Six figures leading half as many mules funneled into the box canyon.
At their head trod a warrior garbed in a mixture of furs and grey woolen wrappings, mail peeking out here and there, dull as pewter. A coarse brown beard emerged from a close-fitting helm worked in the style of the Northern Tribes. He spat as he looked at the ground, carefully picking his way over the terrain. Following him was a slender man, light of step with calfskin boots that emitted not a sound, sporting a black leather jerkin with a baldric of wicked knives of various shapes, a hood shrouding his features. Then tramped a magician, judging from his stooped posture, peaked hat, and staff, a somewhat gnarled object that he leaned on heavily. A priest followed, robes of azure overlaid with a corselet of bronze scales, pouches hanging from a finely tooled leather belt embossed with the holy symbols of his sect. Then a burly man, clad in lustrous armor plate, a shield slung over his back with a crimson rampant griffon, and beside him a lad carrying a large satchel and a pack on his back, arrayed in somewhat fine linen a bit worse from the rigors of the trail, complete with tabard emblazoned with the same griffon covering a quilted gambeson.
The group followed the winding course of the canyon, stopping when they seemed to come to the end of it, where the ground began to rise in steep granite. The warrior took two more steps, halted, and held up one hand, signaling the others. He seemed satisfied rather than thwarted. Naught had troubled them so far; indeed, nothing of interest had been seen aside from spotting the remains of an old campsite yestereve and what looked to be some kobold droppings. The stony ravines and bramble-choked thickets where they had been forced to travel had been mercifully free from adversaries, and concerns of an ambuscade had proved groundless. Doubtless, he thought grimly, that would soon change.
Some further inspection rewarded them with the knowledge they had reached their destination at long last. The expected gates were partially obscured with vines, tenacious but no match for their blades. The narrow gates, of wrought iron bars swirling into fanciful curvilinear patterns that evoked images of clouds and rising smoke, were recessed into a stone arch, its keystone deeply carved with a curious rune from elder times. The mage stared at it, deep in thought. Finally, he turned to his companions.
“’Tis warded, sure. Don’t even bother trying to enter until I deactivate this enchantment.” The others retreated several steps and gave him space, letting him work his craft in peace. He uttered a rasping word that sounded like a command, but nothing happened. He sighed, reconsidering his approach. “This could be several moments yet. In the meantime, ready thyselves.” Then he redoubled his efforts, seeking the Way of it, his mind grasping to solve the puzzle that had been set here in past ages before the realms had been scattered as windswept leaves in autumn.
The others patiently waited, shooting glances about, just in case. Long experience had taught them to remain vigilant in the Barrowlands. Several set down packs, rummaged through their contents and brought out various items deemed useful for the doings ahead. They divested themselves of anything that would be useless or hamper movement in the possibly cramped interior. The knight tossed his shield to the ground, preferring to have his offhand free in close quarters. The thief laid a bow and quiver beside a bundle covered by his hooded cloak. The warrior took a long pull from a waterskin.
The knight and priest handed the reins of the other two mules to the lad who was looking after the third. The knight spoke firmly, accustomed to obedience: “Boy, see you keep an eye on these – mind you: don’t let’m wander off now or fall prey to direwolves.”
“Aye, they’ll be needed to tote our treasure out of here, soon enough!” the thief called out boisterously, his attempt at mirth ringing hollowly on the stepped ledges and looming crags above.
The squire gulped almost imperceptibly, and asked, “How long will ye be, m’lord?” The knight grunted noncommittally. “Can’t say – shouldn’t be too long though. These tomb complexes are rarely extensive. With any luck, we’ll be well on our way before sundown.” The squire nodded and proceeded to dutifully tie the reins of the three mules to a nearby misshapen birch, set down the pack he was charged to carry, flexed his shoulders, and took out a long dagger from his left boot. Without further words, the knight turned and strode back to the others.
