While there’s no longer an elemental in front of her, Briar‘s body is so tense she does not think she could let go of her dagger if she tried. She rushes back over towards the recently dropped Edd and touches him with another heal.
Realizing he's standing, Edrukk takes a mighty swing at the wind warrior. Glory seems almost surprised as well, too disoriented by Kata's spell to react in time, and--
"Tenacity, let me live!" These final words of the poem echo as Kata brings it to a terrible crescendo, unleashing a silent scream that only the wind warrior and herself can hear, high in timbre and head-splitting in pitch, a bone-shaking sonic scream stretching between them.
The plates of the wind warrior's 'boots' screech and crack as it is pushed back by the sheer force of Kata's spell. It raises both swords, as if to counter the scream with its own cacophony, but can't seem to manage the effort. Its armor rattles loudly.
Kata, though, has overspent herself and reopened her wounds. She falls to the ground, bleeding profusely.
Seeing her foe on its last legs, Venelle reaches for her quiver in a seasoned, trained motion, but blinks in astonishment when her fingertips close on nothing. "Oh. Snakes." She races over to where her shortsword lies and snatches it up from the ground.
Now clutching the ravid maple, Seeker flies to Alais and attempts to heal the elf's wounds. The wand sparks and crackles threateningly in its talons and does not yet cooperate. "Bah! Stupid thing!"
Glory sways. Its china mail rattles. It seems dazed, disoriented, on the verge of collapse.
Broccan lunges at the remaining warrior swinging his fist as if intending to smash the crystal armor to powder.
The wind warrior manages to slip back, graceful even on on the brink of oblivion. Perhaps had it had the wits to remain over the abyss, it might have made it. But Broccan is hot on its heels, and as it pauses as if for breath on the edge of the platform, the brawler gives chase and slams his bulk into the creature. It is shattered, and its pieces fall down, down, down into the distant, endless nothing. They hear its distant pieces dully smash against the floor. The sounds echo... and are lost to the quiet.
The Chamber of Sighs is still. Venelle's pounding footsteps break the silence as she rushes to check on Kata.
Broccan looks around a moment to make sure none of the wind warrior creatures is re-forming to do battle again. Once assured that the field of battle is cleared of foes, he retraces his steps back across the bridge and to the other side to retrieve his dropped axe and then his dropped crossbow. He inspects each for damage, then stows them.
He makes his way back to the group, and sits down, legs out in front of him, leaning back on his arms.
"Tha'twas'eh day's work, eh?" he remarks to no one in particular.
"That was a day's work, eh?"
”Aye.” Concern clear on his face, the dwarf moves to Kata, then to Alais.
”T’ close, t’ close by a fur bit.”
With less pressure on the act, Seeker manages to get the ravid maple to cooperate. She jabs Alais with it, then flies it back to Briar--somewhat clumsily, owing to her wound--and perches on Briar's shoulder.
Alaïs’ eyes snap open to the accompaniment of a gasping breath as Seeker manages to heal her. It takes a moment for her reorient herself as she gazes up at the ceiling of the chamber, adrenaline still flooding her veins. With a desperate glance around her to make sure it’s safe to do so and a soft but expressive Elven curse, she lurches unsteadily to her feet, taking in the comparative stillness and the signs of the dénouement of the melee. It looks like…
And then it registers that Venelle is kneeling beside a fallen Kata, so even as she feels the last of her spell crying for release, Alaïs rushes over, hand fumbling in her pockets for the last of her transmuted berries.
“Here,” she says, ragged voice still a bit wet as she settles beside the pair and coaxes the tiny fruit down the elegist’s gullet.
While waiting to see if Kata will need more help right away, Alaïs resumes her examination of the scene. Based on where she last saw everyone…
It looks like Glory took quite a spill. Hmm! Who would have thought?
