Minerva looks at the door way. "The pillows were locks to keep the temple closed. Breaking only three will be sufficient to open the temple. Why was there dynamite on the mules? Why would anyone want to open up something that has those things guarding it?"
She leans forward and tries to look into the door. "I'm afraid of what's going to come out of this door if those were guardians to keep the temple from opening."
A close examination of the doors reveals that there are no keyholes or other methods of opening it.
"Well we can wait for somebody else to open the door for us or we can try to head to the next pillow and stop them from opening the temple."
She sits down on the ledge and looks over at the others. "I say wait. Aren't we supposed to go in here." she waves her hand at the doorway. To find a mummy to bring back to New York. Personally I'd rather let somebody else deal with those guardians while we sit here and wait for them to open the door."
Enoli listens in the distance to see if he can still hear the gunfire, or worst, screams.
"What if these demons cannot be defeated with guns, only this strange weapon that we have now? Where did that even come from? Are there more? We definitely need more. Maybe we need to travel to the recently opened pillow and defeat that demon, then use those stairs to go deeper? Maybe all five pillows connect to the temple. Enoli says, looking pensive towards the location of the last explosion.
"How many of these things do we have to fight, with just one we lost Louise..."Enoli trails off softly, fear gripping his heart worst then anytime he can remember on his excursions with Grandfather.
"I worry about what else might be inside besides a mummy." He looks up at Lady Ashford. "And what happens when all five are broken? What did Gregorio say? The Dreamer will awaken." He shakes his head.
"We don't have the dynamite anymore. If we go to the pillow, we have no way to break it open, do we?"
Enoli looks out in the distance towards the gunfire and screams, determined, he holds his rifle in a ready position, then looks back over his shoulder towards Father Antonio, "Whatever any of this means doesn't really matter anymore, we are here and in the middle of it all, and we can't let these men die without helping."
Enoli looks at shiny fireball spewing pistol holstered with Abraham, "I just wish we had one of those strange weapons as a rifle."
Antonio sighs and looks at Enoli. "How is it that you are the one to hold to the Christian tenants most steadfastly at a time like this?" He smiles at his friend, then looks at the others. "He is right. Whatever is happening at the Pillows, there may be men who need help. And perhaps we can learn more about what they are doing and why. If nothing can be done, then we return here if they are able to break another one."
Minerva sighs and shimmies down the tower. "All right. I'll be a brave person and go and help our enemies. Nothing good will come from this. Mark my words." She reloads her pistol and readies to move out in the direction of the gunfire.
Abraham had been quiet, staring at the foreboding structure that erupted from the ground. It made his stomach turn slowly, his skin itched in a way that he couldn't quite place.
"We investigate the shots. Those soldiers could be the men back at the encampment. The same ones you were worried about Father."[b] Abraham says to the group. Checking his rifle again and ensuring that there was nothing to make it misfire, he gave a nod. [b]"Follow me." With that, Abraham led their group through the heat and foliage and towards the sounds of screams, gunfire, and unnatural roars.
The sounds of battle in the jungle come from about a mile and a half away, so even at a quick jog you are long in getting there. The gunfire has ceased by the time you arrive on the scene.
As you arrive at the scene of the battle, a light rain begins to patter down through the heavy forest canopy. There is devastation, but no bodies. Trees torn and uprooted, signs of severe scorching everywhere, as if many fires had been lit. Here and there, bushes and trees still burn fitfully in the rain. But of the soldiers you can see nothing at all.
What do you do?
Antonio looks around the area. "Where are the casualties? Did they manage to take everyone away?" Antonio looks for any sign of blood or human traces. "If these were demons, would they leave behind any trace?"
Minerva comes out of the trees looking around at the battlefield. "This is unusual." She starts looking for blood trails or drag trails at the edge of the battlefield.
"Where is the pillow?"
The enormous broken ward is not hard to find. It appears to have been dynamited open.
You hear a cough and turning, you see a Bolivian soldier, his face bloody, his legs half eaten away by acid, reclining against a burned tree.
He tries to raise a hand, but can't. He looks vaguely off to his right and you see in the bushes a strange silvery canister.
Not having the knowledge to help the soldier, Enoli follows his gaze to the bushes to inspect the canister, being cautious before touching it, he rolls it slowly around the ground with a stick, looking for anything of danger, and also any possibly writing.
