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Rickard walked just behind Darrowfig as they descended the long stairway into the depths of Vishrac-Uramis. Their enchanted light illuminated the passage ahead.

The stairway was wide enough that several people could have comfortably walked abreast. It had a high, cobweb-covered ceiling, and it curved as it descended, only slightly, but enough that they could swiftly no longer see the doorway behind them, nor exactly far they had left to go.

The Book of the Undying King was tucked under Rick’s arm. He felt it stir, shifting restlessly in his grip as they proceeded. This temple had significance to the Book. It guided him here for a reason, he was sure of that. Everything he’d learned about the cursed tome told him it was governed by a powerful and directed will.

The Book clearly wanted something from him. He feared the consequences of being strung along by its unholy power, but at this point what choice did he have? He’d barely begun to process the awful events of the past weeks. On top of that, a part of Rick was still in shock at the new development of meeting Darrowfig Sable, here in the jungle of all places!

He still remembered the day five years ago when he’d first seen the infamous duelist fight in the Solstice Tournament, along with over a hundred competitors from every corner of the Radiant Dynasty. Rick had been fourteen years old at the time, both too young to enter the tournament himself, and lacking the necessary martial skill to even consider it in the future.

He’d never been much of a fighter, a fault lamented by his parents each time he spurned training drills to spend hours curled up in his father’s library, but he loved to watch the duels. Each was a dizzying display of artistry and skill, as warriors young and old fought for honour and prestige. There was something larger than life about them, like each fight came right out of the stories and legends that filled his favourite books.

It made sense, he supposed; there was drama aplenty in the tournament; rising stars to cheer for, old rivalries to be settled at last, and in the midst of it all, Darrowfig.

He’d learned later that she hid her identity to compete, assuming the disguise of Lord Rogier Tvoorst, a real member of a minor country noble family, to enter the tournament under her parents’ noses.

Why they’d forbidden her to enter when noblewomen were welcome to compete, he did not know.

With the disguise in place, Lord Rogier danced through the opening bouts of the tournament, astounding the watching crowd with his sheer speed and skill as he defeated five opponents of renown back to back with apparent ease. On the second day of the tournament Rogier made it to the quarter final, where he met Corundum Illisar.

At this point, Corundum had already made a name for himself in his military postings. He was a brutal and effective tactician. At the age of sixteen he quelled a budding Rossak secession movement in the northern Heartland, crushing the disorganised militia with precise armed strikes. Word was that he’d personally executed their leadership.

It was simply no contest.

Young Rickard, who’d been following the exciting winning streak of the brilliant and previously unknown Rogier Tvoorst, saw the bout end in three disastrous exchanges that took only a matter of seconds

Darrowfig had her disguise broken in front of everyone in the Royal Court. She was outclassed by her ruthless opponent, embarrassed, and thrown out of the tournament for falsifying her identity.

News in the following days was that she’d been disowned by her family, and shortly after that she left Vostrel for good.

It took him by surprise. The event at the tournament was embarrassing, certainly. The Sables lost face with the court, and punishment was expected, but full disownment of their daughter was an extreme gesture. Looking back, Rick imagined there was more going on behind the scenes with the Sable family than he’d known.

When they heard the news, Rickard’s older sister, Rachel, told him she felt sorry for the disgraced Darrowfig. She understood, she said, what it was like to face resistance as a woman studying combat and martial skills, especially without the support of their family.

In the years since, he’d heard occasional rumours of Darrowfig Sable’s increasingly famous exploits across Sedalia. She’d become a duelist for hire, a mercenary sell-sword living rough in the Outerlands. Travellers and gossip-mongers told stories of how she’d turned up to defeat a group of bandits threatening a town in the Luddish Grasslands, or the time she killed a many eyed beast terrorising the dungeons beneath Brod.

Rick found the stories thrilling, but certain people in Vostrel only spoke about her with tones of condescension and pity. They scoffed about how far she’d fallen, how savage she’d become in the uncivilised lands away from Alfir high society.

Now Fig stood before him, the legend made flesh, and he’d stumbled into the middle of her latest mission. He couldn’t quite believe it, and was more than a little starstruck.

