"Gyleon?"
"Come on, Gyleon, now's not the time for jests," repeated Helmund as he staggered through the morning fog. "Where'd you wander off to... Gyleon?!"
The dwarf's boots crunched along the gravel trail, and instinctively he reached for his axe at his side, freeing it from its leather loop and brandishing it aloft beside his round iron shield. Gyleon had said he was out taking a piss, and should by all means have returned to the patrol by now. Helmund muttered a handful of choice curses beneath his breath, hoping his companion had not wound up with a spear in his back with his trousers down.
This cursed fog was making it no easier for Helmund to look, and he was forced to spend just as much time minding his footing as he was actively searching for his fellow guardsman. He hated the fog almost as much as he hated Gyleon for forcing him off the safety of the path and into the woods beyond.
"Gyleon!" He cried out once more. "You best make yourself known, or else I'll-"
A horn blast broke through the veil of fog. Helmund froze, head swiveling about to the source of the noise to his left. Another blast.
Bandits, Maud's men, he thought, urging his stunted legs into a jog, realizing that perhaps Gyleon
had met his end with his trousers about his ankles with a spear between his ribs.
A third. No, no - clearly the rest of the men on patrol had made a mistake. Three blasts meant
others had been spotted. They rarely ventured this far into the mountains without being spotted, and never in great numbers. A rustling in the trees elicited a yelp and a sharp turn to face from Helmund, only for a bird to flutter out and take to the skies with a stick clutched in its beak.
Helmund made his way back to the trail and turned back in the direction of town, jogging along as fast as he could. His heart thrummed frantically in his chest, and he awaited for the sounds of more horns or the distant clanging of steel upon steel to signify that either the fighting was over or had just begun. None came.
The dwarf jolted to a halt as the wind began to rustle from the north, carrying with it the scent of sulfur and iron. He to face the wind, axe in hand as he shuffled backwards. The Hollows was still a ways off from where his patrol had been sent, and the scent was not playing tricks on him he knew then he would not make it home without a fight. The wind stilled, and Helmund shuddered, feeling the air begin to grow warm around him. Was it his nerves? Or were they upon him?
"Show yourself," he barked, still continuing to backtrack in the direction of the Hollows. "Face me, you cowardly shits!"
The first one emerged from the fog on feet as silent as night, casting a gaudy red glow that seemed to bounce and dance about the fog around it. Its sword raised and fell with a casual ease, sinking into the dwarf's shield with a hideous screech the sent gooseflesh shooting up Helmund's arms. Its sword slid free and again it swung, its wielder seemingly unfocused and disinterested in the combatant before it. Again, Helmund's shield stopped the blow and again the sword retracted from it as if it were nothing more than cheesecloth.
Then came the second one a few paces off from where the first had emerged. Then the third. The fourth. They loomed about the battle, watching as the first chipped away at the dwarf's shield and sent him staggering back blow after blow. Before long, the dwarf's shield was in tatters and had been discarded on the ground. With no other option, Helmund let loose a loud warcry and lunged at the first, axe flashing in the red glow of the battlefield. The first shifted aside, letting the axe slice naught but the fog it had occupied just a second before, and its blade slashed through the air, severing the dwarf's arm. The smell of burned flesh joined that of sulfur as Helmund howled in agony, collapsing to his knees as the first let loose a sound akin to a laughing fire. One more slash, and it was done, the dwarf's head toppling to the ground below...
"Aye, so that'd be Ormund's ghost, wouldn't it, then?" Nathyen said with a bark of laughter utterly bereft of humor. "What'd you see down that way?"
That question he aimed at Oryn, leaving Niowyn and Aria to recollect themselves. Rather, for Aria to recollect herself - Niowyn, in her eccentric manner of calm, had managed to spare the girl the worst of whatever dangers lurked down the hall. Only, now that Oyrn had encountered whatever strange supernatural magics lurked throughout the tomb, Nathyen was left feeling exposed and uncertain about what to do next.
"You manage to find anything down that hall?" He asked, cocking his head up and to the left as he examined the warrior, who stood a good head taller than the locksmith.
