TOMB RAIDERS
The second pack of raptors fared no better than their kin. They had lain in wait throughout the first melee, hoping for the opportunity to make easy prey of the weakened survivors, whether it was their own kind or not. Unfortunately for the sly, but dumb animals, the Legion was not their typical prey. Once again, the combined might of Sepoto and Tower Cleaver, coupled with the acidic sprays of Samson’s breath and the withering magics of Mandi and Marius, made quick work of the dinosaurs. When the last one fell, Daelric, waiting in the wings as usual, stepped in to tend the relatively minor wounds his allies had suffered.
The companions continued their circuit of the overgrown garden, hugging the wall to their right. Daelric, still unseen, had cast a divination allowing him to perceive magical emanations, hoping to find some sign of the obahs they’d been sent to document. Thus it was that he saw the telltale shimmer of magic coming from the long, shallow pool ahead and to their left. A wide mangrove tree grew in the midst of the stone-rimmed pool, and it was from within its tangled roots that the priest detected the aura.
“I’ve got something,” he said, coming to a halt.
“Where?” Mandi asked, turning her head towards the disembodied voice.
“That tree,” the priest responded. “It’s hidden in the roots. One of you should go in there and check it out.”
Sepoto laughed aloud at this suggestion. “My, my! Aren’t we the born leader? I tell you what: since you’re the one that can see what you’re looking for, and since you in turn cannot be seen, I think that you would be perfect for the job of investigating.”
There was silence for a moment. Daelric did not care for the suggestion at all. He knew his role and his strengths, and neither lay in the area of point man. Still, Sepoto, despite his sarcasm, was correct, and it did make sense, and Shaundekal knew that the priest had taken his share of ribbing from the others about his lack of lethal contribution when diplomacy dissolved into violence. Never mind that his magic provided them all with powerful defensive wards, and his curative spells had saved more than one of them on more than one occasion.
“Fine,” he said at length, determined to show them all that he was not afraid to get his hands dirty.
Carefully, Daelric waded out towards the center of the pool, noting with some alarm that, though invisible, his body still displaced water and it would not be very difficult for an enemy to see his location. When he neared the mangrove’s roots, he peered within, and saw the tell-tale glint of gold. As he began reaching inside, however, he heard a rustling in the branches above him. When he looked up he saw a vine, as thick as a man’s wrist curling down towards him. Coiling like a whip, it snapped at him, striking him despite his invisibility. The air was driven from his lungs, and before he could catch his breath, the vine began twining itself around his body, attempting to squeeze the life out of him. Fortunately, Shaundekal’s blessing was upon him. The Traveler did not abide any impediments to travel, and so had blessed His chosen with the freedom to move unimpeded through any such obstruction. Daelric slipped free of the vine easily, as if he were covered in grease. His friends, with the exception of Sepoto, whom Daelric had imbued with the same magic earlier in the day, were not so fortunate. The plants and trees all around the pool suddenly animated into violent motion, clutching and grasping at the Legionnaires. Marius, Tower Cleaver and Samson all found themselves entwined in limbs and branches, unable to move. Mandi, having earlier assumed the form of an air mephit, hovered in the air above the foliage. Her encyclopedic knowledge allowed her to realize immediately what was happening. The flora was under the control of the true enemy…the vine that had struck Daelric initially. It was a semi-sentient plant, carnivorous in nature, which sought to lure its prey within striking distance, holding it in place before strangling the life from it. If the vine were destroyed, its control over the vegetation would end.
“Kill the vine!” she called to her companions and then began casting. A thin, green beam of energy lanced from her finger. Where it struck the vine, a large section simply withered, while a sizeable piece of the mangrove itself vanished, disintegrated into dust.