For all the questions he had, Rick and Fig spoke little. They moved slowly, using his walking stick and her cutlass to tap around the steps ahead and check for any nasty surprises left by Slimy Lez.

Fig was sure there would be traps. She was soon proven right.

Fig held up a hand and Rick froze.

‘Tripwire,’ she whispered.

He squinted where she pointed. It took him a long time to spot the razor thin wire stretched across the passage, even with their bright enchanted light held nearby. His depth perception was still hopelessly poor, and he didn’t know how long it would take to properly adjust to the recent loss of his left eye, if he ever did.

Fig looked around for the mechanism attached to the wire.

It led to a small contraption concealed in one of the dormant wall sconces that lined the passageway. The trap was simple, a pouch and a small explosive charge which, when triggered, was set to disperse a cloud of fine pink powder into the air. Neither of them recognised the powder, but it was almost certain to be something very unpleasant.

Rick spent five minutes with his heart in his throat as Fig very carefully attempted to dismantle the trap mechanism without setting off the fuse. She’d sent him a half dozen steps up the passage, and he waited in the darkness, expecting that at any moment there would be a flash and a scream.

None came; it turned out Fig had some practice with such things from her previous dungeon delving. When she was done, she wiped her forehead and pocketed the small pouch of strange powder.

‘You never know what might come in handy later,’ she said.

They found two more traps on the stairs; a pressure plate concealed under a loose step, linked to a flammable charge that would have filled the stairway with burning oil, and a tripwire that almost triggered a volley of poison tipped darts from a box gummed to the ceiling.

He could see sweat gathering on the back of Fig’s neck as they cleared step after step. His stomach turned each time they moved forward, sure that they must have missed something. His withered ears strained for the snap of string, or grind of stone, that would spell their doom.

He was glad to have Fig there to lead the way, enchanted light held aloft to drive back the darkness. If they hadn’t met, he would have walked right into the very first trap, and that almost certainly would have been the end for him. He shivered and bile rose in his throat at the thought.

They had descended perhaps a hundred metres without reaching the bottom, reinforcing his suspicion that the frontispiece on the cliff face above was mostly for show, and the temple itself was almost entirely deep underground.

Finally, their light reached a point where the stairway opened into a grand entrance hall, and their descent into Vishrac-Uramis came to its end.

As with the stairs, the temple was in utter darkness; the braziers in the corners of the hall they entered were cold and dead, and in the dark cavernous space their enchanted light seemed very small.

Uncomfortably aware that Slimy Lez could be watching them at this very moment, and that there wasn’t much they could do about that, they held up the light to reveal whatever they could of the temple around them.

The entrance hall was massive, like the inside of a great cathedral. The floor was pale marble, smooth as glass. Unadorned stone altars, each set in its own depression in the marble floor, were arranged at uniform intervals stretching across the vast room from the illuminated entrance to the shadowed back corners. The depressions formed a grid, with gutters and walkways running between them.

Prior to starting his journey, Rick had read extensively about the temple in pages the Book showed him, and knew that the altars fulfilled both ritual and practical purposes. One of the things Vishrac-Uramis specialised in back before its abandonment was mummification.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Pillars as tall as trees lined the edges of the room, and held up the distant ceiling. An unlit chandelier the size of a wagon hung above the altars, and across the walls of the hall, carvings and murals showed figures in the lore of death, similar to the cliff face outside. Limited by the range of their bubble of light, Rick saw hints of other ancient scenes involving Sumat and the Aspects, that he did not recognise. Could some of these detailed artworks have survived the memory purge? If so, they might hold exactly the kind of information he was seeking. Rick would have to investigate those as soon as he got the chance.

First, they had to deal with Slimy Lez.

‘He’s down here somewhere, waiting for a moment to strike,’ Fig said.

‘How can you be so sure?’ Rick asked, looking around nervously at the shadows.

‘Hard won experience, and a naturally suspicious disposition,’ Fig responded, dryly, ‘At least we should have him outnumbered.’

‘Um, about that,’ Rick mumbled, ‘I don’t know how helpful I’ll be if there’s a fight.’

Fig regarded him, and he fidgeted under her gaze, gripping the Book to his chest. Here he was with one of the most renowned sellswords of the modern age, and all he could tell her was how useless he was.

