Suthir was the god of time. So it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise as it did that his domain played a part in his altar.

Autumn staggered as a wave of divine fatigue washed over both her and Liddie. Her knees buckled as aches announced themselves decades too early. Catching herself on the wall just beyond the threshold of the once warded door, she watched in horror as she and Liddie aged rapidly before her eyes.

Wild crimson hair and dark locks bleached gray. Wrinkles and liver spots bloomed across their bodies like creeping rashes while crow’s feet stamped themselves deep into the pair’s temples. A weight unseen sought to bow their backs.

Their attire and effects were likewise ravaged. Anything enchanted survived unscathed, but everything mundane aged alongside them.

While Liddie’s gear weathered the wave of divinity fairly intact on account of being reasonably new — made this century, at least — some of Autumn’s did not. Her robes were ancient even when she found them. As such, the sudden aging finally finished them where dire adventuring had not.

Autumn choked out a cry as her robes disintegrated off her body.

They’d been with her since day one. Through thick and thin. Losing them was a harsh blow.

Thankfully, her witch hat survived the sudden chronomatic acceleration with only a few more cracks and tears thanks to the sheer weight of magic she’d stuffed into it. Likewise, her newer clothes underneath her robes survived intact, sparing the others from an impromptu show.

Autumn had only a moment to register her new age before hands pulled her hastily out of the room.

As she passed through the doorway once more, the magical aging reversed itself just as fast as it’d sprung upon her.

The group likewise hauled Liddie promptly out.

“Are you okay?” Nethlia asked anxiously as she held onto Autumn.

Dark of hair once more, the witch blinked in shock. “Y-yeah, I’m fine? I’m fine,” she said more to reassure herself than as an answer. Licking her suddenly dry lips, Autumn continued. “That felt…strange. Odd, but not painful. Well, beyond the sudden onset of aches I could’ve done without.”

“I’m fine as well,” Liddie said, rolling her eyes. Her back let out a loud crack as she stretched. “Owie, owie, owie! My back! Urgh, why do I suddenly want to take up crocheting?” She shivered.

Nethlia ignored her. Turning to Edwyn, she spoke quickly. “What was that? More divine bullshit?”

“Aye, looks like it,” Edwyn gruffed gruffly. “I suppose we should’ve expectit somethin’ like this tae happen eventually.”

“Can we do anything to avoid it?”

Edwyn shook their bearded head. “Nothin’ that I can see. We’ll just have tae brave it, I think.”

Nethlia let out a sigh of frustration. Pensively, she looked around the group, sending Autumn a look of deep concern marked by furrowed brows.

Autumn tried to give the berserker a reassuring look back, but her smile might’ve been shakier than she intended it to be.

“Any chance we could use that black water of yours to bypass this? Or just get a look at what lies ahead of us?” Nethlia asked.

“I could give it a shot.”

Focusing, Autumn quietly muttered her dark ritual. As a drop of her blood fell upon the shadows beneath her feet, a will beyond her own slammed into her, forcefully shutting the connection.

For the barest of moments, the attention of a god lay upon her — it found her wanting.

Autumn supposed that was better than garnering one’s interest.

“No dice,” Autumn said. “Suthir didn’t seem to like the idea of us bypassing his puzzle.”

Nethlia grimaced. “I was afraid of that. Thank you for trying anyway.” Turning her attention to the group as a whole, she addressed them. “Should we head back or carry on?”

“We’ve come this far, haven’t we?” Pyre said. “I think we should carry on till the end.”

Liddie chuckled. “Ah, the gambler’s fallacy. Nice to see it runs deep in us adventurers too. Still, I think we should carry on. After all, the effects don’t seem to be permanent.”

“Do the rest of you agree?” Nethlia asked. Upon getting nods and noise of affirmation back she steeled herself. “Alright then. Make sure to brace yourself and help each other through the doorway. Liddie, I want that room checked, double checked, and triple checked for traps once we’re through.”

“Got it, boss,” Liddie saluted.

One by one, the party of adventurers braved the ravages of time and marched into the smaller room.

Annoyingly, the others bore their new age with far more grace than Autumn had.

She couldn’t help but admire the silver adorning her girls as the pair marched into the small chamber like predators — straight-backed and alert.

Nethlia looked no less dangerous with gray hair and a weathered warhammer than she did as a younger demoness. Thick muscles denied the trappings of age beneath her war-worn clothes. With hard eyes and a warrior’s stride to her steps, she scanned the room for threats, taking in each of the exits warily.

Eme bore herself far more proudly than Autumn expected. She didn’t lose a single step as the chronomatic effect assailed her. With a hand resting calmly atop her dragonblade’s hilt, she walked into the room with a timeless bardic grace to a tune only she could hear.

What would you call a silver fox-like catgirl? A silver cat?

Autumn shook her head ruefully and glanced over at the others.

