Jocasta pelted up the stairs ahead of Beren and Buri. She realized that she didn't even have a weapon, her knife having being lost sometime in the confrontation with the dragon. It was a mind boggling thought to realize that confronting a dragon wasn't even the most dangerous thing she had done today. She reached the door at the top of the stairs, a massive thing with carved lintels and began furiously scribbling sigils and wards on the floors and step with a stick of charcoal from one of her pouches. Battle magic wasn't her specialty but she knew a few spells that might be helpful.

"Time to go," Beren called as he and Buri carried the heavy stone slab up the stairs. It wasn't going to be enough to block the door vertically but laid sideways it would make a serviceable barricade. Jocasta finished the rune she was working on and was forced back into the room beyond the door as Beren and Buri laid the stone in place. She stepped forward and put both hands on it and spoke several words in a grating tongue that almost dislocated her jaw. The stone fused to the lintel and the floor, beyond the power of any number of gundarogs to pull free.

"Where did you learn that?!" Buri demanded, glaring at her from under his heavy brows. The language had been the arcane tongue of dwarves, recognizable even if not spoken commonly by those hardy folk.

"Don't worry about it," Jocasta replied evasively, continuing to inscribe runes on every surface she could fine. Buri might have continued to worry about it if the chorus of hunting calls and scrabbling claws hadn't drowned out further discussion.

The room beyond the door was large and square filled with a ruin of what once had been grave goods. It had long since been looted and a jumble of smashed ceramics and shattered funerary urns covered the floor. Jocasta crossed to a glint of metal and pulled an ancient shortsword from the wreckage. It was heavy and probably never meant to be used in combat but it was better than nothing. She ran her thumb along the edge with a shower of metal shavings as she magically sharpened the ornamental weapon.

"Here they come," Beren warned as the screaming hunting calls grew deafening.

Beren and Jocasta suddenly heard something hard scraping against stone, which would not be too disconcerting if the sound was not occuring in two dozen places at once, all around them. Jocasta spun, trying to gauge if there were other entrances they might have missed, anxious even after getting confirmation from her drones to the contrary. Beren understood how she felt. Chitters and screeches echoed in the wide cavern, but chillingly, Beren realized were not the random, animal noises one might suspect.

There were words in those cries.

Buri looked nervous, but there was very little room for cowardice in the culture of the daurgrim. Even if he was shitting his pants, he would stand his ground or be sent to the halls of the dishonored at his death. Even Beren knew very little about that bit of dwarf theology, but whatever that involved, it was worse than anything a dwarf could rightly imagine. Beren made it to the stairway, but was nearly bludgeoned by a ball of dark glass. The object sailing past him, and were it not for his finely honed reflexes, there was little doubt it would have shattered near the center of the floor. Instead, Beren spun and caught it, completing the spin and sending it flying back down the stairs. Screams arose as a small VOOMPSH and a ripple of concussive force blew up the stairway. Whatever it had contained, it smelled like urine and dead fish.

"Acid flasks!" Buri cried with an accusatory tone. The dwarf had a handful of jagged stones in his arms, hustling to the lip of the barrier.

"Good catch," Jocasta said to Beren just after an appreciative whistle.

"No big deal," He replied with (fake) smugness, shrugging his big shoulders. Jo's eyes widened, and Beren caught her look, turning to see a Gundarog that had ascended the barricade quickly, launch itself from the top of the newly formed stone barrier, leaping at Jocasta with its spindly limbs out and hands aimed at her throat. Its grotesque face contorted in a scream of violence. Jocasta squealed and ducked even as Beren leaped, his foot snapping out to hit the thing in the side of the head, breaking its neck with an audible crack of bone. The thing landed in a tangled heap just as Beren himself landed, knees bent and feet shoulder width apart, his hands splayed in a curious stance of the far east.

"Ok, now you're just trying to impress me." Jocasta laughed, albeit a bit nervously.

"Yeah, I shouldn't press my luck," Beren responded curtly, still in a jocose fashion.

"Little help!?" Buri yelled, tossing large stones down at the horde now teaming on the stairway. Beren leaped forward, seeing a tide of ugly, malformed humanoids with sallow, mottled skin and covered in black, serrated armor pushing against one another and running up the stairs on all fours. A few, somehow, were even crawling along the walls. Behind them, the warband gave the central ground a wide berth, as acid still sizzled on the ancient stone. A few limbs still smoldered from the unfortunate creatures that had been hit by their own cruel device.