Antonio rushes to the man. <My god, what happened here? My son, can I help you?> He looks over the man's injuries, wincing.
The man is whispering and Antonio has to lean in close to hear his final words. <The Devil, Father. We could not stop him. He walks like a man. And now we have been punished..."> The man breathes his last and dies.
Enoli finds that the silvery canister is fitted with straps of some odd, tough leather - it is meant to be worn on the back. It is fitted with a long hose that ends in a pointed nozzle.
Antonio sighs and makes the sign of the cross. "I have seen him, my son...." He turns back to the others. "If this pillow is broken, then something may have changed back at the temple."
He looks around for any sign of the monster that would have been under the pillow. "I guess they were able to kill it. But at great cost."
A thin trail of slime, already dissipating in the sunlight, leads back to the broken ward and the pit below.
Enoli looks down the pit to see if this has the same "stairs" the other one did.
"Should we try to descend here, or should we go back for the dynomite and blow all of the seals, but then release whatever is within them? We do have a fire pistol and a flame thrower."
"I"m fairly certain that there are other men who will try to blow the other pillows. We should maybe try to stop them. I don't want to go down in that hole with whatever is down there. I'd rather face men than whatever went down that hole."
Minerva notices the tank with the nozzle. "I wonder if that thing works like the fancy gun. Want me to wear it Enoli? I'm stronger than I look."
Yes, the pit revealed by the broken ward contains the same stairs as the other one.
"Should we just take these stairs, it seems for each pillow blown there is some creature, if we can prevent more from rising, and still get to this mummy, then maybe some lives would be saved?", wonders Enoli.
Antonio stares down into the darkness below the broken pillow. "We face monsters and demons. But the devil I saw leading the soldiers wants something here. Whether down below or in the temple I am not sure."
He points to the slime trail. "Something came out of the pillow, but we have no idea where it went. They might have killed it, or it could be out loose. But perhaps now is the time to see what is below."
So what, to coin a phrase, is the plan?
Minerva moves next to the good Father. "All right into the mouth of hell we go. Pray for ours souls. We're going to need it." She pulls out a light and begins to climb down the stairs.
"Right you are, miss." Abraham murmurs, stowing his rifle and drawing his pistol instead. It would be a little easier to keep his balance on the way down into the deep, deep dark.
"Just watch where you're pointing that thing, Enoli. Looks like the flamethrowers we had back at the trenches just...not any design I ever saw before." The grizzled veteran murmurs, not trusting his voice to echo down into the deep, dark hole below.
The descent into the vast pit is much like that of the first one. Cyclopean stones project out towards the center in a spiral pattern, forming stairs too tall to be comfortable for humans, but navigable.
However, the pit descends into the earth an almost impossible distance and soon the daylight is merely suggestive glow far above. What are you doing for light?
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Antonio grunts and he steps down another of the too-tall, too-wide steps. He squints in the dark and pulls out a flashlight, switching it on. "See anything down here?" He waves the weak beam around the space.
The descent into darkness is exhausting. Not only is the pit nearly bottomless, but the stairs are not meant for human beings. Hundreds of feet down, you're fatigued and your calves are hurting. A few more hundred feet down and the sky is a mere bright circle somewhere far above.
At last you reach the bottom, a dank and cheerless space a hundred paces across. Lifting your lights you see carvings upon the walls of the lowest level. These are intricate and detailed murals. As you look around, you see no sign of the beast, so you let your lights play over the murals, trying to understand them.
You learn that this location is one of five identical places. Together they form a pentagon or pentagram. The center of the pentragram marks an important location (that's the temple). Many serpent people are portrayed. These are bipedal snake-people. One serpent person is depicted as a leader. She holds a scepter and wears an ornate crown. The design of the crown features a snake motif. Hairy giants, seemingly under the control of whip-wielding serpent-folk are shown building a cone-shaped temple.
Antonio holds the flashlight up to the murals. "Snake people? Dios mio. A whole group of them? Satan from the garden. Forming a design of witchcraft." He makes the sign of the cross on himself.
"This is like what I glimpsed with Captain Lafuente." He shudders. "Demons. They built this place and the temple? Why? And what is inside?"
Minerva holds up her light as she studies the murals. "We walked all this way. It makes sense to study them more. Maybe there's a hidden door or something. Otherwise we have to climb back out of this pit, and I'm not looking forward to that."
Father what did you see with Captain Lafuente? Did you see a serpent like this?" she shakes her head. He couldn't have seen a snake person. They don't exist. He must have heat stroke.
