Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 3
Following is Chapter 3 of the long-awaited sequel to the Skirmisher Publishing LLC fantasy novel Swords of Kos: Necropolis! In this segment our four companions depart Kos City and travel up into the hills to the southwest, make their way through a forsaken cemetery and to an abandoned temple on a hill, make oblations to pertinent gods, meet an ominous serpent, and prepare to enter the catacombs. 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 2"
Two days later, the party rose with the dawn, hefted their gear and the supplies they had bought the day before, and headed out of Kos City. The two women, looking like twin Amazons in their archaic bronze panoplies, led the way on the main road to the west, walking side by side and chatting together. Paros and Pumayo followed a short distance behind, speaking amongst themselves.
Selene and Parthenia, of course, were equipped with the armor and matching shields they had found in the Anemoi family tomb, the priestess in the panoply bearing the likeness and symbols of Zephyrus, God of the West Wind, and the barbarian wearing the suit evocative of Boreas, God of the North Wind. The clerical Half-Elf was moderately armed with a morningstar, longbow, and dagger, but the martial Elf was a veritable walking arsenal. In her hand she clutched a long, bronze-headed spear, across her back were affixed a greatsword, a longbow, and a quiver filled with a score of arrows, upon her heavy leather swordbelt hung a longsword and morningstar, and elsewhere upon her person were at least two daggers. Suffice it to say, she wanted to ensure that she both always had enough weapons and the right ones for any particular job.
"Is she stupid?" Pumayo asked quietly. "The priestess, I mean; the other is clearly very cunning. But I can't understand a thing the Half-Elf says."
"No, no, it's not that ... " Paros began, smiling slightly, having an idea of what the wizard meant but unsure of exactly how to answer. "She just has ... other ways of knowing. Maybe it's because she worships a moon goddess, or has spent most of her life in some weird little town in the middle of nowhere where she never deals with normal people. She is no genius, certainly, but the real issue is that she has a completely alien way of perceiving things. I can't figure out what she is on about half the time either. But Parthenia seems to be able to communicate with her alright."
Paros took the opportunity to look over his companion during this exchange and make note of what he was wearing and equipped with and saw that some of it was familiar to him but some of it not. The wizard wore a set of heavy, dark robes of Asiatic cut that Paros had seen before and, as he had previously, the rogue found himself looking with a combination of mystification and pleasure at the patterns on it. These were embroidered into the cloth with different sorts of metallic thread and could be perceived either simply as asymmetrical two-dimensional images or as depictions of symmetrical three-dimensional solids (and, the more that could be perceived as both by an observer, Pumayo had once told him, could be taken as a measure of their intellect). This outfit was completed by a pair of pointed shoes, a cloak, and the wizard's requisite turban, and complemented by a leather girdle replete with pouches of various sorts and sizes and a standard adventurer's backpack.
What caught Paros's eye more than anything, however, were the two large brooches, each somewhat reminiscent of a shield. One served as a clasp for the wizard's cloak and was metal, round, and slightly concave and emblazoned with a bulls-eye in its center, while the other, which appeared to be carved from wood and covered with fine leather, was affixed to his robe and about four inches high and half as wide. Paros felt it might be indiscrete to inquire as to whether these items had more than a decorative significance and, when Pumayo noticed his companion scrutinizing them, he smiled broadly but volunteered no explanation.
Paros himself wore a dark gray tunic, a fine suit of armor fashioned from pieces of heavy black leather reinforced with steel studs, and supple, soft-soled leather boots, and had rolled up in his backpack a hooded woolen cloak. He carried upon his hip a superior short sword, one of the broad, fish-shaped blades of local manufacture widely known as a "sword of Kos," and was further armed with the best dagger and light crossbow that he could afford. His most useful items, however, were his various toolkits and alchemical substances, and he carried these in a series of custom-made pouches, haversacks, and hidden pockets.
There was moderate traffic on the road, most of it heading in the party's direction early in their journey and a little coming from the direction of Zipari as they approached the large village to the west of Kos. About halfway toward it they stopped at a crumbling, uncared-for herm on the left side of the highway near where a rutted, forsaken road headed up into the wooded hills, more-or-less toward the southwest. There, they ate and drank a little and then, when no one was nearby, they picked up their gear and quickly moved up onto the trail; most likely no one would notice or care what they were doing, but there was no reason to give anyone cause to wonder why a band of adventurers might be headed in a particular direction.
The party's progress was slower and tougher after that, as they were both climbing up into the wooded hills and moving along a narrow, furrowed track that was periodically washed out or littered with rocks, branches, and similar debris. They moved single file now, keen-eyed Parthenia in the lead, Paros some distance behind her, Pumayo behind him, and Selene — heavily armored and the second-best combatant in the group — bringing up the rear. They stopped to rest every mile or so and, by the time they had gone about two-and-a-half miles, were all panting and sweating. At this point an even narrower, rougher trail headed west, through the woods, toward a distant ridgeline and, after ascertaining that no one was around, they began to move up it, maintaining the same formation but tightening up their interval somewhat. The trail split a couple of times but Parthenia already knew which route led directly to the opening in the wrought-iron fence that formed the eastern boundary of the necropolis and they continued along the path they had painstakingly taken with the cart some months before. Before long they came to the large double gates that led into the cemetery and, noting that one side was hanging open, stopped to gaze upon them with some disquiet.