"You have any spells that can hit a bunch in a group!?" Beren called to Jocasta, ducking a spear thrust and yanking the weapon out of the hands of its user, tossing it to the floor. He grabbed his axe in time to block a sword cut with the haft, shoving the smaller creature back into its companions, pushing a number of them down for a moment. Buri did his best to pelt the wall climbers, too short to use his own axe with the barricade in front of him.

"Uhhhh..." Jocasta replied, inspiring little confidence in her allies. She wracked her febrile brain for something that would be more useful than coat the enemy in a liberal splash of bacon grease. The screaming mass of beasts hurled themselves against the barricade. If the obstacle had been on flat ground they would have swarmed the defenders in seconds, but the steep climb up the stairs and over the bodies of the fallen was hampering them. Jocasta saw a clawed talon grab the top of the stone in an attempt to pull its owner over, only to see Buri's axe take the appendage off at the wrist in a spray of blood. The thing hissed hatefully and Jocasta's ear twitched as she tried to figure out the syntax of its language.

"Any time now!" Beren shouted as he drove a bare palm into the face of one of the creatures, smashing its nasal bone up into its brain. Jocasta put her hands on her hips to retort that she wasn't a battle mage but trailed off as her eyes fell on the jagged sword that lay at her feet. The ugly weapon was the jawbone of some kind of giant bettle, black and glossy except where it had been sharpened against bare rocks. She picked it up, wincing at the lice ridden grip, and began to etch patterns in the ground infront of her. Arrows were falling around her now, the angle was too steep for a direct shot, so the beasts were trying to drop the points on them by bouncing them of the roof.

"Don't be so impatient!" Jocasta shouted back, making a number of small adjustments to the sigils she had scratched on the floor.

"I'm not, but I cant speak for our other guests!" Beren shouted as he seized on of the creatures, lifted it over his head and pitched it back into the mass of its fellows, carrying score of them to the bottom of the steps in a snapping hissing heap. Jocasta made a few more scratches then dropped the sword and began to chant. There was a sudden crunching sound followed by screams of agony the flow of monsters slacked but the screams of rage and pain redoubled.

"What did you..." Beren asked and peered over the barricade. The narrow corridor was now crisscrossed by ribbons of black insect carapace each one extended from a sword or spear tip to form a glittering lattice of sharpened chitin. The gundarogs at the rear of the pack were still trying to surge forward, unaware that their weight was forcing their companions into the net of blades in much the same way that cheese is forced against a greater. Within a few moments the panicked front ranks had turned their weapons on those behind them to avoid being forcibly dissected the internecine fighting continued for a minute or two before the penny dropped and the whole group of them fell back in snapping frothing fury.

"Why didn't you do that before?" Buri asked gruffly, cuffing blood from a superficial cut above his eyes.

"Maybe I just have a flare for the dramatic?" Jocasta suggested peevishly.

"Can they get through that?" Beren asked, partially interested, partially trying to diffuse an argument.

"If they have wizards, or they get hammers or something to break it out of the way," Jocasta admitted. Chitin wasn't really very strong, especially if you came at it laterally.

"But we might have a few minutes to catch our breath..."

Beren wiped the sweat from his brow, but he spotted blood on the back of his hand when he pulled it away. The warrior monk blinked and reached up, gingerly checking for a wound. There was a small cut across his scalp, but nothing major. They would take care of it when they could.

"Here, let me." Jocasta said, stepping forward, a cloth in her hand. Beren had no idea where she had been stashing it, but he chalked it down to magic and leaned down so she could give the cut a good once over.

"Thanks Jo," Beren breathed. Behind them Buri lamented their situation in dwarvish, and Beren was glad Jocasta wasn't privvy to the meaning. The Dwarves were a fatalistic people at the best of times, and Buri was not what one called a brave dwarf. In fact one might say he was mostly complaining about what he had not been able to finish in his life yet.

"It's not entirely selfless. We need you in good condition. Plus I got plans for that handsome face." She said with a wink. Whenever she did her nose wrinkled in a way Beren adored. He smiled, and with a quick swipe she wiped away the last of the blood. "There. Now tell me you have a plan."

