Maratāni promptly dragged her daughter over to a secluded corner of the podium, where she began teaching her how to meditate, eager - and perhaps also a bit anxious - to see what class her daughter had received.
That left the others to carry out the second part of their promise, checking to see if the guardians were really dead. Jasper headed to the stairs reluctantly, the group trailing after him. By the tiniest sliver of essence, he’d avoided the worst effects of deprivation, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t utterly exhausted. In truth, he wanted nothing more than to find the nearest dark corner, curl up, and go to sleep, but if there was any chance the guardians might arise again - well, he didn’t want to be around for round three.
The group trudged down the stairs in solemn silence. The battle had been tougher than any of them had expected and none of them had escaped without at least one close call. Erin was the first to break the silence, as they neared the bottom of the first landing. “So is this usually how it is with you guys?”
“No, we bit off a little more than we could chew here, but it’s not usually this bad.”
Ihra snorted. “Often it’s worse.”
“Worse?!” He stopped mid-stride, his eyes widening in horror. “I nearly died - hell, we all nearly died. How could it get worse?”
“Well, there was that time I was almost sacrificed to a demigod,” Tsia chimed in.
“As terrible as Yasgah was, I think the dead gods were worse,” Jasper replied, a faint shudder running down his spine as he recalled the inky depths of Nahassinnu. Hopefully, I will never, ever have to go back there again.
“Or, you know, there’s the time you actually died,” Ihra replied, a bit more solemnly.
“You died?” Erin gasped. “Like dead-dead, or I-need-cpr-dead?”
Jasper pulled down the collar of his tunic, allowing the scout to see the scar that encircled his neck. Over the course of his various evolutions, the scar had faded from the gnarly knot it originally was, but it was still clearly visible. “Like lose-my-head dead,” he replied grimly. “I was dead for a couple of days.”
The scout looked sick at the revelation. “And you still kept fighting?”
“I came back, didn’t I?” Jasper asked with a shrug, feigning a diffidence he didn’t entirely feel. For the most part, he really had moved past his experience with death, but today had been a stark reminder of just how dangerous adventuring could be. He was lucky he wasn’t in the void right now, a mindless beast wandering near the shores of an endless ocean that would consume him with the slightest touch. He shoved the thought aside immediately, not willing to allow it to influence him.
“There’s no point in worrying about it,” he told the scout. “There were a million ways we could die back on earth too, and a lot of them were barely in our control. A car accident, an allergic reaction, a school shooter. At least here, we have healing spells and the possibility of coming back from the dead. Overall, it’s an upgrade.”
“Maybe,” the scout replied, but he didn’t look too convinced. Their conversation came to an end though as they reached the bottom of the stairs. “Let’s split up and check the seraphs’ bodies, see if there’s anything that might bring them back to life.”
“We should chop off their heads just to be sure,” Ihra added.
“What about the coffins,” Erin asked. “Maybe they’re bound to them somehow, like a lich.”
“We should probably check those too,” Jasper agreed after a moment of thought. He wasn’t sure if liches existed in Corsythia, but it was better safe than sorry.
The four spread out through the sunken hall, sifting through mounds of shattered bones in search of the twelve guardians. Jasper marveled at the sheer number of bone fragments; the hectic fight against the undead was little more than a blur in his mind, and he truly realized just how many they had fought. There must have been hundreds of them. Were they all slaughtered the night Ishka’s cult fell?
Upon reflection, he decided it was unlikely. The massive hall seemed far beyond the capabilities of a broken remnant to build, which meant that it likely already been constructed, or at least mostly so, before Ishka’s death. Most of the pharaohs built their tombs before their death too.
Slowly, he unearthed a small cluster of guardians, the initial three that had targeted Tsia, and he was immediately glad they’d gone looking. While they still showed no signs of life, many of their wounds had already sealed up, and two of them had regrown limbs that he was quite sure Tsia had chopped off. They really are going to rise again.
Reluctantly, he used his glaive to chop off their heads and then, just for good measure, he also chopped off their arms and legs. It was an unpleasant task that left him feeling like an ax murderer, but Jasper wasn’t willing to risk having the guardians resurrect while they were still searching the chamber.
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Once the bodies were thoroughly de-limbed, he headed to the nearest coffins. The massive sarcophagi rose higher than his head, and he had to jump up, grab the ledge, and pull himself over to clamber inside.
The inside wasn’t as empty as he’d expected. All four walls were made of pure alabaster, much of which was covered by a mixture of pictures and runes, none of which Jasper was able to read. The bottom was lined with a padded mattress, covered in faded-red silk. In addition to the urumis the guardians had wielded, a long glaive was cradled in the crack between the mattress and the alabaster walls - though it was far too large for Jasper to conceivably wield.
