Autumn squinted as she peered down into the deep hole blocking their path. Ordered rows of sharp spikes glinted back up at her, dark rust staining them. Beneath the instruments of death lay a carpet of ivory bones that completely concealed the floor of the pit. Being so high up, Autumn couldn’t make out a lot of details, but she still spied a few humanoid, or perhaps elvenoid, skulls amidst the shattered remains.
“Yup, looks like a pit-trap to me.”
“Very helpful, Autumn,” Liddie drawled. “Glad I asked you to share your valuable insight with me.”
Autumn rolled her eyes at Liddie’s snark.
Having disarmed the remaining traps without further embarrassing darting discharges, Liddie had led the party down the long hallway beyond the traps to a T-junction. Being the smart adventurers they were, they immediately halted and scoured it for more traps.
And it was a good thing they did.
Within moments, they’d spotted this pit-trap hidden beneath a thin layer of stone and the various magical sigils that’d send them hurtling into it if they’d accidently tripped them.
Autumn was starting to get an idea of just how vindictive these tomb builders were.
Deactivating the traps was relatively easy with both Liddie and Edwyn lending their expertise. Finding out where to go next was the hard part. For you see, neither of the hallways leading off the T-junction were real. Not in that they were illusion per se, but in that they simply led nowhere and were likely riddled with traps.
At least, Autumn assumed so, as they hadn’t bothered traveling down either.
So, how did they know they were fake if they hadn’t traveled down them then?
Easy. In building this tomb, the architects seemingly couldn’t resist leaving behind taunting clues and remarks in the hieroglyphics. Likely they assumed whomever delved it in the future wouldn’t have been able to read them, or their encrypted notes. In any other case, that might’ve been true.
Jokes on them.
That still left the party of adventurers with only one way to go. Down.
Autumn took the hint from Liddie’s remarks and leaned further over the ledge to see if anything showed up in her Witchsight. Surprisingly, she saw something this time. A faint aura of concealing magic lingered on the far wall near the bottom of the pit.
Leaning back, she spoke up about what she saw. “There’s some magic infused into the wall down there. I think it’s an illusory wall, but I could be wrong.”
Nethlia joined Autumn in looking down into the spiked pit. “Hmm, you think that’s the way forward or just a hidden room?”
“Dunno,” Autumn shrugged, chewing her lip slightly. “But I haven’t seen any other way we can go.”
“Alright, we’ll check it out.” Shrugging off her pack, Nethlia pulled out a climbing piton and some rope. With heavy, echoing swings of her pole-hammer, she drove the piton deep into the sandstone floor. Once it was firmly in place, Nethlia lashed one end of the rope to it, the other she tied snugly around Liddie’s hips.
“Why do I always gotta be the one to go first into the death pit?” Liddie grumbled under her breath.
Not quietly enough, as Nethlia spoke back to her sharply. “Because you’re the rogue. Now quit whining and get in the pit.”
Liddie yelped and rushed over to the ledge of the pit-trap. Carefully, she walked backwards into the hole as Nethlia held onto the rope tightly and gently guided her down.
While descending, Liddie looked over the pit for any traps they might’ve missed from up top. Thankfully, there were none.
Within a few short moments, she was at the bottom.
Dry bones crunched loudly beneath her leather boots when she finally touched down. After steadying herself, Liddie picked up a loose bone from the floor and started tapping along the walls, searching for the potential illusory wall where Autumn had pointed out the magical aura was.
The sound of bone rapping on stone echoed up the pit in a steady rhythm until, suddenly, it didn’t
Liddie immediately ducked to the side.
Nothing happened.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief they didn’t know they’d been holding. Liddie sent a reassuring grin back up to the other before turning back to the illusory wall. After testing its size a few times more, she tossed the bone through the wall and listened to the sound of it rattling down a stone corridor beyond.
Still, nothing happened.
After taking a deep, fortifying breath, Liddie bravely stepped through the false wall, fully prepared to duck and roll at the slightest sound.
Autumn held her breath as she waited for the sound of traps springing or her teammate’s untimely demise. Her hands clenched tightly into fists as the seconds ticked by without Liddie’s return. All she could hear was the drumbeats of her own heart.
