Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 5
Following is Chapter 5 of the long-awaited sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis! Herein our four companions cross over the stream of the Styx, enter the vault of the Anemoi, collaborate in an attempt to remove a dangerous magical trap, and contemplate how the presence of a priest in a party can form a line between life and death ... Join alchemical rogue Paros, wizard Pumayo, Elven barbarian Parthenia, and moon priestess Selene in their Return to the Necropolis!
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 4"
Paros, Pumayo, Parthenia, and Selene gathered on the banks of the little stream and peered up the ten-foot-wide ceremonial passageway into the darkness beyond. Parthenia touched the ram-skull amulet hanging around her neck for reassurance, and Paros and Pumayo followed her example, and then the companions waded across the stream to its west bank. Out of the corner of his eye, Paros could see the wizard's familiar slither into the water and neatly swim across it, and recalled the belief held by many that snakes in cemeteries were the reincarnated spirits of warriors who were buried there. He had no reason to think, however, that this strange-looking serpent was anything of the kind.
Once on the other side of the mini Styx, the party adjusted its formation somewhat, with Parthenia and Paros leading side-by-side and the other two following in like manner five feet behind them. Paros could make out the faded frescoes painted in three-foot-high bands on the walls to either side, and recalled how much more vivid they had seemed to him last time he had seen them, when his life force was daily being diminished and he was being transformed into one of the shades that would forever haunt these gloomy passageways.
In short order the companions came to the large chamber where they had battled the three-headed skeletal dog, finally defeating it on their second attempt and using Selene's clerical powers to completely destroy its remains and prevent it from rising up again. Paros and Parthenia halted and surveyed the room. It still contained the scattered bones and wrecked remains of gear from the party of tomb raiders that had perished here however many years before, as well as the bronze statuette of a maiden that Parthenia had used to batter the skeletal hound — which the barbarian resolved to retrieve if she once again needed to battle a similar monster — but they could not tell if anything had been disturbed or not. They also did not notice any movement in the dark mouths of the corridors to the left, right, or ahead of them — the main trunks that led into the various sections of the catacombs — so they moved westward across the open space and into the passageway directly across from them.
Secondary passageways began to lead off to the left or right as adventurers moved down the large corridor and, when they came to the fourth one on the right, they turned into it and proceeded to its end. All along its length on either wall were individual vaults, stacked three high; most of these were sealed with flat, rectangular stones, but some were open and empty, never having been used to inter anyone. None of the vaults in this hallway had been violated, as was the case in some of the others they had explored previously. Periodically, a full-sized stone or metal door was set in the wall instead of a trio of individual vaults, and they knew that these led into larger personal or family tombs.
"Anemoi," Paros said, reading the word carved into the limestone above the large bronze door at the end of the corridor, just as he had the first time they had visited this place, and which he uttered now primarily for Pumayo's benefit. "'The Four Winds,' an aptly-named merchant family of ancient Kos whose main warehouse is now the site of the watering hole we spend so much of our free time and treasure at."
The door to this tomb was secured with a complex lock that Paros had managed to open on their previous visits with a hexagonal bronze key he had found among the effects of the adventurers slain in the four-way intersection they had recently passed through. Those now-dead intruders had obviously known something and been there with the rich Anemoi tomb in mind, but had apparently not found it by the time they had been slain, in all likelihood by the skeletal Cerberus. The only swag Paros and his companions had found on the dismembered adventurers had been relatively modest grave goods, primarily small votive statues, and this tomb did not appear to have been disturbed prior to their initial discovery of it.
Using his locksmithing skills, Paros had affixed a handle to the six-sided key, as he believed had originally been the case, and he now slid it into the lock, disengaged the mechanism, and pulled the heavy portal open. By the light of their sunrod, the companions could see the octagonal, twenty-foot-wide chamber, its floor, ceiling, and walls lined with pale-gray marble. In each of the four diagonal sections of wall there was a large copper panel engraved with images of the gods associated with the four cardinal winds, Boreas, Zephyrus, Eurus, and Notus, those of the north, south, east, and west. On each of the wall surfaces, straight ahead and to the left and right, there were three individual burial vaults, stacked one above the other. Three of these had been unused and six of them sealed, one with a magical trap that Paros had been able to detect but afraid to attempt removal of; this vault looked just as they had left it, sealed with an intact two-foot by three-foot blue marble capstone.
Each of the engraved copper panels had enclosed an aperture containing an armed, armored, and animated skeleton, and the companions had managed to defeat these after a tough battle in which they had availed themselves of Selene's divine magic and Parthenia had gone into a berserker rage. It was from these undead monsters that the women had obtained the ancient bronze hoplite armor which they now wore — as well as their masterwork spears — and they had cached the other two panoplies and their hoard of treasure behind the panel bearing the image of frosty Boreas.
All of them were nervous in varying degrees, however, about the active magical trap in the room and decided to disable it before sealing themselves in the vault, inventorying their treasure, and resting for the night. Pumayo and Paros were the only ones with skills appropriate to this endeavor, and so the women stepped out into the hall, both to keep watch and to be away from whatever terrible effects might be unleashed in the event that the rogue and wizard failed to successfully remove the hazard.
Pumayo started off by casting a simple spell that allowed him to see the magical tracery that Paros had described to him, and then another to help him learn more about the nature of the inscription.
