The party slipped down the long passageway, making little to no sound at all. Hah’roo glided along stealthfully; the only indication of her presence was a pair of pale arms and face, as well as the settling dust kicked up by the breeze that followed wherever she went. Of Earcellwen, there was no sign at all.
Tezeno was next, wearing a new suit of armor he had pulled from his dimensional storage item. This set of mail had been enspelled for silence. He must have already worked out that the new team would favor stealth over durability. His new lamellar cuirass was formed from rows of small horizontal plates that hung over a padded hauberk. Walking at his side, Joe heard nothing from the tiled suit. Even the chainmail around his neck did not jingle.
Yuk had vanished from sight a while ago. The area around the team quivered with movement as the majority of the swarm followed along the walls. Joe found himself host to a fairly large section of Yuk's fragmented body as well. Riding on the pelt were well over a hundred multi-legged passengers. While he was not overly thrilled by the distracting insectoid throng, Yuk had said that maintaining the telepathic link would require most of his focus. Joe just happened to be the one the collective creature was the most comfortable with.
Kendell brought up the rear. Her breastplate was already quiet. Only her heavy leather war-kilt gave off slight creaks every now and then. She had donned a pair of goggles that allowed her to see even in complete darkness.
In each hand, she carried one of her favorite tomahawks. Even though the axe-heads were smaller than most hatchets, the rare-quality weapons had several damage buffs that offset the difference. The long shafts were ideal for parrying attacks. She had coated the hafts with sacred oils to prevent the wights from grabbing the weapons out her her hands, being very careful to not let the slippery fluid get onto the wraps at the end of the shaft which supplied her grip. Kenda could hurl those axes as far as a javelin throw and call them back to her a second later.
Joe’s hands were empty. He would be using his claws up close if he was short of mana. The glowing gauntlet followed him, hovering a foot or two above his head. His gambeson never made noise, and for once, he was happy for the extra padding. The air flowing through the dark hallways was uncomfortably cold. Everyone but Hah’roo and Yuk chaffed the chill from their fingers every few minutes.
While each team member had an alternative light source if needed, the only illumination the group was actively using was Joe’s [Glorious Gauntlet]. He had the spell dimmed to just a bare blush of amber light. With [Night Eyes], that faint glow was enough for Joe to see as if it were a cloudy day. Unfortunately, his enhanced vision wouldn’t work in complete darkness.
Hah’roo had woven a charm for herself and RC that gave them a night-sight equal to Joe’s. Tezeno had a racial trait that allowed him to discern order and chaos. The walls were straight and regular enough for him to distinguish their path, and the twisted undead glowed a bright, sickly green for him. Joe could brighten the force hand for him if he needed to see details.
The corridor they walked led deeper into the pyramid. Roughly every fifty feet, they reached a T intersection. So far, there had been three types of junctions. Either a stairway leading up or one heading down, or it had a closed, heavy stone door facing one of the hallways. Each door had an ornate plate mounted on the wall beside the doorframe. The plaques were carved with hieroglyphic symbols.
The passages had been trapped at some point, but these devices had all been triggered and broken. Long metal spears had sprung out of the walls and rusted into place. Most had been snapped off some time ago, likely by the wights. There were also several runic mines but these had been worn out over time as well. Piles of old bones gave away the locations of the sigils.
Joe had lost count of the turns they had made. His idea of keeping to the right-hand wall had been disregarded. All he knew so far was that they had remained on the same level, avoiding the stairs. They had also yet to try any of the doors.
When the group finally stopped, it was the first time they had found something other than a three-way intersection. The corridor ahead intersected with a staircase that headed in both directions.
“We have traversed roughly half the length of the ziggurat and have moved about a quarter of the way closer to the center,” Hah’roo stated. “I’m guessing the maze was designed to confuse interlopers, but it is too regular to succeed.”
“Maybe for her,” Joe thought. “I’m lost.”
“We could try some of the other branches we passed,” the winsome ranger continued, “but my guess is they will just weave us around this level in a circuitous route. I think we should try the stairs. The question is, do we want to ascend or descend? Does anyone have any strong feelings on the matter?”
“I think the obvious choice is whichever one the Hellions are not taking,” Tezeno declared. “Kendell, would you ask Myllo to ask Naragash if they have taken any stairs yet.”
The hatchet fighter put a pair of fingers to the jeweled earring. A moment later, she replied, “They went upwards. Nara says if we do the same, we need to watch out for the glyph traps. She says they found a dozen above us that are still functioning.”
“So, we go down?” RC posed, peering along in front of her.
“Seems as good as any idea?” replied Hah’roo. “Joe? Yuk? You two have been silent. Any thoughts?”
“I have a terrible sense of direction,” Joe admitted. “I’m happy to leave navigation to you guys. You lead. I’ll follow.”
“Down is much bigger,” Yuk’s voice spoke in their heads. “Less regular in places, too. Pretty sure the ziggurat was built over caves.”