Just as she was about to say something to Nethlia, Liddie reappeared by sticking her head through the illusory wall to shout up at them. “Hey! Come down — there’s another junction down here and it looks like this is our way forward!”
Breathing another sigh of relief, Autumn joined the others as they descended one by one into the pit.
When she was at the bottom, Autumn glanced over the piles of bones as a thought came to her. “Huh, I probably could’ve made a skeleton to check if the wall was trapped for us.”
“You tell me this now!” Liddie threw her hands up aggrievedly. “After I risked my ass and everything!”
Autumn shrugged. “Well, I didn’t think of it before. Were there any traps anyway?”
“A few. Silent triggers too,” Liddie pointed to a couple of scorch marks across the floor on the other side of the false wall as Autumn stepped through the illusion. “These tomb builders weren’t playing around. Don’t worry, I disabled them before I called you down. They were just spells tied to mechanical triggers — more pressure plates.”
“Yeah,” Autumn shivered. She’d heard nothing. If Liddie had been killed, they’d have walked right into that trap none the wiser looking for her.
After a short walk, they found themselves at another T-junction like the one above. Thankfully, there weren’t any traps in this one. Not that they didn’t look for them thoroughly.
Glancing down the dark passageways to either side, Nethlia pointed to a series of murals along the opposite wall from the group. “Autumn, can you tell anything from these about which way we need to go?”
“Hold on, let me see.”
Holding her lantern ring up high, Autumn scanned the paintings. Two large murals dominated the breadth of the hallway wall in front of her, split evenly down the middle of the intersection. Rather than being simple directions, they read more like tales or snippets of the immortal pharaoh’s life.
The mural leading to the left spoke of the ruler as a warrior-king. It told a tale of how he waged bloody conquests across every grain of sand, every dune, and every mountain. None were spared the pharaoh’s wrath or nation’s chains. Not even the mighty mountain clans survived unscathed face with the pharaoh’s legions of slave-soldiers. To take this path would mean facing the trial/judgment of might.
The mural leading to the right spoke of the rule as a scholar-king. It told of a tale of the pharaoh’s avaricious lust for the mysteries of magic. Seemingly not content to just be named after the god of time, he sought to usurp the title of master of magic from him too. For untold centuries, the pharaoh locked himself away in his grand tower in order to pour over his vast wealth of esoteric tomes and dark spell-scrolls in an attempt to master them all. To take this path would mean facing the trial/judgment of magic.
She relayed as much to the others.
Nethlia hummed. “Any clue to what these trials are?”
“No,” Autumn shook her head. “It doesn’t say. I’m guessing it’s something to test us or just keep robbers at bay, maybe? It’s also likely where the keys are at, so we need to do both. It just comes down to which we want to do first. It’s your call. Might or Magic?”
“Might,” Nethlia said without hesitation. “Let’s do that one first and see what we’re getting into. Liddie, Autumn, I want you two scouting ahead for traps. Everyone else, follow behind me.”
With that, the party moved cautiously down the left hallway, constantly keeping a keen eye out for traps.
Surprisingly, there were none. However, rather than put her at ease, the lack of traps just made Autumn even more nervous than before. Thus it came as a great relief to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
And not just metaphorically either, as sunlight lit up the tunnel from the chamber beyond it.
Autumn threw a confused look Liddie’s way, one which the pirate matched. Speeding up slightly, the party quickly and cautiously made their way down the hallway and out into the light.
The sudden change blinded Autumn for a moment. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, a sprawling chamber unveiled itself to her.
Grim elven statues loomed out from the hewn sandstone walls of a vast underground cavern. Their stony, crumbling visages glared down on a broken arena whose floor had disappeared into a dark chittering abyss ages ago, leaving only a patchwork maze of walkways and pillars behind.
A deep ravine forged by an earthquake near a millennium ago cut through both the northern and southern walls of the chamber, bisecting it in twain. Golden sand poured in like great waterfalls from the rent in the ceiling alongside equally golden shafts of sunlight to roar down into the lightless depths.