Daelric scrambled towards the edge of the pool, but as he moved, the vine struck him again, the force of the blow hurling him to the grass at the water’s edge. As it so happened, he landed right next to the entangled dragon shaman. Daelric scrambled to his feet, determined to put some distance between himself and the murderous plant, but as he passed Samson, he touched the goblin’s shoulder, murmuring a short prayer. Abruptly, Samson found himself able to wriggle free from his bonds. He leaped into the pool, spraying acid from his open mouth as he went. The vine hissed and spit where the acid struck, but still it swung about furiously, looking for its next target, which just happened to be the dragon shaman. He was hit with the force of a battering ram, and thrown back towards the lip of the pool. By that time, Sepoto had managed to wade through the clinging plants and into the pool. As the killer vine struck Samson, the goliath replied in kind. His chain coiled around the plant, and the divine power of Savras surged from the crusader through his weapon, causing the vine to shrivel into a blackened husk.
“Don’t ever ask me to do that again!” Daelric shouted as he made his way back to his companions. “I could have been killed!”
“Hmm. It seems that I face that same dilemma every time I go into battle,” Sepoto retorted.
“Yes, but if you die, I can retrieve your soul,” Daelric replied, his voice shrill. “Who will do the same for me?”
“Don’t worry yourself overly,” Sepoto laughed, “Your personal safety seems to be a prime concern of yours. With all of your magical wards, you’ll come through with hardly a scratch…except for now.” He smiled, for though he couldn’t see the priest, he knew the young man surely bore the tell-tale signs of the blows he’d suffered.
The magical auras from within the mangrove’s roots turned out to be from a beautiful suit of golden armor, worn by the skeletal remains of some unfortunate soul who’d traveled this path before them. Of more interest, however, was the pool itself. The raised stone rim around it was carved with several images, which Mandi determined were three more obahs: Mumar, the Obah of Soil, Ciomar, the Obah of Mountain Springs, and Zinrial, the Obah of Fertility. She made her notes while Marius quickly sketched the images, and then the group continued on their way.
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Beyond the mangrove pond they came upon an area where an immense tree root had grown through the lip of another pool, crumbling the stone and creating a delta of streams as it overflowed. These streams formed a maze of rivulets before emptying into a wide, dark pool against the garden’s walls. Barely visible in the gloom beneath the plant-shrouded overhang were two doors, partially submerged in the still water. Mandi thought it better to bypass the doors at the time, in favor of mapping the whole of the garden, and so Tower Cleaver continued to hack through the dense vegetation. Eventually they came to the far side of the enclosure, where they found a number of empty, iron cages. The doors to all of them were missing, or hung askew by rusting hinges. Logs lay broken and rotting upon the floors of some, while others were overgrown with vines and plants from the gardens.
“I imagine this is where the raptors, and possibly the girallons were kept,” Mandi offered, “before whatever happened happened, that is.”
Tower Cleaver had been poking around in one of the cages, when suddenly his large ears pricked up.
“What this?” he asked, staring at a spot high on one wall, which was about eye level for him.
“Don’t tell me,” Mandi said, fluttering up beside him, “you’ve found a peanut.” When she reached the spot on the wall, however, she saw that it was a hole, about two-feet in diameter. Peering down it, she could see that it led onto a small tunnel, which twisted and curved beyond her range of vision. In her current form, she could enter the hole without a problem…and, she reasoned, so could Samson and Marius…
Several minutes later, the diminutive trio was marching single file down the cramped tunnel, with Samson in the lead. It was obvious that the passage was not natural, but had instead been burrowed by something. After several yards, it reached a four-way intersection. To the left, a cramped chamber opened up to a height of nearly twenty-five feet. The walls were covered with crude paintings of lizards and strange animals and figures with too many arms. A thick, rancid layer of droppings and bones covered the floor. Four, strange creatures crouched in the shadows of the intersection. They were small, grey-skinned, hairless humanoids, sporting two pairs of long, rubbery looking arms with oddly elongated fingers. Their yellow eyes glinted ferally in the darkness. While Samson was still some ten feet away from the nearest creature, one of its arms suddenly shot towards him, fastening around his wind pipe. Just as it began to choke him, however, the lingering effects of Daelric’s magic allowed him to slip free. Almost reflexively, as he gasped in a deep breath, he released it in a cloud of acid which rolled over two of the creatures, clinging to them like a second skin. From behind him, he heard Mandi’s voice speaking the words to summon her magic. In an eye-blink, another of the little beings suddenly shimmered, only to be replaced by the form of a toad a moment later. Hissing and shrieking, the three remaining chokers leaped at Samson, their arms flailing and beating at him, hammering him again and again. Abruptly, the pair that still bore his clinging breath suddenly screamed, their skin blistering and boiling, and they collapsed in gelatinous, burned heaps. As the last one stared at its dead companions, Samson lunged forward, his morningstar shattering the creature’s jaw as it struck, sending fanged teeth flying. As it reeled, stunned, the dragon shaman struck again, crushing its skull.
