And then it started.
Bandaged corpses. Jackal-headed humanoids coming up out of a city that had, ten minutes earlier, felt like the most peaceful place I had ever stood.
I want to get the shape of it down while I still can. We pressed forward over a bridge — the bridges are the whole difficulty, they are choke points and everyone knows it including the things on the other side — and we were attacked from BEHIND for our trouble, which I feel is poor manners. I took one and hollered for help. I maintain that was the correct order of operations.
Four attacked at once, with some peeling off to the left, and a great deal of magic curse being thrown about the place. Toes, Nugget and Nora held the front. Silver, Rascal and Felix behind them. Rascal and Toes flanked left. Ariana and I stayed at middle back doing the work of keeping everyone upright, and afterwards the whole group bunched together to repair armour and heal, which I have learned to recognise as the shape of a fight that very nearly went a different way.
Then we SPLIT. Six went forward — Blue Feather, Toes and Silver leading with shields and swords, Rascal wandering off to flank right in the way he does, and myself and the other healer at middle back where I am most useful and least likely to be stepped on.
At the centre of it all is a stone ZIGGURAT. The central tomb of the necropolis, and — this is the phrase I was given and I am keeping it — it’s particular old.
Known to history. But NOT known to Vaelien.
I put my pen down when I heard that. Vaelien is the Woodsman. Vaelien has been about long enough that when HE has not heard of a thing, the thing is either older than he is or somebody hid it, and I asked which and did not get an answer, and I have circled the question and I intend to keep circling it.
And then a piece of mechanism that I made everyone stop for. The sarcophagi do not simply open. Priests have to lay down TRIGGERS to allow them to open at all.
Which means there was a profession. Which means there was a schedule. Which means that somewhere in the long quiet of this city, somebody was still coming to work.
And which raises the question I have written in the margin, circled twice, and then circled again: who is laying them NOW?
And then the DOOR. A great sealed thing with a padlock the size of my head. I reached into my bag — and I should like the record to reflect that this is what the bag is FOR — and produced my three-foot inflatable hammer. Lady Silver took it from me and knocked the door clean off its hinges.
I wish to be scrupulous about this, because I have already heard one version told badly: I supplied the hammer. She swung it. Those are entirely different contributions and I am perfectly delighted with mine.
Beyond the door, a tunnel. DOWN WE WENT.
I should note, for completeness and with some frustration, that the other group went a different way entirely — the more advanced among us, on the harder path, and I am told they may have faced Sand Kings. I was not there. I have asked for a full report from both of them. I am still waiting.
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