Kek clacks along as he guides you. The obsidian halls, despite their hard gleam, seem grayed by age; the air here is ancient in a way that goes beyond dust and cobwebs. Now and then, you see warrior-kings in bas-relief etched upon the black walls. None of you have seen Temple walls decorated in such a way.
You pass several more lengthy halls, and begin to wonder how long this lower level stretches. The decor slowly changes style, and you now walk below faded banners and rusty shields of forgotten houses and dead knights. Once, the little drakes come across nest of beetles, which they pounce upon and devour with relish.
After passing under a red banner emblazoned with a fiery black fist, you finally reach a larger chamber. The room opens wide and tall, the all surfaces covered in red runes of warning. Beyond several layers of such runes, the chamber ends abruptly in a huge elenoid skull embedded in the wall. Kek motions you to follow him as he skitters across the angry red runes, toward the gaping jaws. The giant mouth is large enough to fit several pogonas, with room left over for a feasting table.
Kek jumps lightly between a gap in the teeth. He waves to all of you. "Come come!"
Gabe follows after Kek, moving a little more cautiously than the drake. What are these runes then? Just warning signs? Or are we not the first to breach the Cauldron Lady's domain?
"Looks safe enough... I'll go first just in case. Don't linger to long behind though. Come on Qizz, I'll help you through."
With some trepidation, Gabe climbs through the teeth to follow the drake reaching back to help their myco friend navigate the giant maw.
Qizz is brave, just like Gabe! They climb through by shifting long arms and legs.
Samen, unsettled by the juxtaposition of familiar and unfamiliar, goes through as well.
You pass through the gaping maw unharmed. From inside, the old, silent bones seem more like a cathedral than the remains of a living thing. Walking down the esophageal hallway, you soon encounter a chamber of titanic proportion, under a vaulted ribcage ceiling that could easily house a fritan mansion.
Just as you enter, a gleaming brass heart, suspended from the ceiling by silver chains, begins to chime loudly. The sound is pure, like a bell, despite the odd shape of the anatomic heart. Twelve loud rings, one after another, march into your ears, then suddenly stop. The chamber is silent.
Some of the small drakes have fled from the sound, but now return. They all give little stuttering coughing noises that you think might be nervous laughter. Kek does not laugh. He motions you closer to the heart, but not directly underneath it.
'you want go up, yes? up up? city streetsy?'
Qizz can (shift) to be a small green drake-thing. Maybe a little bigger and stronger than the others, just in case. Qizz (hops) around, for fun.
Gabe also tenses up at the sound of the bell. This place is making me jumpy. "We do indeed want to go up. Is there some passageway up above this... heart, bell thing?" Gabe asks as he's eyeing the bell and the walls for a way up.
Responding to Qizz, "You can shift if you think it'll help you navigate wherever we're trying to go. You seem pretty malleable at the moment so you could probably squeeze through some small holes if you need to."
Kallik has been silent, both brooding and thoughtful. While you all consider the ceiling and the opening above the heart, she says, "Now that we're going back to Temple territory, how do we tell the good guys from the ones that need an axe to the face?"
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Letting his biases get the better of his judgment, Gabe replies "They all need an axe to the face..." Some wounds that festered long enough still linger even if the evidence has been removed apparently.
"Thank you for guiding us here. If you don't mind me asking, how long have you all been down here? From what we remember, drakes weren't very common before."
A wide grin. "Always!"
Samen will assume angelic form again and carry Qizz up to the opening.
Turning back from the hole, he addresses the drakes. "Thank you, fellows, for your assistance. Your help will not soon be forgotten!"
The opening seems to disappear as you pass through it - you are now standing on solid obsidian. The air here is dusty, but not so ancient as the last level. Shards of some kind of pottery crunch beneath your feet, but none so sharp as to pierce your boots.
You hear elen voices farther down the hall. "...just keeping looking. If you find anything whole..."
Immediately on guard, Gabe looks for the closest place to hide. Better to surprise someone than be caught unaware. Using his natural stealthiness, he attempts to get closer to find out to who or what these voices belong.
Samen leaves a mark on the surface they arose from. It might be handy to find that later.
Then, not at all confident in his ability to match Gabe's prowess in remaining hidden, especially in angelic form, he decides to confront these voices head on.
"What would you happen to be looking for?"
Five ifrits in heavy armor all turn toward the voice. Their features are obscured by owl-like eyemasks which Samen easily identifies are powerful detection magic. The markings on their armor are all symbols of the Cauldron Lady.
Four of the ifrits draw greatswords, but the fifth, presumably the captain, holds up a hand. In a tense but calm voice, he says, "I was told this level was empty. I wasn't expecting a winged...whatever you are."
