by Randy Nargi
“Cool.”
“I figured Klothar would have better aim than me.”
They rested for a few more minutes, then Klothar led them back to the game trail. Now they were on the far side of the webbed trees.
“Those hanging things back there,” Justin said. “Were they like supposed to divert us?”
“I have no idea,” Klothar said.
“That would be really bad if the mobs started working together,” Pari said.
They stuck to the game trail and hiked as quickly as they could, but the forest seemed to go on forever. As they walked, Justin felt the gloom darken. If they had to spend the night in this hellhole, he didn’t think he’d be able to make it. Better to die and rez back in civilization.
Klothar led them up a rocky hill. Once they got to the top, the ranger motioned for silence. He pointed down past the other side of the ridge.
Justin and Pari inched forward so they could see what the ranger was pointing to.
Whoa! It was a ruined temple sunk into the ground and overgrown with massive trees. Thick gnarled root systems cradled the various buildings, almost like the claws of some gigantic creature. Moss and vines grew on everything, smothering the temple complex in green.
“That is where the oracle is,” Klothar whispered.
“Yeah, but what else is down there?” Justin asked.
The ranger didn’t answer; he just beckoned them to follow. Carefully, they scrambled down into the ruins, navigating toppled pillars and chunks of broken wall engraved with runes and other symbols.
Justin recognized some of the symbols. He couldn’t read them, but he was pretty sure that they were of Elvish origin. He told Pari and Klothar what he suspected.
Pari shook her head. “There aren’t any Elves in this game,” she said in a hushed voice.
“That’s what you said about dragons.”
Klothar said, “The lad is correct. This was indeed an Elvish fane. A long time ago.”
As they walked to the center of the ruins, an alert popped up on Justin’s overlay.
:::::. Discovered the Fane of Lothorn! +500 Bonus Experience .:::::
“Awesome!”
Pari grinned at him. “XP bonus? I got it too! Not bad, huh?”
“This is so cool!” Justin said. “I’m less than 800 away from leveling.”
“Quiet, you two! I’m trying to get my bearings.” Klothar turned in a circle.
While the ranger went from doorway to doorway, Justin studied the construction of the blocky vine-covered catacombs. Surrounded by these tombs and sepulchers, he felt like he was in an old Indiana Jones movie. There were archways and terraced steps and bas relief carvings everywhere with stylized birds and animals and strange-looking landscapes.
One wall of carvings especially caught his eye. It showed a thin, but well-muscled man with some sort of headdress and a spear. Around him other people danced. Some of them had what appeared to be flutes and others had drums. In the background was a forest of intertwined trees. He pointed it out to Pari. “Doesn’t that look like an Elvish warrior?”
“I guess so. It’s hard to make out.”
“Look at his ears. They look pointy to me.”
Klothar called Justin and Pari over to where he was standing. In front of him was an arched entryway leading into a tall square temple building. The arch itself was elaborately adorned with gold-inlaid symbols.
“You can’t read that by any chance, can you?” Pari asked.
“No,” Justin said. “All I know is that it is Elvish.”
“Form up and bring out your glowstones!” Klothar ordered.
They readied their glowstones and got in a line—with Justin in the middle.
“Don’t touch anything,” Klothar said. “And, remember what I said earlier about dying? It still applies.”
The corridor was narrow and low and made of large stone blocks—and the ceiling was barely six inches over Justin’s head. After about forty feet, the hall turned a corner and opened up into a hexagonal room with a tiled mosaic floor.
There were shadowy figures in each corner of the room. Justin tried to identify them, but his overlay wouldn’t display any information. Klothar didn’t seem to be worried about the figures. He just strode into the room.
By the light of the glowstones, Justin saw that the shadowy figures were actually life-size statues of Elves wearing robes and other ceremonial gear. Each of the statues wore a grim expression and each was in a similar pose: standing and pointing towards the center of the room.
“What is this?” Pari asked.
She stood over a block of wood that was maybe two feet tall and two feet wide. A round depression was carved out of the front edge. It almost looked like a stool or something, but when Justin brought his glowstone closer, he saw that the top of the block was scored with hundreds of crisscrossing indentations. Suddenly, it dawned on him what he was looking at.
“It’s a chopping block.”
“What, for like, heads?” Pari asked.
“That’s exactly what it is,” Klothar said. “Don’t touch it. Just have patience, my friends.”
“Look at that,” Pari said. She pointed to little channels cut into the floor. There were four of them radiating out from the chopping block.
“I bet that’s so the blood can drain,” Justin said.
“Yeah, you wouldn’t want to ruin your shoes while watching a beheading.”
This was very creepy. They were in some kind of execution chamber with these intense Elf statues pointing at them accusingly.
Then it got worse.
A voice said something in a weird foreign language. Just a few words. But what was even more freaky was that Justin could understand it.
“I know what it said,” he whispered.
“You speak Elvish?” Pari asked.
“I guess so.”
“Well?”