“Thank you, everyone,” she says quietly, looking over their wounds and trying to guess how bad things are and what the most reasonable course of action is now. She tries to round up her bravado again for the sake of morale, striking an odd balance between self-deprecation and whimsy. “I’m not sure I can promise that I’ve quite learned my lesson, but I’ll try to keep closer, going forward. And on that note, should we put our backs together, brace shields and shelter here overnight, or try to get back down and hope no one else suddenly gets interested in the cairn? I think I have some biscuits and water enough…”
“And probably enough to keep me out of trouble for a bit composing the tale of the battle!” she adds with surprising cheer. “With perhaps the addition of examining the last bit of these wonderful enspelled reliefs…”
Before she gets distracted again – and maybe she did take a harder blow to the head at some point, or when she fainted and collapsed – hanging on to her memorializing duties, she asks, with a languid gesture to indicate the sequence she’s reconstructing, “Am I reading this aright? Memory falls, then Shame, and finally Glory? How very fitting, I suppose.”
Venelle lets out a sigh of relief as the berry returns some color to Kata's cheeks. She straightens. "So... what now?"
”’s there anne’thin’else’n ‘ere, maybe down’air?” Broccan asks, nodding to
the chasm beneath the room.
”Is there anything else in here, maybe down there?”
Edrukk motions to the elven performer, "Le's not be 'asty, lad. She was learnin' some things, I wager, on the walls 'fore th' ghosts 'n armor showed up. Le's see what else she can learn before we go leapin' int' th' void below."
“Shall I get right to it?” Alaïs asks. She eyes up everyone’s state as she adds, “I’d love to help with bandages and such, as much as I can, but I’m afraid that, er, I’ve always been a bit squeamish and restless when it came down to brass tacks.”
With the least encouragement – though now with an occasional nervous glance to where the armoured elementals appeared – the elegant elven bard resumes her tour of the galleries.
“As bad as we had it, these seem to detail some poor souls caught up in proper wars,” she murmurs half to herself. “Featuring some of our friends from downstairs in very prominent positions.”
As battle seems to conclude, Briar looks around nervously, half-expecting that some new danger is going to pop out of nowhere and finish them off. She finally collapses to the ground, hyperventilating. ”What in the name of every hell was that about. Why’d those wind elemental knight things want to kills us so bad? We gonna have to fight more like that?” She listens to Alaïs’s explanations with a furrowed brow, trying to pare away any of her associate’s flourishes from the bare facts. ”Well, nobody’s dead, save them air fellows, so.” She stands up and begins brushing herself off. ”We’re quite spent after that one, I think, best to be careful how much more we push today. If at all.”
"Bu'why'were they 'ere, in'eh locked room? 'r they guard'n some'm?" Broccan asks.
"But why were they here, in a locked room? Were they guarding something?"
The carvers get up and race into the jungle as the ships draw near to shore.
At first, the battle appears to be close-fought. Then a vast shadow passes overhead. The cavaliers seem to shrink in fear as the magicians cheer.
Alais notices that the lizardfolk’s glyph is that of the Architect, and the talisman man’s glyph is that of the sarcophagus downstairs.
The image seems to zoom in on a scene atop the floating city, and you see the man with the bird mask looking down at the carnage, shoulders slumped in weariness. Atop a great hill almost level with the city, the talisman wielder from the sarcophagus is smiling, but his smile fades when the masked man looks down at him.
The masked figure transforms into a great wading bird, lifts off the ground, and flies away. The man stares after the bird, stunned.
He doesn’t see the arrow zooming for the back of his head.
"Bu'why'were they 'ere, in'eh locked room? 'r they guard'n some'm?" Broccan asks.
** spoiler omitted **
“I imagine so,” Alaïs calls back as she ambles over to where she was in the room before they were so rudely interrupted. “Certainly, they seemed particularly exercised with the idea that we were going to walk off with the plate.”
“Perhaps understandably, if we can extrapolate from this,” she muses as she examines the third relief. “It appears that they had to fight off of a full-scale invasion after all, but – perhaps – there was either a disagreement or strategy called for the disposition of forces such that whoever was memorialized here fought together, while their allies were stationed elsewhere?”
When she reaches the final relief, she utters a sigh as the spectacle of the great and terrible deeds of war sinks in. Even for those fighting in self-defence, the price to pay must leave so many broken hearts. “And so it ends. I hope they were able to find a just and lasting peace, at the last. And that when fate surprised them, it came more kindly to most than it did to our guide with the lanterns.”