‘You’re underselling yourself,’ she said at last, ‘I can see you’re inexperienced, but you have magic on your side, that counts for a lot.’

She held up the stone he’d enchanted to cast light for their descent to illustrate her point.

‘I don’t really have a lot of control over my… magic,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure how to explain it, but it’s very new to me and I’ll be as surprised as anyone else by whatever might happen when I cast a spell.’

Fig rubbed the bridge of her nose, and nodded, ‘That’s not great news, but having you here still puts me in a better position than I would have been if we’d not met. This whole job has been a disaster from the start. I lost all my equipment in the jungle and got chased for miles by giant lizards. I didn’t even have a way to make light when I arrived… I honestly don’t know what I’d have done if you weren’t here.’

She looked very tired and Rick wondered how long she’d been awake before he ran into her.

‘I’ll level with you,’ she said, ‘I’m still not sure how to actually deal with Slimy Lez once we find him. Right now my best plan is to chop him up and spread him as far and wide as I can until the pieces stop wriggling. If that doesn’t work… frankly anything you can come up with will be a welcome plan B.’

‘I’ll do my best,’ Rick said.

‘Thank you. That’s all I ask.’ Fig picked a direction and they started creeping around the edges of the great hall, looking for doorways out of the hall, or anything to guide their search.

‘No wonder Lez likes this place,’ Fig whispered as they passed by one of the huge pillars, ‘It’s dry as bone, I can taste it on my tongue.’

‘He doesn’t like water?’ Rick asked.

‘A little is fine,’ she replied, ‘apparently he can digest animals without problems, but large amounts can dissolve him, make him break apart and lose the ability to reassemble himself. That was my original plan, before everything went sideways.’

‘How did he make it through the rainforest in the first place?’ Rick wondered aloud.

‘A heavy raincoat, I’m guessing. However he did it, he came here. The only dry place in the jungle,’ Fig said, shining their light ahead as they slunk forward, ‘I know we found those drainage holes up by the entrance, but I still can’t believe they managed to keep this whole place from flooding underneath a rainforest. What kind of crazy plumbing did they have four hundred years ago?’

‘It’s very interesting actually.’ Rick whispered back, ‘There’s an enormous reservoir beneath the temple to collect rainfall and any moisture drawn out by the magical wards which clean the air. I thought those might have failed after so long, but they’re still operating. That’s why everything’s so dry. Perfect for mummification and record keeping. And if the reservoir gets too full it just overflows into the local aquifers that feed water back downhill to the ocean.’

Fig paused and turned to frown at him, ‘How the fuck do you know all that?’

‘It’s in the Book,’ he replied, patting the Book of the Undying King tucked snugly under his arm.

‘Oh it’s in the Book, well aren’t you lucky to have a magical guidebook, Rickard. It opens doors and has information on archaic plumbing methods. Quite the read I’m sure. Where did you acquire such a thing?’ she probed.

‘I… found it,’ he shuffled and tried to avoid meeting her eyes.

‘Where?’ Fig arched an eyebrow.

‘In a grave,’ Rick grimaced. It didn’t sound great when you said it out loud.

Fig sighed, ‘Of course you did.’

She turned away and muttered, ‘We’ll need to have a proper talk about that Book once we’ve cleared this place.’

They checked the first archway leading out of the hall.

It led to a wing of the temple full of old stone sarcophagi. The boxes were ornately decorated in a variety of styles, and nearby there were stone carving tools, along with pallets for moving each finished sarcophagus. It looked like an area for preparation, more than permanent storage, and Rick imagined there must be crypts elsewhere with hundreds of occupied sarcophagi, perhaps even thousands of them, considering how many mummification altars there were in the great hall.

Vishrac-Uramis must have been at the centre of burial rites for the wealthy and devout in lost Cthalvaliss, once upon a time, who knows how many were interred here. They found whole rooms filled with long rows of canopic jars that Rick recommended they not look inside.

As they searched, they encountered no traps and no sign of activity. It didn’t make things any easier though; in fact it might have been worse. The entire time, Rick jumped at shadows. He turned every corner expecting to be ambushed.