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"I am an emissary of a forgotten god, and if I must be honest, I've had a rough day. Feels like I've been to hell and back. I have no interest in this particular locale, but I demand to be taken to councilman Dove; I have important information for him from outlying regions."
The captain looks at the strange human-angel-thing in front of him, glances down at the drippy-green-thing cavorting on the floor, and decides he would be very happy to offload these strange beings onto someone in higher authority. "Hmm. Ok, we can straighten things out with the Council." A pause. "Is there anyone else here with you? I don't like surprises, si?
"I was just going to join the procession but since you asked..." Gabe speaks as he steps out of the shadows with a smirk. "If there's anyone else, they aren't with us."
All the guards give a brief start as you appear - none of them had any idea you were so close. The captain has already drawn his blade in pure reaction, and has to consciously stop himself from attacking. He takes a deep breath.
"As I say, I don't like surprises." The point of the blade was not particularly close to you, so apparently he feels no need to apologize. He sheathes his longsword and waves for you to follow.
Kallik stands nice and close to the guard with the quick blade. She stays invisible, even from her allies, and smiles a bloody phantom smile at the guard who can't see her. Try drawing steel on my friends again, and see what happens.
Qizz skips along in Samen's happy light!
The walls on either side of you are lined with shelves and small alcoves, like a columbarium. The style is old fritan, judging by the austere lack of decoration. All the alcoves, however, are empty. You realize the pottery underfoot must be the shattered remains many ancient urns.
One of the guards, a bit more muscular and a bit less graceful than the others, steps on a large chipped piece of urn. It crunches beneath his feet with a fragile breaking sound...and a gentle echo of a weeping old woman follows, then fades.
The captain only turns his head slightly to say, "You release any ghosts, Cordo, and I'll make sure they feed on you so the rest of us get away." This is said not as a threat, but a statement of fact.
Cordo watches his step.
Samen kneels down and considers the broken pottery. "Ghosts, huh? Not surprising, I suppose. The barrier to the Lady's domain is weak here. The hounds are what you should really be concerned about, though."
He leaves it at that, letting them consider his words as he follows.
This is the former Hall of Oracles. Sometime in your studies at Branch, you came across mentions of the true practices of the older sects of the Cauldron Lady: prophecy was deemed too great a power to roam free, so all suspected oracles were burned in sanctified fire, with the smoke and ashes all captured and retained in a special urn. Certain priests were taught to commune with these half-dead oracles, to tease what information they could from them. The oracles, meanwhile, lived in a shabby pocket dimension where time never seemed to pass.
Judging from the destruction, during the upheavals of the last weeks and months, someone realized what an evil and dangerous practice this is, and set out to ruin the whole Hall of Oracles from top to bottom. All you see are shards and scattered ash.
Releasing ghosts from pottery? Sounds like a bad idea.
Gabe is also careful to not step on any urns that lay scattered around.
The larger guard, Cordo, walks beside Samen (still watching his step!) and lightly punches you on the shoulder. It's a friendly gesture with hardly any force behind it. "You telling me you've been runnin' with the Hounds today? Heheheh!"
Completely deadpan, Samen retorts, "Not with per say. More like from."
"Looks like there was a scuffle down here. Who broke the pots?"
"It was quite the invigorating run. They are very persistent when they want to be."
Gabe looks around at all the broken pottery in case there's a complete piece that wasn't smashed.
The captain says, "The urns were broken during Moon's invasion of Hearth. We didn't know the extent of the damage, as most of the attendants of this place were killed."
Huh, might be something worth holding on to... clues to this place.
Gabe slips away to grab the mostly complete piece of pottery before rejoining the procession.
The guards all quicken their pace now that they are away from the oppressive atmosphere of ghosts and dust. They walk past a series of holding cells--crowded, but not overly so, with members of all four races--without saying a word, though the captain uses his gauntlet to rap the knuckles of an ifrit who is clutching the bars. The ifrit gasps in pain and falls to the ground, cursing the captain.
At the end of the corridor, the captain gets the attention of a runner in the green colors of a Temple mediator. The young el bows to the captain after receiving his instructions and jogs ahead.
The captain turns to all of you and says, "Well, no telling how long this will take. Council members are bust little lizards, eh?" He pulls out a pouch of tobacco, packs a battered horn pipe with it, and snaps his fingers to light it. Taking a deep draw, he offers it to the rest of you. "Need food, water?" He takes a look at Samen. "A feather brush?"
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"Ha! No, the feathers are temporary, they'll fade in a bit. If Dove asks who we are, tell him that the remnant of the Swords expedition has returned. That should get his attention."
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Gabe is a little sad at the mention of the Happy Swords. So much has happened since the bone road incident... dreams and drakes and gems. Even a little bit of fey foolishness. "Not exactly the triumphant return we were hoping for..."