He looked around for anything that might serve as a phylactery, even tearing up the mattress to see if anything was hidden beneath it, but he found nothing. He was about to give up when he caught a faint glimmer in the corner of his eye. Nerves already on edge, a spell was sizzling on the tips of his fingers as he spun around, but he saw nothing, save for the empty coffin and the indecipherable text written on it. He froze for a moment, doubting his senses, but nothing moved.
He was about to look away when the barest hint of light flickered again, and this time he saw its origin. The alabaster that lined the coffin was not carved from a single piece; instead, several larger slabs had been joined together with such excellent craftsmanship that the seams were nearly invisible. But the brief flicker of light he’d seen had indeed come from one of the seams.
Grabbing the slab, he tried to pull it out but was unable to get a decent grip on the stone. There wasn’t enough room in the sarcophagi to try prying out with his glaive, so he called Ihra over. “I think I found something!”
Abandoning the guardian she was in the midst of dissecting, Ihra joined him in the coffin a moment later.
“There’s something behind this slab,” he explained. “I saw a light flashing-” As if to cooperate, the light peeked through the tiny seam as he spoke and Ihra, whose vision was much better than his, spotted it immediately. Together, they struggled to wrestle the slab out of place, but even with the leverage Aphora’s misericorde added, it was a task nearly beyond their strength. Finally, with the help of The Still Pond, they managed to budge it a few inches out of place, revealing the source of the light.
A dull blue gem was ensconced inside a cubby carved in the alabaster slab. Almost its entire surface was covered by tiny black glyphs that had been etched into it. As they watched, the glyphs briefly pulsed with faint white light, but before fading once again into darkness. “Any chance you can read those,” he asked Ihra.
His friend pried the gem out of the cubby carefully, and turned it over a few times in her hands, scrutinizing the glyphs, before shaking her head. “These are different than the ones in Aphora’s grimoire. There’s a few that are similar,” she said, tapping on one that vaguely resembled a snake with an egg in its mouth, “but not enough for me to decipher the meaning.”
“Think this is what’s regenerating them?"
“Well, something is,” Ihra said with a frown. “I found one of the ones I shot with Executioner’s Arrow. The wound had completely sealed up. It’s only a matter of time before they start walking again.” Suddenly, she cocked her arm back and flung the gem as hard as she could at the nearest pillar. White light pulsed as it hit the rock, but it bounced to the ground with no apparent damage.
They scrambled out of the coffin and, after a little searching through the piles of bones, found the crystal again. It was indeed unharmed. Jasper tried next. A sturdy hit from his glaive did nothing but send it skittering across the floor, and the spout of fire he flung at it was equally ineffective. With each blow, the glyphs pulsed with light, and as Jasper glanced over, he saw one of the corpses he had dismembered was rapidly knitting itself back together. At least it answers that question.
Seeing the spell cast, Tsia and Erin came running over and tried their hand. Her wind blade bounced off the gem with as little effect as the previous attacks, but lightning proved a different matter - with a final flare of light, the gem crumbled into pieces.
It took them another two hours to finish the task, with Jasper and Ihra painstakingly prying the massive coffin slabs far enough open to slip out the gem, while Tsia scorched it with lightning, but, despite their exhaustion, they dared not take any breaks. Only when the last of the gems had been shattered, did they finally feel free to sink down beside the sarcophagi.
They’d only rested a few minutes before footsteps echoed in the hall as Maratani descended from the podium, holding Gerrah by the hand. She paused in front of them and waited silently until Jasper pried an eye open. “Did she get a class?”
The woman smiled. “She did, thanks to you.” She paused, and Jasper sensed a bit of hesitation in her.
“Is there something wrong with the class?”
Though a bit of worry seeped into the mother’s eyes, she quickly denied the possibility. “I don’t think so - it’s just not the class I was expecting. Ever since Ishka was entombed, our clan has received the Flame Guardian Acolyte class, but Gerrah got something else: Acolyte of the Secret Flame?”
Oops. Jasper recognized the name of the class all too well - it was the upgrade he’d received in place of the Flame Guardian class, but he hadn’t expected that to be offered to the child as well. “That, uh, might be related to me,” he slowly replied. “But don’t worry, it’s a good class - an upgrade from the other one, from what I understand.”
The worry in her eyes eased a little, but not entirely. “And this secret flame? This isn’t some cult is it?”
Jasper frowned at the question, suddenly realizing he didn’t know the answer himself. “I don’t know what the secret flame is,” he admitted, “but there wasn’t anything odd about it - just slightly better spells.”
Mollified, Maratani bowed her head again, this time thanking him full-heartedly. Together, the six left the chamber behind, returning through the portal to the upper enclave. And though the guardians remained where they had fallen, they didn’t see the mounds of broken bones slowly reknit and climb back into their cramped crypts.