The walk down the lit hall was quiet as Mona followed Eurwen, staring up at the beam of light at the ceiling that connected to each hanging piece of crystal. Something about watching the white beam kept her focused enough to keep up the calming breaths.

She eventually heard Eurwen stop ahead of her, causing her to halt in place as well. Her gaze dropped from the light to instead look at the Elven woman leading the way. Eurwen had stopped at the end of the hall, where it had suddenly opened up into a humongous dark room. The last crystal at the end of the hall’s ceiling was slightly askew, leaving the beam to instead hit part of the metal of its fixture.

Eurwen turned to look up at the brass fixture atop the doorway, lifting a hand and finding she could reach it with her taller stature. While she began fiddling with it, Mona leaned around her somewhat to look into the large dark room ahead of them. Her ears stood tall and alert, eyes wide as she stared into it, trying to get some sort of idea of what was there.

The innate night vision of being a Beastfolk certainly helped, but even then she could only see so far into the expansive area. Mo could see pillars holding up the much taller ceiling, dividing the room into open columns. There were divots in the wall, long and deep, similar to the ones that were in the first room, where the spices and offerings were held. These were obviously much bigger, however, and Mo could guess that a corpse was tucked away into each one. They were in a tomb after all.

She could also see some sort of large shape ahead of them in an open area, just before the first of many stone columns. It was a strange table-like shape, a large round and flat thing sitting atop a number of lines until it all connected into the ground.

The only sounds she could hear seemed to come from Eurwen or the fixture she was fidgeting with. The smell, however, was similar to the first room, though faint. The smell of rot and must was definitely there, though it was drastically held back by the incense and fragrant offerings left for the dead. Mona couldn’t help but be grateful that whoever prepared the bodies so long ago had done it well enough to make the smell tolerable.

“And… There!” Eurwen mumbled before turning a small knob at the bottom of the fixture, allowing the light to catch into its quartz inlay and project into the room. It didn’t do all too much, however, casting off into the dark at nothing without really lighting the room up.

“Oh,” The Elven woman muttered with a slight pout.

“Can you angle the beam downward?” Mo asked, pointing out into the dark at the table shape that Eurwen couldn’t see. It was set below the beam. If it was another disc, it would be big enough to light the room. Maybe not entirely, but at least a good amount.

“I think so,” Eurwen gave a nod and began to pull the knob backward, which began to angle the crystal. The beam of light followed suit, slowly gliding down stone shapes further on before inching toward the shape Mo pointed her toward. It glinted with light but didn’t quite catch.

“Looks like another one. It’s huge!” Mo exclaimed, turning to look at her companion.

“They must have misaligned a lot of the parts when leaving for the last time,” Eurwen muttered, taking a few hesitant steps into the still-dark room.

“Who do you mean?”

“The last people to be inside. My ancestors, I would imagine. If my sword is what opened this place up and no one else can get in without it, then that would mean we’re the first ones to set foot here in centuries!” Mo could hear the grin on Eurwen’s face as she exclaimed this.

“Centuries, huh?” Mo muttered, watching Eurwen blindly walk across the floor with careful steps toward the glint of light ahead. After simply watching her for a moment more, Mona stepped out of the doorway and walked toward her, linking her arm with hers in a motion that made the taller woman gasp. “Here, I can see the way. Just walk with me.”

“Ah, got it… You startled me for a moment there!”

“Sorry,” Mo said quietly as she guided them both across the stone floor, her eyes flitting about looking for tripwires or bear traps before they got to the disc without any issue. Once Mo reached her hand out to touch it, however, Eurwen stopped her, pulling her back a step.

“Sorry,” the Elven woman mumbled a bit sheepishly. “Just… Let me be the one to mess with the beam, okay? Just in case.”

“In case of what?” Mo mumbled, a brow raising in curiosity. She watched Eurwen mess with the large, heavy-looking disc of quartz on its large brass swivels and knobs. Mona was well versed in most traps from her past experiences, having seen plenty firsthand. She couldn’t think of any way, however, that a touch of an object could be detected as wrong, at least not without some sort of pressure plate, wire, or spell she’d never encountered. Since they were only changing its position anyway, she couldn’t see how it would matter regardless.

Eurwen didn’t respond with any sort of answer, only giving grunts as she moved the disc upward. The beam eventually captured one of the inner facets with a bright flash that made Mo flinch and look away. As it continued to move, the light bounced about the inner faces of the crystal and made different small beams dance on the walls and pillars about them. Another push from Eurwen and they all tugged inward toward each other, all combining into one enormous and blinding beam that cast itself upward into the ceiling where another crystal was waiting.

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It was a crystalline orb set into a brass chandelier, and the beam caused the light to spread all across the room. The stone lit up and the details of the stone were now visible. Mo blinked past the initial shock, rubbing at her eyes before looking around them. She was certainly right about the dead being housed within the walls. Some of their coffins and wrapped bodies were now visible thanks to the light with not a single one of the spaces empty. She could see the incredible amount of offerings stacked in with and around them now as well.