The mage had been busy. He put away a battered notebook that he had just been consulting, nodded to himself, and once more attempted to evoke the charms needed to unravel the essence of the rune and dispel the ward. He gesticulated in brisk movements, index and middle fingers jointly pointed out, spitting out the Words of Will. His efforts were at last rewarded with a flash of deep red light from the rune crowning the tomb entrance; it vanished just as the gates shuddered and creaked inward, a gap the span of a hand now between them. The mage wore a crooked smile and beckoned the thief forward.
Obligingly the thief bounded up, stopped, and crept forward cautiously, an intent look on his face. He carefully pushed the gates inward, cringing at the resulting whine from the ancient metal, and scanned the shadowy vestibule before them as far as the light could penetrate. He bent down, examined the threshold, gingerly stepped over it, and then turned around and gave the signal to proceed.
The warrior clicked flint against his shortsword, sparks showering onto a torch that sprang to life that he then picked up and raised aloft. The cleric did the same. The mage muttered a word, and the tip of his staff suddenly showed forth in a blueish glow. Into the gaping maw in the rock they went, willingly, every one of them tensed and alert.
The vestibule was scarcely large enough to hold them all, but it merely proved to be little more than a landing for a set of shallow stairs leading downward. Taking point, the thief inspected each tread and examined the walls for small apertures that might eject poisoned darts or other deadly missiles. He reached the bottom and was about to venture into the corridor ahead when he froze. The others abruptly followed his example.
Crouching down, he tentatively reached over and pointed at, and then gently touched, what proved to be a wire that spanned across the passage, scant inches about the chiseled floor. Light from the torches caused an errant sparkle here and there along its length. The thief sighed and turned around.
“Trip-wire, fashioned of electrum if I know my metals. Give this a wide berth,” he whispered. “Who knows what shite it could unleash upon us if pulled or broken? I don’t see any more of them, though.” And with a graceful step over it, he continued, not waiting for the rest to respond.
The mage paused briefly in wonder, scanned the walls and rock above and below them, and murmured cautiously, “I see magic running through this place, in fine silvery threads. I know not what it does, but there is still power here, after all this time.” The warrior frowned. He had hoped to simply gain entry, slay whatever foul beast had taken up residence here, loot it of any and all gold and gems, and maybe also score some items with magical properties – not be surrounded on all sides by it. Still, the bigger the risk, the bigger the reward - as he had proclaimed often enough while swaggering in various aleshops to impress the local women. He tightened the grip on his sword and went on with the others.
The corridor was lined on each side with exquisitely rendered bas-relief sculptures depicting troubling scenes. Images of gutted corpses, gamboling devils, altars hosting noxious rites and decadent tableaux unfolded into ever more elaborate and obscene displays. The priest shuddered upon glimpsing this blasphemy, and silently mouthed an Oath of Purity. Purging this den of iniquity would be a grand tribute to the Shining One. His hand slipped to the handle of the mace swinging from his belt. If they could contrive to collapse this entire structure as they departed he would count it a righteous deed to be added to his account in the Blessed Vault and elevate his stature in the temple. His mouth almost formed a smile – let Good come from Evil, for a change!
Next, a door came into view on the right side of the passage. It was a heavy bronze affair, with sinuous designs etched onto its paneled front. It had a straightforward latching mechanism featuring a keyhole.
The mage held out a hand while uttering a phrase. After a brief moment, he stated, “Not enchanted.” The thief took his place and scrutinized the lock, his array of slender burglary tools already in hand. Satisfied there were no traps, it was a simple matter for him to undo the lock and spring open the latch. With a firm push, the door gave and swung into the room, and the party peered into the gloom beyond, sudden dampness in the air making them twitch, sensitive as they were to the most subtle of changes in an environment where anything could be a signal heralding peril.
It was a library or study of some kind – floor to ceiling cubby-holes and cabinets, along with an ornate table and companion smaller desk with a sloping top, almost like a lectern, each piece of furniture having an unused oil lamp upon it. But something didn’t look quite right. And there was a slow but steady dripping sound.