Oryn watched Niowyn and Aria as they stood, one of them more affected by the situation than the other. He straightened, calmed his breathing and cleared his throat. How annoying it was, that Niowyn always seemed so on top of things. Well, not always. Back in the library, she'd been in a sorry state but that had been because she had to spend all her might to save his worthless skin. Oryn looked from Niowyn to Aria and back and gave a laugh that came out more like a grunt. Good thing that Niowyn had been the one to bring Aria back.
"Hm? Yes, I suppose it would." Oryn nodded, hands at his sides. He moved his feet in the water. He hated having wet feet. "Whispers, floating lights and tombs. A lot of tombs." He was looking at Nathyen with a half smile, almost as if he was trying to figure out if the locksmith was up for another trip down that corridor. "There are markings… Runes above the doors to the tombs. And I've studied far too little to make out the meaning. I hope we have more than one
bookworm in our little company." Oryn glanced at Niowyn and then fixed his eyes back on Nathyen.
"Why's it when it's old letters in another language we go about callin' 'em runes like they're something fanciful?" Nathyen huffed, nodding to himself. "Right then, let's take a look, since there's no way in the Else I'm going to be able to crack that main door by myself."
Nathyen and Oryn plodded through the watery mire, and as they cleared the central chamber and touched down on the relatively drier stone floor of the hallway Oryn had taken earlier, Nathyen could begin to hear the voices, too. He recalled Niowyn's earlier warning and did his best to cast them aside, but even as he remained fixated on the task at hand he found himself drifting about aimlessly only to be guided back on-track by a surprisingly gentle nudge from Oryn. Oryn led Nathyen to the doorways he had described, and the locksmith stood before them, squinting as he did his best to decipher them while simultaneously ignoring the teasing and urging of the lights and voices to the peripheries of his senses.
"Looks like they're names of various thanes, some of 'em are pretty well-known from after Ormund's time." Nathyen muttered, just barely audible to Oryn. "I wager there's treasure inside, and might be even that elf friend of his is locked around down here somewhere. What'ya say we try and crack one of these open, 'eh?"
Wondering just what he was going to gather from staring at the strange symbols, Oryn stood next to Nathyen, glancing around and doing his best to ignore the voices that clearly affected them both.
"Is everyone a scholar around here?" Oryn asked, feeling thick as a brick wall. "I didn't know you could read rune-" He trailed off, nodded toward the letters above the door and a boyish grin found its way onto his face. "That." The whispers grew louder and more distracting and he clenched his jaw as he tried to ignore them. There was a moment of silence between them before Oryn spoke again.
"Yes, let's do that." He sheathed his sword, rolled his shoulder and stepped toward the door they had paused in front of. As long as they did something to distract from the voices. The whispers were like a nagging at the back of his mind. Standing still, not saying anything was maddening. Oryn then approached the door slowly, being cautious to not trip any alarms. Given the nature of the place and the legends and the magic surrounding it, he would not be surprised if whispering, floating orbs were not the only trap waiting.
"I can't read much," Nathyen admitted. "I was a paige for a scholar in the Shroud for some time to raise coin, picked up a bit of old dwarvish - it's how I found the maps of Gol Badhir."
Nathyen paused then, looking a bit sheepish as he fumbled for his tools to open the door to the closest tomb.
"Pilfered the maps, really. See, I wasn't a good map-scriber, so I had no choice. Not that I think you particularly care how I justify it to myself, huh?"
His hands worked with the lock and his tools, and a moment later they clicked. Satisfied, Nathyen gripped the side of the door and heaved it sideways. Much like the door to the watchtower held by Maud had, this door swung into the wall and out of sight. Inside was an elaborately carved stone plinth carved in the shape of a snarling drake enveloping a hammer, a red ruby in its head. Behind the plinth rested a stone coffin that came roughly to Nathyen's hip.
"This is one of Ormund's, I think," he said, pointing out the plinth. "Looks like we're the first ones to take a look in quite a while judging by the dust."
He stood in silence, watching the locksmith work. It was delicate work, picking a lock. But handy, he realized. On several occasions in his past, Oryn could have used the skills Nathyen possessed. When he succeeded and heaved the door open, Oryn stepped toward him. There was always something fascinating, watching someone work, who was good at what they did.
Oryn had deliberately avoided answering Nathyen to begin with. He was absolutely right. He didn't care one bit how he justified it. He didn't care he pilfered the maps. Nathyen didn't seem like such a bad man. When Oryn passed him, he reached out and gave him a solid pat on the shoulder before he focused his attention on the open tomb before them. "Fortune favours the bold, some say." Oryn said, glancing sideways at Nathyen.
