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?"

Head still swimming, at least he wasn't actually swimming any longer. Wherever they were, it was dry like a desert. However, what haunted Beren more was how they got here in the first place. The last thing he remembered was swimming to catch up to Jocasta, who's limp form was being pulled into the abyssal depths of the underworld lake. He rubbed his head and groggily asked "What happened?" as the earring drones he gifted to Jocasta lit up like fireflies and twirled around them to illuminate the small chamber. It also basked Jocasta's pretty face in light, showing his looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"You were being a numbskull." She said, pushing him, albeit playfully. The woman then squared her shoulders and thrust her chest out in an attempt to mimic Beren, as if she did not already have a considerable chest herself. "Oh I'm Beren, I'm big, handsome, and strong and I'm going to throw myself into danger to save Jo without any backup plan!" Her imitation was not horrible, but she did speak with a clumsier, dimwitted cadence to drive the point home, before she deflated and crossed her arms. " Now, did we learn anything?"

"You think I'm handsome?" He replied, fluttering his lashes.

"Don't be fake with me!" She reprimanded, leaping on him to wrestle. Beren cried out as the two tumbled. It was hard to tell when Jocasta was serious at first, but he knew now she was just worried, trying to play it off as scolding. "Bet those abs aren't even real! Oh, wait no they are. But you still get what I mean!"

"Hey! Me saving you has worked so far! I'm not the one that got sucked down by a water spirit!" He shot back, rolling ontop of her.

"Don't use that wording!" She said, but she was laughing. "I've saved you plenty!"

"You ha-" He was going to assure her, but she sneezed, and there was a puff of smoke that stung his senses for the quickest moment. Somewhere in that instant, he couldn't feel her under him anymore, and when he heard her clearing her throat, he turned to the left to see her bowing theatrically, a cloth in her hand. Beren was speechless for a second, impressed. "How did you do that?"

She lifted the cloth, wrapped it around her rump and grabbed the other end, pulling it back and forth. Beren realized it was the sarong he had given her. "You sure you were raised by dwarves? Every time you find something valuable you give it away." She said with a wink.

He gave her a lopsided smile. "Just to you."

Her humor fled, and there was actually a blush on her face. As much as he wanted to pursue further, the enclosed chamber with what probably had limited air was not the place to do it. He got to his feet and wiped sand off his chest and shoulders. Jocasta followed his gaze to the wall, and the the earrings flew closer, lighting up the sandstone to reveal pictogram inscriptions lining the wall. Beren did not recognize him, but Jocasta seemed drawn to it. "Speaking of dwarves, remember when I translated dwarf runes for you? Your turn..."

Jocasta felt her professional interest stir and in truth was happy enough to have something to take her mind off Buri, who presumably had been left alone in the underground. Perhaps that was not such a worry for a dwarf but she didn't like to think that he was standing by that lake thinking the two humans were dead. With a whispered spell she conjured a flame in the form of a dancing naked pixie. Beren cocked his eye at her.

"Really?" he enquired.

"Some spells you pick up on the cheap aren't exactly designed by arch-mages," she informed him tartly, then leaned forward to study the writing.

"Oh, it is old Pharonic," she said, tracing her finger along the script. The ancient tongue was much studied back at the University because it was argued that many old and powerful magics had begun in that tongue and been transmitted to the younger races who peopled the North. Jocasta had never been particularly convinced of that, but courses in it had been very expensive and access had been limited. That hadn't stopped her doing a certain amount of clandestine investigation of course and she could read and speak some of the tongue.

"Kessirai Kessirai, salamani da-ai, zuska Narturn ta-daei t'nakalya praseo, gamara taladis signum hrave" she read. There was a sudden rush of wind and ancient dust stirred around their ankles. It seemed to flow like water, making disturbing suggestions of skulls and scorpions. Beren cursed and stepped back, sanding on some raised stones to avoid the mist.

"What did it say?" Beren demanded.

