The Idol room was a large hallway going forward, made of stone bricks cut to shape and fitted tightly with no additional adhesives. The ceiling continued to be a single enchanted slab, although this time it displayed the names of the Gods and some of the things which they represented in text that outlined how the Gods looked roughly, it was a masterpiece of craftmanship and the hallway still had baskets and cloth as though time had stopped in the room when the last person left. At the end of the 6 metre (20 foot) high hallway that went on for 50 metres (164 feet) there was another pedestal with an idol.

This idol however was cracked into two pieces, as it was lying on the ground as though knocked over with the ceiling having a crack that distinctly split the writing and image of the deity in half with smaller breaks in the ceiling distorting the image as well as making the text illegible to Colbert. This was out of place in such a well preserved room with wicket baskets and jugs that still stood, the ceiling also showed no signs of structural damage as there was not a single chip of stone or dust from the broken idol or desecrated ceiling.

Colbert: “Even though the ceiling is damaged it would seem that the self cleaning enchantments on the room still work, I can not begin to imagine where such a thing is written in the room as so far everything has been about the God and their idol with the text warped to the deities image.”

Marie: “This is all very impressive, but we are not about to try and lug around the entire stone slab that makes up the ceiling back to Snout Port.”

Sofia: “We have to at least study this for a bit longer, if we can even understand how the wrapped text works then it would greatly progress current enchanting work.”

Colbert: “This is a once in a lifetime opportunity, you can not leave me here either so we might as well begin deciphering the rooms secrets, there might be hidden passageways.”

Marie: “You are not fooling me, our objective is to enter the vault and find the sacred texts. Wild speculations on the room, while true that they have secret passageways like any temple, would be a waste of time since we can not comprehend the visible enchants let alone anything that would be wanted to be hidden, case and point the self cleaning enchants.”

Colbert: “I pay you two gold a day, if we have to stay over the harsh winter then the pay stays the same. You do not lose out on anything and this work is easy, no life threatening monster like we would face heading back out of Deep Wood.”

Marie: “You are forgetting that we are currently living on the locals good will, the longer we stay the more dangerous this becomes, also this was not part of the quest. We take you here and help you explore the temple, we do not help you decipher ancient engravings.”

Colbert: “Fine but I will be taking recording of this entire room.”

Marie: “Just the ceiling since in person we can not find anything else here so a recording would give even less information, so stop wasting time and focus on what you can do in your time frame here.”

*Hmph

Colbert huffs and walks to his slaves, where he extracts scrolls from their backpacks before proceeding to look up at the ceiling, which results in his vision being burned into the scroll in black and white. After using the scrolls to take pictures of the entire ceiling, along with the cracked pieces, Colbert also takes a recording of the stone idols depicting the ancient Draconic empires gods.

The idols are depictions of what the gods held dear for each other, like the God of the underworld Ahpuch having an idol of an owl sitting atop a pile of corpses of elves and dragonkin with wings. This idol is 3 metres (10 foot) tall with the owl making up a third of the idol, the scene creates a sense of gallantry towards the inevitable, although Marie being 1.7 metres (5.6 foot) looking up at the statue while beside me must be intimidated.

Zutal: “What do you think of this owl for an idol Marie?”

Marie: “It feels odd, but I can respect the end for I have caused so many to end before their time.”

Zutal: “You like the hunt of the wild do you not? Why bother about those that you finish when it is about your own entertainment?”

Marie: “I do not like that line of thinking.”

Marie has a pained expression on her face but I know not what she is thinking.

Marie: “I lived closely to the Desert Cohorts in the tree line with my village, we used to hunt for the villages needs and never to cause pain to the creatures of the woods. The teaching of our elders were always about making a clean kill and to never torture our prey, that a good hunter revels in both the tracking and the chase rather than in the suffering that hardens the meat and soils the spirit of the hunt.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

Zutal: “Why did you ever decide to leave then”

Marie: “Vengeance, to hunt wild beasts in clothes.”

Colbert: “Fine, I am done now so let us depart for the lower levels of the temple in the hopes of some texts on what is going on here. A text explaining what the hole down does or its purpose would also be helpful.”

Zutal: “Nice to know that we have the same interests.”

Allelu: “Less talking, more raiding.”

As we exit through the door of the idol room and turn towards the doors leading supposedly down we notice that it is left ajar.

Colbert: “The door to the drop is fully open, although it does not seem like any creature is in here with us.”