It was mentally and emotionally exhausting. Rick couldn’t imagine how he was going to face searching the entire underground complex like this. How long before they made a mistake? How long before he broke down and couldn’t take it any more?

Even without the threat of ambush by a murderer, Rick was realising that in the dark, and with potentially miles of tunnels to navigate throughout the complex, he would have been terrified to explore these sinister halls alone.

Fig, by comparison, seemed stoically resigned and methodical. He could see the situation wearing on her, but she took it far better than he did. She calmly told him where to stand, and led the way through each door. Rick marvelled at her composure as they crept through the menacing darkness. How did she do it?

Their search turned up nothing but rooms full of ancient tools, devoid of life.

Disappointed and more worn down with every passing moment, they left the sarcophagi wing and returned to the grand hall to continue their search around the leftmost wall, towards the next group of archways.

Fig was the first one to notice the corpse.

It sprawled discarded against the base of one of the pillars, russet haired, with strong male features stretched into a silent wail in death. It looked Vermilli, if its stature and build were anything to go by. As they inched closer, and their light fell across the whole scene, Rick and Fig both flinched.

The body was entirely missing its lower half.

The torso ended at the waist in a soupy mass of bubbling flesh, which spilled across the marble floor in a trail of viscera that appeared to lead off through one of the archways.

Up until recently, this would have been the most gruesome sight Rick had laid eyes on; how much a few weeks could change, but even now it was deeply upsetting. He looked away in disgust.

‘Slimy Lez’s handywork?’ Rick asked.

‘Yes,’ Fig said, her voice clipped. She turned away to scan the darkness as she responded, ‘The kill is fresh. Partially dissolved and left for later.’

He saw that Fig had gone a little pale, her knuckles clenched white on the hilt of her sword. She didn’t seem the type to be so affected by a random death, even one so gory.

‘Do you know who this is?’ Rick asked.

Fig nodded slowly, not looking back at the body

‘A friend?’

‘Cove Barksole, he was a mercenary,’ she said, speaking slowly, ‘One of the better ones. We weren’t particularly close, we just worked together a couple of times. But he was kind enough to introduce me to Saltcrust, and he vouched for me with Mirabelle the Black when I was looking for new contracts in the south… He was on the job with Lez, when the slimy bastard turned on his team.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Rick said.

‘It’s fine,’ Fig let out a breath, ‘I just wasn’t expecting him to be here. I thought he died in the desert months ago… Knowing that I could have saved him if I'd got here a bit sooner…’

She shook her head, ‘It’s just a shit situation.’

Rick nodded.

Fig looked at the trail leading away from the body.

‘There could be other captives.’ she said, ‘Lez knows we’re here. This is a challenge. He’s putting time pressure on us.’

‘Drawing us into a trap, or an ambush?’ Rick said.

Fig nodded, ‘I expect so.’

‘What do we do?’ Rick asked. He looked to Fig, feeling completely out of his depth.

She knelt down and ran a finger through the gore trail, pinching her fingers together to test it. It was fresh.

‘I’m not going to wait around for another captive to be slaughtered and dumped, just to taunt me,’ she said, ‘which I suppose means I’m just going to have to spring his trap and hope for the best.’

Rick gulped, ‘That sounds like a terrible plan.’

‘Believe me, I know,’ Fig replied, wiping her fingers on Cove’s threadbare shirt. She straightened up, ‘Are you in or out?’

‘Do I have a choice?’ he asked.

‘Not really, unless you want to leave,’ she said, and fixed him with a serious stare, ‘I won’t blame you, if you do, just so long as you leave me some light.’

Rick looked longingly across the great hall at the stairway to the surface.

The Book of the Undying King rustled its displeasure in his grip.

He glanced at Fig. Her face was set in a mask of indifference, but there was a slight tremor to her eyes as she watched him consider whether to leave her alone in the darkness.

He made up his mind and sighed, ‘I’m staying. For better or worse.’

Fig couldn’t hide her sigh of relief, but she quickly covered it as they turned to follow the trail of gore, wherever it led.

‘Good,’ she said, ‘Let’s find this slimy fucker and kill him.’

[End of Chapter 3]