"A warning traveler that they who speak the name of the accursed Narturn release him from this binding and he shall visit plauges upon the earth. Or maybe, he was bound to end up a plague to his mother? The syntax is a little unclear, its possible its also a dirty joke about..." Beren reached down and scooped her out of the mist as it flowed past heading down a passageway with a slightly upward angle.

"I'm pretty sure the first translation was right, why would you read that?!" he demanded. Jocasta crossed her arms and nearly fell back into the mist but was saved by Beren's grip on the back of her tunic.

"Well you told me to!" she snipped defensively, "plus why would they write that, if I had words that could unleash some ancient evil, I'd maybe shut the hell up about them!"

"So we both unleashed an ancient evil..." Beren concluded, lifting Jo's leg as a tendril of the mist swept by. The warrior monk decided to just pick her up and set her near the center of the small chamber.

"So what do we do?" Jocasta asked him, finally snapping out of her reverie and seeing the room was swiftly growing an unclean and unnatural aura. She shivered, her magical senses more attuned to such things than Beren. Down the hall, there was a crack like lightning, and ill green light flashed against the stone walls as something stirred.

"I don't know!" Beren laughed incredulously, just appreciating how crazy every situation they got themselves in was.

"What do you mean!? This is your expertise! I excavate, you dungeon dive! You lived with dwarves underground, right?" She asked, and bonked his head multiple times with her fist as if she was knocking on a door. To Jo's surprise, it actually seemed to put an idea in her companion's head. He abruptly turned around and leaped over a stream of mist, skidding on the sandy floor before the opposite wall. Jocasta followed, keeping close to Beren's back as a low, inhuman moan escaped from down the corridor. Beren knocked his knuckles against the wall, listening intently and watching the imperfections on the sandstone as he did so. He was no dwarf, who's very anatomy helped them find flaws in stone, but he had learned enough.

He tapped again, and the darkly handsome warrior smiled. "Keep clear," he warned her, and Jocasta slipped to the side, not wanting to back up too much. Beren closed his eyes, drawing in a long breath. His hands spun in a circuitous motion, performing an intricate set of hand movements that seemed almost a strange version of spellcasting, taking fifteen full seconds of the odd ritual, ending with his left hand palm out, his right hand curled into a fist and pulled back.

"Beren?" Jocasta asked, but he couldn't hear her, his concentration absolute. After another heartbeat, he struck the stone wall. Jocasta gave a yelp as she felt the wind from the blow. Immediately the wall fell apart, or at least a sizeable portion of it, tearing through the stone like a sword slicing through parchment. Jocasta clapped as Beren drew in another breath, and they felt a small gust of heat and a bit of sunlight on their feet. Beren and Jocasta leaped into the next room. It was a long mausoleum with a dozen stone coffins on the left and right, and at the end was a wooden doorway barely kept together. Along the coffins were carvings of different figures of strength and elegance, each with brass and silver torques adorned on their necks.

"You'll have to tell me how you did that." Jocasta said, glancing back at the shattered stone and giving a whistle.

"I have this wonderful meal plan."

"I've noticed," she said, pinching his left pec. "but like..."

"You can plumb the depths of me later, for now we should get scarce unless we want to make friends with whatever is waking up." He declared, and as if on cue, their banter was interrupted as another flash of eldritch light erupted behind them. It hissed like a huge serpent, and the stone coffins before them began to rumble, though whether by some magic or something within them was fighting to get out, they did not wait to find out. The two adventurers sprinted down the corridor, running for all they were worth. Suddenly a large stone tile dropped before them, and to anyone who had not been constantly delving into dungeons the past two months, it would have been fatal. There looked to be no bottom in sight. But Beren leaped like a gazelle and Jocasta jumped with practiced precision, hitting the ground in a roll. Both recovered simultaneously, and they shoulder rushed into the ancient wooden door, breaking it into kindling. They reached the light of the desert sun and the heat of this strange new land.