Marie: “Stay on alert, be sure to attack first and ask questions later.”

Ignoring the fully opened door to the drop we instead head to the door leading down, and when we are next to it I get the chance to sniff the door attentively.

Zutal: “I can smell a human on the door knob.”

Colbert: “It would seem that they use a smelling suppressant, most likely for wild creatures but they were not expecting us to have someone with such a good sense of smell. Good doggie.”

Zutal: “Shut up.”

I lead up front with Allelu behind me and the rest of the party loosely following behind with Marie behind Colbert. This is done because Sofia has her familiar healing spell, but that does not mean that I am happy to become a pin cushion to any dart traps or a pancake for an Indiana Jones boulder down the hallway trap.

The clinking of my claws on the floor is distinct from the rest of the parties quieter thudding sounds of their shoes, this makes it harder to focus on any other noises so I focus on staring into the darkness with my superior night vision and smelling for any lingering threats that have made this place their home. Smelling for threats is what alerts me to a giant arachnid that jumps out of a dark indent in the hallway that appears periodically, the torches carried by the party could not pierce into the darkness right next to me and I bring up my right arm with the bone bracer.

The brown arachnid is the same size as myself, its hydraulic legs jump out of the darkness and are the first thing to slam into me while my arm goes up to its fangs. However I regret the defensive decisions as the spiders two front legs slam into my shoulders and bring me down to the ground, with a lot of pain in my still ruined right shoulder, the maw of the spider is slightly different from a regular arachnid as it does not have two sets of fangs but instead it has a split lower jaw and a split upper mouth that splits open.

The ‘X’ shaped mouth fully encloses around my right arm brace and I can feel the creature pressing down with so much force that it feels like my forearm bone is being ground down, this puts an irrational fear into me as I wildly swing my left arm at the spiders upper body to create multiple series of large gashes that do not seem to deter the spider from actively trying to eat me alive. The four damnable legs press down onto me as I try to forcefully lift it up but my weakened right shoulder hurts too much, along with the slick spider blood seeping down into a pool below me making it slippery to try and get up as my legs while pinned also can get little traction.

Zutal: “What are you doing help me!”

My forearm has lost all feeling and my bone feels like its going to chip, the bone bracer has not let the sharp inner teeth of this unholy abomination pierce into me however it does not protect against the heavy pressure exerted from all directions. My slashing is erratic along with my breathing as I can hear very little of what is happening, I am also hyper focused on the eight beady eyes the size of golf balls staring at me from the top of the spiders head as I scream and thrash until I am able to push the spider body off to the side and stand up all while staring at the beady eyes of the spider still locked onto my arm like a vice.

I can feel being ground down when I am thrown to the floor again and onto my back. Stopping the staring contest only to look at another spider maw closing in on my face, but I quickly position my frontal horn into the maw and slide it through the arachnids head, with a spray of green ich I can only close my eyes and push off the body that turns my head with it falling to the side. Sliding my head back and wiping my eyes I stand and look around, ignoring my arm for now, I can see that behind me there is only a little bit of light coming through a wall of black.

When I look closer the light shifts and I can see hints of brown fur, this dawns a realization on me that while I was struggling on the ground the party got swarmed by more arachnids and that the tunnel behind me is now a wall of the creatures as they scramble to be able to feast on the rest of the party.

Thinking for a moment I jam my left claw into my right forearm and rip out the spider head along with the bone bracer right off my arm, ignoring the extreme pain that now permeates my whole right side I run up to the wall and slash.

I slash at the wall as fluids hit my face, effectively blinding me, but I do not stop for fear of the brown tarantulas turning around and attempting to clamp down on me. This proves to not be too effective as my left leg is soon crushed under a bite.

*Aaaahhh!

“Die”

*Thump*Squelch*Crunch*Slap

Only one leg able to move I use the left to balance myself as I lash out with my right, claws and jaw, snapping and scraping the chitinous armour of what I presume is the living wall of arachnids in front of me. I can not tell where I am after a few seconds as my wide swings and impromptu leg kicks feel like they are hitting the brick walls of the oversized tunnel rather than spiders.

This does not last long as I am soon engulfed my a wave coming from above that buries me as the pressure from above mounts and I feel more ichor come down my face, I also feel more pain from every part of my body as both my shoulders are bit into, my thighs feel as though something is chewing through my scales and my clawed hands and legs feel limp as I bring them into a foetal position.