Marmaladas, the 18th of Lost Speed, 4E 201

Draloth pulled the golden claw from Taelor’s hand. “So this is what he and those bandits were on about.” He pulled out a magnifying loupe and held it to his eye. “This is solid gold!”

Mell reached down and took a thin book from the bag about Taelor’s waist and flipped it open. “Hmmm...this journal says he stole the claw from the trader in Riverweed.”

“Ah, stolen goods,” said Ti’lieth. “This one will return it in secret and give the place a little tidy before he leaves.”

“No,” said Kharla. “We’ll see if there’s a reward, but that’s assuming we get out of here alive, of course.”

“What’s this?” Thral asked as he stood on a very poorly disguised pressure plate at the end of the chamber. As soon as he did so a large spiked iron grid swung from some hidden place right into his back. The Nord didn’t budge at first but then started moving gently up and down as his face lit up. “Oh yes, that’s nice! Why they put backscratcher down here? Maybe because there’s no trees.”

While Thral relieved an itch on a part of his broad back he’d not been able to reach since adolescence, the rest of them passed safely by the spiked-gate trap. Thral followed, a big smile on his face.

They entered a second crypt chamber not dissimilar to the one they’d just left, but this time they crept through silently so as to not disturb any Daughtr. As they reached the doorway tunnel that provided the exit to the chamber, large pendulums with heavy sharp blade axes affixed to their ends started swinging from the tunnel’s ceiling.

“Any ideas how we get past those?” Kharla asked.

“Ti’lief sees these before. There’s usually a chain that stops them.”

Kharla looked at the Cat. “And where would that be?”

“This one thinks this chain would be at the other end of the doorway.”

Kharla rolled her eyes.

“Ti’lief doesn’t want to give more bad news,” began the Khapiit, “but I think we have another problem.”

Kharla turned to see several Daughtr stirring in the chamber.

“There’s a gap between those blades and the floor,” Draloth said. “If we crawl we might be safe. As long as everyone keeps their head down.”

“Good, let’s do it!” Kharla said as the Daughtr began to draw close.

Soon they were all crawling along, keeping as low to the ground as they could. Behind her Kharla heard the Daughtr scream followed by the sound of blades cutting through bone. She hoped it was Daughtr bone and not one of her companions. Luckily, they all emerged whole at the other end, the only evidence of their enemy a red ribbon that had somehow got caught around Thral’s ear.

The chain was indeed on the other side of the doorway tunnel, but Kharla didn’t pull it. It would serve them well if anymore Daughtr tried to come up behind them. They passed now through a series of catacombs, treading carefully as they went by Daughtr standing in alcoves. All were attired in dresses that must’ve once been beautiful. Some held dolls in their hands, one a hoop and stick, another a teak model of a house complete with thatch and a little door and windows. A couple of times they came across oily puddles on the floor with oil lamps suspended above.

Mell had extinguished her light as the lamps provided plenty of their own. “I wonder who maintains all the lighting down here.”

“Well, it must be the Daughtr,” Draloth said.

Kharla looked back. “That’s unlikely, I’d say.”

“Yes, you are right,” the Dark Elf began. “It must be the Skreevers. They need the light to do their drawings and write their lovely little messages.”

“But the Daughtr are not tall enough,” said Ti’lief. “I doubt even Thral could reach them.”

Thral was following behind and walking around the lamps so he didn’t have to duck. What was wrong with the Cat? Was he blind? Maybe the light was affecting his eyes. Khapiit didn’t do too well in strong light. Kharla wondered why they lived in a land known for its bright warm sun. Perhaps they came out later in the day when the sun was going down.

“Maybe they stand on each other’s shoulders?” suggested Mell.

“That would explain why they spill most of the oil on the floor I suppose,” said Draloth.