Cordo and the other guards casually make a perimeter up and down the hallway, but you can tell from their posture they are expecting no trouble. The captain draws from his pipe now and then, exhaling through his nose, which makes it seem like his owl-eye mask is breathing fire.
Ten minutes or more pass like this, when an illusory image appears before you. The image of an office room is superimposed upon the hallway, making it seem that Dove has transported half of his room onto half of your hallway. The effect has that slight transparency common to hasty illusion spells, though Dove himself, centered in the image, appears more clearly than the rest.
Captain Dove stands attentively, arms behind his back. In a slightly tinny illusion-voice, he says, "Captain, would you be so kind as to give us the room?"
The guards all nod, and walk up the nearby stairs to give you privacy. Dove looks at you with piercing eyes, his face curious but giving nothing away. The sylph seems the same as ever, pale skin stretched thin across bird-stick bones.
"I cannot say I recall two individuals fitting your description from the Happy Swords, gentle-elens. Might you introduce yourselves?"
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Samen nods in understanding. "I am Samen. Much has occurred since we last met. An elemental titan of death killed us all. Our bodies and souls were consumed into the earth where ancient magic stewarded by a fungal society stitched a few of us back together in unexpected ways.
Since then, we've fought at least three divine beings on the same scale as Moon's invasion of Hearth, and I fear we've altered the world in unexpected ways.
Gabriel and I discovered humanity, the long lost pure basis of all elens.
We discovered a new god, Sun.
We killed inquisitor Ky La again, presumably forever this time.
Abnaki has ascended to being a god of dreams and madness, not to be trusted.
...
What's new here?"
Dove shrugs, the motion made mostly with his wrists and palms. "Merely the preludes to a civil war." He arches an eyebrow. As ever, the sylph's sense of humor seems to slant toward the both gallows and deadpan.
He sighs, the sound transmitted across the illusion is more like the rushing water. "The Cauldron Lady sect has become more isolated, secretive, and violent. It has crossed my mind that both Silver Bringer and Cauldron Lady are corrupt or stolen aspects of Volcano, and that the Warrior may be the only shred of virtue left."
"On the brighter side of things, the Gem hordes are completely gone, so we have our farmlands back. We have no idea how to march upon the city of Light, as it is presently surrounded by a magical bubble of some kind, of which I have received mixed reports. Though the idea of an organized attack is laughable, being that we still have our domestic issues to sort out."
A brief pause. "In what ways have you...altered the world? What 'changes' have you noticed?" He rubs his left hand absently.
As Samen introduces himself, Gabe gives Dove a flamboyant bow. "Gabriel Izalith at your service. I've recently taken the moniker 'Freemind' as well." With a grin, he waits patiently as Samen explains the situation. Answering Dove's question, "You wouldn't have noticed any drakes around have you? That's one of the changes. Part of Abnaki's transformation for a time was speaking things into being. That might have been a combination of things though. Our time at the library was... odd."
"I don't want to give away the secrets of Uluru, but as Gabe said, it was odd. The Tribe of Peace is alive and well. Probably better unified than Hearth, come to mention it. The quiet elders have settled down and they're setting their eyes on Light as well. We were on our way there as an advance scouting party when we were interrupted by a creature of literal nightmare. I believe we defeated it, but ended up banished to the Cauldron Lady's front porch for our troubles. It was a narrow thing to escape, and vexingly, escape seems to have brought us back here.
We really should be getting back to my brother, but I figured that since we're here, we might as well make you a report and bring him any intel you might have. You see, one of the tricks I picked up from the library was the ability to take a small group across long distances quickly.
How is Hearth's quiet elder?"
Dove is quiet for a moment, contemplating the many things you have said, and the many reports meandering through his mind. "The Quiet Elder is...unlucky. I apologize for the imprecise word, but since the Fey were made into bland plants under the assault of Moon, most oreads treat it as cursed rather than blessed. The oread population still lives mostly in the Stems, but the majority avoid the Elder itself. Only Dowanhowee and a few other care-takers truly live there."
Twirling one of his rings absently, Dove then says, "Before you head out of town to Tribes of Peace and Breathless Valleys, I am wondering if you could do me one kindness. The civil war I alluded to...it has some nasty players hiding in the bowels of the Temple. The place is cursed against other faiths--Warrior, Witch, Father--but not against 'humans' and other unknowns. I am trying to put together a strong team that can bypass these traps and put an end to the strife within the Temple. Are you interested in helping?"
"I'm sure that odd barrier will still be there once we're done with this errand. And giving Wamblee time to secure the tribes' unification can only be a good thing. I don't see why we can't help out..." Gabe shrugs. Anything to avoid more dream nonsense for now.