With the added help of her exhaustion from fighting spiders for most of the day, Iris was finally able to get some sleep. She was still plagued with nightmares, but she was able to sleep through most of them and quickly fall back asleep after the rest. The recurring flashbacks to her most recent mortal injury affected her less and less, and more so than causing fear or panic they had begun to simply annoy her. The nightmares quickly took a turn for the esoteric after that, with twisted sceneries and grotesque monsters, as if her mind were testing out approaches in search of something that might torment her.
The morning was groggy and slow -- and her eyes ached with complaints about the perpetual light of the cavern -- but she at least felt rested, and began to regain her cheer throughout breakfast. It was soup, again, and most of the party complained to Autumn when she finally joined them. She explained it was all she could do with what she had on hand right now, but assured them that solid meals would be coming as soon as they were back on the ship and she once again had access to her full array of ingredients and cookware in the galley.
After breakfast, the party made their way to the gargoyle living chamber between the crew's cavern camp and the workshop where the Gaping Maw was still undergoing repairs. There they met up with Killup, who had promised to give them a proper tour of the mountain at the first chance he had to peel away from his family.
"Last time I'll be home for a while," he was saying as he lead them through a series of cracks in the walls, "can barely get the nephews off me."
"The Gaping Maw must take you pretty far from here," Iris said.
"Very, very far," his voice grew sad for a moment, but then his energy abruptly rebounded, "but today, friends see the mountain!"
"Yeah!" Autumn said with excitement, "what's up first?"
The crack opened up into one of the giant's hallways, which they continued down right up against the wall. A giant lumbered past soon after they entered the hallway, the ground shaking with each of his footfalls.
"First, the steps," he spread his hands wide across the air as if illustrating a grand and impressive sight.
"Ooh! What are the steps?" Autumn asked with barely contained glee.
"Right up here!" Killup darted forward on all fours.
Iris and Autumn immediately chased after him. Victoria floated after them slightly faster than she had been before, while Eli and Titus sighed and sped up to a light jog.
Killup soon came to a stop as he reached a corner, and Autumn nearly ran into him when she caught up. Iris blipped beside them, and the others followed close behind.
"Behold, the steps!" Killup gestured beyond the corner.
Autumn instantly deflated, "these are stairs."
Before them were massive stairs, each forming a sheer cliff face that rose about twenty feet above the step below. They seemed to be built from long rectangular blocks of marble, and were clearly once polished smooth but now bore the scuffs and pock marks of use.
"I'm not climbing that," Eli said flatly.
"No need! Come!" Killup bounded off towards the first of the steps and disappeared into a small tunnel where the cliff of the first step met the wall.
Most of the party had to hunch over to fit into the tunnel, while Autumn strolled through with only a passing caution not to scrape the top of her head on the lowest portions and Victoria merely sank her ghostly form into the floor so she could float down the tunnel at a similar height to Autumn.
After a few hundred feet, the tunnel opened into a small cave that had clearly been mined out of the marble with pickaxes. At the center of the chamber was a ramshackle wooden platform attached to ropes and a pulley system, which led up into a vertical tunnel mined through the marble.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.
"There's no way we're going to fit on that," Titus remarked.
"It's fine!" Killup assured them, clearly excited to show them what was at the other end, "I'll climb, that one flies," he pointed at Victoria, "the rest of you, stand here."
After sharing cautious glances, Iris, Autumn, Titus and Eli squeezed onto the small wooden platform. There were no rails or walls, and it would be precariously easy to fall off. Killup began the climb up the shaft, and looked back only to call out instructions.
"Ring the bell!"
The group looked around until Iris located a dangling rope attached to a bell suspended from a wooden beam affixed to the wall of the chamber. She blipped over, yanked on the rope to ring the bell, and then blipped back to the platform. A few seconds later, the lift lurched into motion. The ropes and pulleys groaned and the platform creaked, and Autumn retched like she was about to puke.