The catacombs came to an end and they followed a short tunnel into a chamber through which a stream ran to a closed gate from a waterfall flowing over a plain unpaneled stone wall. As they entered the room an upright sarcophagus broke open and a Daughtr stepped out. Its slack-jawed head was crowned with a wonky tiara and in its hand it held a small item of pottery. A child’s bowl. It looked at the company with its glowing eyes and then lobbed the bowl at Thral. It hit his head and smashed to pieces. Thral rubbed his head but before he could say anything a wooden toy horse was hurtling its way toward them. Then other toys and pieces of children’s kitchenware followed in quick succession. The undead figure seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of such items in its sarcophagus.

They retreated to the entrance as a spinning top flew over Mell’s head. Kharla tried her bow but the speed of the attacks were too fast for her to get a good aim.

“Cat,” Kharla said. “Use your acrobatics to distract it, then we’ll rush in.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The Khapiit nodded and somersaulted out into the chamber, only to trip and fall in the stream. He recovered quickly and attempted a flip but miscalculated and flew past the Daughtr and crashed into its supply of throwing items. The creature bore its eyes into the Cat and raised a wooden baby’s rattle impregnated with metal spikes above its head, but before the rattle came down Kharla planted her axe in the undead’s skull. It buckled and fell to the ground.

“What’s wrong with you?” Kharla asked the cat as she removed the axe.

“Ti’lief must be a bit tired, yes, that’s it.”

Kharla grunted. “Right, the only way’s through that gate,” she said to the others. “Let’s go.”

The gate opened as Kharla pulled on the chain and they followed the stream into a cramped tunnel. They turned down a dry tunnel, the stream slipping through a blocked area; the tunnel twisted until it came into a larger cavernous passage that picked up the stream again. At the end sat a teak chest with a few coins in it.

They then passed down a low narrow tunnel barely high enough to accommodate Thral and found themselves exiting it over an icy natural walkway, the rush of water coming from below. It wasn’t the only thing that came from below either, for a Daughtr emerged, sickly and thin.

“Sweet Roll, I want a Sweet Roll!” came its guttural words just before Kharla smashed it in the face and it fell back down into the water below.

The passage continued once they were over the walkway until they reached two arches that led to a chamber with a double door at its end. Here another Daughtr stood guard, a shredded turquoise mantle about its shoulder and a rolling pin in its hand.

It came for them as soon as it saw them, its glowing ice-blue eyes shining with murderous zeal just before Thral’s warhammer slammed it into the double doors, forcing them open, the rolling pin harmlessly rolling away into the chamber beyond.

They passed a brazier, its fire burning strong, surrounded by six stone heads of what looked like puffins, and then into a passage that ended with a short tunnel where again swinging axes set in motion as they approached.

“Not again!” Kharla sighed. Thral wasn’t going to fit through this one, and the Cat seemed to have lost all sense of size and dimension and was likely to be scalped if he attempted it. “Right, this time I’ll crawl through and pull the chain.”

As Kharla neared the end of the short passage a Daughtr from the new chamber, attired in a shabby but no doubt once-elegant brocade frock in forest green, launched itself at her but was chewed up by the blades.

Kharla pulled the chain and the others moved swiftly through. Kharla, now becoming extremely miffed by all the undead Nordic girls standing in the way of her getting her spear, plunged both her axes into another Daughtr as it tried to climb out of a nearby sarcophagus. It fell back into the receptacle, its guttural voice screeching the words, “It’s not fair! Why’s it always my fault!” before it went still and its eyes dimmed.

Three more Daughtr appeared on the upper level of the chamber and started down the teak stairs toward them. Fortunately, Kharla saw the large pool of oil on the floor and, conveniently suspended precariously above it, several oil lamps. Kharla drew an arrow and shot at the lamp, knocking it to the floor, lighting the oil, and engulfing the Daughtr in flames. They screamed as they went up like torches. “But it wasn’t me! It was my brother!” Kharla heard one of them say before it collapsed.

