by Paul Yoder
The torch crackled, consuming the surface oil ferociously, slowly mellowing as its surface fuel began to diminish. Casting light on all four corners of the large, square room, Nomad stepped out into the center to get a good look at the destruction Jadu had unleashed.
Thirty bodies, or what was left of them, lay crumpled, completely burnt black to the bone. The heat for some had been so intense that even the bone had crumbled to powdered ash.
Had Jadu saved their lives? He stood there considering the odds, weighing favor when a clank of armor at the top of the stairs turned his attention to the entrance.
Clanking all the way down until coming into view, Nomad confirmed that it was indeed Reza that approached. Standing at the foot of the stairs now, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, Reza slowly headed towards Nomad’s torch.
He considered if he should voice his concerns with her being in pain and injured and still being down in a potentially dangerous place. Considering how strong-willed Reza was though, experience cautioned him to keep silent on the issue, knowing that she would more than likely do as she wished.
“I wanted to inspect this underground structure further. Jadu said he glanced over it and found no threat, but…you know how attentive Jadu can selectively be.”
Reza, who had seemed to have been studying Nomad’s reaction to her arrival, replied, “Yes. I thought it best to double check as well.”
“Did you bring a torch?” Nomad asked, apparently a little too gently since Reza crooked her ear, indicating for Nomad to ask again louder, which he did, this time Reza answering that she hadn’t.
“Come,” Nomad said, beckoning her over. “We’ll share mine.”
After entering into the light of the torch, Reza wasted no time, suggesting they begin by searching the perimeter, the room being so expansive that even with the torchlight, they still couldn’t discern the ends of the room.
Stepping around burnt corpses, the two leisurely made their way to the left wall. It was a good thirty paces, and the walls had been scorched from Jadu’s chemical fire, making it hard to tell it was a wall and not just the darkness.
Putting a hand on the wall, Reza scratched a bit of soot and sand off, finding that the walls were chiseled sandstone, and said, “Follow the wall. See where it leads.”
Another thirty paces marked the corner of the room. Turning and starting to walk down the far end of the room’s wall soon brought them to an arched portal leading down a narrow tunnel.
Both looking down the dark stretch for a moment before turning to one another, Reza, putting a hand out for the torch, said, “I’d feel more comfortable in the front. My armor is a lot more inclusive than yours.”
Nomad didn’t like the idea of having the half-deaf one leading them into the darkness, but not wanting to actively defy her command-like request, he reluctantly gave her the torch. Reza turned and started down the one-person-width tunnel first with Nomad close behind her.
Not far in, a dropped ledge on the roof of the tunnel with an inscription on it led Reza to stop and inspect the tablet.
Nomad, looking at the foreign symbols said, “I don’t recognize that writing.”
Reza, who had been studying the inscription, broke her silence and replied, “I barely can interpret it, and I’ve lived around this region for many years. It’s some kind of old, local dialect. I believe it translates to, ‘Our dead rest lightly here. Respect those that slumber within these halls.’”
“Are they speaking of the dead that attacked us back there?” Nomad questioned.
Reza, giving the inscription further thought, replied, “No. I believe the writing refers to what’s ahead, not behind. That symbol,” she said as she pointed to two crossed square marks with two wavy lines in them. “That, I think, stands for tomb or mausoleum. It might be that this tunnel leads to some sort of burial chambers.”
“Burial chambers….The best way to honor the dead is by leaving them be. Perhaps we should turn back,” Nomad said, ready to turn return the way they had come.
“Hold on,” Reza started, turning to eye Nomad. “The best way to honor the dead in this case would be to make sure nothing had desecrated their resting places. Who knows how long those monsters in the front room had lingered here.”
A cold sweat broke out across Nomad’s brow. Looking nervously back the way they came, Reza could tell something about gravesites and the subject of the hallowed dead bothered the man.
“Come, don’t leave me lightless. Let’s go in a little further to make sure that the dead rest in peace here.”