It was hard to tell if time had even bothered with Edwyn. Only a few streaks of white in their beard and a somehow even surlier demeanor signaled any changes to the grumpy Manus. They squinted at Autumn, daring her to comment on the state of their beard.

Autumn wisely did not.

Liddie and Nelva, while not as graceful as Eme, walked with far more dexterity and strength than Autumn did. The only one to share in the witch’s plight was Pyre. The now elderly alchemist grumbled and complained just as much as Autumn about her aching knees and joints.

Hobbling into the room, Autumn made her way over to the long abandoned campsite.

The rest of the room was fairly unremarkable. With a square footage of only 900ft, there thankfully wasn’t much of it to explore. Three other stone doors led out of the small chamber, aside from the entrance they’d come through, one to each of the north, west, and eastern walls.

Engravings of elves adorned each door. Either old or young. The doors to both the north and west bore upon them carvings of elders, while novitiates decorated the east.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Autumn groaned slightly as she took a knee to brush the decades and millennia of dust off of the words carved roughly into the sandstone floor. While timeworn, she could still tell they were of a different language to the hieroglyphics in the chambers before.

“Beware the doors. Beware time,” Autumn muttered as she picked out the only surviving words. She sighed. “Real helpful.”

Annoyed, she picked up the tattered pack and tipped its contents out onto the ground. Tattered apparel and ancient parchment spilled out. While the parchment instantly fragmented into a thousand pieces at the slightest of touches, Autumn found a small wrapped bundle amongst the clothes. Unraveling it revealed an intricate silver pendant inside.

Autumn held the strange pendant up to the soft light of her lantern ring. A tarnished silver cage glittered dully as it coiled like a dragon around a large, cracked teardrop ruby.

While it didn’t shine with magic to her Witchsight, it also refused to be mended by her magic.

She smelled more divine shenanigans at foot.

“Did you find something, Autumn?”

Autumn jumped as Nelva spoke up from behind her. She glared up at the amused older knight, heart beating heavily in her chest as she hauled herself to her feet with another groan.

“Don’t do that — I don’t know if my heart can take it right now. Here lies Witch Autumn, eighteen years old and died of old age,” she huffed. “Who’d have thought it?”

Nelva smiled. “Those words say anything useful?”

“Barely. ‘Beware the doors. Beware time,’ was all I could get from it. The rest was far too worn to read. Suspicious, given that some murals are readable and they’re just paint. Someone had carved these words into the ground.”

“Are you thinking divine interference?”

Autumn shrugged. “Possibly. Probably. I’m guessing, and this is just a guess, Suthir might want those who come across this tomb to solve it themselves.”

Nelva nodded, silver hair spilling over her eyes as she looked about the empty chamber. “Make sense. The gods love to guide and shepard us, but not tell us what to do. Most of the time, at least. There have been some exceptions — divine visions, prophecies, and the like.”

“Really?” Autumn asked, curiously. “What were they about— no, let’s not get distracted.” She looked down at the words once more. “You think our mystery thieves left this? The ones who stole the key from that mad Lich?”

“That seems highly likely. Unless this tomb sees much more visitation than we were led to believe.”

Humming, Autumn rocked back on her heels. “Where do you think we are? I mean, where was this tomb from before the Feywild gobbled it up? Is it even from the same continent? The same world?”

The Lepus knight pondered the question. “That is a tricky question to answer. In all honesty, I don’t really know. Perhaps this empire of sand was located where the Echea Empire’s southern border now rests. While I haven’t been there myself, my tutors told me of a cold desert that might fit and it possesses a few elven tribes that might be this older empire’s descendants. But you may be right, and it could be from farther afield than even that. As for it being from another world? Given Suthir’s presence here, I find it unlikely.”

“I don’t know,” Autumn said dubiously. “We had some religions that worshiped animal-headed gods like him in my world’s past. They had different names and looked different, but they might’ve been the same ones.”

Nelva sighed. Brushing her hair back, she favored Autumn with an exasperated look. “Then I don’t know either. And didn’t you say you didn’t want to be distracted?”

Autumn had enough presence of mind to look sheepish.

Looking around the room, she glanced at the doors. “Any of them locked?” she asked.

Nelva followed her gaze. “Yes, the northern and western ones are, and they require strangely shaped keys. The eastern door is unlocked, but Nethlia wants us to figure out the room first.”

Autumn blinked. “Strangely shaped keys? Something like this?” She held up the tarnished silver pendant.

Looking over the pendant, Nelva quirked an eyebrow. “Exactly like that, in fact. I think that the northern door had a recess in the front that it’d fit in.”

“Well? What are we waiting for?”

Striding over to the northern door, Autumn swiftly found the recess Nelva was talking about. However, while the silver pendant fit inside it perfectly, the door still didn’t unlock. The crack in the gemstone seemed to glare up at her.

