Next time Darius floats down one of the holes, Placidus informs him, "We're going to check out the trap door. I don't appreciate you giving us the silent treatment. After that we're going to destroy the idol and leave. If you want to come with us, I'd suggest you do so."
”Killing the idol...” Darius says wearily, ”Will mean nothing for life on this island...if we don’t kill....kill the priestess,” he stammers as he leans against the wall.
”Killing the idol...” Darius says wearily, ”Will mean nothing for life on this island...if we don’t kill....kill the priestess,” he stammers as he leans against the wall.
"She's gone, man! If these lead outside she could have gone out any one of them. She had a big head start on us, and she didn't have to hesitate in ignorance. You couldn't finish her in your state anyway. Look at you!"
Placidus crosses his arms over his chest. "We are in the Grave now, this whole continent is supposedly crawling with serpentspawn. How is chasing this one down going to change anything? If the gods intend us to kill her, then they will cross our paths again."
”One life...no better than another...” he mutters as he passes Placidus, beads of sweat from the strain on his body becoming more evident on his brow and arms.
”One life...one life...”
"You're clearly delirious from the poison. Just come with us, Darius. We can report the priestess's presence when we get back to Apollonia. We have her notes, and now we know that this temple is here. I'm sure the Guard can send another team to watch over this place long term."
Darius looked at Placidus, seeing not the man assigned to his unit, but the face of the high priest that excommunicated him. ”I’m not delirious! You are...clinging...you don’t see...life and death are a cycle! From death comes life! But life can bring...more death...more than it should...must kill her...to protect life...”
Cica gives a loud, frustrated sigh, and then slaps Darius across the face.
"Pull it together, pretty boy. If you're too weakened and addled by poison to go on, I can respect that. Go outside and rest in the boat.
"Otherwise: follow with us, remember you're a soldier now, and don't run off without communicating with your troup. We're going to investigate the trap door. It may not have occurred to you, but the water levels aren't going to stay low forever. In fact, if I understand right, they'd already climbed high again just between when that serpentlady came down here and when we did. That means we have precious little time to finish exploring. Are we clear?"
Darius feebly slaps at her hand trying to deflect it.
These fools refuse to see! The church blinds them to the Cycle!
”Priests! You don’t...you do not see!?!? I am Death! I am Death...for the good of Life! There cannot be Light...without Darkness! But Darkness unchecked...is damnation! I am the torch in the never ending night! I must...must defend all Life! Must kill that...that which would kill needlessly...” he rambles as he staggers forward, clutching to Ilistra’s shoulders, all recognition of her seemingly gone from his eyes in his delirium.
Placidus lowers his face into his broad palm, then sighs. "Guess we have to do this the hard way..."
The Warrior tries to grab Darius, but he can't get a hold as Darius continues to thrash about. "Little help here?"
Upon seeing Darius grab Ilistra's shoulders, the gallant Garland decided that it was time to act!
Our hero quickly put the delirious Darius into a heroic hold!
"Placidus, Cica, bind him!"
Cica grabs him by the collar and says "Here. He's bound."
"Don't worry, pretty boy. We're going to assume this is the poison talking, and take you to the boat with our friends. We'll be back in a bit."
Unless he resists, Cica walks him out to the boat, plops him down, and then hustles back to investigate the trap door they'd passed earlier.
When Darius reaches up to grab her, her flesh starts to feel very hot, just shy of enough to leave blisters. When he's tackled off of her and then bound, she steps away and folds her arms while saying nothing.
"Is he going to die?" Ilistra asks as he's dragged away back to the boat. "The poison will kill him. Is there anything you can do?"
"No, I think he's just addled. He was getting worse quickly there, and then it just stopped. I think if he was going to die, he would be dead already. "
The group heads back out of the temple, frog marching Darius along the way. When they reach the entry chamber, Placidus places him at the top of the steps, just outside the temple. "Let's check that room and destroy the idol before we leave."
The trapdoor turns out to be stuck shut.
Cica tries once without success, but then really puts her shoulder into it.
"That does it!"
She cautiously pokes her head through and glances about in.
A gust of foul-smelling, stale air rushes up from a hole that drops twenty feet down into some kind of chamber.
A bloom of fire appears in Ilistra's hands, radiating heat as though it was a torch. She picks up a rock off the ground, holds in tightly in her hand, then moves to the side of the trapdoor. She lets the now-burning rock drop into the chamber, illuminating it.