Once she completes her circuit and takes up a position by the passageway back to the vicious, windy trap, Alaïs pauses. “Well, as Miss Vervain suggests, I think we might all benefit from a pause to let our lost blood build up again, as well as the energy we put into our spells. I doubt the family silver is going anywhere soon. Or whatever it is.”
Well, at least until she and her friends get to it, but that’s not the sort of thing one just comes right out and says so. Before she makes herself comfortable though, struck by a thought, Alaïs strikes an attitude in turn and recites, in formal, archaizing Taldane that makes her Elven accent more obvious,
“Marrucinus Asinius, thou dost not use
Thy left hand becomingly in caper and in cups,
Carrying off the linens of the more careless.
Dost think this witty? Poor fool, thou noddest!
Dost not believe me, that this is a foul trick
And quite inelegant? Therefore, expect
Three hundred hendecasyllables, but thou
Give back my kerchief…”
Kata listens to Alaïs' poem, her eyes closed, her head gently nodding here and there at various points in the skald's inflection.
"That was lovely, Alaïs, thank you."
Kata pauses, the room spins, and the elegist remembers she's still at death's door. "I would appreciate a rest myself. Honestly, I'm barely standing."
A new day arrives, though no sunlight touches the Chamber of Sighs. The pillar of wind at its center beckons towards the True Tomb.
"Was'sat wind blow'n up there'n th' middle be'fore?" Broccan asks everyone and no one in particular. "I dint notice'et while we were fightin'."
[b]"Was that window blowing up there in the middle before? I didn't notice it while we were fighting."{/b]
Kata listens to Alaïs' poem, her eyes closed, her head gently nodding here and there at various points in the skald's inflection.
"That was lovely, Alaïs, thank you."
Kata pauses, the room spins, and the elegist remembers she's still at death's door. "I would appreciate a rest myself. Honestly, I'm barely standing."
“Likewise, your poem was marvellous,” Alaïs says gratefully, her expression growing sombre for a moment. “And without it, it might have taken just that little bit too long for us to land a decisive blow…”
She gives herself a shake as if to dislodge the thought bodily, and tries to make herself comfortable against the nearest wall, calling forth a bit of magical light to read by and settling in with the spellbook liberated from Filge.
And then there’s the question of the Auran that seems to have taken root in her head. There was a fashion for elemental languages for a bit when she and her brothers were children, but unlike Ardarion and Ascyron, she didn’t stick with it, even less than Dirael. Maybe there’s something about the Cairn, or all of the mounds surrounding Diamond Lake generally, that has woken – now, for whatever reason – some ghosts that normally sleep deep, and not just her own.
That’s certainly not cheerful conversation, and unless any of the others are as bookishly enthusiastic as she is, the necromancer’s grimoire is not the sort of thing that lends itself to reading out loud for entertainment either, so Alaïs reluctantly settles into something a bit less sociable than she normally is.
Eventually, though, after even she can’t deny the call of the tummy, Alaïs rummages in her pack for her emergency supplies. There’s desperation biscuits – not as bad as they sound, but nothing to write home about either, the hard crackers only enlivened so much by almonds, sunflower seeds, and cranberries and raisins – some peppery venison jerky and more mysterious fruit leather, her waterskin, of course, and arguably even more so, a small bottle of lamentably indifferent wine. (Red, naturally. This vintage is particularly tannic and oak-y, but there is also just a merciful hint of sour cherry too.) One never knows when one will be caught somewhere without a decent supply, but there are very definite limits to what Alaïs considers an acceptable amount of roughing it, so she tries to be prepared, and if any day deserves a reward of a tipple, one like today does. She’s reluctant to leave the others long enough to go to town, especially with Kata in the state she’s in, but is willing to slip just out of the cairn to the berry brake she’s dabbled in before, this time taking longer to fill a helmet’s worth to share. And then, as the evening draws on in the cairn, she starts working on how she’ll tell the tale of their glorious battle.
"Was'sat wind blow'n up there'n th' middle be'fore?" Broccan asks everyone and no one in particular. "I dint notice'et while we were fightin'."
** spoiler omitted **
After taking a moment to enspell a handful of berries , just in case, and checking her armour one last time, Alaïs heads around back to the intact span leading to the centre of the room.