"I think you're right." He stopped when he was six feet into the room, ears listening for any noise that might alert them to danger. But it was hard. The voices were quieter now but just enough of a nuisance to not let him focus entirely on the silence. Oryn eyed the plinth and the red ruby. "Did the dwarves uphold the custom of burying their thanes with lots of valuables?" Oryn looked back at Nathyen and smirked, then nodding toward the stone coffin in the room.
"Dwarves were a greedy lot - they tended to keep the better parts of their treasures with them," Nathyen confirmed.
He strode to opposite the coffin and rested two hands along its lip. He shuddered, feeling cobwebs and centuries of dust coat his fingers as he wrapped his fingers beneath the lid and shifted it. With a hideous, almost damp, grinding of cobweb-mired stone upon cobweb-mired stone the lid began to budge. Nathyen shifted his weight and braced his feet along the ground, heaving with all his might until the lid clattered to the ground. Inside was an iron sarcophagus lined with handfuls of precious metals, jewels, and a small war axe and shield.
No sooner than the dust cloud formed by the shifting stone had settled and the contents of the coffin had been revealed did the voices intensify, seeming to emanate from the treasures inside. Nathyen clutched his temple with one hand and steadied himself along the coffin with the other as the voices drowned out all else. The voices reached their peak in a hideous, agonized screech that seemed to echo not just through Nathyen's head but the halls of the tomb itself before the voices ceased entirely.
"Elvish magic," he spluttered as the voices subsided. "Glad there aren't any living dwarves to come chase us after that."
His sword lay on the ground, but he had not heard the sound of steel against stone. Oryn had been clutching his own head, having been overwhelmed by the voices. He hadn't thought they could get more invasive and distracting, but it had been as if the whispers and eventual screams had filled all of his mind.
Shaking his head, he let out a sharp breath, picked up his sword and sheathed it again. He approached the coffin once more, leaning to get a good view of what lay inside. "I won't lie to you…" Oryn said, rapping a knuckle against the iron coffin. "I'm getting pretty tired of Elvish magic." Only then did he stop grinding his teeth. He was left with the feeling that magical, whispering voices wouldn't be the greatest enemy they'd face in the bowels of Gol Badhir.
Reaching into the stone coffin, Oryn traced a finger over the jewels and metals. "To think that this dwarf once called this place home." Oryn paused, tilted his head and cleared his throat. "Tomb such as this is more than will be done for any of us." He said after a pause. "But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves while we're alive, and seeing as he-" Oryn knocked the iron sarcophagus again and raised his eyebrow. "-Won't be needing them, we might as well relieve him of his riches and put them to good use."
"A man after my own heart," Nathyen jested, fetching a handful of coins and jewels and stuffing them in his pack as Oryn did the same.
The axe they left - upon further inspection, it was nothing more than plain steel. Satisfied with their looting, the pair ventured back out into the hall to the all-too-familiar hushed whispers of the voices and the flickering of the lights once more. They went from tomb to tomb, entering those that they could and leaving those too blocked-off or whose locks were too corroded or difficult for Nathyen's skills to crack. When Niowyn and Aria came by to explore what had caused the shrieking, Nathyen and Oryn had explained what had transpired but it seemed that, for the time being, their encounter with the shrill-pitched elven magic was short-lived.
In all, they managed to fetch a handful of Volcite steel weapons and enough gold to live in lavish comfort for at least a year, if not more. Safely transporting it back to the Hollows would be another matter entirely, and Nathyen had lurking suspicions that Maud would lay claim to a portion of the gold for the "opportunity", but for now his curiosity of the last tomb in the hall held was more than enough to stay any doubts. Though he could barely make out the script over the tomb's door, that only confirmed more who lay beyond it.
"Aye, this one's the bastard's," Nathyen spat. "This one's the elf's."
When Nathyen went to try the lock, he grabbed on to the peripheries of the door's keyhole and winced as it flared white-hot. He yelped and withdrew his fingers, which had already begun to blister from contact with the hot metal. It shone cherry red in the aftermath of whatever spell Nathyen had triggered, and the locksmith let out a string of choice curses as he grimaced and propped his elbows against each side of the keyhole, careful not to touch the exposed metal as he worked at the lock with his tools. It was painful, slow work and every so often he would have to stop and recover as inevitably he slipped and burned himself further on the lock.