“How do you know that?” asked the archon out loud.
“Bugs talk. But they are very limited in what they know. More like instincts than memories,” Yuk professed. “We can’t tell you much more than there are caves down there. More corridors and rooms, too.”
“It’s more info than we had a minute ago,” Kendell offered. “I say we go take a look.”
“We are looking for a room with the loom in it, so we should probably stick to the worked passages,” Tez suggested.
“Good point,” Hah’roo agreed, checking the top stairs for any hidden triggers. “This will be slow going. Wait here while I work my way down.”
It took the windy ranger the better part of fifteen minutes to make her way to the bottom. She had marked three steps with red chalk X’s, indicating those steps were trapped. Two had holes in walls beside the booby-trapped stairs. These would likely thrust forth more of the metal spears. The third had a cleverly carved rune, which the party had to duck under.
At the bottom of the stairs, the team was presented with the options of right or left. Hah’roo had a better feel about the left and led the team in that direction. Each of them kept their senses peeled for more traps.
What the ranger had sensed on the air turned out to be a large chamber. Unfortunately, it was not the loom room. The walls rose upward twenty feet, with a doorway cleverly built into each wall that flowed seamlessly into the murals depicted on each massive wall surface. The theme of the walls appeared to be the four seasons.
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In front of them was a tribute to the bounty of summer. Flowers and fruits filled baskets of freshly woven reeds carried by graceful elves and winged pixies. The central figure was a stunning woman in cloth of gold, holding a swan in her arms. Her face was that of the woman who had overwhelmed Joe when he first touched Corra Loigen. Gloriana. The Queen of the Summer and one of the two rulers of the Feylands.
Joe spun around and found Summer Queen’s counterpart glaring at him from the wall they had just entered through. The Morrigu was no less stunning, but where Gloriana was precious and endearing, the Dark Queen’s gaze was exacting and austere. She stood half in and half out of a great hall. On one side of her was a fire-warmed chamber filled with shelves of lore and winter stores. The fey here were darker of form, wearing fine robes instead of the alluring wrap and kilts of the Summer Court. On the other side of her, snow-covered forests held both beauty and menace. The Winterlands seemed like a place only the best-prepared should ever venture into.
Joe looked right and left and found Spring and Fall. Since the fey knight had used the term ‘harbinger of spring’ for the Erlking, Joe turned that way first. The figures depicted here were even more handsome and beautiful than fey courtiers on the previous walls. Not just the humanoids either. Graceful beasts and brightly colored birds filled the mural. Everything about the image drew in the eye as if compelling the watcher to stay and ponder the glory of spring and its imagery. The central figure was a tall, regal man wearing a crown of flowers and bearing a small harp. Like the queens, he, too, was beautiful. Instead of summer’s vigor or winter’s precision, the lord of spring was all about enticement, begging one to come and walk by his side.
Joe pulled his gaze from the glamorous mural so he could give autumn’s tableau a glance, fully intending to return his gaze to the wonders of the Erlking again. Yet the moment he turned to the last wall, all other thoughts fled. In the deep woods depicted on the fourth wall, hundreds of hunters bounded through the wilds. Wolves, cats, satyrs, and elk-bourn riders coursed after prey. Hawks, owls, falcons, and eagles soared beside hunters as fierce participants. As soon as Joe’s eyes fell on the mural, the wildness surged inside him. It wanted to leap into the depiction and join the hunt so badly, he found himself panting from the inexplicably fierce desire.
He vaguely heard Earcellwen speak at his back as he stood mesmerized by the scene.
“Guys. I don’t think we have the whole story,” she mused, turning from wall to wall. “The Erlking may actually have been a real king. Not just some audacious lesser lord.”
“Where are you getting that from?” Tezeno asked, stepping up next to her and following her line of sight.
“See how in each image just behind the central figure are the other three. They are each carved evenly; the queens are not bigger than the Erlking or Autumn’s treant.”
Joe pulled his eyes away from the hunting packs to focus on the central figure of the mural he was staring at. Sure enough, it was a tree-like creature whose crowning branches were shaped almost like a rack of antlers. The forest lord’s features were painted to convey both an ancient sense of wisdom as well as the predaceous spirit of the hunting host behind him.
“So what,” the archon rebutted. “The Erlking’s followers could have made these murals. Why wouldn’t they portray their lord as an equal to the Queens?”
“One, that is not the way the fey work. Bald-faced lies are almost impossible for them, and that would be a lie. But that is not the real reason. See this,” she said, placing her fingers on a four-pointed star-like symbol.
Joe had seen that image several times already, but due to RC’s prompting, he now considered it more closely. It was four feathers woven together. Where the symbol was painted instead of just carved, the feathers were brown, black, blue, and gold. They kept that order, though the emblem rotated on the different walls to have a different upward feather. On his wall, brown was at the top, but on the Erlkings wall, where Earcellwen was pointing, the upward quill was blue.