“I’m afraid I was rather distracted when our rudely overzealous guards appeared, so I didn’t notice if they flew down or up,” she adds, peering in both directions along the central well. She extends a cautious arm out over the chasm below and then into the edge of the pillar of wind, trying to get a sense for the currents at play.
And then she gets what might be a bad idea, to which she adds some lip-service to the idea of caution: “Do we still have that bit of rope?”
If that’s forthcoming, feeling a bit foolish, she grips it in her free hand after looping it a few times around her wrist, and then steps into the pillar, bracing herself in case she needs to resist a sudden gust intended to sweep her out into the depths below, listening for any more voices on the wind.
"'old on, 'ere! 'fore ye start yer latest death-defyin' stunt, le's be fer 'ealin' ye!"
"'m a bit cuttup still," Broccan replies. "I cou'use'eh bit'o heal'n."
"Was'sat wind blow'n up there'n th' middle be'fore?" Broccan asks everyone and no one in particular. "I dint notice'et while we were fightin'."
** spoiler omitted **
"Yes," Seeker says, head bobbing. "I can't tell the magic making it go, though."
She didn't seem to sleep last night, though she did slip out at one point for about an hour. She returned with a dead sparrow clutched in her talons and a beak stained purple with smeared blackberries, and devoured the sparrow almost as soon as she landed.
Venelle rises with a strenuous yawn. She finishes polishing and re-sharpening the arrows she recovered from the battlesite, a task she put off last night, and gratefully samples Alais's berries--after confirming these aren't the fermented kind. She brought a large watertight pouch of myrtle nut gruel, with honey and blackberries for sweetness, and shares this for those who didn't think to pack a breakfast. It's not heated, and a little excessively sweet, but it's quite filling.
Broccan looks around at his companions, many of whom are still badly injured, and flushes deeply.
"Should'eh kep'y'r mouth shut, ijit. You'ruh bit scratch'd up, but y'ain't dyin'..." he mutters to himself reproachfully under his breath.
"Never mind m'ask'n," Broccan says to Edruukk, not meeting his gaze.
"'old on, 'ere! 'fore ye start yer latest death-defyin' stunt, le's be fer 'ealin' ye!"
Alaïs glances down to Edrukk with a slightly startled expression that says, Oh, right.
“Fair enough, though I’d hope that there’s not anything else up? down? there inclined to cut us to ribbons, and if we need to run for it… You’re right, I’m sorry. Holding on to our spells when we’d have to move quickly wouldn’t help.”
Humming a thoughtful tune to herself, she calls upon her magic to speed up the process of knitting her wounds together, before turning to repeat the process for Broccan.
Kata moves slowly in the morning, her body bruised and broken from the previous day. She steeps a simple herbal tea, made from lavender and of course mint, and chews on a dry biscuit slathered with a raspberry jam.
"We're all a bit cutup, I'm afraid," Kata says, wincing as she drops to sit next to Venelle. The nut gruel, Kata remembers it from childhood visits: sweet and filling, and Kata's mouth waters.
Though still a bit scratched up, Seeker does not seek healing, instead watching as the others receive care. Her eyestalks flick towards the wind pillar every-so-often, and her impatience is evident as she hops about.
After he awakens and says his prayers to the Lord in Iron, Edrukk still looks a bit battered, but he's concerned about the health of the ladies in the party, too.
"We dinnae know what's a'ead. I don' like th' prospect o' goin' t' more danger damaged 's we 'r."
Though still a bit scratched up, Seeker does not seek healing, instead watching as the others receive care. Her eyestalks flick towards the wind pillar every-so-often, and her impatience is evident as she hops about.
The aberrant not-just-a-bird's restlessness is contagious. Alaïs listens a bit to see if there are any more voices on the wind, or if whatever started to manifest the day before to help her is still lingering, starting a mental conversation. <"Excuse me? Ah... old ones? Ancestors? Are you still ... listening?">
Nothing answers over the sound of the eerie wind, so she supposes whatever it is only works when she's rapt in performance and the peak of that ecstasy. For now, she calls upon less ephemeral magic and probes the moving pillar of air with her arcane senses in case there's some obvious trap at play.
It should be fine, right? The fight skirted around the thing yesterday, after all. While the last of the healing's being sorted out, Alaïs stretches her hand out again and tries to get a sense for what the wind is doing, encouraging it not to blow her in a dangerous direction with the same instinct she uses when she needs to make a tricky jump. If it doesn't want to blow her down, where might the wind want to take her?