"Find a way out of here?" Beren suggested.

"Good idea, but my earrings already searched the place." She reminded him, hands on her hips as she tried to think up something else. Beren walked passed her, scanning the tombs and alcoves for something, anything specific. Buri's wailing made it hard to think, but it was a good way to keep Beren's activities silent. He ran his hands along the walls, keen eyes brushing across the surface.

"Maybe they just didn't know where to look..." Beren muttured, and on the last word of his statement, there was a 'click'.

A slab of stone, too smoothly placed with the rest of the wall to see the crease by the naked eye, began to move slowly. Beren backed up, the portal yawning into a small passageway. If Beren was not mistaken, this was the part of the mausoleum against the rock wall, which meant this had to lead out somewhere. But where?

Beren led the way into the passageway without hesitation. Where ever it lead had to be better than this death trap. It was only a matter of time before the beasts returned with hammers to smash their way through the web of chitin that Jocasta had spun from their weapons and shields. Buri came last, cursing as bot of Jocasta's dragonflies zipped through a moment before he could push the heavy doors home. One settled into her hair like a pin, the other at the neck of her tunic like a broach. Both enchanted items began to softly glow, giving Jocasta enough light to see by. Recovering himself, Buri pushed the door closed with a satisfying click of stone on stone. Jocasta wondered if it would now be visible on the other side. Doubtful, given Dwarven craftsmanship.

The purpose of the package remained a mystery, at least to Jocasta. If Beren and Buri had any more insight they were keeping it to themselves. The walls were cut through the rock, rough and unfinished. That was obviously a stylistic choice given the mining skills of its makers, did that mean it was a simple access shaft, or was it left unfinished for some ritual purpose? There was no way to tell, and so long as it led away from the ruined Dwarfhold, no real reason to enquire. The one thing she could say for sure was that the gradient was down, deeper into the bowels of the earth.

"You hear that?" Beren asked suddenly enough to make Jocasta's heart jump into her throat. They had been walking for what felt like hours. She had been zoned out, staring blankly at Beren's back. She opened her mouth to say she heard nothing only to find her mouth to dry to speak. At first she thought all she could hear was their breathing, but then she picked it up. A soft hissing like sand sliding in a slowly rocked glass jar.

"It is water," Buri said, his face puzzled in the soft green light of Jocasta's dragonflies. Beren nodded and continued forward, his hand on the haft of his weapon. The hissing grew steadily louder and to Jocasta's surprise fungus began to grow along the sides of the walls. Her hands twitched with a desire to investigate but she restrained herself heroically. The hissing grew louder and deeper as they moved forward.

"Feel that?" Beren asked. Jocasta did, there was a soft wind blowing up the tunnel. Buri and Beren exchanged looks that were impenetrable to Jocasta, but there was only one way to go: forward. After another minute or so the tunnel opened into a cavern so vast that Jocasta couldn't see the ceiling. A pebbled beach stretched off in both directions and the waters of what Jocasta could only think of as an ocean stretched out into the darkness.

"It is huge," Buri murmured, his dwarven tunnelsense better than any human.

"An underground lake, bigger than any I have ever seen," Buri elaborated. Jocasta could only nod, hours of flight, fear, and spell craft were fast catching up with her. Beren walked off in on direction, then returned.

"Dead end that way, the wall falls into the lake. Buri nodded and headed off in the other direction only to return with a similar report.

"Think there is something on the other side?" Beren asked.

"Further than I can see," Buri replied, "but from the wind... maybe... need alot of space for air currents to build up." Beren nodded as though he agreed with the statement.

"Can you send your ear rings to scout?" he asked Jocasta. She shook her head.

"Not yet... need to rest a minute," she replied. Buri looked skeptical and Beren looked suddenly concerned.

"Alright, lets make camp, Ill take first watch," he offered. Jocasta was already spreading her bedroll out on the beach. Within moments, she was fast asleep.

Beren skipped a rock into the water. Buri let out a soft whistle, his darkvision letting him see the entirety of the stone's flight.

"Strong as an anvilgard," Buri compliment, referring to the esteemed, heavily armored tunnel fighters of his kin. Beren doubted that, but it was nice to hear. Buri groaned and got off his rump, dusting himself off before he began rummaging in his pack for something to eat. "What I wouldn't give for a pint of Dromegar's Finest with some salted pork."