"It appears that if discharged it will unleash a powerful elemental air effect ... nothing we would want to experience. I think I can remove it, although there is some chance that I will not succeed and that we will instead suffer the full repercussions of the spell," Pumayo said contemplatively. "There is nothing you can do to help me," he said looking up at Paros. "Go out into the hall with the others, but make sure the priestess is standing by to render aid; if something goes wrong and I am not killed outright I will most assuredly need help."
Paros nodded apprehensively at these words and then retreated into the hallway with Parthenia and Selene, passing on to the latter what the wizard had said.
His study of the glyph complete, Pumayo sighed, placed his hand upon it, and, as he uttered the arcane syllables of the spell that would allow him to remove the symbol, traced its outlines with his finger. As he did, the glyph incrementally disappeared and, by the time the wizard completed his incantation, it was gone. He sighed again, this time in relief rather than apprehension, and stepped back from the vault.
"It's done!" he said and, in response to this announcement, the other party members came into the room. Things were finally starting to come together on this heretofore aggravating venture!
Paros searched the panel for traps one more time, just to be safe, and then, confident that there was no longer anything to fear, proceeded to open his tool pouch and select the implements he would need to remove the capstone; these included a sturdy awl for digging away the lead affixing the plaque to the wall and a crowbar for prying it off once enough of the sealant had been removed. In short order he had detached the stone from the wall and, with help from Parthenia, carefully lowered it to the floor. Then, with the other three adventurers peering over his shoulders, Paros thrust the sunrod into the vault to see what it contained. Much of the space, he was not surprised to see, contained a skeleton, clad in sky-blue robes, and as he began to carefully use his crowbar to probe the vault for anything else it might contain the rogue could see that the cloth was stiff and friable, ripping as he came into contact with it. Presently, he had collected three items, including a ring removed from one of the boney fingers, a statuette of a winged figure crafted from some gray-white metal, and a small bottle that appeared to have been carved from a single piece of azure lapis lazuli.
Pumayo had used up the single spell he had prepared for purposes of detecting the presence of magic, and Selene declined to use the one she had prepared — offering no explanation as to why — so the party simply collected up the items without learning anything more about them. Pumayo took the bottle of semi-precious stone without objection from anyone else; it did not appear to be worth much and they had cached more loot than all of them would be able to carry anyway.
Their business in the vault concluded, Paros decided it was time to secure the tomb for the night and, accordingly, went and pulled the door shut; the locking mechanism was fairly sophisticated and was equipped with a device for locking or unlocking it from within — presumably for the benefit in ages past of family members who had come to visit their dearly departed — and he easily engaged it. Everyone else had unlimbered themselves of their backpacks, bedrolls, and other bulky gear. They then turned to the tall copper panel engraved with the life-sized image of Boreas, God of the North Wind, a burly, winged man with long hair and beard, flying through a snowstorm over a wintry landscape, a conch shell in his hand and a cloak flapping behind him.
Each of the panels was equipped with a spring mechanism that, when any one of them was touched, caused all four to abruptly slide open, and Paros had reengaged this system after they had cached their treasure and closed the portals. They did not expect skeletal warriors to come marching out of them again but, ever cautious, the four companions went back-to-back, facing out toward the other portals, as Paros reached out and pressed the metal surface bearing the image of Boreas. When he did, the panel abruptly slid upward into an aperture in the wall above it, and he could hear the other three do the same — followed immediately by a violent, reverberating metallic clanging, a flash of movement, and blinding pain.
Paros staggered, clutching at his gut, and then sank to his knees. Before him he could see that the five-foot-square aperture was empty save for one thing: a heavy crossbow that had been primed to discharge upon opening. He rolled over onto his side, gasping and with dark blood seeping out around his fingers, a heavy metal bolt embedded in his abdomen. Similar devices had been set in the other apertures, and two of the bolts had simply shot across the middle of the room and into the opening opposite them, threatening no one as the party had not been in the middle of the room. The one directly across from the niche they had opened, however, fired straight at Parthenia, and she now knelt on the floor, a large bolt embedded up to its broad fletchings in her leg. Although in great pain, the hardy barbarian waved away her friend when she came to render assistance and, afraid to speak lest she reveal her discomfort, simply pointed toward Paros.
Squatting beside the grievously injured rogue, Selene bade Pumayo assist her and then proceeded to remove the missile from Paros, causing him to scream in agony and nearly pass out as she did. He lay there panting, seeing nothing but a large black spot before his eyes, as she laid her hands upon him and then cast her most potent healing spell.
Even that robust prayer was not quite enough to completely heal the wound, but did reduce it to a shallow, seeping cut, and Selene knew that any life-threatening damage to the man's organs had been reversed. Pumayo had, naturally, seen divine healing before but was nonetheless bemused by it when he considered postulations he had heard of worlds where magic was weak or even nonexistent. In such a place they would even now be comforting a dying companion and preparing to move on without him — as they also would, of course, if they were engaged in this adventure without the association of a cleric.
Selene then turned to the other woman and, in short order, removed the bolt embedded in her leg and used her second-best healing spell to knit the shredded muscles and stanch the flow of blood. Her spell completely healed the Elf and there was nothing but an innocuous mark and a smear of congealing blood on her thigh and hand to indicate that she had been injured at all.