"Nope," Titus said, promptly wrapping a hand around her eyes so she couldn't see down and a hand around her mouth so she couldn't puke. Muffled complaints came from beneath his hand, but the platform shook when Autumn resisted, so she gave up.
The platform moved slowly, but after a short while it lurched to a stop in another small chamber much like the last. Titus kept a hand over Autumn's eyes and hoisted her over the small gap between the platform and the floor, while Iris blipped past it and Eli simply stepped across. Victoria and Killup were waiting for them.
"We don't use that much," Killup said, "glad it worked."
"How did it work?" Iris asked, "I thought there'd be someone up here pulling a rope or something. What was the bell for?"
Killup shrugged and bounded off down another passageway.
They followed him until the passageway opened up onto one of the steps in the stairwell. They had traveled hundreds of feet upwards and bypassed much of the stairwell, but there were still several more cliffs between them and the top of the stairs. They followed Killup down the length of the giant step, to a wooden door with a rounded top set into the cliff face of the next step.
"This," he paused as he grabbed hold of the large metal knocker hanging from the door and banged it several times, "is the Keghold."
The door creaked as it swung open, and on the other side a gargoyle holding a ridiculously oversized mug welcomed Killup with a disgruntled expression which was quickly replaced with a joyous grin.
"Kill! Everyone, Kill's back!"
A chorus of cheers erupted from within as Killup and the party filtered in. It was -- by all means -- a tavern. There round tables scattered around a wide room lit by glow stone sconces, a gargoyle-and-autumn sized bar with rows of stools, and a back wall behind it lined with dozens horizontal barrels. Some were carved from marble, while others were traditional wooden barrels, and many had taps ready to pour.
There were about a dozen gargoyles scattered around the tavern, not counting the pair of barkeeps behind the bar, and all of them were cheering at the sight of Killup. Several ran up to greet him with hugs, shoulder claps and high fives. The celebrations escalated until he was hoisted off his feet by four gargoyles and carried to the bar, where he was promptly placed onto a stool and immediately served with a freshly filled mug.
"Good to have you, Kill," the barkeep smiled, "heard you were around the mountain somewhere."
"Just for a little while," Killup said, nodding in appreciation at the drink "round for my friends?"
The barkeep eyed the adventurers with a skeptical expression, but eventually nodded and began filling mugs. "Visitor's special," he said as he placed the first mug down in front of Autumn.
She eyed the drink for a second, then shrugged and threw it back. She managed to swallow the gulp she took, but then erupted into coughing. "That is terrible!"
"Autumn," Eli hissed, nudging her with an elbow as he took a seat beside her on the too-small stool.
The barkeep, however, didn't seem offended. He instead laughed, and was joined by the patrons surrounding Killup, "gargoyle mead hits hard," he said proudly.
The others took tentative sips of their mugs, not wanting to be rude when offered free drinks, but none of them liked it. Iris thought it tasted like rocks, a suspicion that was soon confirmed when she noticed there were several stones rolling around beneath the mead at the bottom of the mug.
She leaned over to whisper to Titus, "why are there rocks in it?"
"Just smile and pretend to drink," he whispered back.
They ended up staying at the Keghold for multiple rounds of drinks, having no choice but to actually drink them as time wore on because there was nowhere to discretely pour them out. Iris considered dumping hers into her bag a few times, but ultimately decided there was no way she could pull it off without being seen.
Throughout their stay, Killup caught up with the barkeeps and the other patrons, retelling some of the highlights of his adventures. He told of a massive battle in the depths of a swamp with a sea serpent which they ultimately captured, and the wrangling of a kraken in the northern seas which they bound with chains and drug across the oceans back to the Shining Blue. Eventually he got around to properly introducing Autumn, explaining that she was way better than his previous chef, and much less likely to fall onto her own knife.
After a few hours, they stumbled out of the bar and back out onto the giant step.
"Next stop," Killup swayed slightly as he spoke, "the growing chambers."
"The what?" Autumn asked after an involuntary burp.
"Where giants are born!" Killup raced off towards the nearest wall, where he disappeared into another crack.
Eli groaned, "does he ever slow down?"