#79 - Bronze Doors and Stone Coffins

From the Leaves of Memory, the written musings of Loh, druid of the King's Forest

Last thing I recall was running up the wall to towards the beholder-thing. After that, nothing. When I came to, I was crumpled on the ground, and my body felt tingly and weird. 

I hate dungeons.

After Cypher, Magnus, and the others brought down the many-eyed creature, Irakas and her hobgoblins huddled around the body of one of their fallen comrade. His face was clearly burned by fire, probably from one of the beholder-kin's blasts. While my companions debated what to do next, I hovered by the dirge singer and eavesdropped on their conversation. They didn't want to move on without honoring the dead. They wanted to bury him but knew this wasn't the safest place to do so; instead, they were opting to burn the hobgoblin's body in the tunnel.

To me, this seemed like a horrible idea. It could attract more attention to our location and leave a clear sign of our having been there in the first place. I reported what I overheard to the others, who agreed with me that we needed to find another way. Fortunately, I was able to persuade Irakas to let me transform part of the tunnel wall into a coffin—to shape the very stone, something I had only recently learned to accomplish—so the body would be safe and she could hopefully return for it later.

The surviving hobgoblins helped move a pile of boulders that sat to the left of the giant, bronze double-doors. I fashioned part of the exposed wall into a passable coffin. After the hobgoblins disguised my work with the giant's boulders, Irakas and her bodyguards broke into a mournful song.

When they finally finished their not-so-discreet dirge, Cypher withdrew an amulet from one of his many pockets and placed it around his neck. In Goblin, he commanded the Emperor's Key to open the door, and, to my astonishment, that's exactly what happened. The ornate doors opened slowly, and beyond them we saw a dark hallway. Immediately across from us was another short passageway that ended with another door, but the areas to the right and left were more difficult to see.

The so-called
Emperor's Key

Cypher wanted to jam the goblin door so that it could not be opened except by us or so that no one could enter it from the other side, but Irakas insisted we were wasting our time. She seemed convinced that our use of the doors would be discovered no matter what, and so we had best not idle.

The hallway smelled faintly malodorous, and Clarion identified the presence of several undead to our right. Luckily, they were moving away from where we stood. But who is working in these tunnels that has a use for the undead? Such hideous beings are uncommon in the civilized parts of Breland, surely. As far as I know, only in faraway Karrnath is this particular necromantic practice used openly. In Breland, most people who animate the corpses of the dead are almost certainly an enemy. In the King's Forest we would tolerate no such abominations.

To our left was a vast open chamber lit by a dim, color-shifting light. Those who observed it from the corner saw that the source was a large chalice sitting upon a pedestal at the center of some kind of fountain. This was nearly one hundred feet away! That is how large the room was. I heard Irakas mutter to Cypher that this might have once been a "Chamber of Offerings" when Glyphstone Keep was still occupied by her ancestors.

Uncertain in these new surroundings, I scurried over to the short hallway across from the goblin doors. There, Semel had pushed open another door. Inside was a circular chamber with four lit candles standing before the painted images of four human warriors, each one adorning the back of one of the chamber's doors. This also did not seem like a safe place to be. Semel ventured inside, and found that the flicking candle began to dwindle, as fire does when it is starved of air. Semel uttered the likelihood that this was probably a trap of some sort. He existed, and closed the door with a shudder.

Stories of the dreaded beholder are far more numerous
than any actual known encounters with one.

In the dark and away from the sounds of the natural world, I felt dull and useless. I spent the previous battle paralyzed, and I was exhausted from shaping ancient rock into a stone coffin. My mind is loathe and too spent to encounter whatever horrors lurked in this place. We all needed rest.

Aleae reported to the rest of us that she had spotted a beholder-shaped creature floating in the dark hall to the left of the goblin doors. By he report, this one is much larger than the one we fought! Beholders used to be just stories, even in my youth. They were a creature of the depths and the distant past, not a real threat. But Aleae's spotting of one, or something like one, quickly helped us decide to walk the other way, toward the undead. Choice takes on a new meaning in these dark places.

We moved quietly through the tunnel, fortunately discovering that one branch of the hallway led away from where we suspected the undead had gone. We paused when we encountered two arcane sigils inscribed on what appeared to be a dead end. One was as simple message meaning "magical danger," and Cypher suggested the other was the unique signature of a wizard.

Upon closer inspection we noticed an uneven hole in the stone wall, about fist sized. When we shined light through it, we saw another door several feet beyond the wall. Now things really weren't making sense, but it did seem like the space between the wall and the hidden door offered a place for some rest if we could just get in there without being obvious about it. Irakas asked if I could get us through the wall with my magic.

"No," I said. "I used the last bit of magical energy I had making a resting place for your friend. I need to rest."

I can only hope my coffin-making services aren't required again any time soon.