The landscape could not have been more different from the frozen northlands they had left mere hours ago. A sea of waving sand stretched out before them, flat save for a low ridge off to the east. The sun was setting but beating down hard enough to make the landscape shimmer with heat haze. As Beren paused to take in the strange sight, the rumbling began to grow worse, so badly it seemed that the sand beyond seemed to shake. Dust drifted down from the ceiling and Beren and Jocasta leaped down onto the hot sands. The structure they had emerged from was a simple columaded doorway with a flat roof that seemed to protrude from the side of a huge sand dune.

“I can still feel…” Jocasta began but Beren held up a hand, then squatted to place his hand flat against the sand.

“It is like an earthquake,” he mused.

“Beren,” Jocasta interrupted, but he waved her down.

“Almost like…”

“Beren!” Jocasta shouted, grabbing his head and lifting his chin to the sand in front of him. A low spot had appeared a hundred feet infront of them and was sinking fast. It looked for all the word like water running down an unseen drain. The depression raced out towards them and there was a sudden feeling of sand rushing past their feet. Jocasta spun to see the entire dune behind them beginning to slump towards the depression, now over thirty feet deep and grown rapidly. Millions of tons of sand was pouring towards the hole at a pace so fast it seemed a dream.

“Get back!” Beren shouted but the ground was already gone from beneath their feet and they tumbled down into the yawning pit, rolling down the incline and struggling like swimmers to stay atop of the cascading waves of sand. The sand sucked at them as though trying to draw them under and Jocasta kicked and thrashed wildly. Beren, heavier by far was having a harder time, his powerful body serving only to dig him in deeper as they carrened deeper. Cursing in several languages (deliberately excluding Old Pharonic) Jocasta extended her hand and shouted a few arcane syllables, a wall of fire burst from her palm and fused a ten foot section of sand into dark glass, with a yell she threw herself onto it, yelping with the heat it still projected. Beren managed to grab the edge which broke off in jagged shards, then burst from the sand like a man kicking himself free of a frozen pond. The pane of glass rode atop the sand like a raft, albeit a raft careening into a whirlpool.

“Up here!” Jocasta shouted and Beren managed to crawl to her, the cooling glass now painful but not actually causing burns. Jocasta shifted her weight and the glass sheet changed direction, turning slightly as though to circle. By carefully managing their weight they managed to begin circling the declivity, whirling around it like suds in a draining sink.

“Gods above,” Jocasta exclaimed as they made their third circuit. It was difficult to see the door they had emerged from in all the flying dust but she could just make it out, no longer in a dune but at the top of a massive pyramid of sandstone, the sand from which the whirling sandpool was clearing.

“Swing out wide and…” but Beren had already seen it, the cut wide towards the pyramid and at the last moment both leaped from the glass raft to impact on the side. Beren caught hold of the rock and braced himself against the sand still pouring down from above. Jocasta managed to grab hold of Beren’s leg and cling on for dear life. After a minute or so they were above the falling sand level and Jocasta was able to uneasily find purchase of her own. Far below them the sand drain was nearing its end. As it did so more structures, smaller pyramids and temples, partially ruined by uncounted eons beneath the sand, began to emerge. Impressive statues of half men half beasts, some thirty feet tall were exposed. Great obelisks of black marble, carved with inscriptions in Old Pharonic emerged like the rootlets of some vast plant. It was like watching the desert bury them but in reverse. They both stared in fascination as the last of the alluvial sand vanished into a great fissure at the center of the complex. Jocasta wasn’t sure how, but was entirely certain that it had been designed to do exactly what it had just done. The engineering and mystical expertise it must have taken were staggering. Abruptly everything was silent.

“Well, you don’t see that coming down the road from Bloomsberry fair,” Jocasta commented inanely.

“What is it?” Beren asked in wonder.

“An ancient city, filled with treasures and arcane knowledge beyond worth,” Jocasta said dryly. An ominous sound that might have been part of the excavation spell but sounded for all the world like an evil chuckle echoed around them.

“You want to get out of here?” Beren asked.

“I thought you would never ask.”