Edrukk will use fervor on Kata and see how she is holding up.
Nodding in satisfaction that his god has seen fit to bless the elegist, he turns to Briar. "'ow 'r ye feelin', lass? 'm seein' a few wounds 'at should be tended t', 'm thinkin'."
Briar shakes her head. ”Thankee, but no. I already got it sorted. Had to learn how to take care of meself in my line a’ work.” She glances slyly at Seeker. Soon, she needs to corner that bird and find out what it knows.
"Wha'd'ya make'eh this wind, Ms. 'laïs?" Broccan asks, stepping up next to Alaïs as she contemplates the column of wind in the center of the walkways. "'f y'mean t' step'n'to't, I c'n go 'nstead."
"What do you make of this wind, Ms. Alaïs? If you mean to step into it, I can go instead."
A beautiful mural on the wall behind the sarcophagus depicts a grand floating city soaring high over a vast jungle. It is the city from the battle shown in the fourth gallery, though in this image it is at peace, alight with the colors of light, not war.
Runes are carved into the side of the dais in three distinct scripts--ancient forms of familiar languages, Varisian, Mwangi and Taldane. As one looks at them, though, the runes seem to shift like the galleries before, lines borrowing shapes and patterns from one another to form the words in the viewer's native tongue.
I, who longed to soar above the clouds yet wallowed within the bloody vanity of war, ask now only the smallest of respects. If your need is great and your cause is true, speak the name of the First King of Kho.
As she pokes about the pillar of moving air, Alaïs is pleasantly surprised to find that it provides something vanishingly rare in this cursed tomb, an uplifting, almost hopeful feeling.
It feels like it wants to be helpful, and whatever else is true, the cairn does seem to have awoken something latent in her blood that doesn’t seem particularly frightening yet. After all, it saved her during the tumble down the shaft before the howling face was deactivated.
So, she puts on a brave smile and thanks Broccan, but, “Thank you, good sir, but I couldn’t possibly ask that of you. The winds – and not just these right here – seem to like me, but if I’m not mistaken, feel free to follow directly.”
And without further ado, bracing herself for a rough landing just in case, Alaïs steps into the wind…
… and the next thing she knows, she is being lifted up, up, up. “Oh! Not to worry, I think it’ll be fiiiiiineee!” she calls, trying to be heard over the winds carrying her away, happily not down for a messy landing below.
After a heart-pounding few moments, she kicks out and is deposited lightly in another tomb chamber some uncertain distance above. Just in case, Alaïs draws her sword as she takes in the decorations, admiring the welcomely shifting inscription, and tries to sort out names and personalities from those she and her new friends have met in the cairn so far.
Broccan looks over his shoulder and says quickly before stepping into the air column, "Don' worry, I'm goin' with'er!"
He steps into the room above, and re-orients himself after the exhilarating, but brief sensation of flight.
”Ah got yer back, go on.”
He motions to the other ladies as he makes sure his weapons are securely fastened.
After sorting through her memories of the past few days, Alaïs steps up to the sarcophagus with a closer look, a blend of idle curiosity and respect for someone who’s paid the price all mortal flesh must jangling inside her.
She glances back to give Broccan an uneasy smile as she hears him make his way into the room. “It really is something, isn’t it?”
Turning back to the last resting place of Kho’s first king, she lets her shield hand rest briefly on the slab under his effigy as she nervously takes her breath and then asks, quietly, “Who were you, Zosiel?”
Head on a swivel, Kata looks for a place to tie a rope. If they have any rope.
"I will see," Seeker pipes up. She takes off into the air, flying in lazy spirals around the windshaft. "If they are dead, no need to risk ourselves."
She reaches the ceiling, high, high above everyone's heads, and pauses there a moment. For a moment, the only sound is the roaring of winds.
The curious parasite flies back down. "I hear their voices, though the wind makes it not easy. There is a chamber up there." She perches on Briar's shoulder and scratches at an eyestalk, a motion that is simultaneously birdlike and totally alien. "If it is a trap, it is a very good one, to include such clever illusions." Derision crackles from her words.