It didn’t take Eurwen and Mona long to pack up the camp and head on their way down the path once more. The sun shined down on them as they left, and not a word was shared between them. Mo in particular was unable to shake the embarrassment she felt at having been vulnerable in front of the other. She did nothing but scan the surroundings for trouble and occasionally let her head hang.
Eurwen seemed to be quieter than usual as well, but her expression and body language left no signs as to what she could be thinking. Instead, she simply walked along the path, guiding the way. She didn’t whistle, hum, or ask any questions, leaving the two of them with nothing to listen to but the birdsong above.
Hours passed with no sign of anything out of the ordinary. There was no fresh scent of blood, no feeling of danger, and no sight too strange. Eventually, once they were about three hours out from the clearing they slept in, Eurwen suddenly changed directions.
Mo stopped in her tracks, staring at the Elf’s back as she walked off into the ferns. “Hey!” she called after her, taking a step to follow, but not yet leaving the path. “Where are you going!?”
“The tomb is this way!” Eurwen called back, pointing to a hill up ahead. She kept walking, not waiting for the other.
Mona hesitated, eyes scanning over the hill before she gave a heavy sigh and stepped off the path and into the thicket. She soon caught up to Eurwen, glancing back every few moments. “Are you sure we won’t get lost? And what’s a burial tomb doing so far off the path, anyway?”
“We won’t get lost.” The Elven woman chuckled but didn’t respond to the second question. She continued to walk, weaving through the ferns and the trees.
Mo decided not to press her to answer, simply rolling her eyes and continuing to follow. The vague answers and the dodging of questions was starting to get old.
After another hour or so of walking off into the woods and toward the hill, Mona started to see the entrance. They both pushed through the last of the brush and into a small fern-filled area at the base of the hill. There, built into the side of the hill in moss-covered rock, was a small shelter with a door at the end. The door itself was solid stone, ancient Elven lettering lining the edges where it stood against the rock walls. In the very center was a clear quartz disc, smooth and perfectly rounded, set into a bar that seemed to divide the door into two. Above and below it were two large slots that Mona guessed were keyholes.
Mo walked up to it, attempting to peek through the crystal laid into the door. She could see vague shapes inside, but nothing truly comprehensible through the dark. The Beastfolk woman turned to look at Eurwen, who was still standing out in the sun, eyes scanning over the moss-covered stones laid into the dirt.
“I can’t read Elven,” Mo said in a monotone voice. Eurwen’s head snapped to look at her, as if broken from a trance, before entering the shaded overhang of rock to look closer at the door.
“Let’s see…” she muttered, kneeling down to begin reading the script from the bottom left corner of the door. “‘And so the Sun sets on souls gone past. The night, however, will never last. The light will rise once again, and shine toward the forgotten glen.’”
Mo watched as Eurwen read out the words, pointing out each section she was reading before finally ending at the lower right corner of the door. “That’s quite the poem.”
“It’s part of a rite my family recites for the dead. If what I know of the tomb is true, however, only one chamber inside actually houses ancestors of mine.”
“Only one?” Mona asked, raising an eyebrow at the Elf before beginning to inspect one of the two slots in the door.
“If I remember right, this specific tomb was for a war caravan of soldiers. Most of them fell atop this very hill, and those left standing built the crypt itself.” Eurwen rubbed the back of her head, a look of confusion on her face. “Though, I’m not all too sure if that’s true. It was a vague tale. It didn’t even mention what they were fighting for, or even who they were fighting.”
Mo was now using one of her daggers to try and lift the large pins set inside the door’s lock, green eyes staring intensely at it in hopes the blade wouldn’t snap. “There seems to be a lot you don’t know.”
“Well, there’s not much to learn from anymore,” the Elf muttered, watching her companion struggle with the lock’s mechanism.
“And what do you mean by that?” Mo asked, one of her feline ears twitching at the sound of a solid click as the last of the pins set in place. She pulled out the dagger and now moved to the next keyhole.
“There’s just… Not much left,” Eurwen was looking behind them and up toward the sky now, watching as a few whisps of thin clouds drifted over the bright blue. Mona didn’t turn to look at her expression, but she could still hear the hint of grief in the Elven woman’s voice.
Mo hesitated, ears pulled back to listen for some sort of elaboration on this before she concluded that Eurwen was done talking about it. With that, she used her blade to lift the last pin. That same click sounded and she pulled back, looking over the doors and waiting for them to open.
Nothing happened. Her brows knit together as she then stepped up to the door and attempted to push at it. Nothing. She was sure they were unlocked, and a quick check at both slots confirmed that the pins had not dropped back down.
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Eurwen looked back to Mo now, head cocking to the side in a questioning gesture. “I thought you said you were good at getting into places?”
Immediately Mo could feel a twinge of annoyance, turning to look at her with a clearly irritated expression. “I am. I unlocked it, but it’s not opening.”
Eurwen stepped up beside her, pressing her hands on the door and attempting to push it in as well, but it just wouldn’t budge. She tried pushing it to the side, and it still didn’t move. She even tried to get a handhold between the bar and the left door to pull at it. Nothing. The Elven woman whined and pulled away, shaking her now sore fingers. “Ow ow ow! There’s just no good way to get a grip on this thing!” she huffed, glaring at the doors.