Minutes passed before it was done. Satisfied, Nathyen stood back to admire the door, glancing over to the door - lined in metal - and back to Oryn.
"Well." He said with a grunt. "Looks like we'll have to get a bit creative in opening it."
Studying the door, he tilted his head. Then he looked around. There was nothing in the corridor aside from odd pieces of debris, dust, water and the worn craftsmanship of the dwarves. Oryn sighed, unsure of how to proceed. His eyes wandered the hallway, landed on Nathyen and his burned hands and then to the door. He sighed.
"Creativity…" Oryn mumbled. "Not my strong suit."
He patted Nathyen's shoulder again, taking a few steps back, increasing the distance between himself and the door. Once Nathyen had joined him he shrugged. He watched the locksmith for a moment, giving him ample opportunity to come up with a better suggestion, but as none was given, he took that as silent agreement. Chuckling, Oryn counted down from three.
The two of them set into a run, covering the distance to the magic door in short order and ramming their shoulders against it roughly at the same time. Timing didn't seem to matter, however, as the door gave way and opened on creaking hinges before them. Oryn felt the immense heat against the fabric of his armor, but managed to shift and roll away before he was burned. It did, however, cause him to lose his balance and crash onto the floor where he lay for only a few seconds before he shook his head and looked around.
Nathyen shifted to his feet from where he had tumbled alongside Oryn and brushed the dust off from his trousers and cloak, resisting the urge to quip about the ridiculousness of two men ramming through an aged doorway in a dwarven crypt. This room was different from the others - the door was on hinges, for starters. But more than that, it felt alive. The air was crisp, the walls lined in pleasant-smelling moss that reminded Nathyen of days spent wandering the forests around the Shroud.
He shuddered at the gravity of the situation. Here they were, standing before the remains of an actual elf embalmed in a tomb of amber and fringed with gold and interlocked vines. Nathyen reverently laid a hand upon the tomb, which was cool and glossy smooth to the touch: not a trace of dust lingered here. His eyes ran the length of the tomb to a threaded loop of vines in the center of the mossy wall opposite the doorway. Wrapped in a cluster of aged, brittle vines was a small keystone carved into an octangular shape and carved with the mark or Ormund's house: a hammer and dragon, just like the first plinth in the first tomb.
Only as Nathyen cautiously approached the stone did he realize that, at least within this room, the voices had stopped. The same hue and shade of the flickering lights seemed to permeate from the stone, and after placing a delicate pinky to the stone to ensure it would not burn him, Nathyen plucked it from the wall and turned it over in his hands. Its back was angular, forming into a sharp point lined with spines and juts of rock that seemed to form in the pattern of a key unlike any Nathyen had seen.
"Here," he said, offering it to Oryn. "I've opened enough doors for the day, and I think that's for the important one. Besides."
He gestured to the door they had just barged through.
"You seem to be an expert."
Laughing, he took the stone and turned it over in his hands, as Nathyen had done. Theirs was not exactly the quiet approach. But from what he gathered, they were surrounded by dead things. He wasn't sure what the voices were. Oryn looked around, trying to figure out if the key belonged to a keyhole somewhere in that same chamber. He scanned the room, paced the stone floor for only a few minutes before he turned to face the coffin in the room.
"Hold up…" He said with a serious face, pointing at Nathyen. "What did you say back there?" Oryn raised an eyebrow, looked from Nathyen to the amber encasing and back. "Elf?" He then pointed to the coffin, feet automatically carrying him slowly toward whoever was laid to rest in the tomb. There wasn't a lock to be seen anywhere. Oryn pulled out his sword, the runes on the steel glowed white hot.
"What do you plan on doin' there?" Nathyen asked, an edge of nerves penetrating his voice. "I wouldn't slice it open if'n I were you, seems like a bad idea."
He paused, looking at Nathyen. His sword was hovering a few inches above the amber. There was an inner struggle clearly visible on Oryn's face.
"This might be the only chance I get to see an elf, in my life." He said, raising his eyebrows as he looked as the locksmith. But as true as that might be, there was still something staying his hand. Oryn paused, looking at the warped features of the elf through the amber encasing him. It was impossible to make out any facial features, but it was clear that there was someone - well-preserved - in the coffin.