With that said, Reza turned to start walking down the black corridor, relieved that it didn’t take Nomad too long to start up after her to light her way.
It wasn’t far before Reza noticed two portals to the left and right on either side of the hallway.
Quietly putting her hand around the hilt of her seax, Reza quickstepped into the room to the left with Nomad following suit.
Though the room was long, it was only twice as wide as the one-person-wide hallway, causing Nomad to almost crash into Reza as he entered, not expecting the tight squeeze.
Shelves of the remains of the long ago deceased lined the wall. Much of what must have once been an orderly scene, now only looked as if years of grave robbers and animals had picked through the shrines of anything but bone and tattered cloth—broken urns and fragments of clayware strewn across the floor and shelves.
“Ransacked catacombs,” Reza said, inspecting the floor and shelves while she mumbled, “Which appear to have not been disturbed recently either. Simply by the amount of dust film in this room, I’d suspect we are the first ones in here in months, possibly years. Not so with the hallway though. Excuse me.”
Nomad moved back out into the hallway, giving Reza room to stoop down to inspect and compare the floor of the burial room and the hallway, the hallway appearing quite a bit cleaner than the burial room.
“You think someone has used the main hall recently?” Nomad asked, trying to reason through what Reza was thinking.
“Perhaps,” Reza replied, drawing the word out, “but there could be other explanations. The wind could have blown in from the open entrance and blew all the settled dust away down the main corridor. We’ll have to investigate further for answers. We’re not going to learn much from dust.”
Poking her head into the adjacent burial room to the right, finding nothing different from the room to the left, she ushered Nomad to lead the way down the tunnel until they reached another pair of adjacent portals.
After leaning into each of the rooms for a moment, he looked back and said, “Same as the other two rooms,” then moved further down the hall which eventually opened up into a large room lined with four columns of pillars reaching from floor to ceiling, extending all the way down to the end of the chamber.
The torchlight reflected back off of multiple mirrors angled in different directions imbedded in the pillars, scattering light all around the room, lighting it up quite nicely.
Finding that some of the pillars held mounted, unlit torches, Nomad lit a few that appeared to be in more a condition to hold a flame for a while. The room now was well lit, and Nomad and Reza walked down to the end of the room, past seven rows of shimmering pillars, and approached the altar at the end of the path.
The two stood still in silence for a few moments admiring the ancient, elaborately carved sandstone altar that lay before them.
“I wonder,” Reza whispered, barely audible above the gentle crackle of the old torches further back in the room.
Blowing the grit and dust off of a stone tablet at the base of the altar revealed more of the same ancient language symbols that Reza began translating.
“Tungéun Haukchék rests here, head of the Haukchék name, awaiting the breath of Dannon to restore life to him and his family who resides in these halls.”
Finishing reading the stone, she added, “Well then this must be a sarcophagus, not simply
an altar. I’m surprised it hasn’t been tampered with all these years, but then again, this dialect is an uncommon one other than for those that live around here, and most locals are more than superstitious to risk angering the dead, especially dead with renown status and power.”
Nomad remained silent, and Reza turned to assess his demeanor. Turning around to look back the way they had come, his attention clearly not on the sarcophagus before them, Reza could tell Nomad was uncomfortable being in the tomb.
A bit disappointed in her company’s lack of interest in such an interesting find, she was about to suggest they leave, seeing nothing of actual help to solve why there had been a small horde of risen corpses in the front room when she noticed a small, dark shape through two of the pillars at the far-right end of the room. Nomad snapped back to attention as Reza got up and headed over to the dark object across the room.
Kneeling down, Reza picked up a dark scrap of cloth, noticing the ground around it had been freshly trodden upon by something hard and sharp, two recent scrape marks lightly scarred into the soft, sandstone floor.
“Sabatons perhaps? Looks recent, don’t you think?” Reza asked to a finally interested Nomad.
