One after another, the ringbearers each took a sheet of paper and began to note down every single arcane symbol on the section of wall that professor Lockley directed them to. For Maynard, it was a slow process, but a less arduous one than he was expecting. He did not think of himself as a good artist, in fact when it came to his drawing abilities he would barely even call himself passable, but something about what had been done to him when he got grabbed by the powers behind Kai had caused his fine motor control to increase dramatically. His sketching speed was only surpassed by Tommy, which unfortunately still left him in the shadows with regards to the professor.
Somehow I don’t think I’ll be completing the C rank task any time soon… As Maynard continued to draw page after page of text, he glanced back at his mission tasks and began to wonder about them. His primary task was a must, but he had no real clue to what the ore actually looked like, and as for his secondary tasks, some seemed impossible to complete, some seemed insanely easy, and some seemed to be leading him in a direction that he did not wholly understand yet. He knew that there was some greater work going on behind the scenes, but nothing he had learned so far gave him any clues. Maynard was not in a position to take anything at face value, and even if he did, there was no real way of knowing what good that did for him. All he could do was continue to sketch the wall, and work out some way of completing as many of the tasks as he could in order to get home. The only thing that concerned him was his A rank task. The series of squares that omitted the actual task in question made him feel profoundly uncomfortable, as it left him with even more questions. It feels like all I have at the moment are questions that lead to more questions.
One after the other, the group finished drawing. Professor Lockley collected up the images, spare paper, and pencils before turning back to the door. He leaned in and looked at the chains made of purple metal before taking hold of a link and shaking it. There was a crackling sound as the metal chain began collapsing under its own weight, and aged chunks of purple iron began raining down around them. Lockley and Tommy skittered backwards as the doors began eking outwards. A gust of fetid air and an ominous violet light slithered out of the doorway, leaving Maynard uncomfortable with what was beyond the ancient doorway – and from the faces of his current companions he could tell that he was not on his own. There was something incredibly unsettling about the entire area, and while Maynard had been the first to notice it, everyone else was beginning to as well.
Pre-empting the rest of the group, Adam walked over to the door and pulled it fully open, revealing a long hallway with luminescent stones affixed above doorways, which in turn sat between intricately carved pillars, seemingly replicating the patterns that decorated the outer doorway. There was a thin layer of dust that lined the floor, slightly obscuring large runic marks that were scored into the pathway. Writing was everywhere, and this began to set off alarm bells in the back of Maynard’s head. Turning to Lockley, he asked, “Professor, this is reminding me of what I read about the Egyptian excavations. Do you think this might be a tomb?”
“That’s a good point, young man,” Lockley replied, “This does have some of the same hallmarks as what were recorded in Petrie’s expedition, but the pictographs are not similar in any way. You might have pointed out something important though. I’ll keep it in mind for when I do the write up and try to decode the text, but for now we should explore and see what’s within. Remember, this crypt is ancient, so the roof may not be very stable. Be wary of cave ins, and if you find anything within you should record it before you remove it”.
The group made their way into the crypt and carefully began approaching the doorways in turn. Trusting his luck, Maynard picked the first number that popped into his head, four, and moved to the fourth doorway on the left. He glanced at the other members of his expedition group as they stared at the doorways before them. Callum and Philippe were nervous, but Lockley, Adam and Tommy all wore expressions of extreme excitement. For Lockley, that made sense – this was at least partially his life’s work, but for the ringbearers it did not. The hair on the back of Maynards neck stood on end as he began pushing his doorway open. He was not sure what he could expect beyond the door, maybe it would be a trap or a monster, but what he did know was that if there was anything valuable he would be loathed to share it with Adam.
As the doorway was breached, there was a snapping sound, followed by five more in quick succession. The doors swung apart and revealed an even gloomier room than the hallway it was connected to. The room was plain, without any of the intricacies that lined the walls outside. There were no pillars, no markings, and no luminescent stones – instead, there was a crude pillar that jutted out of the ground in the heart of the room with a single lump of a ruddy iron-like rock on it. The rock was unremarkable, but Maynard felt an almost instinctive attraction to it. This was what he was here for. As long as he could keep hold of that, he would be able to pass his main quest with flying colours.
Taking a quick look around the room, he let out the deep breath of air that he had been holding in since he entered the odd crypt and made his way in. He trusted his instincts, and walked towards the plinth, picking up the deceptively light rock that was the same size as his chest. With a thought, the rock disappeared into Maynard’s inventory and he turned to leave. I need to convince them there was an empty plinth in this room, he thought to himself, There’s no way I’m sharing this with Adam, whatever it’s used for.
As he walked back into the hall, he made eye contact with Tommy, who nodded at him with a grin. In response, Maynard shrugged and sighed before thinking of another number and opening the fifth door on the right. He heard that snapping sound once more, the archaic creak, and the puff of fetid air as he opened a room that nobody had stepped into for generations. The door creaked open and Maynard could not help but feel nervous, the first door had been helpful to him, but was in general a disappointment.
On the plinth in the middle of the room was a pale white metal disk with a ruddy hand-print placed on its heart. Maynard walked to the plinth and picked the disk up, flipping it over and revealing handles on the underside. As he held the object at arms length, he tilted it slightly and whispered, “A shield…” With a smile, he thought if I can’t attack people much, then I can keep myself alive with this. Similar to the chunk of ore, Maynard threw the shield into his inventory. Instinctively he could tell that nothing else would fit inside, but he had an excuse. If pressed he would simply pull out the shield to show them he had found something, but he would insist that the first room was empty.
Before he stepped back into the hallway, Maynard took a moment to analyse the room he was in. It was sparse, like the first, but as the door had not opened entirely he was able to see the ominous patterning on its back. Unlike the clean, crisp runes that wrapped around the hallway and the outer wall of the crypt, these symbols leaked with malice. They were just as illegible as the runes in the hallway, but they gave off a faint, light that made Maynard feel sick. He swallowed and turned away from the symbols as he found them too uncomfortable to look at. His head pulsed and he quickly moved to open the doors further and cover them up. As he did so, however, he called out, “Professor? Have you seen the markings on the back of the doors? I can’t help but feel that they’re rather unsettling”.
“Hm?” Lockley replied from the hallway, “Markings on the back of the doors? I failed to notice any in the room I looked at..” Returning to the hallway, Maynard watched as Lockley went back into the room he had just opened, and looked on the back of the door. “Ah! I see what you mean, but I seem to be developing a migraine. Would someone mind noting that down for me? I think I need a moment to sit down”.
The group congregated around the professor as he sat on the floor, nursing his skull while drinking from a hip flask. As Tommy noted down the symbols as best he could on paper, Maynard opened up his status page and swallowed at the 97 that sat in his sanity score. He moved back to the group and tapped Adam on the shoulder, motioning for them to move away from the rest.