Instead of books and scrolls filling every crevice, bulbous growths emerged, covering most of the surfaces, pale and glistening. They had a sickly yellow hue, and silken threads joined them together, spreading up to the ceiling, ultimately surrounding where a crack permitted water to regularly drip onto the middle of the floor, creating a modest puddle before finding another gap through which to drain. Sucking at the constant supply of moisture and nourished by moldering parchment, strange fruiting projections thrust upward until here and there orb-like sacs the size of cantaloupes had separated and floated into the air, just buoyant enough to be at waist height. The disturbance of the opening door had caused enough of a brief current to cause them to move to the rear of the room, before gently bouncing silently off the wall or sticking against other growths still attached to moldering wood.
The cleric shuddered. “Cave fungus,” he explained, ”the bane of many books stored in subterranean conditions.” He put an arm across the doorway, barring the way just in case anyone else decided to venture in further. “If you rupture any of yonder spore sacs, spores that come into contact with your skin will infect you and rhizomes will begin to crawl within your flesh. Without the proper treatment, you could be dead within a one sun cycle.” He thought of the foul excrescences that would eventually burst forth from the hapless victim, a sight he had once witnessed years ago that had given him nightmares for months afterward. “And if you inhale any of them…well, the effects are even worse and much more swift. Best to let this chamber be. Close the door softly and we shall resume our delving!”
The others looked at their spell casting colleague, knowing he was the only one who really cared about the written word. The mage’s face had a sour expression. The only sure way he knew to cleanse the space of the fungus – and its deadly spores – was to incinerate it. This he could do, with a fireball or perhaps a flamestrike, but at the cost of also burning all the tomes and scrolls within to ashes. Curses! Maybe he could devise a clever stratagem to kill the one while sparing the other, but it would require some prolonged thinking. Best to move on and attempt to crack this nut later. The knight, well aware of the value his sorcerous comrade placed on libraries, patted him sympathetically on the shoulder before continuing the exploration.
After a sharp turn to the right, a second portal came into view, with a similar door, this time on the left side. But while the first had been true and straight, this one bulged outward slightly into the corridor, as if it had sustained more than one powerful impact from the other side. It still held, however, and the hinges were sound.
The thief approached the door and placed one side of his head against it, listening. Shrugging, he felt around the battered edges, satisfied himself that there were no traps, picked the lock, and held out a hand to take the pry bar that the warrior had just extracted from the wrappings about his calf and offered him. After a few moments of working it into a small gap and pushing and wriggling, the door popped open with a groan and swung into the unexplored space. A fetid stench began issuing from the gaping doorway. The knight recoiled in disgust.
They could see a room, not overly large, that contained barrels, vats, and cauldrons with what looked to be shelves stocked with glass vessels of various shapes and sizes as well as other unidentifiable objects. Towards the left, a set of shelves had been knocked over or collapsed at some point, littering the floor, and next to the wreckage was a heap of rubble at the foot of a large rent in the wall that remained stubbornly black no matter how they held their torches or the mage positioned his staff. The thief entered the room with a long stride to get a better look.
“Doesn’t look to be much of value here…mayhap this was a laboratory at some point, judging from the apparatus. There might be some reagents in these vessels – probably no longer effective, though.” He shrugged and turned back to face them. “I say we press on until we’ve mapped out the entire place. Shouldn’t take long at this rate!”
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As he finished saying this a gaping mouth full of triangular teeth set around it emerged from above the lintel of the doorway and in one smooth motion fastened itself around the thief’s head, snapping shut and pulling him off his feet, choking off his gasp of surprise.
The attacker was revealed to be a long wormlike creature that had been hugging the other side of the wall and the ceiling. It was over thirty feet long and 3 feet in diameter, with purple undulating skin almost as dark as an eggplant. It dropped down to the floor to better devour its quarry.
The rest sprang into action. While the warrior and knight fought to jointly squeeze through the door simultaneously, the wizard spoke a Word and four bolts of white energy sped from his outstretched fingers to unerringly strike the worm with small but fierce detonations, causing it to thrash in agitation.
