Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li - Brian Pratt [79]
As they move through the catacomb, Miko begins relaxing. He doesn’t lose his nervousness, but the panic he originally felt upon entering has long since subsided.
The passage they’re following abruptly ends again, so they again turn back. Coming to the juncture of passages, they turn right.
They follow this passage down past six chambers until it suddenly ends at a crude stairway going up. “This is encouraging,” James says as he begins to ascend the stairs.
“I hope it leads out,” Miko says from behind him.
“Me too,” agrees James.
Coming to the top of the stairs, they enter a small room, with more biers of the dead. This room looks to be constructed slightly better than what they saw down below. Where the area below had looked to have been just dug out of the earth, here it looks more constructed. The walls are more uniform, though still consisting of dirt and earth.
The biers here aren’t just dug out of the walls. Instead, some are lined with linen and wood. The dead here looks to have been better preserved than those below.
“This area looks newer than the other,” observes Jiron.
“Yeah,” agrees James. He moves through the chamber to the opposite side where a doorway leads to a connecting hallway. The hallway is wider and slightly higher than its counterpart below. “We may be getting closer to the exit,” he announces.
“That would be wonderful,” he hears Miko exclaim behind him. He can’t help but smile at him.
Moving along the hallway, they pass more chambers. These contain more gold and other valuables for the dead. In one, he sees gripped in a corpse’s hands that are crossed upon its chest, a finely wrought golden chalice. The Holy Grail? He smiles at the thought. I doubt it!
Continuing on, they come to where the hallway they’ve been following intersects another. Now faced with three choices, they pause a moment.
“Which way?” he asks, glancing back to his friends.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jiron says.
So James turns again to the right and follows the hallway. After passing by several chambers, it opens up onto a large chamber, the largest they’ve yet seen.
A large sarcophagus rests in the center of the chamber and a chest sits at the foot of it. He moves into the chamber to inspect it more closely.
“What are you doing?” asks Miko from where he stopped at the entrance.
“Just taking a better look?” he replies.
“Why?” he asks. “Let’s get out of here!”
“Just a moment,” James replies. He moves to the sarcophagus and holds the orb over it as he examines the artwork. His eyes are drawn to the chest and he really wants to open it. If this had been a role playing game, he’d not even had hesitated. But he dares not risk it, he remembers the last time they opened a chest and the results.
The room itself is fairly unadorned, a lone tapestry which has long since fallen to rot hangs on one of the walls.
His curiosity satisfied, he leaves the room and they move back to the juncture. Turning again to the right he follows the hallway down past burial chambers until it ends at a stone door set in the wall.
He gasps when he sees what is upon the door. The Star of Morcyth. “This must be a burial chamber for a priest of Morcyth,” he says. Taking out the medallion, he puts it into the recess of the Star on the door and the door begins to open.
Before he replaces the medallion back within his shirt, he notices a subtle glow emanating from it. He shows it to the others. “Never saw it do this before,” he says.
“Maybe it’s like back when we were trapped in the place with the skull pyramids,” suggests Miko.
“Perhaps,” James agrees, “but I’ve yet to encounter anything bearing the Star of Morcyth to be harmful.”
He moves through the doorway, holding the medallion out before him and enters a large chamber. A single sarcophagus rests upon a stand in the center of the room, the Star of Morcyth engraved upon the top.
The medallion flashes in his hand and the room seems to