Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li - Brian Pratt [30]
He lies there, holding his side as best he can until Jiron approaches. Looking to him he says, “I knew I couldn’t hold on with one hand.”
“Sorry,” Jiron says as he kneels next to him. “Let me look at it.” Lifting his shirt, he sees scrapes going from just under his armpit to his waist. One cut looks deeper than the rest and is oozing blood, but it is already beginning to stop.
Putting the shirt back down, he says, “I don’t thing you’re going to bleed to death, but it’s going to hurt for a while.”
“Feels that way,” James says as he puts his hand back on the wound, continuing to apply pressure.
“Did you find anything?” asks Miko.
“There was a bronze plaque in the room up there,” he says, gesturing to the room. Grimacing from the pain, he gingerly puts his arm back down. “On it was a diagram showing the five pyramids and how they’re linked to the main one here.”
“And?” Jiron asks, urging him to continue.
“And, there may be another plaque, hopefully, that may tell us something else,” he explains to them.
“You’re in no shape to be searching for some plaque that may not even exist,” Miko says.
“No,” agrees Jiron, “but I am.” Getting up, he looks to James and asks, “Just what am I looking for?”
Shrugging, James says, “I don’t know, but you’ll probably know it when you find it.”
“Alright,” he says. Then to Miko, “Stay here and keep an eye on him until I get back.” When he sees him nod, he turns and hurries from the room.
James starts to get up and says, “Help me up, will you?” He reaches a hand to Miko who grabs his arm and helps him to his feet. Grimacing with pain as his side is stretched and pulled with the effort to stand, he finally gets to his feet. Then, as he stands there, he has Miko go over and retrieve his walking stick for him.
He takes the stick and begins to carefully move through the rubble choked room to the doorway leading outside the collapsed building. “Let’s move outside while we wait for his return,” he says.
Miko helps him along and once they’ve left the building, they find a block of fallen stone to sit on.
They’re not waiting long before Jiron returns in a hurry. The look on his face indicating he may have found something.
“You find it?” James asks.
“I think so,” he replies. “In a building over there,” he says as he points back the way he’d come. “I found a bronze plaque similar to the one you described.”
“What was on it?” James asks.
“I couldn’t really make it out,” he explains. “There were lots of lines and boxes, I’m not sure just what it was trying to show.”
Leaning heavily upon the staff, he gets up off the stone and says, “You better take me there.”
“Is it on the ground floor?” Miko asks, worried about James having to climb unstable stairs again.
Nodding, he says, “Yeah, it is.”
“Good!” Lending James a hand, Miko helps him as they follow Jiron over to where he’d found the plaque.
The building wherein it lies looks to have been but a single floored structure and still to be in fairly decent shape. Jiron leads them up three stairs to the entrance of the building where they enter through the doorway.
“It’s over here,” he says as he takes them through another doorway into an adjacent room.
When James enters the room, he immediately sees what Jiron was trying to describe. Having designed many dungeons for his role playing games, he instantly recognizes what he’s seeing. It’s a layered map of different levels.
“This is showing the layout of an underground complex,” he explains to them, as he steps up closer to the plaque. “Here,” James says, pointing to a set of squiggly lines, “this looks like it could be stairs leading down.”
“Does it show what’s in there?” Jiron asks, not able to see it for what it is.
Shaking his head, James says, “No, this is just a map of the layout, nothing more.” He turns his head to look at Jiron and says, “We’re going to need to get in there.”
“How?” he asks. “I found no entrance to a lower level