The warrior stepped under the head of the worm as it reared against the ceiling and thrust his blade upward, missing as the worm lashed from side to side. The priest warily approached and after closing the distance jammed his torch against its mid-section. The knight attacked its flank as well and brought his sword across it in a sweeping arc, and succeeded in slicing open its side.
Convulsing in obvious pain, the worm released the thief from its mouth and he landed with a crunch, his neck bent at a sharp, unnatural angle. Its body spasmed and caught the knight full in the chest. The impact threw him off his feet and he caromed into the wall behind him, striking it and slumping to the floor, where he heaved trying to refill his lungs with air. The priest was also knocked off balance as the tail whipped around to catch him unawares behind the knee, a stinger at its end plunging into him. His legs buckled and he fell on his hip, grimacing and stifling a cry.
As the purple worm mindlessly struck out to avenge its injuries, its front pistoned downward at the warrior, its jaws catching his torch arm and piercing his chain mail. Grunting in pain, with his other arm he thrust his sword again at the creature and this time buried it to the hilt, the grievous wound he inflicted causing a gush of green blood to spew out all over him. The worm emitted a guttural moan, shuddered and collapsed onto its side, twitched several times, and was finally still.
There were a few moments of panting. The cleric frantically said the prayer necessary to channel sacred power, cleansing his body of the poison that had been injected into him. When he was done he struggled back to his feet, limped over, and knelt beside the form of the thief, looking to see if aid could be rendered. A swift examination, however, proved that the fallen rogue was beyond his healing art and gone, his soul flown who knows where. He sighed, wishing he had managed to convince the thief of the shining verity of the True Faith. He quickly rifled the corpse, retrieving a few precious items that he knew the thief’s woman would want to be bequeathed to her when they returned to town, softly uttered a prayer of mourning, and then stood. He turned to give his attention to the warrior, but the lean man was already gulping down a healing elixir from a small silver flask he carried in a hidden pocket. After quaffing it he then wiped some of the creature’s blood off his face. The knight finally stood once more as well and held up his palm wearily to show he was uninjured.
The room had no other exits – aside from the irregular opening in the wall, which proved to be a crude tunnel bored by the worm and not fit for human travel. After making a quick survey of the wreckage the remaining party members stared at each other for several moments, and then forged ahead, carefully but with unwavering purpose. Hells, they all knew this wasn’t going to be easy.
Now the party was down a thief. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any more traps in need of detection. At least, the mage recalled belatedly, he did have in his possession one enchanted scroll that would undo just about any lock they might encounter. So, they weren’t completely helpless.
The passage adopted a slight slope downward from this point, and the ceiling became more sharply arched, with organic-looking olivine ribs at intervals between carved panels meeting at the top with a flourish of twining serpentine knots. The air grew steadily colder and staler. They began to detect a glow off in the distance. The hair rose on the backs of their necks.
The knight held his sword out. The blade of his fathers quivered, he could feel the expectant thrum of it from the hilt through his gauntlets, confirming that the Dead were active somewhere up ahead. So be it. He lowered his visor.
The descent and the passage ended at the mouth of a large aperture that opened up into a cavernous room. The capacious chamber was octagonal, with no other portals, though the other seven sides had deep niches set in the middle that did not look empty. Its ceiling was vaulted and groined, the gracefully curving facets joining at a central apex. At the back of it rose a statue with a sneering mien twice the height of a man, carved from stone the color of dried blood. In each of its outstretched arms, a flame guttered from an upturned palm, giving the vicinity a feeble illumination. In the center of the room was a large sarcophagus, its corners jutting up and out into cruel black spikes that reflected some of the light. The sides of it were engraved with more strange runes of unknown significance. And the lid of the sarcophagus, chased with intricate designs of gold, was askew.
The party regarded the statue with a certain amount of trepidation. The cleric shot a glance at the mage, wondering if both of them had the same thought: golem? Well, if it was a golem set here as a guard, it would either attack them or it would not.
From long experience the four men began to spread out as they entered the chamber, two to each side, intending to work their way along the perimeter. They divided their gaze between the statue and the niches that they approached, half-expecting ghostly wraiths or mummified corpses to suddenly animate and lunge out of them.