“I hope you’ve not damaged those teak stairs,” said Draloth, running over to them as the flames went out. “No, they seem to be all right. Luckily, teak is resistant not just to decay but also to fire. It’s because it’s relatively dense.”

Kharla, utterly uninterested, ignored the Dark Elf and made her way up the steps. The others followed, but then she heard the Cat squeal and looked back to see him flat on the ground at the bottom of the stairs.

“Ti’lief is sorry. He seems to have misplaced his step. This one’s toe hurts from the Skreever bite.” He got up and warily started to make his way back up.

“Shall we get on with it?” Kharla sighed. “I don’t want to spend more time here than we have to.”

“This is very narrow, is it not?” The Khapiit said as they crossed a narrow stone walkway above the chamber.

Not, thought Kharla. It was wide enough to ride a horse down. She’d have to talk to the Cat later to see if he was all right. For now, she needed to get out of here. Kharla didn’t like being underground for too long. It’s why she never liked mining. Not that she’d ever admit that, being an Orc and all.

The walkway led to a tunnel that ended in a large wooden double door. Finest teak, of course. Kharla pushed it open to reveal a long chamber with engraved teak walls depicting animals and other figures surrounding line upon line of Nordic script.

“A Hall of Series!” Draloth announced, casting his excited red eyes over the walls as Mell’s light globe danced to life along them.

“What’s a Hall of Series?” Kharla said.

Draloth ran his hand over the engraved panels. “I’m not really sure. I just heard about them somewhere. Halls that contain stories of the past written on the walls.”

Since the events of this tale I have learned that the Hall of Series is where Nordic wordcrafters would publish their stories in serial form. Normally they were done in stone, with a new tablet being put up every so often so ‘readers’ could continue to follow the story. Anyway, the ‘author’ (as they were called) would generally charge a gold coin entrance fee called a ‘subscription’ each time they put up a new ‘episode’. Some wordcrafters even let people read them for free in the hope they’d later buy other works, usually in the form of books, from the author.

Kharla walked along the hall, the ancient text meant nothing to her—but the pictures were pretty. At the end of the hall sat a solid stone barrier. Round in shape, it had three concentric rings in it, each bearing an image. In its center Kharla could see several holes.

They all looked at the door as Mell’s globe, now yellow, hung above it. The images from top to bottom were: a sad face, a masked bandit face, and a face in the act of vomiting.

Mell reached up to the top ring and touched it. Then she moved her hand and the ring moved, rotating about until the sad face was replaced by a face with little hands squeezing a heart. “Aww…how cute!”

Kharla had seen that symbol before. She grabbed the golden claw hanging from the back of her belt and looked at it. In the palm of the claw she saw the face with little hands squeezing a heart. Whether it was cute or whether it was some gruesome depiction of some monster having just ripped someone’s heart out, she didn’t know. “Hey, this claw’s got that image on it as well as two others below it.”

“It must be a combination!” Draloth said. “What are the other two?”

Kharla held up the claw to the light. “Looks like a crying face and then a face with a bandit mask.”

Mell turned the second and third rings until she found the correct images.

“That’s it!” said Kharla. “These talons on this claw look like they might fit those holes in the stone. Let me try.” Kharla inserted the claw into the stone’s holes and the gate began to shudder. As the stone began to disappear into the floor, the claw released and Kharla grabbed it.

“We must be near the end now,” Kharla said. “Everyone through!”

“Ti’lief thinks it too small. How will he fit through such a small hole?”

Kharla looked at the opening the gate had provided. “Cat, we could walk through that four abreast, as long as one of the four isn’t Thral. Come on.”

Kharla, Mell, Draloth, and Thral stepped through (two abreast, as it happened). Ti’lief followed cautiously, first checking his whiskers, then holding out his arms to make sure the gap was indeed wide enough.

This must be the last part of the ruins, Kharla thought as she looked up the steps before them to the large cavern beyond. She could almost feel that spear in her hands.