Mona watched the woman with her arms crossed over her chest with a deadpan expression, just as Eurwen began to shake her hands to get rid of the pain in her fingers. The movement of her arms lifting to do this caused her cape to move, the sword on her hip now visible. Mo’s eyes flitted to it, remembering the white blade that was now sheathed and hidden. Her eyes then scanned over the hilt and its design of golden feathery wings before landing on the marble set in the center.
A sudden idea popped into her head and she walked out of the small overhang and into the sunlight. Mona shaded her eyes with one hand, looking up into the sky before looking back to the door. Eurwen was standing in the shade beside it, watching Mo with a raised brow.
“That sword is a family sword, right? Seems most things you have are from your family,” Mona motioned toward the Elven woman’s hip where the sword was in its scabbard.
Eurwen glanced at it before giving a nod. “Yes. What does it have to do with the door?”
“Give it to me.”
“What!?” Eurwen squeaked out, her brown eyes immediately going wide.
“Only for a moment, I’m not robbing you!” Mona huffed, her hands now ar her hips. She watched as Eurwen fumbled for words before giving a defeated sigh. The red-haired Elf walked away from the door and toward Mo before coming to a stop to stand in front of her. She very slowly pulled the sword from its sheath, the white blade giving an almost oppressive sheen from the sun.
“Be very careful with it,” Eurwen mumbled, presenting the sword to her with two hands. Mo hesitated, eyes glancing over the ornate weapon before taking it from her, one hand on the hilt and the other supporting the blade.
“I’m not gonna break it or anything,” Mona replied, beginning to angle the blade in several different ways, all while glancing between the sun and the door.
“... What are you doing, anyway?” Eurwen asked. She stood behind Mo, eyes glued to the sword as if waiting for something horrible to happen to it.
Mo’s eyes snapped to a blip of light that appeared on the wall of mossy stone beside the door, a smile tugging at her lips.
“That. I’m trying to do that.” She slowly continued to angle the sword and its hilt, the small circle of light reacting accordingly. As the light inched closer to the crystal disc lodged into the bar separating the doors, it began to grow brighter. Other colors started to whisp from it like kaleidoscopic glares along the wall, casting prismatic colors across the shade and lighting it up.
“Wow,” Eurwen whispered, watching the small beam of light move across the stone. She then looked down toward the hilt and gasped. Mona didn’t glance at her, focusing on turning the reflection of light toward the quartz disc. Before she could stop her, Eurwen gripped the hilt with one hand and pulled Mo’s off in the same motion.
Mo gave a yelp of surprise, stumbling backward before steadying herself and looking back to Eurwen. “Hey! What was that for!?” she huffed, but a loud thunk soon turned her attention to the tomb. The light had met the disc of crystal and the stone doors were now slowly sinking into the floor with a low grinding of stone. Light whisped from the disk and the ray connecting it to the sword was visible, brighter than any sort of reflection of light Mona would have deemed normal.
She stepped around to be able to look at Eurwen now, eyes landing on the quartz ball that was in the hilt of the sword. It was glowing the same way as the door’s disc, prismatic tethers of light flooding off of it like fog. The blade was shaking slightly from Eurwen’s white knuckle grip on it, eyes squeezed shut.
Mo quietly mumbled her name in question, brow beginning to knit with concern. She reached out to her, about to touch her when the light finally dimmed. When the light was gone and the hilt of the sword stopped glowing, Eurwen took in a deep, shaky gasp and nearly dropped before steadying herself.
“Whoa, take it easy,” Mona said as she put a hand on the other’s arm, hoping to help keep her in the moment. “Are you okay? What was all that?”
“I’m fine, I’m alright…” Eurwen then opened her eyes, making Mo choke back a gasp of her own. They were gold, if not for just a moment, before quickly darkening back to their usual brown. Before Mo could comment on it, Eurwen was looking at the tomb and grinning. “Hey, that did it! It’s open! Come on, let’s go in.”
Mo watched as Eurwen jogged back over to the entrance, where the quartz disc was still glowing with that strange prismatic sunlight. She couldn’t help the feeling of curiosity in her, but there was an apprehensive feeling there as well. She could hear Eurwen calling for her to follow, and she slowly began to step her way back toward the tomb.
That anxiety that was plaguing her before taking the job began to eat at her once more. She was about to walk into a dark crypt under the earth with most likely only one way in. All while following some mysterious Elven woman with secrets. Her boots tapped against the stone as she walked through the slice of shade that pulled a shadow over the ferns behind her.
“Are you okay? You look rather pale,” Eurwen asked quietly. She wasn’t smiling, simply looking down at Mona with genuine concern. “You’re free to leave now if you don’t want to come along. I just needed you to open the door, if you’re uncomfortable-”
“No!” Mo blurted out, perhaps a bit too forcefully. Her hands were gripping tightly at the front of her cloak as if to pull it closer around herself. “No, I… I need to do this, or I’ll never be able to do it.”
“...Huh?” Eurwen raised an eyebrow at her in question.
“Nothing. I’m coming with you,” Mo mumbled, now stepping past her and approaching the open door to the tomb. Her mind briefly reminded her of the memories of her last venture into the earth before she dug a sharp nail into her skin to drag herself out of it. Despite the slight shaking of her body, she pushed herself onward.
If she was ever to have that quiet, secluded life she wanted, she had to do it without fear or regret. In her mind, being scared of this for the rest of her life would do nothing but hinder her if she ever needed to do it again.
“...Okay. We’ll be sticking together then,” Eurwen said in a steady tone, staying close to her as they both stepped through the threshold and into the tomb.