This did not happen. What did happen, however, was a man-sized creature silently sat up in the sarcophagus, placed bony hands on the lid that still covered its lower half, and heaved itself up and then over the side, landing on its feet with a click that carried to every corner of the room. This arrested their progress and caught their attention.
Slender it was, and it stood with a stately posture, fell and terrible, exuding deadly intent, clad in garments that were once rich and intricately embroidered, but were now dusty and shabby with age. A circlet of bronze set with rubies that pulsed with a lurid glare crowned its head, placed over stringy grey locks of hair. The face was almost skeletal, the skull covered with flesh flaking like onion-skin, nose collapsed inward, teeth protruding from desiccated lips. In dark sockets, small points of light occupied the place where eyes had been.
It could be no other than a lich, reputed to be the most powerful of the undead, a creature the result of a puissant archmage or high priest that possessed such a will to continue and such potent magicks that even after death its consciousness persisted in its ensorcelled remains in a living death-state that made them well-nigh immortal. It regarded them for the briefest of moments in total silence. Dimly, as if in a haze, the mage recalled reading about liches who could speak by sending words into the minds of the living. This particular lich, however, did not deem that necessary. It raised one thin arm and made a motion with its bony fingers.
As the knight ran forward to engage this accursed being, a roaring and spinning ball of fire leaped from the lich’s extended hand and raced towards the warrior and priest on the left side of the room. It swelled as it hurtled along its trajectory, and exploded with a concussive detonation, bathing the entire area in flame.
The priest had just managed to scramble to one side and was only somewhat singed by the blaze, but the warrior was engulfed in the conflagration and agonized screaming rent the air for a few seconds. He dropped his weapon and raised his hands to his face. He stumbled a few paces as a living torch until he collapsed on the floor, black smoke rising from his charred corpse.
As the warrior died the knight closed the distance and mounted his attack in the middle of the room. The knight’s sword blade swung down as he sought to deal a powerful blow, but it was met by a bejeweled bracer on the forearm of the lich upon which it clanged, whose other arm then touched his shoulder briefly.
Instantly chilled, the flesh near where he had been touched completely numb, the knight found he couldn’t move. Struggle as he might, his limbs were fixed and rigid as iron. With rising panic, he realized that he was now completely at the lich’s mercy – and that mercy would be in short supply. His only hope was that his remaining colleagues could keep it occupied while the effects wore off.
The mage directed his staff at the creature and let loose its power, and a jagged bolt of lightning tore through the air with a crack. It wrapped around the lich only to die out and vanish, leaving it completely unaffected. Immune! The mage thought of other spells that probably wouldn’t work – cold, charm, sleep. He had to try something else! Frantically he racked his brain, taking inventory of his remaining spells.
The lich stepped away from the immobile knight and made a graceful wave that caused a faintly shimmering sphere to surround it. Then he began to stalk slowly towards the priest.
The priest had let his redundant torch fall to the floor and raised both arms; perhaps if he found favor he could banish or even destroy the lich – he had done so to undead before, though none so powerful. With fervent prayers, he beseeched his god to provide the might required to reduce this undead being to fragments.
“Hear me Scintos – your faithful servant has need of your holy light! Aid me in my moment of greatest extremity, I beg you! Bestow upon me your blessing and I shall vanquish this foul abomination in your name!” His hands began to glow and he repeated the words. He had just managed to utter them a second time when the lich reached him.
Simultaneously they reached out towards each other, and the power emanating from the cleric’s hands flared once and then was extinguished, demonstrating a failure to influence his opponent. The lich seized him by the throat.
The priest could feel his vitality draining from him, siphoned off by the infernal void that should have been occupied by the lich’s soul. He knew then that he was unworthy, and this knowledge was just as painful to him as the horrible process to which he was being subjected. “Scintos save me!” he screamed, clutching the holy symbol hanging from his neck. The lich regarded him in what only could be described as a baleful glare.