Justin took a deep breath. “The voice said ‘Are you worthy?’”
“What does—”
Klothar interrupted her. “Yes!” he shouted.
Pari jumped, startled.
Then there was a loud grinding sound and the floor beneath them began to rumble and move. And sink.
“Stand firm,” Klothar said. “Do not move until we reach the bottom.”
Holy crap. They were on some kind of platform that was now lowering into the ground.
“You’ve done this before?” Pari asked the ranger.
“Yes.”
As the platform sunk, they got a glimpse of the room below them. It looked like the chamber above, but there was a corridor leading off to the west. And no statues. Thank god.
“This way,” Klothar said.
He led them down the corridor, but stopped halfway through. “This next part is a bit tricky, I’m afraid.”
He took one more step and, when he did, a line of blue flames appeared on the floor. The fire danced and raced down the corridor in a crazy zig-zag pattern. It was like someone had put a match to a stream of gasoline.
“Whatever you do, stay out of the fire!” Klothar yelled. “Just follow where I walk.”
“Got it.”
The blue flames weren’t that high, so it wasn’t tough to leap over them when the ranger told them to.
“Almost there,” Klothar said.
“I don’t know how you figured all this out,” Pari said.
“Neither do I, my lady, neither do I. Honestly, I think the spirits must have guided me.”
“Uh huh.”
The end of the corridor dead-ended in a tall stone door with a pointed archway. The line of flames raced up around the doorway, outlining it in bluish fire.
“This last part, my friends, requires a bit of a leap of faith.”
With that, Klothar jumped through the archway, passing right through the solid stone door.
Justin looked at Pari questioningly.
She said, “You’re next, dude.”
Justin took a deep breath. Either this was goi
ng to be very cool, or he’d be very hurt. What the hell—let’s do this.
“Leeroy Jenkins!” he yelled and charged straight into the flaming door. He passed through the stone, but must have tripped on the door sill because he spectacularly stumbled into the room.
Luckily, Klothar was there to catch him and prevent him from totally faceplanting.
“Easy lad.”
A second later, Pari jumped through the doorway—a lot more gracefully than Justin, that was for sure.
She grinned at him. “Leeroy Jenkins. Good one.”
He looked around at their surroundings. This chamber was square, maybe thirty feet on a side, and lit by wall sconces with flickering blue flames. The room was dominated by a life-size stone statue of a haughty-looking Elvish woman wearing a crown and sitting on an ornate throne.
“This is the oracle,” Klothar said in a hushed voice.
Justin moved a little closer and stared at the statue’s face. The likeness of this queen—or whoever she was—was very beautiful. She had high cheekbones and full lips with large eyes and angled brows which gave her an imperious look.
He tried inspecting the statue, but nothing came up.
They all stood in silence for several moments. Then Pari said, “Um…this is a statue.”
“Yes, the statue of the oracle.”
“But didn’t you say that it spoke to you?”
“Not the statue, my lady. The oracle itself.”
Justin had walked completely around the statue and studied it from every angle. It was so incredible detailed—the folds of her clothing, her hair, even the individual facets on the jewels set in her crown. Then he noticed the hole in the ceiling. It was small, about the diameter of a coin, and it was directly over the oracle’s head.
“How do we get this oracle to talk?” Pari asked.
“I’ll show you.” Klothar pulled his long hunting knife from its sheath. Then he moved in back of the statue.
“You’re not going to slit its throat, are you?” Justin asked.
“Hush, lad.”
With a quick motion, the ranger cut the palm of his own hand.
Pari gasped.
Then Klothar held his hand over the statue’s head. A good amount of blood dripped down, splattering the statue’s crown and face.
“Why’d you do that?” Pari asked.
“The oracle requires a blood tribute.”
Justin looked at the hole again and things fell into place. It probably connected with the execution chamber above. The blood would flow down through pipes on to the statue.
But before he could share his theory, the statue came alive.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Justin jumped back in surprise. The stone figure of the Elf was now alive. As she gazed at them, tilting her head haughtily, Justin could see that her eyes were a light purple color. The Elf queen’s skin glowed with life and strands of pale white hair framed her face. The throne she sat upon had also changed. Now it was covered with dripping blood—much more blood than had come from the ranger’s hand. It was almost like there was some sort of blood fountain built into the throne. The blood continued to flow down its sides.
The sight was actually making Justin a little queasy. And judging from Pari’s face, she wasn’t digging this either.
“I have returned,” Klothar said to the Elf queen. “And I have brought Justin and Pari as you requested.”
“I can see that.” The queen spoke in a strange, lilting voice with an accent that Justin couldn’t place. It sounded a bit like his neighbor’s mom growing up. She was Swedish or Norwegian or something.
This whole thing was definitely a little creepy.
Justin glanced over at Pari. She was probably thinking the same thing he was. What kind of Elves require blood sacrifices? With the execution chamber and the fire, this whole scenario seemed more than a little lawful evil.
“Time grows short,” the queen intoned. “My magic is fading and I cannot maintain this frail flesh form for long.”