Cica shrugs and says, "Maybe it's time to put this magic rope to the test. Ilistra, you have my back?"
Cica starts to climb down, warily.
Ilistra's stone illuminates a jagged pile of calcified bones at the bottom of the chute. It looks like falling on them would be extremely painful.
Cica manages to scramble down the knotted rope of climbing.
At first glance, this damp cavern seems natural, but here and there the mineral deposits on the walls and ceiling don’t quite obscure ancient walls that were carved by hand. The floor is covered with a shallow layer of brackish water from which numerous small mounds of delicate crystals emerge. A large mound of ancient bones caked with thick mineral deposits lies along the west wall under the hole Cica came down. Small doll-sized tunnels lead out of the chamber. It appears to be otherwise empty.
While the trap door is being explored, Ilistra will fill the time by chucking her miniature fireballs at the idol.
The fire isn't very effective against stone, but Ilistra thinks that if she continues for a few minutes she will destroy the idol.
"Hold on. That idol clearly needs to be destroyed, but before it is, I'd like to have Jask come look at these writings. There might be something to learn from them.
"Then I'll help you smash it to pieces."
----
Cica goes out to the boat, tells Jask, "Well, it's safe now, and we need some help deciphering a strange writing." After a brief pause, it occurs to her to say, "Can you help?"
The group makes their way back across the exposed reefs at the bottom of the magically drained lagoon. They find Alexandra and Jhask still waiting for them on the beach, near Alexandra's boat.
Alexandra quickly scans the group, noting their injuries. She looks at Darius with one quirked eyebrow. "Looks like he's been on a week long bender."
Jask smiles at Cica. "Thank the gods that you are safe. I am not sure if I will be able to help you, but I can take a look."
Placidus hands him the stack of notes written in serpentspeak.
"Ah, yes, the language of the Enemy. I have translated it before," Jhask comments as he looks over the sheets.
"There is a lot here, but these appear to be the notes of someone named Yarzoth. It seems she was transcribing Atlantean carvings from the temple of Zura there..." Jhask squints as he flips through the pages, silently mouthing the words as he translates them in his mind. After a while, his eyes go wide with shock. "Great elements!"
"This...this is valuable beyond what you realize, my friends. This might be the key to Saventh-Yhi!"
"Huh. Sounds...important? Look, I've learned a bunch about tracking and staying alive and making nice bows...but I'm not much of a scholar. Can you spell it out a bit?"
Jhask nods, "Of course. It is a bit of an arcane topic I suppose. I will explain, as I owe you all my life."
Alexandra, for any looking at her, seems to be extremely intrigued by all that is unfolding. She stays quiet. Her green eyes lock onto Jhask as he continues.
"Saventh-Yhi is one of the most sought after lost cities of the Serpent's Grave. Legends say that it was built by the Atlanteans. Such a discovery could revolutionize what is known about the ancient empire. That information alone, properly transcribed and recorded, would be worth thousands. Yet hard evidence about the location of Saventh-Yhi would be, well... priceless! Once we return to the city, the Baron will be very interested in these notes. As would every other faction of power brokers in Apollonia, I imagine. It will take me time to fully read over so many pages, but if there is a description of Saventh-Yhi here as it seems, I would beg you to be very careful with how you proceed. Our lives are worth far less than the information contained here."
Having finished his explanation, Jhask looks excitedly back to the jumble of notes in his hands. "Are you finished with your business in the temple? I can continue to translate the notes while you finish up. If you are already done, I will work on them while we sail back to the mainland."
Before leaving the temple, Garland put his trusty scythe to good use and made sure to destroy the evil statue on the way out!
Darius remained in the boat, his body shivering from the poison induced fever.
As Ilistra, Garland and Placidus destroy the altar, it cracks open and is revealed to be hollow. Great gouts of blood pour out of it and wash down the channel into the cave where the aberrant mouther lurked. The lingering whispers in the air of the evil place turn to screams and howls. A ripple of invisible energy explodes out from the idol as it completely crumbles!
The soldiers sense a great weight being lifted from the region as the energy fades. The Shiv feels much less ominous than it did before.
"Woah. OK, I'm glad you spelled it out. We have to go destroy that evil idol in there and then we can head home. While we're on the way back, we better figure out what we want to do with this information."
As she turns to leave, she adds, "Please keep an eye on Darius. We suspect that the poison's effects on him have stabilized, but we saw signs of what could be permanent brain damage. At any rate, he's clearly not himself."