The situation was turning most dire. Decision made, the mage began doing the incantation for his most powerful spell – a ray of disintegration that should blast this foul thing into nothingness. He just needed a few moments…
Helpless, the knight watched in fascinated dread as the priest’s face began to change. His firm cheeks sunk, the flesh beneath the eyes sagged, his mouth gaped open as his head tilted back. Then his skin began to wither, the life force sucked from him, channeled through the lich’s arm in a surging pearly luminescence. He emitted one last weak sigh and then his head lolled forward and he was still. The lich cast the body to one side, and as it come into contact with the floor the carcass split open, showing it to be a mere dried-out husk.
Preparations now complete, the mage pointed an index finger to direct a thin beam of green light at the back of the lich. He snarled and awaited the anticipated vengeance as the undead began to turn around to face him.
The beam stopped short of the lich and diffused, washing over the sphere the lich had previously cast, which the mage belatedly recognized as an anti-magic shell of protection. His heart quailed and in shock, his mind dissociated briefly from the fray.
How did this all go so wrong so quickly? Maybe dispelling the rune at the entrance had awoken the lich as well as opened the gates? What an unfortunate oversight that would have been – no way to know for certain, though. The mage blinked and assessed the dire circumstances in which found himself.
The knight found that his paralysis was fading and the feeling returning to his rigid limbs. Discovering he could move once more, he swallowed his terror. He would stand his ground. He would not run. He never ran. He would prevail or die, as his code dictated. With a cry he rushed the lich with sword arm raised, movements still awkward.
The mage watched this charge and saw his fellow adventurer swing, thrust, and cut, each blow either smacked aside or hitting and encountering a resilience as hard as granite. There was no point in remaining. All his companions were dead – or soon would be. His magic did not suffice. Might as well make the knight’s brave sacrifice worth something! As quickly as he could he wheeled about, cast a jump spell, and sprang a good ten yards out of the room into the corridor - once, twice, thrice he bounded - and charged back the way they had come at a full sprint. Legs pumping as fast as he could make them, the wizard galloped up the long passageway with its unsettling carvings. Behind him, sounds of combat abruptly ceased and silence now reigned, signifying – well, who knows what? In his imagination he pictured the lich rising into the air and taking flight, swooping through the darkness to enfold him in a sickening grasp that sucked him down into oblivion. But hark! He could see daylight now, there were the steps up ahead. The land of the living awaited him.
He was going to make it. Once he was past the threshold, the lich would be forbidden to follow him, lest it crumble to dust, its form only held together by the potent theurgies of the crypt. Of this at least he was certain. If he dashed immediately to the right or left once he was outside, any line of sight spells issuing from the entrance would necessarily miss him. All other difficulties making good an escape from this accursed canyon after that point were surely solvable.
He bounded up the steps leading to the vestibule, and as he did so his right foot snagged the electrum wire at their base, which yielded a finger’s length until it broke with an unheard twang. The mage was at the top of the stairs when a previously unnoticed pipe set in the ceiling, angled to match the descent of the stairway, suddenly erupted and sprayed him and the entire passage with some kind of fluid.
The effect was immediate and the pain was intense. “No!” the mage realized with a shock, “- acid!!”
The squire jerked his head up just in time to hear frantic screaming and see the mage rocket out of the tomb entrance only to stop, wildly thrash about, and gurgle desperately. Reddened hands clutched a waterskin and raised it to spill out some measure of relief and douse himself, only for it to fall through shuddering fingers to the ground. Wisps of smoke curled off his head, in mere moments dissipating to show skin melting off his face, bloody scraps plopping wetly onto the scree upon which he teetered. His very robes had holes appear and then enlarge. His staff clattered to the ground, of no use now.
Eyelids gone, one eye had ruptured, and fluids now tinged with green seeped down the rapidly disintegrating skin and musculature, leaving patches of bone to show through. The ill-fated wizard pitched forward, sank to his knees, and collapsed face down, stone dead. The gates of the crypt closed with a clang. In stunned terror the lad slumped against the birch tree gasping for breath, staring at the shut gates, still reverberating with an awful finality. Now what?!?