Alien trees reached up from the darkness with twisting branches like clawing hands. They twined around the giant pillars and bridges in a desperate, hungry search for light and warmth. Inadvertently, their doomed quest saw them fill in the gaps the maze of broken stone bridges left.
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Around the weathered walls, faded murals depicted the immortal ruler’s military triumphs. However, time and the elements had seen these scoured from history. Not even Autumn could piece together anything useful from them anymore.
Looking around the edges of the immense chamber, Autumn spotted three other doors leading out of the chamber aside from the one they entered through. Unfortunately, one exit had collapsed while another lay on the far side of the ravine. The only one within easy reach would still take some work to get to, as the twisting maze of stone bridges and wooden limbs separated them from it.
Autumn stepped up the edge of the stairs they currently stood on and kicked a loose stone off. Quietly, she listened for the sound of its impact.
She heard nothing.
Below, the abyss glared up at the disturbance. Autumn glared back.
“Woah,” Eme whispered as she stopped near Autumn. “This is…we need to cross all that?”
Tearing her gaze away from the chittering darkness, Autumn glanced back curiously at the pale catgirl. “Sure,” she shrugged. “It doesn’t look too bad to me. The key I’ve found is to not look down — keep your eyes on where you’re stepping, but don’t fixate on it.”
“You’ve done something like this before?” Eme asked incredulously.
“Once or twice. Remember — just don’t look down.”
Eme shook her head. “You’re pretty incredible sometimes, you know?”
“Only sometimes?” Autumn grinned slightly with a blush.
Before Eme could respond, Nethlia ushered the group onward. Following her, they quickly descended the crumbling stairs towards a broken bridge that stretched partially over the yawning abyss. At the bridge’s other end, a thick tree limb wound around it as it stretched towards the ceiling, offering a way forward.
Autumn stopped before she placed her foot on the rough bark of the tree. For a moment, she saw shining crystal below her instead.
A supporting hand on her back helped her shake off those twisting thoughts, and she moved with the others swiftly onto the wooden ramp as they headed towards the intact door nearest them.
While Autumn would’ve loved an unobstructed journey to their destination, it was not to be.
About halfway to the other door, the tree limb they were walking on dipped down at such an extreme angle that it forced them to find another way to pass. Luckily, another wide, serpentine branch snaked below the one they were on, heading towards a series of mostly intact bridges connected to where the intact door was on the northern wall.
However, as they intended to return via the same path, they needed to secure a way back up first.
As such, Nethlia retrieved another piton from her pack. The sound of metal on metal resounded throughout the cavernous chamber as she hammered it deep into the wood with mighty swings.
For a moment, the heavy pounding was all Autumn heard, until guttural, warbling shrieks like dying beasts replied from the lightless depths below.
Nethlia halted mid-swing.
The group shared nervous, resigned glances as they silently drew their weapons.
Heart thundering in her chest, Autumn carefully approached the edge of the branch they stood upon and peered down into the abyss in search of what’d shrieked.
Thousands of horrific monsters birthed from the darkest of nightmares skittered out of the depths up the twisting trees. As they entered the light, they revealed their awful visages to Autumn. Pale papery flesh stretched taut over skeletal humanoid legless bodies wreathed in tattered gray cloaks. Hundreds of empty sunken eye-sockets of mismatched sizes ringed maws of jagged shark-like teeth, only one socket beheld a rummy eye each.
Upon seeing Autumn, the nightmarish creatures let out shrill, baleful screeches. A pair of too long, spindly arms dragged their pale bodies up the alien trees towards her unnervingly fast. Hunger, great and terrible, loomed over the horde like a roiling cloud.
“Holy fuck!” Autumn swore as she scrambled back from the edge.
Liddie peeked over the edge to see what’d spooked her so. The pirate’s face screwed up in disgust as she saw the horrors quickly clawing themselves up towards the party. “What the shit are they?!”
“Nothing good,” Nelva replied from beside her, mirror-shield held at the ready. “Prepare yourselves. Here they come!”
Autumn channeled her magic through her body to coalesce her Witch Armor around her. A shadowy breastplate clung tightly to her chest and back while a fraying scarf wound itself protectively around her throat and lower face.
