Warsinger - Chapter 25

It took us a while to hack and blast our way through the doors. One of them lead to the ass-end of the Ful Algol. There were more dung beetle-like [Guardian Drones] here, frozen in the moment that their controller had died. Some of them were halfway through pushing clumps of shit cement into position, back legs resting up on their payloads. There was approximately a ton of balled up detritus in the huge sewer channel that opened up into a filtering pool. Foul liquid sprayed out through the cracks in the lumpy mass, which gurgled and rumbled like the stomach of a green recruit after his first meal at the One Dollar Chinese Food shack outside JBLM.

"Okay, Tidbit. Are you ready for the worst experience of your entire life?" I braced like a sprinter, the Spear held low in one hand. "Because this, right here, is the collective pent-up asshole of Karhad. There is so much liquid shit backed up in this bitch that it could run for President AND the Senate in all thirty states and three provinces. It is going to be The Worst. Capital T, capital Worst."

“Ugh. Just get it over with.” Karalti clamped her hands over her nose, drew a deep breath, and nodded.

“Today’s monologue has been bought to you by Three-Day Old Leftover Tacos.” I steeled myself and dashed forward, lashing out with one final blow of Shattering Darkness. 

The congealed mass squealed as it froze solid, and I had barely changed course when the barrier exploded out into the tunnel and blasted a month's worth of raw sludge into the unsuspecting canal. Karalti and I fled the room ahead of a billowing cloud of noxious gas that pushed us out the door like the giant sulfurous hand of god. We stumbled to the next entrance in the cistern and ran down the stairs. It was comparatively unstinky down here, cool and dusty. About halfway down, we stopped and gratefully gulped lungfuls of fresh air, then continued down the winding narrow stairs. They fed out into a dry, barrel-shaped tunnel. There was no sewerage here, no rats, and no moss or fungi. Grates were set along the dusty walls. They all looked surprisingly new, and as I pulled up to one of them and held the torch up, I saw why.

"New steel." I tapped one with a nail. The metal was still shiny. "And are these... runes?"

"Yup." Karalti looked at them, weaving her head like a curious eagle. "Words of Power... they're almost the same as the ones I use for my Circle of Protection."

"They keep undead out?"

"Not just undead. Everything. But they don't work anymore. There's no mana in them." Karalti pressed forward, strumming the bars as she passed by. "The note said it the entry they wanted was the third grate from the end of the tunnel... oh."

"Oh what?" As I joined her where she'd stopped, the torchlight swept over the shrunken, dried out husk of the last looter. "Ohhh."

He - or she - had crumpled to the ground like a wet paper bag, the life sucked out of him by the shades. There was a sword and a broken [Guardian Drone] nearby. They hadn't broken the bluesteel bars - they'd used a mallet and chisel to break into the wall, carving a narrow tunnel into the shaft beyond. 

"I guess they disturbed the Tomb Guardian's drone units, and they activated the mothership," I said, toeing the broken artifact. "Do you think those words of power are old?"

"I don't think so? They look like the kind human mages would use." Karalti poked her head into the tunnel, then slid in with a little 'hup' of effort. "Push me in!"

I caught her feet, and helped to slide her into the shaft, then unequipped my armor and did the same thing. We commando crawled in, the tunnel sloping down. On the mini-map, I could see that we were now right underneath the University... and more specifically, right under the University's cathedral. After a few more minutes, we dropped out of the shaft into a huge, echoing chamber... and as we lit up a second torch, deja-vu slapped me upside the face so hard my eyes widened.

In the great circular chamber were a ring of dragon-sized biers. It was an almost perfect mirror of the chamber I had stumbled into in Taltos, the one under the grand old Cathedral of the Maker in the center of town. However, there was one notable difference. When I pulled up in front of one of the biers and cast the torch around, I saw it was empty.

“Oh my gods…” she passed by me in a daze, going to her knees in front of the black stone platform. She swept her hands over the dusty plaque, clearing it off. " Tanrilar tarafindan. The Haven of the Eggs. Hector... this is..."

"A burial chamber from the Aesari Wars period, yeah." Just like the collective tomb in Taltos, this place had the quiet, hallow hush of a church. It was hard to believe the sewers raged under the streets around it, but no matter how hard I strained to hear it, there were no sounds of water to be found. There was nothing but a thick, heavy silence.

“There were children buried here, Hector,” Karalti whispered, her voice trembling. "This was the tomb of the hatchlings killed when... when... "

"When what?" I knelt beside her, looping an arm around her narrow shoulders.

"When the Aesari massacred them. It... it says... that the Solonkratsu here shook off the geas binding them with the help of the demigoddess... wait, that can't be right." Karalti sniffed, bending down until her nose almost touched the stone. "The Demigoddess Taltas, the royal daughter of Khors?"

"Taltas? Like... Taltos?" I blinked. I knew that the capital of Vlachia was named for the theoretical demi-god son of Khors, one of the Nine and the patron deity of the country. "You sure that says 'daughter'?"

