Thirteen statues stood arrayed before Autumn as she entered a red-painted hall. Five lay in broken piles of shattered stone at her feet while the remaining eight still standing were lit from below by flickering crimson light. Red candles burned with a bloody glow as they filled every scrap of available space within the cramped chamber. Only a small path leading towards the ominous statues had been left free of the ever-burning wax.

A sickly sweet scent of incense and smoke choked the air.

Looking at the statues, Autumn saw they were of cruder make than the statue of Suthir before. The harsh bite of rough chisels and inexperienced hands gave them a primitive cast in comparison. Yet, they looked more dangerous all the same.

Collections of glittering coins, scraps of aged inked prayers, and reliquaries of unholy bones litter the bases of these statues amongst even more lit candles. Clearly, they’d seen supplicants in their time.

The smoky air felt choked with dread and anticipation.

Behind her, the others dare not to even breathe as they gazed trepidatiously upon the statues before them.

Autumn looked behind the thirteen before her and saw a terrifying mural painted in the familiar pigment of blood spanning the entire walls. Like all the others before, she could read this one too. Instinctively, she knew that it’d been written by a different hand than those outside. By a darker mind filled with madness.

According to the maddened writing adorning the walls, these crude statues depicted gods.

Dark gods. Specifically, The Thirteen Evils.

Like the statues, five of the names were dust. The other eight burned into Autumn’s mind like a grim omen, and she knew she’d never forget them as long as she lived.

Or they.

Vulkvures the Lich, God of Undeath.

The Great Green Grin, Betrayal made Manifest.

The Foul Dragoneater, God of Blood and Hunger.

The Hellkeeper, King of Sin.

Mammon, God of Greed.

The-One-Who-Crawls, the Horror from the Dark.

Morath, the First Vampire.

The Screaming Silence, that of the Void.

Reading further, Autumn learned that those that’d constructed this shrine to evil hadn’t been of the pharaoh’s people, but had come later at the behest of their dark patrons. The ones lining this profane hall.

Those cultists had built this shrine in secret long ago to honor a legacy of death and sin the fallen empire of sand had left behind in its fall.

They’d seen the ancient entombed pharaoh as a dark messiah. In his indifference and bloodshed, a great many cults to the dark pantheon arose from the crimson-stained sands. So bloated on greed and gluttony, the ancient kingdom fell under the vile sway of the ruinous gods with barely any effort on the cultist’s part. And with the pharaoh’s growing dispassion with the affairs of his people, they’d glutted on the kingdom until it lay twisted and warped.

It’d been a golden age of evil.

Autumn wondered if that’d been the goal of Mildred all along — to turn the empire upon itself, allowing it to be devoured from within.

Perhaps she did it for some dark, ineffable goal? Or maybe she’d done it for her own twisted amusement?

Autumn didn’t know, nor did she care.

As she took a cautious step further into the red-lit chamber, Nethlia stopped her hurriedly by clasping her shoulder firmly.

“Wait!” she hissed quietly. “Those statues, they’re—”

“I know what they are,” Autumn interrupted Nethlia gently. “The mural back there says what they are, along with each of their names. Even so, we still need to find that key if it’s here, don’t we?”

The whole time she was talking, Autumn never took her eyes off the statues.

Nethlia glanced grimly into the ominous chamber. “This place is…” she trailed off, searching for the words to properly articulate her discomfort and desire to leave. “We shouldn’t be here. It is a dark place. These…gods are cruel. Often for no reason at all. It’s dangerous to garner their attention, favorable or otherwise. I think we should just leave.”

“We should destroy this place,” Nelva said. The knight’s fists clenched tightly around her weapons as she glared into the room. “It is a place of evil. No good will come of entering it.”

“Shhh!” Liddie hastily hissed. “Don’t say that shit out loud! Who knows if they can hear us!”

Nelva scoffed. “I doubt fiends such as these are paying attention to some lost shrines.”

“You don’t know that!” Liddie blanched.

“Quiet, you two,” Nethlia barked. When she was sure they’d be silent, she turned back to Autumn, mulling over what to do. “Alright, we’ll search for that key, but quickly. Touch nothing!” she glared at each of them. “Take nothing!”

With that warning, she reluctantly let Autumn go.

Autumn and the other spread out cautiously into the incense smothered hall in search of a key hidden within.

The first statue that Autumn approached was of Vulkvures the Lich, the God of Undeath.

Vulkvures looked like the quintessential Lich — tall, skeletal, and clad in the heavy robes of an ancient mage. A crown of iron sat upon the statue’s white-painted skull, heavy and grim. In one hand, they wielded a spinal staff capped with a humanoid skull, while in the other, they held a dark spell-book of indeterminate content.

While similar in build to Death, this dark god lacked the warmth that the old ferryman possessed. Even as a statue, Autumn could feel the sheer arrogance radiating off of them.