Swords, shields, arrows, bows, hammers, axes, helmets, incense, pots, small ceramic figurines, and even old bits of dried flowers and chipped dishes lined the spaces around the corpses. Each and every one held at least a few different offerings or belongings. Despite not being necessarily devout, Mo couldn’t help but feel somewhat guilty for not bringing something to offer as well.

“There’s so many of them,” Mo mumbled, keeping her voice low as though she would disturb the resting souls around them. “And so many things… How could this place be abandoned? These have to be the ancestors of so many different people, why would no one else know about it?”

“I’m not sure, but the amount certainly does align with the story of these folks being part of a war caravan. And a big one at that.” Eurwen replied, staring down one of the long stretches of the divided room.

“Do you think they were all soldiers?” Mona asked as she approached one of the walls, looking at the stone coffins and the many things about them. She then crouched down to look into the one seated at the bottom. It was half the size of the coffin above it, one no fully grown man or woman could fit into comfortably. A wooden totem-esque carving of a bear sat beside it, the wood now brittle. “...I think that they had families with them,” she muttered.

“It’s likely,” Eurwen’s voice was further away now, but Mo couldn’t bring her eyes up to see where she’d wandered. “Perhaps it was a caravan of people affected by the war, rather than a group leaving to attend the war itself. Though by the amount of weapons and armor in here, I’d say they were still well prepared if the fight was brought to them.”

Mo eventually sighed and stood back up to her full height. She turned to look around at the sheer amount of resting places within the tomb before beginning to walk back over toward Eurwen. The Elven woman was further into the burial room, standing underneath the chandelier with her hands on her hips, head angled back to look up at it.

Mona then looked out to the next part of the room, where stairs started to descend along with the ceiling and the burial walls. Another hallway similar to the one they’d just gotten out of was at the bottom of the long flight of stairs. The doorway even had the same fixture of quartz at the top where the beam could presumably continue.

“So we’re just going to be threading the light through? Until we hit what?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Eurwen started, pointing up to the chandelier. Specifically, toward its outer brass ring and the tiny inlaid ball of quartz on one side. “I think that’s the next connecting piece, though! Look, it even has an inlet there so it’ll click into place!”

“You’re pretty excited about this whole place, aren’t you?” Mo asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Of course I am! I’ve got an opportunity to learn about my history! Not to mention the light itself is simply beautiful.”

Mona looked up to the chandelier, thinking for a moment before pulling out her bow and plucking an arrow from her quiver. “I could hit that pretty easily,” she said as she knocked the arrow and began to pull it back. Before she could get a full draw, however, Eurwen was stopping her again, a hand on her arm as she made her lower her weapon.

“Here, let me do it. Please,” Eurwen looked her in the eyes before holding out her hands for the weapon.

“What?” Mo asked, surprised at the sudden request for her bow. “Why? I can hit that shot. Do you even know how to use a bow and arrow?”

“Eh… I’ve done it maybe once, but please, I need to be the one to do this, okay? I won’t break your bow. Trust me.”

Mo hesitated then, staring into Eurwen’s unwavering brown eye. She was wearing that smile again, a warm and kind beam of reassurance. The Beastfolk woman could feel her face becoming hot before she finally gave in. She huffed and handed the bow and arrow to her companion. “Fine, but let me line you up!”

“Line me up? Oh!” Eurwen gasped as Mo then began to move about her, angling her arms and legs with quick, deft touches. She was soon standing behind the tall fiery-haired woman, one hand on her shoulder and the other on her drawing arm.

“Go ahead and pull back the arrow and start aiming it up at the back end of the ring,” Mo began, unmoving as Eurwen hesitantly began to pull back the bow. Her hand was holding the arrow right at least, pinched onto it without holding on too tight or too loose. She was able to pull it back to her ear as well without much trouble, something Mo had expected with how the Elf had carried herself before.

“Good,” Mona spoke quietly, moving now to her other side and slowly angling her arm upward to adjust her aim. A few quiet moments of silence followed before she stopped her, pointing out the area to Eurwen. “Now shoot!”

Eurwen barely hesitated before letting the arrow loose. The arrowhead was just slightly off the mark but did its job as the brass ring snapped with the force, knocking it into place. The light almost immediately shined through the small inlay and cast a beam down into the disc above the next hallway.

Mona stepped back at the same moment as the other, the Elven woman quickly handing her back her bow before starting to jog off toward the stairs. “Thanks, w-we got it! Time to head on to the next one!” she spoke quickly and with some sort of nervousness revealed by her stutter.

Mo watched her go for a moment before simply nodding and walking off to grab her stray arrow from where it’d landed to the side. She did her best to ignore the redness she could feel on her scarred face, deciding to stay silent. After slipping the arrow back into her quiver again she started to follow once more.

One of her ears atop her head twitched and her brows knit together slightly. The further down they went on the large set of stairs she could swear she could faintly hear something in the walls, past the stone. Her hair stood on end and she shuddered. She could only pray it was water as they continued walking further into the earth.