Sweat stings Abraham's eyes as he looks over the murals depicting snakemen and their terrible servants. It seemed a little too unreal to be imagined but ancient culture's had strange ideas and odd symbolisms for their world. It didn't mean that the captain was one of these creatures, right? Swallowing hard, he looked away and shook his head.
"Stress is taking its toll. We can't be dealing with snakemen and ancient guardians. It had to be some kind of strange creature, maybe a new breed never seen before. These weapons have to be experimental, something that was prepared before the end of the war." Abraham thought to himself, letting his mind fill in the blanks logically rather than let it wander towards the dark truth. Minerva's words pulled him out of the train of thought he was in and he would flicker his light along the walls. Heading back up was not something he was looking forward to, not without coming up with something worthwhile from this godforsaken pit. He began to search the walls for anything out of place, the his gaze following the where the weak light went.
Enoli scans the images on the walls, he subconsciously runs his hand along the hidden scars on his chest. "The others do not believe in the demons, although I thought for sure that the Father would. I know, Grandfather warned me, tried to prepare me, showed me things in his rituals, but I never heard of them to be like a tribe, so many of them in one place, with a leader. How do we fight something like this Grandfather?!
Enoli sets his pack down and begins to sort through it, "If we are going to spend time here I'd like to try to learn more my own way." He sits on the ground with the various items. He sets a clay bowl on the ground and fills it with some dried plants, then strikes some sparks to light a small fire in the bowl, the then begins to chant lightly, breathing in the smoke from the bowl and moving it to four directions.
Antonio turns to answer the others and he finds his throat getting tight. He barely manages a croak at first as he tries to speak about the thing he saw. It was one thing to see it in your mind and name it the devil, but to tell others...
"I...I think so." He takes a deep breath. "It was scales underneath the human skin, like...one of these pictures of a lizard-person." He shudders and then points to one of the images. "Like that one. Like it was wearing a man's skin. These demons shown here...they have walked among us in the camp." He looks down at his hands, suddenly realizing he is gripping his rosary wrapped around his hand so tightly that he might break it.
Abraham, this place is exactly as empty, desolate and weird as it appears. You find nothing of interest beyond the murals and the stairs.
Enoli sits crosslegged and begins chanting in his native language. It is a strange and sonorous sound, but somehow appropriate in this eerie and unsettling place. His head lolls forward, as if he is deeply asleep, but you can still faintly hear his voice chanting.
The scene shifts and you see the serpent woman wearing an ornate crown - the one depicted in the mural. She is leading an army of serpent people down the avenues of Paris, driving terrified humans before them.
Enoli awakes from his vision, his body aches and his head pounds from the burned herbs, but he is used to this by now. He relays what he has seen to the others.
"I know some of you do not believe, but you cannot deny what you have already seen, deny where we are. These visions are not exact, sometimes symbols, but it is up to us to interpret them. Maybe this queen is the mummy we are here to get. Maybe some of these demons have been awaken and they want to wake her up, but if that happens, it will be the death of many."
So...
"I think we should continue forward, be prepared for the monsters we may face, find this queen. Maybe we don't take her back to our employers, maybe we just destroy her."
I guess we really need to go back and get that dynamite then
Antonio looks through the mural for any depictions that might show the other pillows. Finally, he points to the picture of the spiral shaped temple. "The soldiers are bound to be trying to destroy another pillow. I think we should return to the temple to wait to enter before they can."
Nope.
Correct.
That could work!
"Father that sounds like an excellent plan. Let's wait for them to do the work for us, and hopefully get inside ahead of the soldiers." She shudders. "Not that I want to face whatever is in the temple first."
She starts the long slow climb out of the pit of the pillow.
"That probably is best. If these...pillows...are letting the temple rise up from the ground, then maybe we can force our way in early and get the jump on them. I think I remember seeing some seams in the stonework, maybe we can try to force it open and get inside." Abraham mutters, staring up at the massive staircase. He was really beginning to hate it in this g%%+**n jungle.
Abraham made no mention about Enoli or Father Antonio's visions or delusions. Things were strange here, certainly, but it wasn't like they were experts on anything really. He would give a credulous look to Minerva, his worries apparent on his face; maybe the jungle was a bit too much for him.
For what it was worth, Abraham's sanity held and he had not begun to truly grasp the terror they were in.