Leveling her wand towards the edges of their platform, Autumn waited for the monsters to come. She and the others backed up around Nethlia to defend her as she continued to hammer the piton into the stubborn wood. Without saying anything, they’d unanimously decided to relocate to more stable footing — the chances of them slipping off during combat was too great.
As soon as the first horrific creatures crested onto their platform, a barrage of necrotic magic, runic fire, and crossbow bolts slammed into them. Foul bodies crumpled dead under the overwhelming violence. They spilled down like rain back into the dark that’d spawned them.
Yet, no matter how many they’d killed, more replaced them in endless, screeching waves.
Autumn was getting sick of swarms and hordes.
Blades, daggers, and spells flashed as the horde of horrors washed over the party. Acidic blood freely spilled, pitting and burning where it splashed.
Bodies fell by the dozens, piling high around the adventurers.
With one last powerful blow, Nethlia drove the piton deep into the wood. She tied off the rope hastily but firmly to the anchor before tossing the other end off the path to the one down below. Turning back to the group with her weapon in hand, she bellowed. “It’s done! Go! I’ll hold them off!”
Autumn grunted in acknowledgement as she kicked a horror off of herself. Her dark blade ripped free of its emaciated body with a squelch, splattering her shadowy breastplate with acidic blood. Thankfully, the hardened magic saved her robes beneath.
Dodging backwards, Autumn hurriedly re-sheathed her black blade and white wand so that she could scramble down the hempen rope.
As soon as her boots touched rough bark again, the dark-eyed witch spun around and unleashed a tide of magic upon the swarm. Her ire saw many cascade like rain back down into the unholy dark that’d birthed them.
The rest of the party quickly followed Autumn and plunged over the lip one by one to rappel down the rope.
Nethlia was the last to leave. Her wrath held back the horde alone.
When everyone else had safely landed atop the lower path, she let out a mighty roar and swept her pole-hammer through the waves of horrors. The monsters broke before her overwhelming strength. She didn’t bother with the rope, opting instead to leap off the branch and crash down on the lower one with barely a grunt.
Autumn staggered slightly as the impact rocked the wide branch.
Above them, the sightless horde let out a howl of displease at the flight of the adventurers. In a blind rush, they spilled over the lip, snapping and biting at the party with their toothy maws. Those that’d been on the edges of the pack fell screaming into the void below. Their hate and madness echoed around the chamber.
“Go!” Nethlia bellowed.
Not needing to be told twice, the party rushed away from the nightmarish creatures. Their booted feet pounded a wild rhythm into the bark as they weaved their way through the mess of interconnected paths and broken pillars towards the stone bridges in the near distance.
Autumn breathed steadily as she sprinted alongside the others. She mentally thanked Nethlia for making her do those early morning suicide drills.
The monsters dogged their heels like an onrushing wave.
Just as they were approaching the ancient stone bridges, a horror lashed out with their long frog-like tongue and caught Eme around her ankle. The catgirl bard let out a startled yelp as the tongue yanked her off her feet. She crashed down heavily onto the bark and was dragged back towards the horror’s gaping maw of jagged teeth.
“Eme!” Autumn cried out as she ground to a halt.
However, before she could unleash her fury on the beast, Eme freed herself. Rolling over, the catgirl drew her sword in one smooth motion and severed the tongue coiled around her ankle.
The horror recoiled, screeching in pain.
Seeing Eme free, Autumn unleashed a furious barrage of forceful magic upon the horde, giving Nethlia just enough time to haul the limping bard to her feet and drag her onto the stone bridge. Autumn backed up slowly to join them, still unleashing a tide of violence towards the horrors.
The mindless horrors threw themselves recklessly against the adventurers’ defenses clustered around the narrow chokepoint. Like a meat grinder, the party tore into the flood of grotesque. Black blood stained the stones and boughs, letting off wisps of smoke as they pitted and burned.
Iron and magic crushed howling skulls.
Autumn stomped heavily on a skittering limb of a monster crawling towards her, snapping it like a dry twig. Her breath came hot and fast as she fought. With a wave of her wand, she sent more monsters tumbling back into the abyss with heavy blasts. The others fought around her with equal fervor.