“What is it with this place and multi-limbed aberrations?” Mandi asked as they inspected the crude lair of the little creatures, and turned up nothing of any real value. “It’s almost as if they’ve been purposefully warped, or bred this way. Just what sort of experiments where these monks carrying out, I wonder?”
The trio rejoined their companions, and told them of what they’d found. There was nowhere else to go in the garden, at that point, which left only the two doors they had passed earlier.
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The first door they tried was stuck, but that proved only a minor inconvenience for Tower Cleaver. Unfortunately, it led only to a partially flooded, but otherwise empty room. The second door was slightly more problematic. As the minotaur’s axe smashed into the wood, it struck metal beneath. It seemed someone, or something had affixed an iron plate to the inside of the portal. Although a bit more effort was required, the big barbarian still managed to batter through the barrier in less than a minute. On the opposite side, they found themselves in a long chamber, with a high, vaulted ceiling supported by rows of intricately carved columns which gave the place a feeling of ancient grandeur. It had obviously seen its better days, however, as the floor was partially flooded from the garden pool. Though impressive, the room was unoccupied, and bore no likenesses of the obahs. The only way out was via a narrow stair on one side, which led up to a small door. Single-file, they moved up the stairway with Sepoto leading. The goliath didn’t even pause at the door, instead twisting the handle and pushing it open wide. Immediately, the reek of unwashed bodies mingled with the stench of foul cooking washed over the company. Great fireplaces lined one wall of the room beyond, one of which held a massive brass kettle over a banked fire. Foodstuffs were stacked throughout, and a great chopping block was covered with bloody cuts of meat. A massive bed, crudely cobbled together, stood against another wall next to a large bag. Standing at the chopping block was a large creature that, on first glance, resembled an overly muscular ogre, but when Sepoto looked closer, he saw that a third arm sprouted from the center of its chest.
Brakalan had been a cook for the Shensites long before the barbarians came, having been made to see the error of his evil ways by the kindly monks, and trained in the culinary arts. So docile had he become that when the Tuigan attacked, he had not raised an arm (or three) against them, and thus they had spared his life. Unfortunately, in the long years since, spent under their influence, the athach’s foul temperament had reasserted itself, and the fact that he was forced to cook for the prisoners the barbarians returned with on their raids only served to worsen his mood. Thus, when he saw that a group of prisoners were wandering loose, and had invaded his domain, he was not at all pleased.
“No prisoner’s allowed!” he bellowed, raising his three meat tenderizers threateningly. Unfortunately, only Mandi understood the foreign language the giant spoke, and though she knew the brute was only issuing a warning, she had become disgusted and fed up with the mutated monstrosities they continued to encounter.
“It’s threatening us,” she said aloud to her comrades. “It says it will kill us all and have us for its dinner. I suggest we pacify it.”
Sepoto and Tower Cleaver needed no more motivation than that. As one, they moved forward. Brakalan stepped out to meet them, shouting and gesturing at them. Sepoto wound up, murmuring a short prayer over his chain, causing the spikes that studded it to become barbed and cruelly hooked. When he struck, the arterial spray filled the kitchen like a slaughter house. Brakalan gurgled, all three of his hands going to his sliced carotid. His eyes grew wider when he saw Tower Cleaver’s axe whistling towards him, but they went quickly blank when the blade buried itself between them.