The two ascended out of the depression, Beren giving Jocasta his hand twice and Jo having to call upon her magics once to keep him from sliding down the steep decline, but the ziggurat loomed over them even when they stepped out of the precipice and onto more solid ground. There always seemed to be something going on with them, it was as if the Evergod himself had cursed their adventures. But ever the optimist, Beren tried to rationalize that perhaps this would have occurred regardless, and maybe they were here to make sure it did not get out of control. It was a quaint thought, though he had been through enough trials in his life even before he had met Jo to know insane circumstances could be behind any corner.

Trudging across the landscape, they followed the sinking sun, keeping close just in case something tried to suck or yank one of them down a concealed hole in the earth. The sky was red like blood, and the wind coiled around them fervently, as if it had a mind of its own. Beren was happy for the heat, he had always been a man who liked hotter weather. But not usually dry heat, and the longer they climbed over collapsed dunes and cracked earth, the more uneasy he became. He decided talking and sharing the last of their water could distract from the near hopeless trek to find a settlement. The moon was a distant figure behind the gleam of red in the sky.

"Where do you think we are?" He asked her, passing the water flask. Jocasta finishing tying up her hair in a pony tail and took a long, well deserved drink.

"Well, hard to say considering it was magic that brought us here. We could be in the Southlands, we could be in the Moltepny Stretch. I know the languages, or at least more than what's probably healthy for someone my age, but I haven't traveled to any of these locations before. How about you?" She handed the flask back. Beren took another sip from the skin and then slid it back in his belt, running a hand through his dark mane of hair. His chin and upper lip was starting to get dark from a lack of shaving, though it was not quite true facial hair yet. Unlike his dwarven found family, he did not grow facial hair quickly or thickly.

"I didn't go to an academy, but I do know a few bits of aradian. I liked reading the old stories so I wanted to learn, and a bit of Anu'sarian, but I probably shouldn't-"

"Say those outloud, yeah." Jocasta agreed, wiping the sweat from her brow. They were coming closer to some rocky outcroppings, and it was only when Beren looked up at the buttes did he really stare past them into the sky. The sun was finally touching the horizon, and he peered across the broken landscape with his fine eyesight, before blinking.

"Jo?" He asked. She gave a 'hmmm?' and looked at him, and Beren thrust his chin forward. She turned to look, and after a few moments searching, she blinked as well. Beren spoke for her, knowing she saw what he did. The horizon was not red. "Did you...ever notice the clouds were colored like blood?" He asked, his voice wavering.

"That...can't be right." She breathed, reaching into her pack and fishing for something, only to groan when she couldn't find the right tome, clasping it closed again. "What could make the clouds-" her question halted when she gasped, and drew closer to Beren in fear. He looked at her clinging, and pointed emphatically. "The moon!"

Beren felt something in his chest sieze, but he kept himself together and looked around until he glanced to the west, and nearly jumped back. He felt a cold fear run up his spine. It had grown closer somehow, past the rocks, and through he knew it was not possible, no matter how hard he closed or rubbed his eyes, it did not go away. They walked over to the rocks and put the large stones between them and the celestial body, but Beren peered around the corner again, and was met with the same eerie sight.

As he looked at the moon, the moon looked back.

"What the hell is happening?" Jocasta asked incredulously. "It's not an illusion, I would have been able to tell with the flows. It's like...a portent." The last words were like a bell's chime in her mind, and as crows cawed overhead, she began to search through her pack again, thumbing through books until she pulled out a leather bound volume locked in a silver-steel padlock. She whispered a few words, and it popped open. "I might be able to find something in here, or at least glean a bit of what could cause the blood clouds."

"And what could give the moon a face?" Beren asked as another crow cawed. There was a flutter of wings, and as Jocasta fished through her book of lore, Beren looked up to see three, eight, two dozen crows fly overhead. They were followed by hundreds more. The caws became malicious cries and screeches, as tens of thousands of black feathered crows flooded the sky overhead in a wave of torturous sounds that pierced the ears. Beren was poking Jo to look up, but she had already closed her book and watched in rapt fascination as the avian creatures flooded the sky.