“This is called a coranar. It is a common elven symbol representing time, change, and the seasons. I have seen it all my life, and yet I have never really considered its implications until now. We know the Morrigu’s color is black and see how the black crow feather points upward on her wall. On Gloriana’s wall, the golden swan feather is in ascendence. But here on the Earlking’s wall, the blue songbird feather is at the top, and it's the brown raptor feather on the autumn wall.”
“I’m not following you,” Kenda stated, sounding uncertain.
“Like I said, this symbol is everywhere in elven books and homes. It is carved into our clocks and worked into our calendars. It a common mark to carve into doors to the outside of a building,” she declared. “We know that the queens are immensely powerful. We also know they don’t share power well. There are countless tales of the rivalry and fights between the two. So, why would there be a common symbol that shows not two but four feathers, all the same size? Two lesser lords would not become part of such a fundamental sign.”
“Unless once they were equals,” Hah’roo breathed. “I am following your trail, Earcellwen. North of Durkrug and the Small Kingdoms is the Dire Wold, another home of the fey before they moved across the veil to the Feylands. They have an expression there, ‘Ravens and Raptors,’ which means ‘all things.’ It is short for ‘Ravens and Raptors, Swans and Songbirds’.”
RC spoke those last three words with the galeling. “My father says that all the time, too. It is a way to say everything or everyone. So, even if this place was built in flattery to the Erlking, it doesn’t change the fact that there is evidence that they once may have been four fey nobles, not just two.”
“If that is the case, does it mean we are trying to find the lair of something on a fairy queen power level?” Joe questioned. “Cause if so, that seems like a horribly bad idea.”
Tezeno swung his head around to stare at his fighting partner. “Who are you, and what have you done with my insanely impetuous companion?” the archon mocked in his toneless voice.
“Funny,” Joe quipped back. “But seriously. The dirge wights are bad enough. If there is a true fey king in here, we are in serious trouble.”
“You are quite right, Joe. We are not strong enough for such a foe,” Hah’roo exhaled. “Our job at this point is primarily to find that loom. Let’s keep looking, but we should avoid anything that could be the Erlking until we have the whole team with us. Agreed?”
The rest agreed; even Yuk chimed in his assent. Having no better lead than the fact the left-hand wall was dedicated to the Erlking, they chose that doorway to exit through. Another long hallway stretched into the darkness in front of them.
Joe could see his breath in the air as they moved in the faint light of the glowing fist. The air in this passageway was much colder than it had been on the upper level or even the Hall of Seasons. For once, Joe was happy his fingers were covered in shaggy fur. He could feel the chill much more acutely against his palms than on his fingertips. Thankfully, this meant he just had to make fists, carefully thanks to his claws, and the cold was not too uncomfortable.
Earcellwen was not nearly so lucky. The slight elf was shivering heavily. Being both lean and growing up in a semi-tropical location must not have prepared her for this environment. Joe wished he could keep a [Heart Fire] burning for her, but one, the spell was stationary, and two, its much brighter light would alert anything nearby.
The least covered of them also seemed to be the least affected. Hah’roo’s sleeveless duster left her arms exposed, and her shirt was cut to leave her midriff bare. The galeing people, who lived on the mountaintop peaks, were obviously well-adapted to cold climates. She seemed completely unaffected by the biting chill in the air.
“For crying out loud, Hah’roo,” Kendell shuddered. “You are making me cold just looking at you.”
The white-skinned woman’s only response was a sly grin and a bare-shouldered shrug. As the huntress slipped forward, Joe pulled off his fingerless gloves and offered them to RC.
“The claw enchantment won’t help you, but the mending charm will cause them to shrink to your size. They should keep your hands warmer, and since they’re fingerless, they shouldn’t affect your shooting.”
“Oh, thank you, Joe,” she replied, snatching the gloves from Joe’s hand and tugging them on. “Oh, you pre-warmed them too. ‘A true friend splits even a meager meal,’ as my father says. You are currently my favorite person again.”
“Again?” Joe sputtered in a mockingly hurt tone.
Earcellwen gestured at the rope-dancer gliding away from them.
“Yeah,” Joe found himself admitting. “I’d pick her too.” There was just something effortlessly cool about Hah’roo. Only Count Randeau’s charm rivaled the galeling’s compellingly unshakable nature.
They moved on again, keeping the same formation. Their path began to deviate from the previous perfectly straight lines. The hallway curved and sloped downward. The curve was not a tight corkscrew, but it clearly was a descending spiral.
Down and down, the team crept ever deeper into the dreaded lair, hoping to find the chamber containing the loom. They had sent a note through the paired pouch informing the others of what they had surmised and where they had gone. Kendell was also carrying a beacon that would alert Vexor and homing sigils, which would allow him to open a gate to their location. This meant the destruction of the undead spawner was not even their priority.
They just needed to find it. Somewhere here in the dark.