"Ah…" He kicked the base of the coffin. "Plenty of ghosts are haunting me already, no need to add him to the list." Oryn sighed, still conflicted, but lowered his sword and put it back in its sheath. He desperately wanted to lay his eyes on an elf, but as interesting as that was, he didn't want some elvish spell hanging over his head for the rest of his life. And Oryn had experienced enough in the tombs of Gol Badhir already, to realize that that might actually be a possibility. "Let's get back to the others."
"Let's," Nathyen agreed, and the two exited the crypt and ventured back out into the hallway beyond.
The walk back to the main chamber was a short one, both Nathen and Oryn eager to be done with this nonsense of voices and strange tombs. Oryn held aloft the keystone gingerly, much to Nathyen's amusement - he seemed to carry it as if it were his own newborn babe. Once back in the flooded entryway to the tomb, Nathyen called over the others and began to approach Ormund's resting place. Water sloshed underfoot, growing deeper as they went along and the floor became less stable. By the time they had reached the base of the stairs leading up to the entrance of Ormund's tomb, the water was up to their knees.
Without pause they advanced up the stairs where seemingly the voices had ceased, as if deafened by the keystone clutched in Oryn's hands. Once at the top, Nathyen pointed out to Oryn the slot he had spied earlier and helped him jostle and coax the stone into place. It took four or five tries to get the ridges lined up on both the ends of the keystone and the slot it belonged to, but before long the stone had been secured. Oryn twisted the stone in its slot clockwise, and the doors began to grind into motion. Aged stone gears cracked and protested the motion after centuries of being left inert and the ground about them shook.
The doors halted abruptly, leaving a gap so narrow that even Nathyen had to slant sideways to squeeze through. He froze, then, mouth agape at the display before him. Gold littered the floor, only slightly darkened with age and exposure to air and water. Coins, bars, and jewelry all lay scattered about. Gemstones glittered in the light that crept in from the fungi in the flooded chamber. The walls sloped upward into arches about him, held aloft in their centers by gold cornerstones. In the middle of it all rested a large tomb, fringed with gold but mostly cast of iron that had decayed and degraded into a rusted, verdigris-covered mess.
And there, inlaid across the lid of the tomb, was Scarnesbane. Though Nathyen had no preconception of the hammer, this he knew was it - a polished head with an end about twice the size of a balled fist ended in a vicious-looking wedge meant to punch through armor. In the center of its head rested a brilliant red ruby etched with a snarling drake's head. Below, aged wrappings about the handle lay frayed and tattered in scraps of leather that hung off like tattered ribbons over a plain steel shaft. Scarnesbane was as long as a dwarf was tall, and would likely have stood to Nathyen's shoulder if placed upright next to him.
Almost reverently, Nathyen approached the hammer, drifting ahead of his companions. He gripped it tenderly, glancing about nervously for any remnants of the magic that had plagued them, before lifting it. Nathyen felt a surge tingle through his fingers and shoot up his arm as soon as he lifted the hammer, and the ruby began to pulse dimly as if sensing its wielder. The hammer was remarkably well-balanced, and it felt natural to even the untrained arm like Nathyen's.
The locksmith lingered there for a moment before acknowledging the others, voice shaking momentarily, still transfixed on the hammer before him.
"Let's get what we can, see if we can't find a few more Volcite weapons, and head back to Maud," he said. "With any luck, we'll be spending our riches in town come in under a fortnight..."
GM NOTES:
Mentioned IC:
@Pupperr @Elle Joyner @Steel @Jamaicanbobslayer @Morgan
Other:
RETURNING TO MAUD
With Scarnesbane in hand, the time has come to return to Maud and the Hollows! If you wish to have your character do something else in the meantime, or explore Gol Badhir more, then do so in your own posts during this round of posting. The end of this round of posts will see the group gather their belongings and head back to the watchtower Maud inhabits before venturing back to the Hollows proper - collabs and character interactions or reflections are encouraged before the action picks back up on the road!
INTERACTIVE ELEMENTS
Interactive elements in this section will be largely communicated on Discord and OOC - if you have a destination in mind, let me know and we will work out the trip there and what obstacles there are. You may feel free to push the story forward as you see fit, and if you have questions as to where challenges are or if something is permissible please let me know!