"Yup. And the word they use, kralis, is only used to describe queen daughters in Solunkraati," Karalti said, nodding. "It's not used for boys, ever."

"Huh. Guess they're gonna have to make some changes to that big statue in the middle of the market plaza." I scratched my jaw, looking around. "There's a tomb just like this under Taltos. There should be chambers for humans here, too."

"I hope not." Karalti stood, swaying uneasily. 

We poked around the great tomb, and sure enough, there were radial flights of stairs that led to smaller catacombs. Some of them contained the graves of the beings called Tulaq - slender winged creatures a bit larger than a horse. Most of the graves were empty, and one had been preserved under glass. A trestle table sat nearby, spread with sheets of thin paper and sticks of charcoal.

"The scholars in the university must have been studying here," I said, holding the torch up to the walls. There were rows and rows of spiraling, ornate symbols painstakingly engraved into the brass paneling. "Can you read these?"

"Nuh uh." Karalti shook her head. "Weird language, though. It's full of Words."

"Language usually is."

"No, silly. Not words. WORDS." She uttered an exasperated sigh.

The human graves were at the end of the hallway, the bodies still mostly in place and intact. A faint musty smell permeated these rooms, the odor of flesh long turned to dust. We left it in peace, returning to the main hall and trying another corridor... but as I took my first step past the threshold, I felt - and heard - the air around me sigh and pull back toward the main chamber.

"Huh?" I stopped, looking back in the direction of the faint, icy cold draft.

Karalti chirped curiously. "What?"

"I thought I..." there was a whispering in the wind, the sound of words too soft to hear. The Mark of Matir chilled, and I found myself drawn back, angling for one specific branch of the tomb. As I walked, the hissing, tickling air built in intensity, stroking the back of my neck like cold fingers. When I stepped in, the breeze gusted and blew out the torch in my hand. And there, in the shadow of the door, I saw an even deeper darkness at the end of the hall. Matir’s star blazed like a black sun on the face of a round metal portal as thick as a bank vault door.

Karalti followed warily as I was drawn closer. When I was at arm's length, I reached out, and carefully placed my hand down on the door. As I did, eight other symbols flared to life, casting an opalescent glow across the floor. A white hourglass, a green heart with spirals in place of arteries, a blazing red hammer, a hexagon struck through with a sword... the symbols of all of the Nine.

"Hail, Herald," the air hissed. "Hail to you, Daughter of the Black God."

"Oooh..." Karalti shivered pleasurably. 

A pulse of energy rolled through the pit of my belly like of tequila. The symbols winked out, and the door soundlessly rolled back into the wall, opening into an undisturbed burial chamber bathed in warm golden light. I stepped in, awed. The sealed vault still smelled like incense, scents I was pretty sure were frankincense and myrrh. Magelights hovered patiently over a great planetary diorama, the center of which was golden globe of Archemi. Or... was it? As I got closer, I saw that the planet in the middle of the diorama was far too large, and contained no fewer than six continents. On one of rings orbiting the giant planet was a much smaller one with only two landforms. One was the easily-recognizable fortune-cookie shaped continent of Artana. The other was the Africa-like continent of Daun.

"Holy shit. That's Erruku!" I gently spun the big golden globe. As it rotated, the little Archemi globe began to move around it, along with several other, even smaller planets. "Erruku has continents?"

Karalti was in as much awe as I was, trying to figure out what she was seeing. "But… Erruku is the moon. Nothing lives there."

"That we know of." The enormous moon that lit Archemi's skies was, indeed, nothing but a swirling yellow circle in the sky.

The diorama was only one of many treasures in this room. Karalti broke away to poke through it all while I advanced to the inner chamber. This place was very different to simple, austere tomb I had been teleported to under Taltos. It was as grand as anything ever dug out of Ancient Egypt. There was furniture and pottery decorated in gold leaf, statues made of bronze so old it had turned black, artificed machines that had fallen apart into their fragile components. The walls were covered in engraved tablets written in a curving right-to-left script I didn’t know. All of the letters were connected by a long line across the top of each word. I can’t imagine how value this would be to the University.

At the end of the inner chamber was an even smaller one. It contained a sarcophagus that looked to be made of solid gold. Graceful Tulaq were molded onto the corners, the tips of their wings touching. The walls and ceiling were painted like the walls of an Egyptian tomb, showing a sequence of images all featuring the same man. He was very tall, with a huge red beard that fell to his waist. He dressed in blue robes, a tool belt, and golden gauntlets. In some scenes, he praised a great burly effigy of Khors in front of a huge volcanic forge. In others, he oversaw teams of humans and Mercurions in the construction of a single huge hand, or a giant scimitar as long as ten people. But in the central image, the one directly behind the head of the sarcophagus, he was not featured at all. The image was of a Warsinger. And not just any Warsinger – THE Warsinger. The one that I had seen when the Ruby of Boundless Strength bonded itself to the Spear of Nine Spheres.