“Hmm. Yes. It does appear like it. The two marks are a pace apart. Seems their path points to the exit,” Nomad responded.
“If that’s where they were going, where were they coming from?” Reza questioned, trailing off as she followed the direction of the marks back to a dimly lit portion of the wall.
The whole length of the wall was not flat and smooth. Rough carvings, most in seemingly abstract shapes and designs with some representing human and animalistic figures, decorated the whole of it. The point on the wall where the tracks led to depicted a more elaborate scene than most of the other carvings and was enclosed in an arch. The scene was of two women, one older, and one noticeably younger. They both wore veils covering their faces and there was a flying beast in the air above them looking down upon them.
“That’s Dannon,” Reza said, pointing to the beast in the air.
“I’ve only seen him depicted in a few older records, but I do believe that’s him. The Tarigannie people are quite secretive of their history to almost all outsiders. Being a saren though has its advantages among most races. That’s how I know a bit of their more aged dialects and forgotten deities. I’ve had open access to some renowned libraries here in Tarigannie for a while now. Most people here now worship Gothganna. A sun Goddess. Few even remember the old Gods like Dannon—”
“Reza,” Nomad cut in, “look here.”
Nomad, crouched over pointing to the floor at the crack of the wall, mumbled, “Heavy wear marks in the grooves at the base of the carving.”
Reza, looking over the whole carved slab of wall again, noticed that it was slightly depressed from the rest of the wall, and there were two deeply carved pockets in the stone on either end of the slab.
“Perhaps this is more than just a nice wall carving,” she said as she gripped the handhold in the slab, pulling sideways. With some effort, the large slab of wall began to slide, rolling on a narrow track of hard-stone cylinders.
Reza, slowly opening wide an entrance to some dark room, stepped back, the two looking in awe at the hidden room they had stumbled upon, imaginations going wild with theories of what could lie within.
The one with the torch, Nomad stepped into the small shrine room first, shedding light that glinted and shone off of broken, golden pottery and tipped over braziers. Scattered coin and jewelry and different colored powders covered the floor and shelves, reflecting a golden hue back at them.
So claustrophobic and displaced were the contents of the room that Nomad didn’t notice at first the free-standing skeleton to the left of him until its jaw hinged open and let out a multi-toned scream, immediately drawing the startled attention of Nomad and Reza.
It fell forward towards Nomad as if falling off of a frame. Instead of crumpling to the ground, however, it dipped and then lunged upward, its dark eye sockets remaining fixed on Nomad, claw-like hands reaching up to dig into Nomad’s face.
Nomad was yanked back, Reza throwing him behind her like a ragdoll, quickly drawing her seax, holding it between her and the unsteady, but determined, animated skeleton.
“Shit—” was all Reza could blurt out, cursing her curiosity that led them this deep into the tomb as the skeleton made another, more resolved lunge, this time at Reza.
Bringing her free hand around, she slammed the skeleton’s skull with the back of her gauntlet, sending the shambling bones crashing back against the corner of the desecrated hidden room.
Nomad was up now, drawing his sword when he heard a grinding sound far behind him. Four boney hands clenched around the edge of the sepulcher’s stone slab, revealing another secret room on the far wall.
“Two more behind us!” Nomad shouted above the persistent echoing grind of the stone slab.
Just as the skeleton Reza had struck began to right itself, another, smaller, skeleton began to mindlessly walk out of the sepulcher’s shadows, not yet seemingly interested in Reza and Nomad.
Seeing that the two skeletons were close to finishing opening the other secret portal, Nomad bent down and picked up a sizeable chunk of sandstone at the base of one of the crumbling pillars.
The two skeletons leapt out of the dark room, galloping headlong towards Nomad, their skeletal structure jostling violently, but their skulls remaining dead-locked on Nomad.
Nomad launched the rock at the lead skeleton’s skull, the rock shattering into dust upon impact, the skeleton not even acknowledging the assault.