“Very efficient,” Mandi said, nodding approvingly. Samson stared at her back coolly. He was quickly becoming disillusioned with the sorceress, and worse, he didn’t trust her at all.
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Beyond the kitchen, the group found themselves on a second veranda. On the opposite side, an archway opened into what appeared to be an armory, the walls of which were lined with wooden racks. Many of them were empty, but a number of weapons and items of armor and equipment still remained. Trestle tables occupied the center of the room with benches along either side. To their left, however, the veranda opened onto a narrow mountain valley that separated the main portion of the temple from a tall citadel higher up the mountain face. The floor of the plaza climbed a series of terraces to a bronze door at the base of the building. High overhead, a pair of narrow, soaring aqueducts ran from the citadel’s bronze domes to the highest dome on the lower temple. A pair of alcoves flanked the citadel entrance. The western one was empty, but the eastern one held a four-armed statue which frowned down upon the plaza. A shrill piping filled the courtyard with an alien melody.
“Something tells me that is where we must ultimately go,” Mandi said as the group gazed up the valley, “but I don’t think now is the time. I have a bad feeling about that place and I would just as soon delay the inevitable a bit longer. Let us continue through the lower temple for now.”
They pressed on, moving across the empty armory to a larger room which, though in shambles, had obviously been used recently by a great number of occupants. It seemed that every scrap of wood in the temple had been rounded up and cobbled together into crude beds, tables and chairs. Stained furs, carpets and various pieces of cloth served as mattresses or were otherwise strewn about the room. Several bronze braziers made the room uncomfortably warm. The debris of broken equipment, articles of clothing, spilled wine jugs, the remains of meals, and items of garbage were scattered everywhere. The rancid stench of sweat and sour wine filled the room. Whatever the room’s original purpose, it was obvious that it was now a barracks.
“It seems as if our savage hosts are all away on other business,” Sepoto remarked.
“All the better for us,” Mandi answered. “All the more reason why I don’t want to be here when the storm ends. Let’s keep moving.”
Two doors on the far side of the barracks were locked and boarded shut, as if to keep whatever was on the other side out. Once more Tower Cleaver made quick work of the barriers, revealing an antechamber leading onto a wide stair on the opposite side. The stairs, in turn, led to another high-ceilinged chamber. Rain poured through an opening at the top of the bronze dome seventy-five feet overhead. Bas-reliefs depicting a verdant, mountainous jungle realm covered the walls and interior of the dome. Fantastical images of hanging palaces and majestic, cloud-wrapped peaks mingled with images of multi-armed men and animals. A dark form lay motionless in a puddle on the floor beneath the skylight above.
Cautiously, Sepoto and Tower Cleaver moved towards the still creature. As they passed a shadowed alcove to their left, sudden movement caught Sepoto’s eye. Two creatures stalked slowly out of the gloom, crouched low to the ground. At first glance, they looked like emaciated, black panthers, but the pair of long, barbed tentacles which sprouted from their shoulders identified them as another version of the extra-limbed horrors they’d been battling since they entered the accursed temple. As the felines prepared to spring, the two warriors each stepped to meet them. The pounce never came as twin blows from chain and axe laid the monsters low. When they approached the body beneath the skylight, they saw that it was another of the panthers, its neck obviously broken. It seemed apparent that the beasts had either entered through the dome, or were attempting to exit that way when one of their number fell. Quickly, the group passed through the chamber, careful to avoid passing directly beneath the hole above.
