him look for pieces of the altar that might be scattered around the room. Soon, he had a small pile of promising chunks of stone, a few of which definitely had portions of runic script on them. Looking at the piece as a whole, he had no idea what effect the runes would create. He recognized gathering arrays, some movement runes, even a few light runes, but many were a mystery to him.
So began a very frustrating 3D puzzle. Xander could perfectly meld the stone back together, and had done so for the majority of the altar, binding the runes back together and reconnecting their circuits. Now, he was trying to figure out where all these little pieces were supposed to go. He had to take several breaks, to allow himself time to calm down from the frustration of the task. Several hours later, he had placed all the pieces they had been able to find that had runes on them, but a few spots were still missing. Xander angrily expelled air through his clenched teeth.
“There’s still a few spot missing… I’m going to have to spend some time researching this, and figuring out what all these runes mean so that I can fill in the blanks. I’ll take a rubbing of the altar and then we can go back up. It’s probably past dark already, and I could use some sleep at this point, before I begin banging my head against the wall.”
As the group agreed with him, they all began heading back up the stairs. Just before he left the room, Xander turned around and said to the empty air, “Don’t worry, I’m not abandoning the quest… just taking a break to do some research so I can finish.”
Climbing their way back up was much faster than coming down had taken them, and as they reached the top of the ziggurat once more, they saw that it was indeed dark in the jungle. They heard a few shouts from the guards on shift as their lights shone from the top of the structure, hailing their return.
They were met halfway down the stairs that led down the outside of the temple by the lead researcher, who still hadn’t given the mercenaries her name. Xander always hated being treat like he was nothing more than hired help.
“Is it clear? Can we go in?” She asked eagerly.
“Yes, it’s clear,” Atrax said, tiredly.
The relayed what they had encountered during their exploration of the temple. The lead researcher appeared slightly upset about the fact that Xander had tunneled through the stone of the temple, as well as the giant rock striking the wall and lodging itself in a doorway. Apparently, she was concerned that the structure of the temple would be compromised, though the thing seemed pretty damned sturdy to Xander.
“Our runic expert here had taken it upon himself to try and repair the altar that was on the lowest floor,” Atrax explained to the woman, gesturing at Xander. “He’s very keen to see what the array will do once it’s been recreated.”
The woman had raised her eyebrows at ‘runic expert.’ “You can do runes?” she asked quizzically. “And you decided to be a mercenary?”
Xander shrugged. “I like the lifestyle, what can I say.”
The five mercenaries, and Freyja, who was still quietly tagging along, made their way back to the confines of the camp. Xander could tell that Freyja was itching to get out into the forest and do some hunting, so Xander gave her permission, with the caveat that she shouldn’t go too far off, and not to get stuck in any spider webs. The five of them then ate a short dinner and retired to sleep, setting up their tents in a free space within the camp.
Xander pulled his armor into his inventory, freeing himself from its weight, though with his increased strength score, he barely even noticed it anymore. He pulled out the rubbing he’d taken of the altar, made with a huge single piece of paper he’s used [Improved Creation] to make, and began studying the massive array. The thing was complicated beyond belief, far more advanced than anything he’d ever created, except perhaps, for his wings, which if the sheets of carbon fiber were flattened out, might exceed the size of the array on the altar.
Xander delved into his [Rune Master’s Library] skill and began the arduous process of identifying runes. Scribbling out notes and descriptions on his giant sheet of paper, Xander eventually fell asleep, pencil still in hand. Fortunately for him, he did not drool on the paper, and so avoided ruining his rubbing.
Xander woke up the next morning with a sore neck from his awkward sleeping position. After a stretch and some breakfast, he moved back to his proverbial grindstone, staring at the sheet. It ended up taking him three entire days of research with his [Rune Master’s Library] skill to identify each rune. He still had no idea what the array actually did, but he was starting to get some ideas, as well as thoughts on what runes might be able to complete the missing portions of the altar. There was a great deal of symmetry to the array, and that was allowing him to fill in several of the gaps without actually having to know what the array did, as he could copy from other non-damaged sections. However, there was one segment near the center that did not have a copy elsewhere on the array.
Xander spent another two days just theorizing what the array was supposed to do. Tracing each rune to the ones they were connected in sequence to, he deduced that many of the runes were designed to attract… something. There was no clear rune that was tied to the attraction array. He was also still unsure what the light runes were for. Perhaps they were purely cosmetic? But he got the gist of it, if not the purpose or the material to be attracted. It appeared to be some kind of array that would attract something, some kind of nonphysical energy that wasn’t mana, and collect it. What it was used for afterwards, he had no idea. He supposed the Goddess must use it, if she wanted it fixed. But judging by the context he was picking up around the design of the array, and the few bits of runes that were visible on the edge of the damaged center portion, he managed to research what they might be. They looked like storage runes. Which intrigued Xander. He hadn’t know storage runes were a thing until now. Would he be able to create mana batteries with this? The little information he did get from the library skill on the rune seemed to suggest not. Instead, it seemed more that it… warped the space around it. Perhaps he could make a bag that was bigger on the inside than the outside. He’d heard of those amongst the chatter of the guild, and apparently, they were as expensive as they were desired by adventurers.
Xander shook his head, clearing his thoughts. The runes he needed to carve were almost certainly storage runes. He just had no idea what they were storing. He supposed he didn’t need to, to fix the altar. Satisfied, he gave himself a mental pat on the back for finally figuring everything out, and went to go inform his companions.