Withdrawing the pendant from the lock, Autumn went to check it against the western door.

Predictably, it didn’t fit.

Curiously, flakes of dried clay clung to the edges of this door’s lock. Autumn rubbed the dry substances through her fingers thoughtfully.

A whistle caught her attention. Looking over to the source, she saw Nethlia waving the group over.

“What have you all got for me?” The berserker asked once they’d gathered up once more.

All eyes turned to Autumn.

Blushing, she cleared her throat. “Well, we know this puzzle has to do with time, right? In the pack I found a key to the northern door, but it didn’t work because of a crack in it, and it resisted my repair spell. I’m thinking we need to somehow de-age it or something. Likely, we’ll age or de-age depending on which door we pass through.”

“How do you figure that?” Liddie asked.

“For one, we did so coming into this place, so it’s not a great leap of logic that we’ll do so going through more doors. And two, the engravings on the doors are fairly telling given what’s already happened. Likely, the ones with older elves make us older and vice versa for the younger elves.”

Eme raised her hand. “What happens if we pass through another Elder door? Will we get even older?”

“Or die?” Pyre added.

Autumn grimaced. “I don’t know.”

“We’ll not test it on ourselves,” Nethlia said firmly. “Our non-magical gear suffered the same fate as us, so we can use something we won’t miss first. Got it?”

Getting noises of affirmation back, she nodded. “Okay then. Liddie, have you checked the east door for traps yet?”

“Yes, boss!” Liddie saluted. “It’s all trapfree!”

“Good. Let’s get it open. I want to see what’s on the other side before we rush in.”

Making their way over to the aforementioned door, they carefully cracked it open. Thankfully, it wasn’t all that hard to open. With an audible grinding sound, the stone door split down the middle and swung inward, giving them a clear look at the next room beyond.

It was as bare as they last and just as small. Only one other door led out of the chamber to the north, this one bearing older mages upon it.

There was one major difference from the room before. In the center of the room stood a trio of zombies bedecked in degraded adventuring gear. While visibly identifiable as elves, or at least humanoid, their attire was relatively more modern than those elves adorning the murals.

How they all died was clear — expended darts from the long since triggered traps that lined the room still riddled their decayed bodies.

As one, they turned towards the sound of the door opening and let out a series of undead moans.

Rot filled the air.

Before Autumn could even raise her wand, Nethlia leapt through the portal with a roar. The berserker barely stumbled as her strength returned to her. Three powerful swings of iron saw the undead’s brains splattered across the stones.

Shaking her head, Autumn strode into the room behind Nethlia with the others, letting a sigh of relief as old age fled her and the resilience of youth filled her limbs and lungs, even if only for a moment.

She left the others to loot the corpses for their meager amounts of silver coins and, not seeing much else to investigate in the room, made her way over to the northern door. There she met Liddie, and between them, they checked the door for traps. Not seeing any, they gently cracked it open to peek inside the next room.

Another small chamber, identical in size to the last two, met their eyes.

However, this one wasn’t as empty. Smashed vases and statues of fired clay littered the floor like a carpet of artistic destruction. A clay statue of an elven man stood naked and tall upon a plinth in the center of the room. It was suspiciously intact, given the state of the room. It shone with magic before Autumn’s Witchsight.

“See anything?” Nethlia asked from behind the pair.

Autumn nodded. “Yeah. Lots of smashed vases covering the floor and a magical statue in the middle of the floor. Could be a trap of some kind.”

“A statue?” Edwyn asked. Peering into the room, they grunted in annoyance. “Ah, that be a clay golem. A lesser one, methinks.”

“You’re sure?”

Edwyn nodded. “I’m sure. We get ‘em roamin’ the undermountains back home. Mostly stone ones an’ the like. But sometimes some eejit’ll let a clay one loose accidentally or ‘accidentally.’”

“The difference being?” Autumn asked.

“One is a testament to stupidity, the other, politics.”

Nethlia cleared her throat, trying to get the conversation back on track. “They have any weaknesses?” she asked.

“Few, unfortunately,” Edwyn grumbled. “Fire ‘n’ earthbreaker spells, mainly. They’re typically resistant tae all else, an’ immune tae anythin’ non-magical. However, this one looks fairly old sae its core might be degradit enough that it lacks those protections. Can’t rightly say either way.”

Autumn grinned. “Good thing we’re packing a lot of fire then.”

Nethlia held up a hand, stalling the witch. “While that is true, don’t forget we’ll be fighting under the effects of the trial in there.” She pointed to the old elves engraved on the door. “We won’t be able to move as fast or as fluidly as we’re used to. And that can be more dangerous than any strong enemy. A single strike might hurt us more than we expect.”

Autumn grimaced. She’d forgotten about that part, what with being back to her own age again.

Hopefully, magic would equalize things.

“Alright,” Autumn said, “here’s the plan.”