Beren tossed a stone up and caught it casually, doing so over and over as he responded back to Buri.

"I'm hungry too, but I'm more tired than anything, I think." He admitted, and glanced at Jocasta's slumbering form. The light wind brushed against his skin lightly, and it felt good. He briefly wondered if they were exposed out here, just by the lake. They had opted not to make a fire, but see by the very soft light from small crevasses above. Once you were in the dark long enough, even human eyes could become used to such an environment to a point, but even so he knew he was more used to it than any man he had ever met. Jocasta was out of her element down here, no wonder she was tired.

He turned to Buri, the dwarf pulling out a bit of his beef jerky and scarfing it down. Beren knelt beside him, and the dwarf gave him a guarded look. Beren raised an eyebrow, and after a few long moments the fat merchant sighed and handed him a few scraps of the meat. Beren gave him a thanks in dwarvish and popped them into his mouth, and the two took turns taking swigs from the water flasks.

"'Least we can refill them," Buri whispered in dwarvish.

"Aye, Runar's blessing." Beren agreed, and then gave a grunt for a laugh. "This adventure's been about as smooth as a donkey's ass though."

"And half as valuable," Buri complained. "But we're not fermented yet. Though what I wouldn't give to be back in my storeroom counting the stock and coins. Druge, Fahke, Hrom..." Beren recognized those are various terms for gold, specifically numeric representations of gold. Dwarves coveted the mineral so much, they even had a separate, holy counting system for coins of that most precious of metals.

"I would like to see you in your element," Beren laughed. "If survival isn't your strongsuit, you must be a great master of goods."

The dwarf snorted. He was the first to admit he was not a warrior dwarf like the rest, save perhaps Varin the beardling. He stood up once more, attempting to tower over Beren, though even sitting down, they were nearly eye level. "Boy, I could sell the shirt off yer back and the teeth out yer mouth before you even knew we had begun negotiating!" He boasted, fat hands on his hips. "The old priest brought me here so I could appraise what riches we found, but it feels like that won't be happening anytime soon, Woegrim take me."

"You're not done yet. We just need to-" Beren glanced back at Jocasta to keep an eye on her.

She was gone. He blinked, and his fine eyes caught a shape in the shallows of the gently lapping water. He gasped when he saw the white hand of Jocasta slipping beneath the surface, her silhouette drifting deeper into the waves. Beren scrambled to his feet, and like a hound on the chase, he did not think twice. The eru'dai sprinted to the edge of the lake and dove in, hands together and body streamlined as any born swimmer did. It took him all of three seconds to reach her, grabbing her arm. To his distress, her eyes were still closed and bubbles lazily floated out of her mouth. He pulled, but something kept her down. Panicking, he grabbed the axe at his belt, ready to chop off whatever tentacled monstrosity had her in its grasp, but when he looked passed her, he was shocked to see she had been snagged by a small torrent of swirling water.

Suddenly it yanked the both of them deeper, and soon the faint light from above was gone. Beren felt cold water flow past him as the two of them were dragged inexorably down, down into the unknown depths where horrible, nameless things dwelled. Beren suddenly felt an immense pressure on his skull, and the last thing he remembered was letting go of Jocasta's hand, a feeling of despair welling up inside of him.

---

The floor was mostly smooth stone, though the occasional barnacle and crawling, alien crustacean meandered about. Where the light came from, it was hard to gauge. Somehow, her immediate surroundings were visible and alight. Water slowly dripped onto the floor, and Jocasta lifted her head to behold what lay before her.

All around her were the walls of broken sea vessel, having fallen to the depths of the lake long ago. The design was unknown to her, derelict and wrong in appearance. The material was not made of wood, and it curved where it should have pushed out, and looked bloated where it should have swept inward in its build. It was easy to see she was underwater, because by some strange magic, a wall of water a few meters before her was kept at bay, and it was the same behind her. Beside her, Beren lay unconscious beside her, but thankfully when she checked, he was breathing and alive. In fact, it seemed only the inside of the strange ship had breathable air, where the pressure was somehow equalized. As she looked back at the front barrier of water, she gasped. Beyond it was a vast figure, just at the edge of her vision.

"We will speak, woman. You have been marked, and must answer my questions..."