Gripping his curved sword, Nomad got into stance to receive the first assailant.
Reza brought up her seax to block a downward slam from the skeleton she had backhanded, but without her shield or flail, all she could do to stop the second swipe to her midsection was grab the skeleton’s wrist, locking the two up in a bind, allowing the skeleton in dangerously close.
Aged, white, gnashing teeth nipped in towards Reza’s face, clamping down on some of Reza’s loose hair, ripping a small clump out as Reza pushed the skeleton away.
It recoiled fast and leapt back in, leaving Reza no time to present a strong defensive front. Reza held out her free hand to push at the skeleton’s ribcage, successfully keeping the thing at bay for a moment, it jostling violently all over, trying to get around its impediment, but as Reza focused on her immediate threat, the smaller skeleton had oriented itself, seemingly finding it’s sinister charge, leaping into the fray, biting in repeatedly at Reza’s unprotected neck and side of her head, smearing fresh blood all over the child-sized, vicious skull.
The sharp pain to her most vital region caused Reza to muster the speed and strength needed to forcibly throw both attackers a good distance away from her, both skeletons hitting the wall with enough force for their bones to hollowly clank and crack. Reza still stood, but was visibly shaking, feeling incredibly vulnerable with every second that went by without the full protection of her armor, shield, and her flail. Her seax was short, and on top of that, stabbing and slashing at bones wasn’t going to prove very effective.
Two claws that came in at Nomad to choke the life out of him were lopped off with one sideways cut, spinning to follow through with another horizontal cut that landed hard along the spine between the attacker’s skull and ribcage.
The skull spun twice in the air before coming down on the sandstone floor, the body toppling forward from its own momentum, sliding it well past where Nomad stood, giving Nomad a clear view to his next attacker—a bony frame that stood a good two-and-a-half heads over Nomad.
Wide shoulders and narrow hips, Nomad assumed the giant striding towards him was once a strapping man, intimidating most definitely in life, as well as in death.
Nomad’s brief hesitation was enough for the giant to take advantage of. Swatting him aside, the large bony hand easily sent Nomad flying two yards into a crumbling pillar, the im
pact sending dust and sand everywhere.
He attempted to recover quickly, but the giant was to him in a single stride, clenching its hand into a fist of bone, bringing it down hard on Nomad’s back, sending him down to the ground again before he could even fully get back to his feet.
Feeling the second hit land hard, knowing he couldn’t afford to be pinned by his colossal opponent, he kicked out as hard as he could, popping the giant’s left leg out from under him, sending the skeleton down, it now struggling to steady its massive weight, leaving Nomad the chance to roll away and bound back to his feet.
The giant still stumbled, appearing slightly injured at the last scuffle and fumble. Seeing a line of attack in, Nomad stepped swiftly towards the skeleton, shuffling to the giant’s left, then striking hard from the side with his sword.
The giant was swift enough to bring up an arm to block the incoming attack, but the blade shattered right through the two thick bones. Making a swift adjustment to his arc, Nomad swiveled and threw his blade back up to the skeleton’s right, connecting with the giant’s right elbow joint, coming through, leaving the giant holding out two broken arm stumps, reeling backwards, not even sure at that moment what had taken place in Nomad’s last attack.
Stepping up, Nomad pressed forward, throwing all of his strength into a clean, horizontal cut, severing the giant’s lower spine, the upper torso landing upright on the ground before him. Coming back around with his blade, decapitating the giant with another horizontal cut, the dismembered giant toppled to the ground, its hollow skull landing on the sandstone floor with a clunk.
The child-sized skeleton, with face smeared red, let out an explosive scream, bellowing at Reza, the sound shaking her to her very core, tearing from her what was left of her morale.
A red trailing glow sparked to life in the eye sockets of the child skeleton as it let out another bellowing howl from beyond, arms violently shaking at its sides.
