Karon stared blankly at Lora for a long moment. Eventually, he said, “Lifebringer?”

Lora’s smile quirked. “As she is most commonly known, yes. Lifebringer, Gardener, Nature. The Voshellians, I believe, simply call her Eve.”

You follow no particular religion, but as Voshell is an important figure in the Mindet Valley pantheon, you are familiar with most Voshellian myths. According to those myths, the Creator gods made paradise, but the youngest, named Eve, in an act of willful disobedience opened the way for the forces of chaos and destruction to enter the garden. This act, which destroyed paradise and cast all beings away from their heavenly benefactors, earned Eve the title of Heaven-Breaker.

The myth was, of course, familiar to Dorri in other ways, too, although it contained differences and layers of meaning from the version she’d heard in a different life.

Again, there was a longer pause. After a moment, Booth’s frown deepened. Dorri couldn’t tell if he was upset or just confused.

“The Breaker of Heaven?” Booth said to Lora.

“I doubt she was called such within these walls. Not all religions presume to lay blame for evil on the same entity which provided life to begin with.” Lora’s light tone somehow managed to chide without sounding chiding. “But that would be my guess. Since Lifebringer is no longer much venerated these days, I imagine that also makes these ruins quite old.”

Booth’s jaw worked, but if he had more to say, he managed not to.

Lora, however, tipped her head in that innocently-curious way she had. “There are those who trace Voshell back to Lifebringer, who believe that the current Mother of the Fields is but an aspect of the Mother of Life. Much symbolism is shared by the two, certainly. The sheaf of grain on your shield, for instance, or that golden scythe for which your townsfolk died.”

Abruptly, Lora leaned toward Booth. Her voice sharpened with an intensity Dorri had never heard from her. Frankly, it was a little scary.

“Lifebringer is the sole wielder of the elemental forces of our world. Without… her, nothing in this world would ever be manifested. The garden which some are so fond of claiming she destroyed would not have existed to begin with, without her.”

Dorri noticed the odd hesitation as Lora spoke, but the sudden shift in Lora’s tone shook her enough to forget it almost immediately.

Message delivered, Lora returned to her more typical, less strained posture.

Booth’s jaw clenched, and his face darkened. Beyond him, a sneering grin twisted across Nildeyr’s mouth. Dorri doubted he cared at all about the argument itself and more about what really did feel very much like an attack from Lora on Booth.

Booth spent a few moments just breathing. Eventually, with careful calm, he said, “Whoever made this shrine to whatever god, it matters less than clearing out the Scourge.”

Karon cleared his throat. “I might respectfully argue that point, actually. We know nothing about this Scourge of Batzieh organization, not why they’re here or whether this relatively small number are all that exist of them.”

Booth swung his glower toward Karon, but understanding took hold and blossomed in Dorri’s mind.

We need to move on. Soon.

Moving cautiously but not backing down, either, Dorri scooted to the cot’s edge and swung her legs over the side. She paused there, waiting for the arrival of pain or dizziness or nausea or any other indication that her recovery wasn’t complete.

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Her body moved as it should, free of discomfort unless you counted the tacky wetness of drying blood that mottled her clothing. Her head remained clear.

Karon continued in his usual clinical manner, which was at the moment soothing in its predictability.

“If there is something larger at work, then there is no guarantee that simply wiping out the Scourge here will stop them indefinitely. It would behoove us to discern what their purpose here was, precisely, because not knowing the larger picture leaves Traton’s long term safety in question.”

Booth continued to stare at Karon, but his jaw unclenched, and the dark clouds brewing in his expression began to clear.

Dorri planted her feet on the floor and stood. Someone had recovered her bow and laid it across the foot of the cot. She took it up and checked it over for damage. Finding none, she looked up and directly into Nildeyr’s hesitant smile.

“I’m fine, now.” Dorri slid her gaze away from Nildeyr’s and avoided looking at Booth while she was at it. “I’m ready to move on.”

An odd moment of tense silence fell over the room. Dorri busied herself with ensuring her quiver was settled properly.

“I suppose we’ll need to decipher how to work that lift, then.” Karon crossed the room, aimed toward the door.

“There’s a crank.” Arra’s long strides overtook Karon. She cut him off and exited the room ahead of him, her head turning as she checked the hall outside before moving to allow him through. “And counterbalances. We turn the crank, and the lift moves.”

There was a crank. Arra wrestled with it for mere seconds, and the lifted lurched beneath their feet and began a slow, not entirely steady descent. The walls of the shaft encircled them, condensing the modest glow of Lora’s lantern into something much brighter.

Carvings covered the shaft walls all the way down, dances of triangles and lines which created circles and squares and whorls of larger patterns. Dorri remained carefully toward the lift’s center and held her breath, but none of those patterns detached and came after her.

Arrival at their destination announced itself with twin gaps which opened first at the lift’s bottom edge, indicating it would soon settle into place between two openings just as it had above.

Lora frowned and hooded her lantern. The lift’s interior dimmed but didn’t darken. Light spilled through the widening gaps at the lift’s bottom edge.

Weapons snicked free of their sheaths. Dorri bent her bow and slipped the string into place. All six of the people crowded onto the lift platform pressed to its edges, presenting as slim a target as possible.

#

Booth was quite certain that the presence of light meant the presence of enemies. As the lowering lift expanded the exits to either side of it, flickering wall sconces cast unsteady shadows across the mottled gray and tan and ochre stone floor of the room they dropped into. Air flowed into the lift shaft, not stale as expected but rich like freshly tilled soil.

What about any of this has been what I expected?

Outside the lift, archways with darkness beyond stood to the east and west. The west held shadowed outlines of rounded walls and a smaller version of the statue upstairs.

Lifebringer. Eve. Heaven-Breaker.

Booth hadn’t had any particular feelings about any religion, one way or another, in his real life. His mother had been raised Catholic, so Booth had heard the real world version of the Eve story. Even his mother, who’d walked the line between respect for the faith she’d been raised in and skepticism about many of its claims, had ventured that it was just another instance of men placing the blame for things going wrong on a woman’s head.

This version of the myth had many differences, and all Booth had to go on were the things his narrator had told him. If he was sticking to this new roleplaying attempt of his, he knew what his attitude should be, even though he was reluctant to join the cast of men unrightfully blaming women for something.

Honestly, though, he was mostly just curious about the whole Lifebringer deal. What he felt about Lora seeming to turn on him so suddenly, that was more complicated. All he’d done was try to confirm the name his narrator had provided to him, and she’d come at him as if he were the biggest bigot in the world.

To be fair, he was now a Tilier, and in this world, her assumption was likely a fair one.

None of that is important right now.

Beyond the east archway, a long hallway stretched toward double doors. Closer, just inside the archway, two figures stood, watching the descending lift with mildly expectant boredom. Booth studied them only long enough to confirm the crude symbol drawn onto their tunics.

Their expressions shifted away from boredom and toward confusion, but no dice roll announced a start to initiative. Booth’s party had the chance for a surprise round, still.

“Take them out.” Booth’s every muscle screamed for him to rush the sentries himself.

But we just learned that lesson, didn’t we?

Everyone else wanted their common enemy defeated, too, for whatever their varying reasons. What mattered to Booth was that they all also survived this quest of his.

No more messing up. Do the damned job, and do it right.

The surprise round started, and arrows flew.