Not wanting to dull her greatsword, Cica pulls out her lucern hammer to join in the smashing party.
With each clang of scythe on stone, Cica cringes slightly...but figures Garland's a grown man and knows how long it takes to resharpen a dented or notched blade.
After realizing that he might damage his awesome scythe, Garland instead opted to use his morningstar to destroy the wicked alter!
The foul statue's final act of evil failed to phase the mighty Garland!
(...The same could not be said for the noble Luna.)
Cica shrugs off the wave of dark energy, knowing that today she had defeated it!
Laughing loudly, she slaps Garland, Placidus, and Ilista on the backs. "Congrats, we really did it!
"Now let's get out of here before it all floods back in, and see if we can make it back to New Haliad in time for a drink...and hopefully some healing for Pretty Boy. Anyone wanna wager whether or not that brain damage is permanent?"
The oppressive evil of the altar makes Ilistra drop to her knee and shudder. She stumbles back away from the ruins and puts as much distance as she can between the destroyed altar and herself as possible.
After destroying the idol, and returning outside, the atmosphere of the Shiv feels much less oppressive.
They make their way back to the boat, where Alexandra is busy doing something with the boat's rigging. Jask sits in the aft part of the boat, hunched over the sheets of the notes, reading. Darius sits in the boat looking off into space and sweating.
The red haired woman looks up as the soldiers return. "That wave of energy, that was you? Feels better around here now. Problem is, that we can't really leave here until the water comes back. Don't suppose you know how that works?"
After trying everything they can think of to return water to the lagoon, the soldiers are forced to give up and simply wait, on the hope that the effect will eventually wear off.
Finally, after four or five hours of waiting, the temple doors grind slowly shut across the lagoon. As they slam shut, and the rumble fades, the magic holding the sea back fades as well. A wall of water rushes in, momentarily scaring the group with the thought of inundation. However, the water sloshes perfectly into the lagoon, filling it just enough to return the water level to its previous height.
Alexandra huffs. "We have water now, but the wind is blowing south. We can sail, but we will have to pull some sailor tricks to get going in the right direction. It will take forever to get back to the city with the wind wrong. We might end up spending a night on the see if we leave now. If we end up on deep water for too long, we might become pirate bait. If we sleep here, we might get eaten by whatever other beasts live here. Want to camp here another night, or risk the trip now?"
After much thought, Garland voiced his well-reasoned suggestion!
"I suggest that we stay on land for the night. At sea, most of us would be unable to fight efficiently. Meanwhile, on this island, we have more or less obliterated anything that has opposed us; even the priestess required powerful magic to last as long as she did. That said, I am not set in stone on this matter."
Cica shrugs. "I was really hoping to make it back for some celebratory rum--not to mention getting Pretty Boy over there a bit of clerical attention--but that's what I get for dreaming, right?
" I can't argue with your logic so...I'll go catch us some fresh fish. Have a fire burning when I get back to we can roast it."
The second afternoon on the Shiv goes smoothly. The group's earlier encounter with the chupacabra likely eliminated the largest predator in the area - one whose presence had been keeping other threats at bay. It seems the other dangerous creatures of the island haven't yet caught on that the lagoon is now free territory.
Shortly after night falls, as the group is sitting around their fire chatting, the ghost of Captain Kinkarian emerges from the smoke of their camp fire. Captain Kinkarian appears in undeath as a nearly skeletal form, his bare bones picked mostly clean by the fish and crabs, yet he still wears his dripping coat and hat. He raises a metal hooked hand to point at Ilistra. "Thief! Scoundrel! Give me back Aeshamara at once!"
Ilistra had been sitting on her haunches while watching the others around the fire. She was quiet and reflective after leaving the temple and dispelling its evil.
The coalescing apparition surprised her, and when the ghostly apparition accuses her, she rolls backwards away from it. She'd been used to being accused of petty thefts of items that were simply misplaced, and the finger pointed at her fills her with dread. Protestations of innocence are generally worthless, and usually only compound the "crime" of theft with the worse offense of lying about it.
"I took nothing!" she shouts as she puts more distance between it and her.
Cica looks up in shock as the ghost appears.
Scratching her head, she asks "Who or what is Aeshamara?" and then with a start gasps, "Oh, wait! One second!!"
She rummages in the group's loot and pulls out the locket they found.
Nervously she holds it out toward the spirit. "Is this what you seek?"