When Liddie dispatched the last screaming horror with a purposeful swing of her white-gold blade, Autumn let out a shuddering sigh of relief. She slumped down onto her knees as she tried to regain her breath.
With a tug of her will, the Witch Armor adorning Autumn dissipated like smoke on a breeze. Her robes beneath were mostly undamaged, the acidic blood having splattered across her unprotected hands and sleeves, pitting both. Autumn let out a hiss as her hands stung.
Fortunately, she still had some of Pyre’s healing cream on hand, and with said alchemist’s help, they quickly treated her acid burned hands.
Across from Autumn’s seated form, Liddie pushed one of the bodies off the bridge with her foot as she panted. “Again, I reiterate, but what the shit were they?!”
Nelva looked up from examining her acid damaged gear and frowned at the pirate’s language. “Does it matter?” she asked.
“I suppose not,” Liddie shrugged. “You think there’ll be more?”
Eme shuddered. “I hope not. We’re not exactly equipped to deal with monsters with acidic blood,” she said, gesturing to her burned hands that Pyre was just now tending to. The group’s main healer grumbled at the catgirl for moving.
Autumn idly picked at her ruined sleeves. Taking out her wand, she attempted to mend them with magic. While she was mostly successful, they ended up looking a touch more frayed than they’d had before, as there simply wasn’t much left to fix. The rest of her gear bore a few pitted burns, but were easier to fix, as they were made of either leather or bone.
In but a moment of violet magic, she was looking much better and far less sweaty.
Of course, that also drew the others’ attention, and she felt obligated to fix up their gear as well.
When she was done, Autumn looked towards Nethlia. “What now?” she asked.
The demoness rolled her jaw as she looked out over the brightly lit ruins and tumbling falls of golden sand. “Well, that depends on whether we can find a way across the ravine or not. For now, we might as well see what’s behind that door,” she nodded towards the one near them. “This place is far larger and more dangerous than I initially thought, but,” she rolled the word out reluctantly, “we are still good to carry on. Unless anyone wants to turn back?”
Nobody spoke up.
Autumn herself felt apprehensive about continuing with what they’d just endured, but the allure of a weapon forged to combat the hag was too great to ignore. So she too kept quiet.
Nethlia let out a sigh. “Fine. Take a moment to rest, then we’ll head out shortly.”
As the others found somewhere to sit and check their gear, Nethlia came to sit beside Autumn. Eme sent them a pout as Pyre wrapped her twisted ankle with gauze.
“You doing okay?” Nethlia asked. “Did you get injured?”
Autumn shook her head. “No, not anything major — just some burns on my hands, but Pyre already took care of that. You?”
“Same,” Nethlia said, showing off her own treated wounds. “Have you seen anything like that before? Any idea what they were?”
“No. To both questions. They might’ve been the former builders of the tomb? Slaves buried away with their master? Or they might just be random horrors from the underground drawn to loud sounds.” Autumn shrugged. “Who knows? I’ve never come across anything like those before. Not in the Feywild, nor in the Underdark. Underoots. Whatever. They were still living, at least, not undead. I saw their hunger and madness,” she said with a shiver.
“Hunger?”
Autumn nodded. “Yeah, they were starving. It was like an oppressive cloud suffocating them. I couldn’t tell if it was a physical hunger or a desire for something stranger, like our souls or something.”
“That's…not reassuring,” Nethlia said carefully, throwing a grim look at the piles once more. “Any chance we killed them all?”
Autumn snorted. “With our luck?”
Nethlia sighed. “Yeah, I thought so. Well, get up — I think we’ve rested long enough.” Saying so, she stood up and helped Autumn to her feet.
Refreshed thanks to their short rest, the party of battle-tested adventurers slowly picked their way across the remaining pathways towards the northern end of the sprawling chamber where their destination lay. They had to jump across a few gaps too wide to simply step across. Each leap sent a bolt of fright skittering up Autumn’s spine.
As they crossed the last bridge onto the platform where the door sat, they finally got a good look at the door itself. A large crack split the stone portal in two, allowing for one to glimpse inside. When Autumn shone her lantern ring’s light inside, gold glinted back at her from within.
Beyond the cracked door was a room absolutely packed full of treasure.
Liddie squealed in delight.