One dropped down before them, tilting its head and squawking. Jocasta held her book out to use as a bludgeoning device, just in case, but Beren and her froze when they looked into the crows eyes. It hopped to the left, and cawed at the empty rock wall beside them, for it could not see. Its eyes were milky white. The two adventurers shared a look, and then decided not to speak as it hopped away, flapping its wings and crying out before fleeing into the air once again. The pair did not move for an hour, until the crows had exhausted their numbers in their great migration, and darkness had descended upon the sky.

They walked for another two hours, walking under a watchful moon. The eyes and mouth of the celestial object never moved, they were simply there, carved or magicked or planted there by something with the power to shape reality itself. But they needed the moon, for as they walked, they noticed the blood clouds had vanished, but they had taken the stars with them. There was not a cloud in the night sky, and yet no stars were present. They had vanished as surely as the crows and the clouds, and now only the moon remained to grant them the light that led them to the walled settlement of Dikmar.

The gates had been closed, but the sentries along the walls carried torches and patrolled circuitously, calling to one another in their native tongue. Jocasta and Beren were a bowshot away, but they had not yet been spotted. Before Beren could announce themselves, Jocasta placed a hand on her muscled arm and asked him to let her handle it. He kept his mouth shut, having learned to respect her intelligence whenever she was confident in what needed to be done. She gave a soft call in a tongue he did not understand. It sounded similar to Aradian, but it was not the same. A bellowing cry echoed from the walls, followed by another. Jocasta spoke back, only to get shot back with another long diatribe from the town. Beren could not understand, though he really tried. The cadence was different, and there seemed to be only a few loan words, most of them just beyond the cusp of his understanding. It was actually somewhat frustrating. Generally people thought of Beren as intelligent when they got to know him, but Jocasta was one of the few people who not only had grown to know him, but seemed to have much more unique knowledge than Beren, who felt like a charlatan in comparison. Next to her, he really did feel like the muscle bound himbo people accused him of behind his back.

It was only a brief thought for the moment, however, and after a few more traded words, the gates opened.

"How did you get them to let us in?" He asked her.

She grinned, looking back up at him. "I'll tell you later after a bath. Oh, and the town's called Dikmar. I don't even think they know what it means." Jocasta giggled.

At Beren's questioning look, she winked: "It's Snake Cock in Pharonic."

The gate swung inward to reveal about a dozen nervous looking men. They were a piratical looking bunch, armed with reaping hooks, spears, axes and a few ancient looking swords. Some wore chainmail or heavy tunics of leather and all carried shields of woven wicker. They weren’t professional soldiers, or even guardsmen, just nervous villagers armed with whatever weapons and armor had been passed down. The wall itself was mortared sandstone polishes smooth as much by blowing sand as human effort. It was rarely higher than ten feet, designed to discourage bandits rather than fend off a real army. The gates themselves were teak panels bound with ancient verdigris bronze hinges. The wood must have cost a fortune in this desert, but the town's founders had no doubt found it cheaper to buy gates than to rebuild the village after a raid, not to mention easier than sewing their heads back on.

“Who is you strangers?” an older man in a dark grey caftan with a white turban asked. In contrast to the nervous men around him, his voice was steady and worn smooth by the companionship of a hashish pipe. He had a staff of some pale timber in his hand, it was gnarled and twisted in a way so intriguing that made Jocasta wish she could see the tree which had produced it.

“Who are any of us?” Jocasta replied airly, adjusting her idiom to match the stranger.

“A strange hour for a philosopher to appear,” the man replied with a chuckle that made his companions shift nervously.

“Do you have names? Where do you come from on so ill omened a night?” he asked. There was a weird cry out in the desert, something like a hyena’s laugh but low enough that it made Jocasta’s guts twist. She glanced nervously over her shoulder at the dunes but there was nothing there.

“I’m Jocasta and this is Beren,” she said hastily, “as for where we come from it is a long story.” She held her hands palm up to forestall the objections growled by a half dozen of the militia men.