“What is our next course of action, oracle? How do we find the Iron Veil?” Klothar asked.
“You must seek out Leminkäinon’s Finger, a tower hidden on the Isle of Saari.”
Pari nudged Justin. “Memorize this!”
The oracle continued, “Mark this song.”
But she didn’t sing. Instead, she recited some sort of epic poem or saga:
~
In days long gone
The crafty Leminkäinon did retire
From the haunts of men.
Sailed his bone ship to an isle
Of rock and doom.
~
And upon this isle,
Which Leminkäinon named Saari,
The mage did build a tower:
Leminkäinon’s Finger
Taller than the tallest tree.
At the top, on a throne well-adorned
Leminkäinon surveyed the world around him.
Everything he saw, Leminkäinon knew:
Glimmers and riddles,
Mysteries and lies.
~
But his enemies were many
And they had cold greed in their hearts.
Soon a great host assembled off the shore.
A hundred times a hundred warriors bold
Set about to wrest the mage’s treasure
And topple his great shining tower
Into the sea.
~
But Leminkäinon, aloft in his eyrie,
Saw clearly their treachery.
He spoke in a voice like thunder:
“Three wards I place on the Isle of Saari.
So that none shall gain its treasures.”
~
The first ward was Strength:
A great beast of the sea to guard the Isle,
A Cormorian behemoth who could shatter a fleet of ships
With a single blow of his mighty fists.
~
The second ward was Guile:
As the first rays of the sun pierced night’s shroud
The Isle of Saari sank beneath the waves,
With nary a trace that it was ever there.
And when the sun eased towards its blood-red grave,
The Isle rose again and cast off its watery shackles.
~
The third and final ward was Blindness:
Leminkäinon pronounced
“It matters not if my enemy’s feet fall upon my shore—
No man shall ever lay eyes upon the Finger.
What he cannot see, he cannot defile.”
~
And from that day to this, none ever have.
With that, the oracle closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The blood stopped pouring down the sides of the throne. As they watched, the oracle’s skin grew pale, and all color faded from her eyes and hair and clothes.
“Outside, the thynir await to serve the weak,” she said in a quiet voice. “They will take you to Saari. But it is up to you to avail yourselves of its mysteries.”
“I don’t understand,” Klothar said.
“My time is done…” She slumped into her throne and became still.
“No!” Klothar shouted. “We need more information.”
But the oracle had returned to her statue form. And this time her expression wasn’t arrogant. She looked anguished—like someone who was in great pain.
“This isn’t enough,” the ranger said grimly.
Once more he withdrew his knife. This time he cut his other palm and dripped blood over the statue.
But instead of coming alive, the statue collapsed into a flurry of dust.
Justin and Pari jumped back wheezing and trying to cover their mouths as the cloud of dust billowed out from the center of the room. When it had settled, the throne was empty—except for the oracle’s crown.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Pari said as she picked up the crown and put it into her bag. “It might actually be valuable.”
The r
anger said nothing, and slumped down on the floor, his head in his hands. He looked defeated.
Justin walked over and patted the older man’s shoulder.
“Hey, man. That was pretty amazing, right? All those clues in the poem…”
Pari said, “Which, honestly, you should be writing down right now—before you forget them.”
“Right.”
Justin dug through his pouches until he found his empty journal book and pen and paper. After a few false ink splatters and holes gouged in the paper, he finally got the hang of writing with the ink pen.
“Did you get the reference to the cormorian?” Pari asked.
“The what?”
“That was the name of the giant creature I saw. In fact, you have the map to that island. It’s on your wax tablet.”
The ranger looked up, a glimmer of hope in his eyes.
“The map!”
Justin pulled out the wax tablet, and they all crowded around it. Pari might be right. There was the giant—the cormorian—and there, by his foot, was a squiggly thing that could be the island.
“That symbol,” Klothar said. “The setting sun. It was one of Leminkäinon’s wards.”
“Yes!” Pari said. “The island sinks during the day and rises when the sun sets.”
“But what about the third ward?” Justin asked. “The blindness thing. Does that mean that the tower is invisible?”
“There’s only one way to find out, lad.”
It took them a while, but they eventually made their way out of the temple building, avoiding the burning hallway and climbing up through the execution chamber.
Once they returned back outside, they were greeted by a remarkable sight: three winged stags grazed placidly amidst the ruins. They were huge and white and had a rack of antlers as wide as a pickup truck. When one stretched its wings, it looked like the creature had a 30 or 40-foot wingspan. They also had long, feathery tails.
“What are those things?” Justin asked.
Pari smiled. “Inspect them for yourself.”
Justin did.
:::::. Thynir. (Cerynian Stag). Friendly. .:::::
“The oracle mentioned that the thynir would aid us,” Klothar said. “I think these beasts may be able to fly us to the island.”
“I am so down with that!” Justin said. He couldn’t believe it. This was so awesome. Real life flying reindeer.