Another short flight of stairs led to a corridor which branched left and right. Directly ahead was a spacious room, the doors of which were missing. A cool, moist breeze flowed through the chamber, issuing from a great hole in the bronze dome that rose one-hundred feet overhead. The occasional flash of lightning provided sparkling illumination as it was reflected through a series of mirrors set around the dome and redirected to shine on the room’s center. The locus of the light was a twenty-foot tall, two-step ziggurat. Spaced around the first tier were eight elaborate sarcophagi that glittered with gold. At the ziggurat’s summit sat an even larger sarcophagus that gleamed in the intermittent beams of light. Two more of the panther creatures lounged on the lower tier of the pyramid, while three others prowled the floor. Perched atop the ziggurat was a huge specimen of the beast, its tentacles easily twenty feet in length. No sooner had the Legionnaires reached the top of the stair in the exterior hall, than the great pack lord yowled and hissed, slinking down the pyramid towards them. On cue, three of the other beasts moved to join their alpha, while the remaining two darted through archways in opposite walls of the chamber, obviously seeking to flank their prey.
When the pack lord was still several yards away, it struck out with one of its tentacles, raking it across Sepoto’s chest. The goliath quickly rushed towards the creature, finding himself immediately hemmed in by the smaller felines. This did not deter him as he whipped his chain around his head, slashing into the alpha’s hide. The crusader found it disconcerting, however, that two more of his blows, equally perfectly placed, seemed to pass right through the animal.
“Careful!” he heard Mandi call from the landing. “These creatures are magical. They generate a mystic field about themselves that warps and displaces light, making it seem that they are where they are not.”
“Hmm,” Marius mused. “What if I just blow up everything?” To answer his own question, he hurled a ball of flame into the room behind the beasts. It detonated, engulfing the pack lord and two of its smaller kin, leaving them howling in pain from raw burns. “That seems to work just fine,” the gnome said, nodding smugly.
“Yes, magic seems to be the great equalizer,” Mandi concurred. She then wove her own spell, rooting the alpha where he stood, rigid and unmoving. Sepoto recognized the effect, and didn’t waste the opportunity. Ignoring the flailing tentacles of the animals around him, he wrapped his chain carefully around the pack lord’s neck, then pulled it taught and up with a sharp twist, snapping the creature’s neck.
By that time, the two displacer beasts that had left the room had reached the landing, coming from opposite directions. Samson moved to intercept the first, while Tower Cleaver blocked the second. Displacement or no, the minotaur’s axe connected solidly with his opponent, nearly chopping the beast in two. Samson was not as impressive with his own attack, but no less effective, bringing his foe down with a combination of his acidic breath, and several deftly aimed blows from his morningstar.
Sepoto stood in the midst of the remaining three creatures, dodging most of their blows, and shrugging off the occasional one that got through his defenses. His counter attacks were much more debilitating, bringing down another of the beasts in short order. A conjured hail of stone courtesy of Marius crushed and buried a second one, while a perfect strike to the base of the third’s skull by Samson finished it off.
As the last creature fell, Mandi’s eyes locked on the sarcophagi, and she moved into the chamber to inspect them more closely. All of them, save for the one at the top of the ziggurat, had been opened. Two of these were completely empty, while the others held only the barest bits of bone and shreds of cloth. Slowly, the sorceress fluttered to the topmost one. She realized almost immediately what she was looking at. The chamber must have been the final resting places of the Shensite masters, and possibly the grand master himself. Mandi did not give this fact a second thought. Her attention was riveted on the large diamond embedded in the lid of the last sarcophagus. Pulling a scroll from her belt, she read the words to a spell, and then touched the lid, causing it to open of its own accord.
“What are you doing?” Samson called from below.
Mandi didn’t even turn towards him. “I would think that would be obvious,” she said as she stared hungrily at the shining artifacts arrayed about the six-armed humanoid corpse within the coffin.
“It looks to me as if you are planning on robbing the tomb of the monks who built this temple,” the dragon shaman said, obviously incensed.
“Robbing is such a harsh word,” the Seeker retorted, still not looking at her detractor. “The organization to which Marius and I belong believes in recovering ancient archaeological findings and returning them for study, so that we may gain knowledge from those who came before us.”
“I still think its blasphemy,” Samson snapped, “and I want no part of it.”
“Noted,” Mandi quipped, then she whispered to herself, “and after we’ve studied our finds, and sold them off, you can be sure you’ll never see a copper of it.”
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