“Which I am happy to tell as soon as I am inside and not worried about some eldritch horror ripping me apart while I give an extended travelogue,” she hastily added. The man in the robe snorted and came forward. He was old, his face the color of polished walnut wood and line with wisdom, a white beard framed his face though he bore no mustache. He reached out and laid a hand on Beren’s chest and closed his eyes. If he worked a spell Jocasta couldn’t tell but when he pulled his hand away he nodded.

“This one means us no harm,” he announced, the words smoothing out in Jocasta’s mind as she sorted out the stresses and colloquialism.

“Whether they will bring us harm is too soon to say, but I share the young ladies desire to remain in a single piece.” He twitched his head to the side and the militia lowered their weapons, springing to close the gate almost before Jocasta and Beren had cleared it. The weird chuckling echoed from the dunes again as the timbers boomed shut.

Dikmar was a small but prosperous settlement. It’s wealth was derived from the oasis that sat at its center. It would normally have been picturesque but tonight the still water reflected the face of the moon unpleasantly. A fringed of date palms ringed it in green and sandstone lined channels carried water outwards like spines, bringing water to extensive gardens that opened off the back of low sandstone houses with flat roofs. A large caravansery suggested that it was a stopping point for caravans, from which it doubtlessly drew most of its modest wealth. Water was worth more than gold in a place like this, and the meanest caravan master would pay well for a chance to water thirsty camels. The villagers would take that largess, but also gather up the dung of the camels to fertilize their gardens and produce fresh fruits and vegetables that they would sell to the caravans at another premium. There was nothing of monumental architecture, though a few larger stone buildings bore obvious signs of trades, a blacksmith, a glass blower, a brewery and a few others besides. The grandest building was a small inn marked with a crescent moon. It was doing a brisk business tonight, thronged with nervous villagers. Women in loose shifts carried handsome amphorae of wine with which they filled glasses and mugs in exchange for a few coins.

“I am Fazel,” the old man announced as he led them to a table, “I’m an old fool, but these young fools insist on asking my opinion.” He waved his hands at a few of the militia men who had followed them in a shooing motion.

“Now how about you tell me that story?”

“Alright but I’m going to need wine,” Jocasta replied.

“By the White God that is a tale,” Fazel admitted when Jocasta wound down her account, glossing somewhat over the fact that she had read the incantation that seemed to have set all this in motion.

“I fear that your presence in the pyramid, no matter how unintentional might have released the Black Pharaoh from his slumber,” Fazel said, taking a sip from a brass cup of wine a girl had set before him without asking for payment.
“Narturn?” Jocasta asked and the dozens of torches that lit the night gutted down to nothing. Fazel winced as though physically struck.

“Don’t..” Fazel began. “Say his name. Got it.” Jocasta finished. A nervous sigh went through the crowd as the torches flared back up to their original intensity.

“The legend says that in the ancient days this desert was ruled by great sorcerer Pharaohs, priests of the nameless gods which dwell beyond the edge of shadow. They forged kingdoms with fear and dark magic, harnessing even the djinn to build their vast cities. Of these fearsome kings the Black Pharaoh was the most terrible. The stories say that he turned the very sun and stars dark, and that his kingdom was perpetually in burning twilight,” Fazel said. Beren glanced up at the starless sky above them.

“Black stars,” he observed, and Fazel nodded solemnly.

“It is said that he cast the very demons of the blasted hells into thrall, and that his rule was enforced by things more terrible than men,” Fazel continued. Jocasta remembered the weird hyena-like cry.

“But he was defeated?” Beren suggested, ever willing to look for a way to confront evil.

“The Black Pharaoh did something… the stories don't agree on what, something so monstrous that the other Pharaohs, who were his vassals, plotted against him, and rose up to overthrow him, sealing him in his own pyramid and calling the sand to bury it for all time,” Fazel said with a sigh.

“Not quite for all time,” Jocasta replied, sharing a glance with Beren.