Following is Chapter 7 of the long-awaited sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis! Herein our four companions begin to rob graves, content with mundane and magical traps, suffer the grievous injury of a companion, and are attacked from a source as yet to be revealed ... 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 6"
In the morning, the companions rose, dressed and equipped themselves, and, while they ate a light breakfast, decided that they would simply start working on the tombs in the hallway just outside of the sepulcher they were in. It was, after all, as secure a base of operations as any they knew of here, and that would mean they would not need to pack up their camping gear and carry it around with them. If something tougher than them came down the dead-end hallway, of course, they would have nowhere to go and either be killed or trapped — but there would be risks associated with anything they decided to do in this place.
Paros, as the party member whose skills and abilities were most salient to the operations ahead, would lead the party's efforts and direct the actions of the others. Opening the door to the tomb and stepping into the hallway, the rogue surveyed the hallway in the light of a fresh sunrod (he had, fortunately, compounded more than a dozen of these in the weeks before they departed and therefore had more than a few days' worth at his disposal). Parthenia stepped past him, longbow in hand, and walked through the circle of light into the darkness beyond; with their lowlight vision, she and Selene were able see perfectly well for another ten yards or so beyond the radius of light visible to a Human and would take turns standing guard against anything that might come down the hallway. In the meantime, Pumayo and the other would assist Paros directly.
In the light of the sunrod, Paros could see thirty feet down the hallway and count a total of eighteen vaults in that space, three stacked one above another in each ten-foot segment of wall. The lowest vaults were about a foot above the level of the floor, the middle ones were about four feet up, and the upper ones were about seven feet up. Of those Paros could see, three were unsealed and did not appear to have ever been used and the rest were capped by flat stones about two feet high and three wide; most of these were simple rectangles but there were a few lozenges or ones with scalloping or scrollwork on their edges, and some were painted with images or carved with various embellishments. Examination had revealed that they were affixed over the individual burial vaults by a variety of means, including cement, lead solder, and some form of glue, and he had the tools or chemicals necessary for dealing with all of these.
Being at chest level, the middle ones would be the easiest to work with, and the lower ones would involve a lot of kneeling and crouching and be more exhausting and time-consuming as a result but still be eminently manageable. The upper ones, however, which they would not even be able to see inside of without something to stand upon, would be more difficult, and if they wanted to loot them they would at the very least need a ladder or perhaps a platform of some sort. That all seemed like more trouble than it would be worth, and Paros decided that for the time being they would simply work with those on the lower tiers, which in any event they had an ample supply of.
Paros stepped past the first group of three vaults on his right, spread out his tools between them and the next group down the hall, and turned his attention to the tomb closest to the ground. Its capstone appeared to be affixed to the wall with a glue of some sort and, figuring the awl-and-crowbar method he had employed inside the Anemoi tomb the day before would not work well here, he instead selected a small vial of acid from the special padded pouch he had for carrying this substance. He then used a pipette to apply it around the periphery of the plaque, causing wisps of acrid smoke to curl up as it reacted with the adhesive, and, once he had utilized all the caustic fluid in the container, employed his crowbar to pop the stone off the wall. Pumayo and Selene caught it as it fell forward and lowered it to the floor, careful to avoid the edges where the acid had been applied.
With the iron sunrod he had struck jammed in the wall to provide steady light, Paros realized he would need to ignite another one to see inside the vaults, and that would most assuredly limit how long they would be able to operate in the catacombs. He struck this second light source and then thrust it into the vault, revealing that it contained a corpse wrapped in swaddling, like the one they had battled in the embalming laboratory. Leaning into the open space and using his crowbar as a probe, he thoroughly searched around the body for any other contents the vault might contain but, to his disappointment, found nothing. This was not an auspicious start and, based on his experience with the vaults inside the tombs, he had expected more and hoped this would not become a trend; he began mentally calculating the expenses represented by the acid and sunrods he was using and determining the value of what they would need to find to offset them.
The next vault looked like it would be a little easier to deal with, as it had a recessed bronze handle that could be grasped and turned, apparently counterclockwise, to disengage the mechanism holding it in place and thereby remove the capstone. The rogue's careful examination of the device, however, revealed a number of tiny, almost imperceptible holes in the recessed demi-sphere into which the handle was set. After loosening the mechanism with oil, Paros turned it counterclockwise with a pair of tools, his hands well clear of the place they would intuitively be for this operation — and, when he did, a quintet of steel needles snapped out of the holes! Had his hand been there, the barbs would have been embedded in it, and the oily toxin he could now see oozing down them coursing through his veins. Further experimentation with the device indicated that pressing the handle and continuing to turn it counterclockwise caused the needles to retract, while pulling it and then turning it clockwise would allow someone to open it without engaging the trap. Within the tomb they found the embalmed body of a woman and were heartened to discover upon her finger a ring carved into the shape of tiny intertwining snakes from a single fine piece of semiprecious serpentine.
There was nothing of note associated with the next several tombs they examined in terms of either hazards or treasure — although Paros did gain some new insights on the way such things were constructed — and, as the hours went by, the process of searching for traps, opening the sealing stones, and searching the vaults became somewhat routine and tedious. Paros became considerably more engaged, however, when after they had completed their operations on a dozen tombs he discovered on the next one the nearly-invisible traceries of a magical trap.
Calling Pumayo over to him, Paros pointed out the lines of the tracery and the wizard nodded and then cast the spell that allowed him to detect the presence of magic, and they pulsed and glowed for him. The two men discussed the nature of the magic trap and determined it would in all likelihood cause an explosive elemental blast of some sort if triggered. Pumayo agreed that it was no more complex than the one he had removed the previous day in the Anemoi tomb, that he would have about the same odds of successfully doing so, and that he was once again willing to make the attempt.
Selene and Parthenia had both become very bored with the proceedings and had long before sat down together about ten feet further down the hallway from where the men were working. They took their guard duties seriously enough that they did not break out their dice and begin rolling them on the stone floor and instead sat chatting quietly amongst themselves, for the most part gossiping and complaining about the other inhabitants of the primitive hillside hamlet near the Koan village of Lagoudi where Selene made her home.
Paros stepped back down the passageway about five feet from the tomb and watched as Pumayo prepared himself, reached forward to touch the tracery, and began utter the syllables of his spell of erasure; as the wizard ran his finger over the lines of glyph, the sharp-eyed rogue watched them disappear. Paros thought he noticed his friend's swarthy countenance darken a little in the midst of the procedure and then, suddenly, before he could analyze the import of this, the wizard's words were interrupted by a load "Bang!" The stone plaque was torn straight off the wall by the force of the blast, driving Pumayo across the hall and slamming him into the wall with a sickening crunch. He slid to the floor insensate, the broken halves of the stone laying across his chest.
Paros ran to his friend and, torn from her reverie, Selene staggered to her feet and scrambled to render aid. Parthenia also stood but prudently held her position, standing so that she could easily glance over at what was happening with the wizard but keep most of her attention focused down the hallway; she had been doing this sort of thing long enough to know that this was exactly the sort of time that something would just happen to attack them.
And it was.
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 8"