"It looks like someone has been here ..." Paros said apprehensively, glancing about nervously when it occurred to him to wonder if any of the walking dead that roamed the cemetery by night might have wandered out of the place. Did the fence serve as a physical barrier or was it consecrated or enchanted in some manner to keep the undead monsters confined within? He and Parthenia approached the gate and examined the ground around it but neither of them could tell if anything had passed through it recently.
Cautiously, the party proceeded through gate, arrayed in the same order as before but alert now and with weapons at the ready; Parthenia bore a powerful masterwork longbow with an arrow knocked in it, Paros and Pumayo both carried loaded crossbows, and Selene opted for her shield and morningstar, ready to turn any undead they might encounter. They made their way through the overgrown paths between the rows of mausoleums and other funerary architecture, especially alert as they passed by dark, open entryways, or places where the ground had collapsed, revealing underground areas connected to various tombs. Barbaric Parthenia shuddered and was especially glad that it was so early in the day and that they still had several hours of daylight. They had learned the hard way the folly of trying to spend the night aboveground in the cemetery and recalled the nightmarish ordeal of having been trapped in a mausoleum and besieged there by countless numbers of the walking dead. They now knew, ironically, that the safest place they could be overnight was in some part of the catacombs that they could secure — ideally, like the embalming chamber, one that had more than one way in or out in case they had to make an escape.
Soon after the companions reached the wide path that led up the side of the hill to the temple, crossed the grass-covered paved plaza in front of it, and came to the stairs leading up to the age-greened double bronze doors. Like the gates to the cemetery itself, they, too, were ajar. Exchanging glances with each other, Paros and Parthenia split so that one was to either side of the door and then advanced up the steps toward it. When they made it to the top, Parthenia slung her bow over her back and drew the long, two-handed sword from her back, while Paros carefully examined the entryway and the other two kept watch. Satisfied that there were no traps or other hazards present, he signaled the Elf and each of them pushed open one of the doors.
Wan light filtered through the bronze-grated clerestory windows that ran along the top of the walls to either side of them, dimly illuminating the long hall and the eight statues that stood on pedestals along the walls, four on either side. Nothing penetrated the darkness of the doorway at the far end of the area, which they knew led down into the catacombs. While Parthenia stepped into the temple, Paros gestured to the other two that they should come and join them.
Once inside, the companions held their traditional debate as to whether or not to close and bar the doors behind them; they had originally intended to but, now uncertain whether anyone else was present, were not sure if this was the best or not. They finally decided to close the doors to discourage undead or wildlife from entering the building but to forego barring them, so as to not alert anyone else of their presence.
"Attend!" Pumayo said portentously once this was accomplished, reaching into the folds of his robes and drawing forth a hand entwined with his ebony-scaled horned viper. "This is Kidna and she is my friend. She is smart and will not molest you, so do not be alarmed by her; it will be to our to our benefit if I can allow her to roam free." Parthenia, Selene, and Paros all looked toward the serpent, the women especially apprehensively, but all nodded their assent as the wizard set the creature on the floor and it slithered off into the shadows behind one of the rows of statues.
Paros looked up at the statue of Hermes Psychopompos, he who conveyed souls to the land of the dead, and studied the bronze likeness of a well-formed man holding a small, child-sized person. As someone devoted to the fleet-footed god, he had regretted his failure to make offering to Hermes on his previous visit and had resolved to do so this time. Stepping up to the idol, the rogue retrieved from his haversack a generous ball of myrrh and one of the tinder-twigs he had recently crafted, scratched the latter item against the rough stone of the pedestal, and then, when it flared up, used it to light the piece of incense. He then placed the smoldering sphere of resin in the metal dish set into the pedestal in front of the statue, spread his hands, bowed his head, and prayed to the god to grant him fortune and protection during his venture into the catacombs.
Pumayo, meanwhile, had walked to the far end of the hall and stopped before the archaic, somewhat crude statue of the three-faced woman that the party had been unable to identify during their previous visits to the temple but who the wizard recognized immediately.
"Hecate, goddess of magic," the swarthy man said, kneeling before the pedestal upon which the statue stood. He proceeded to pray to the ancient deity in an inhuman tongue, evoking shudders from Parthenia in particular. In the course of these oblations, he also burned a block of incense before the idol, causing dark smoke and a strange, composite odor to waft off of it.
After Paros had revealed his plans during their preparations for the venture, Parthenia, too, had decided to make an offering before the likeness of Herakles, monster slayer extraordinaire and god of strength. She placed in the metal dish before the muscular bronze man a handful of rare dried herbs that she had gathered during her last venture to mainland Anatolia and then used flint and steel to ignite them with a spark. Gray, aromatic smoke curled up from the smoldering herbs, and in her native Elven tongue the barbaric woman prayed to the god for power in whatever struggles might lie ahead of her.
Selene alone did not make offering before any of the idols, which represented the gods of a pantheon opposed to the primordial Titans that she worshipped. The rustic priestess had, in fact, during their planning session bluntly expressed her intention to destroy the statues — albeit with no clear description of how she would accomplish this — but her companions had insisted that this would be both unwise and contrary to their own goals. So, while the other party members made their devotions she simply stood to one side with a blank look on her face.
These activities completed, the party formed up and descended into the catacombs.
Read "Return to the Necropolis: Chapter 4"