A few offerings littered the skeleton god’s feet. Nothing of value stood out to Autumn, other than a few reliquaries that radiated undeath.

Autumn was tempted to take them despite Nethlia’s warnings. However, she resisted the urge and bowed to her common sense to not potentially alert the foul god to her presence.

Moving on, she glanced at the statue next in line.

A statue of a corpulent goblin, overweight to the extreme, greeted her. It’d been depicted reclining on a stolen throne, held aloft by a mass of smaller goblins visibly struggling under the vast weight. The large goblin held a bloody butcher’s blade in one hand and an overflowing goblet in the other while on their head rested a stolen crown and their hands glittered with robbed rings.

Curiously, the statue also depicted a smaller goblin on the back of the throne, having clambered up unseen. In their hand, they held a blade of betrayal raised high to stab in the larger one’s unknowing back.

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Both wore grins of cracked, yellowed teeth.

Autumn was unsure as to which was meant to be the Great Green Grin.

Maybe both were?

Shaking her head, Autumn glanced down at the meager offerings placed before the god of goblins. The only thing of value was a blood-stained blade.

She moved on.

Of all the gods here, it was only the third that Autumn had heard of before. Even if that’d been only in hushed whispers in the woods.

Here stood the Foul Dragoneater, God of Blood and Hunger.

Well, stood was a misnomer, as while the first two statues had been of humanoids-slash-goblinoids, this one was not.

Carved from black stone, the Dragoneater looked like someone had taken a bottled spider and stretched it out to werewolf-like proportions and then added a few too many heads. Three grotesque heads of unnaturally hinged jaws and eyes that glittered with a hungering madness emerged from a heavily hunched back of chitinous flesh. From that same twisted back, eight or more clawed spider-like limbs grew, some ending in barbed scythe-like blades.

Below the foul beast rested a stony depiction of a dragon’s corpse which each of the three heads were shown tearing into it hungrily. Fresh blood poured freely from the twisted jaws to pool in bowls of tarnished silver where offerings would reside.

Autumn shivered as the scent of iron hit her and she turned her gaze away to the next statue.

Larger than the rest, a giant devil, horned of skull and charcoal of skin, loomed over the hall. Climbing up a mound of tortured souls, a myriad of devilish statues coiled in supplication around the great devil’s cloven hooves, included scores of naked succubi and incubi.

The Hellkeeper, the infernal text scrawled across the statue’s base proclaimed. King of Sin. Ruler of the Fiery Hells. The First Beast. Many were his profane titles, but whispered by her friends was the only one that mattered.

The Great Enemy.

Stone chains and cruel armor bound the devil’s cracked flesh that wept fiery blood. Carved rivers of the liquid flame trailed down the statue’s muscular, four-armed body towards the devils below, who lapped up the sinful blood gleefully. Across the Hellkeeper’s back coiled a cloak of blistering fire and grand wings of a bat.

Near featureless, was the devil’s elongated, horned skull. Only a lipless maw full of grinding, bloodstained teeth adorned their foul face.

Many offerings littered the devil’s feet — pacts and deals enshrouded in sin, blood, and life sacrificed on the altar of evil.

Autumn desired nothing of this profane altar and the pair of demonesses she traveled with avoided it like the plague.

Moving on once more, the witch turned her attention to the fifth divine effigy. That to the God of Greed, Mammon.

Curiously, that was a name Autumn knew from Earth. Was it the same creature, perhaps?

The statue of Mammon looked like a gargoyle with sharp eyes, teeth, and horns of gold perched atop a mound of golden coins. Liquid gold poured down from the dark god’s fanged maw like a river and fell upon a mass of avaricious mortals clawing desperately for his wealth.

The gold was just painted stone, unfortunately.

According to Liddie, desperate, poverty-stricken thieves often took to worshiping Mammon in hopes of garnering his favor and power. However, she also told Autumn that it was never worth it, as the dark god frequently took everything the thieves stole and/or owned in tribute for a meager modicum of power. And if they refused, their lives too, he’d claim.

Pyrite coins, fool’s gold, overflowed the dark god’s altar — tricks to ensnare the foolish into the Mammon’s debt.

Keeping her hands to herself, Autumn looked towards the next altar and had to hold back a wince as the sight of it pounded at her mind. An echo of madness loomed within the hall.

The-One-Who-Crawls.

An eldritch horror birthed from the deepest depths of insanity. A being beyond rationality. Beyond mortal ken. Even witnessing it etched in naught but stone was like staring into a dark well with no end.

Fortunately, Autumn had experience with such beings. Even if she couldn’t remember some.

Only a mind as mad as hers could hope to comprehend even a sliver of it.

Whoever made this statue must’ve been stark-raving mad. The clawing-at-the-walls-and-their-own-skin type.

The best way Autumn could describe the nightmarish creature the statue depicted, without losing her mind any further, was as if some twisted artist had merged a scorpion with a bloated caterpillar then added far too many legs. There were thousands or more of them — humanoid, beast, insect, monster, and other.