Jocasta felt her stomach begin to grow warm. Hastily she hiked up the bottom of her corset to reveal the demon’s mark shining on her pale skin. It twisted in unpleasant flux, shifting and changing as though to prevent her from getting a clear picture of it.

“I would have answered your questions anyway!” she shouted at the strange figure beyond the wall of water. Her words were oddly flat and she realized it was because water was damping the sound on three side. The ship around her was a wonder. From the encrustation of sea life it must be ancient beyond belief, yet the interior might have been constructed yesterday. It was filled with strange objects, odd glyphs, and shiny panels for which Jocasta had no name. The net result was to make her eyes attempt to look in all directions at once. Her dragonfly earrings, animated by their creators curiosity, pulled hard on her ears trying to make their own investigations. The creature paused, as though somewhat taken aback by the reply.

“You give answers… of your own free will?” the creature rumbled, clearly disturbed by this. Jocasta had in the last day been so inundated with wonder she seemed to be growing a little giddy nodded her head and sat down on the floor. Both Dragonflies managed to open their clasps within a second of each other, zipping off into the corners of the strange ship to explore.

“Sure,” she responded as she reached into a pouch and withdrew a piece of dwarven trail cheese. It had the consistency of moist sawdust but the taste was tolerable. Beren even claimed it was nutritious but if dwarves started standing on their heads Beren would probably claim it was good for posture. She popped a piece into her mouth and began to chew.

“Waddya want t’know?” she asked around a mouthful, crumbs tumbling down from the corner of her mouth.

"How come you by that mark, wretched and accursed?" It asked, and its voice had a malleable quality to it, as if it was made through the vibration of water rather than air. The air itself seemed to respond, and she could feel the voice on her skin as the second hand vibrations bounced across the ship. Jocasta crossed her arms, and glanced at Beren, who was still out cold. She had checked his pulse to make sure he was fine, but now he seemed to merely be asleep. With trepidation, she began to tell the tale of her encounter with the demon, and Beren's apparent death and revitalization, something he was still not wholly aware of. Her words poured out of her like a loosened faucet, spilling into the air, and without even realizing, she had even gone so far as to tell the tale of Iskura and their discovery of the dwarves, as well as their adventures in the deep beneath the world.

When she was done, she realized the eldritch thing had come closer, its eyes aglow with a rheumy yellow light. It watched her in unnerving silence for many moments, its shape in the water vast. Her dragonflies had returned to her, zipping around to inform her of priceless treasures and glyphs that even the greybeard of the Mythrim Tethir might have never seen. The mechanisms of the ship itself seemed derelict yet advanced beyond modern engineering.

"You have spoken truth." It rumbled slowly, as if contemplating some unknown mystery despite its words. "I have been here since the forging of the world, and I will be here long after your descendants are dead. But I sense in you a heart that does not match the mark upon yourself, nor does it match the one with whom you travel. But there are those who dwell in the deep who would ask such questions and carve it out of you, would use you to their own ends." A weight seemed to lift, and waters around the ship began to calm. They no longer seemed as if they were to rush in and crush them at a moment's notice. "I cannot remove the mark, but I can send you far from here, where your patron cannot follow without great difficulty. This will be my gift to you..."

The figure began to fade into the murk of the deep, and suddenly there was a change in the air pressure. The ship began to rumble, and it became clear she had no time to examine the ship. Water began to fall from above, and the last thing she remembered was a feeling of sleepiness falling over, like a great wave.

---

Beren's first realization was coughing, and a sluggish weight to his form. He rolled over, only to find his face pressed against a soft cheek. Groaning, the warrior monk opened his eyes, and realized he could see nothing. Absolutely nothing. He suddenly sat up, and realized he had felt Jocasta's soft breath against his skin moments before. He placed his hands on where he knew she lay, gently rocking her. Underneath them was sand, and while that was strange enough, he felt almost every sound he took to move was echoing softly, as if they were both in a very small chamber.

His hair still felt somewhat damp, and as Jocasta roused, he remembered seeing her sinking beneath the waves and the subsequent pulling of her form. The darkness of the water had become almost as oppressive as the pitch black they now found themselves in, but as to where they were or if Buri was nearby, he could not say.

"Jo," he whispered. Despite the pains he took to keep quiet, the words cut through the silence like a newly sharpened scimitar. "Jo, are you good?"