To cap off the horror show that was the warped creature, a vaguely humanoid face stretched into a horrified rictus emerged from where the scorpion’s own ought to be, complete with a gnashing maw of snapping pincers.

Autumn shuddered and turned away. She didn’t even look at the offerings, as she didn’t want to know what horrors supplicants might offer such a nightmare.

The penultimate statue was refreshingly normal, if scary in its own way.

An impossibly beautiful woman had been carved out of ivory-white marble. Haughty, red-painted eyes stared disdainfully down at the witch standing before the statue. Ruby red lips curled around sharp fangs as a trail of dried blood ran down the first vampire’s stony half-nude body to pool and waterfall around the carved cloth at its waist. Age-old blood stained her hands decorated with long claw-like fingernails.

At Morath’s delicate, unclad feet, dozens of stone thralls clung to her in awed lust and fervor. Each bore throats stained crimson.

Autumn swore she could feel an almost physical weight of attention bearing down on her as the red eyes glinted in the candlelight, but the sensation passed as swiftly as it occurred.

Turning away from the statue of sinful temptation, Autumn looked towards the last of those still in one piece.

The Screaming Silence was one of the strangest of the eight gods. While it wasn’t as eldritch-looking as The-One-Who-Crawls, the statue of the void-born was still somewhat mind-bending to look upon.

Space and light bent oddly around a colossal stone mass of a thousand screaming mouths and squirming tentacles posed like it was floating as it sat atop several drooping tendrils. Clearly, this dark god possessed a size grander than what simple stone could portray if such a small portion of its presence could imbue the stone statue with a gravity well of its own.

If her hunch was correct, this monstrous void-spawn was another one of those star devouring gods. She just hoped it didn’t get a hankering for the local sun while she was still here.

Not much littered the offering altar, but even if there was something good, Autumn didn’t know if she’d risk approaching the distorted space around the statue to take it.

Frustratingly, she didn’t spot the missing key anywhere.

Just as Autumn was debating leaving the chamber in its entirety, Eme’s voice broke through the hushed silence in a whispered shout.

“I found it!”

Autumn hurried over to her alongside the others.

They found the catgirl standing nervously before another profane altar, this one to a broken god of naught but rubble and dust. On the altar before her rested the key they sought, amongst other tarnished offerings.

While it was still intact, cultists had defaced the circular key. They’d scratched away the original artwork on the key’s face and replaced it with their own foul images. Dried blood lingered in the rough grooves.

“What should we do?” Eme asked as they gathered around her. “Do you think it’s cursed or something?”

“Possibly,” Autumn said as she shuffled closer to the altar to see. She gestured for the others to take a step back as she double-checked the protective charms on her belt. “I can’t see any curses on it, but that’s no guarantee with divine energies. For now, at least. There is one way to check,” she said humorlessly.

Eme blinked, her face twisting up in alarmed concern. “Is that safe?”

“Is anything?” Autumn joked. More seriously, she added, “no, but what other choice do we have?”

“We could just leave,” Nethlia reminded her. “We don’t need to risk their ire for this. You don’t need to.”

Around the party, the smoky, sweet-scented air circled. It felt heavy with dreadful anticipation.

Autumn gulped as she stepped closer to the altar. “We could.” Without another word, she reached out and grasped the defaced key.

Nothing happened.

Releasing the breath she’d been holding, the dark-eyed witch stepped back, taking the key with her. She grinned. “Well, that was anticlimactic. I was half expecting the roof to cave in on us.”

A sundering crack resounded through the chamber like a gunshot as the stone ceiling above her split.

Baleful glares from the party fell upon the sheepish witch as the chamber rumbled, dust falling down around them.

“You just had to say it!” Liddie bemoaned.

“Oops?” Autumn offered.

As one, the party turned tail and ran desperately for the exit. Above them, a desert’s worth of sand steadily caved in the ceiling, sending it crashing down around them with resounding booms. Dust and sand filled the air, snuffing out the candles that’d glowed for an age-and-a-half undisturbed.

Autumn leapt over fallen rocks like a fleeing gazelle who’d spotted a lioness stalking her. She choked on the dusty air as her heart pound a rhythm of dread in her chest.

Was it her own fright that saw her limbs moving faster than they ought to, or was it the bardic spell sung by the equally frightened catgirl bard sprinting alongside her that did so?

Rushing out of the collapsing chamber of sin, the party’s boots pounded down the blackened corridor as it too began crumbling around them. Behind them, rock and sand filled the unholy shrine, crushing the remaining eight statues.

Hopefully, the dark gods wouldn’t blame her for that.

As the last member of their party stumbled out of a plume of dust and into the arena of twisted trees and broken bridges, Autumn couldn’t help but laugh. After a moment, the others joined her with relieved chuckles.

“Come on,” Nethlia said, trying to dust herself off furtively. “Let’s head back. One more key to go, right?”