Mimir’s Thunder: Part 4
July 27, 3022 cont’d
Their battle with the fire-breathing fey Captain Lotus had left the Honest Coin limping, but Dogface, Fergus, and Heavy Metal persevered. A short rest in the abandoned apartment of an ex-Imperial officer saw the party back on their feet, and they set out back through the maze of alleys and side streets, making for the cemetery on the edge of town.
Their travels through the city were unhindered. Dogface spotted a giantess hanging laundry in distant plaza, and they encountered a long-abandoned mechanical hawking sausages that had turned to dust. At the edge of the great stretch of mausoleums they witnessed the figure made of moths and butterflies again, turning and making for the temple at the cemetery’s center.
The temple was a circular structure, once again carved from the mountain itself. Massive pillars held aloft a flat roof and beyond them an arch in the curved wall. The interior of the temple was divided into two semicircular rooms with small windows high in their walls. The front room held what appeared to be an altar, but the purpose of the back room was lost to time. A spiral staircase descended from the back room leading to a mirrored set of chambers 30 feet down.
The party followed long corridors down into the earth. The walls of the corridors held countless niches that might once have contained bodies, but these tombs seemed to be empty. Magic sight allowed the party to continue on in the pitch dark. At a hub of three corridors, the figure of moths and butterflies appeared again, in vivid color despite the darkness. The Honest Coin pursued.
After a time, the party saw more figures in the darkness ahead, skeletal warriors with shields and spears. Phantom voices whispered of a desperate chase with a nameless enemy close at hand. The party felt the whipping winds of ancient arrows fly past them, and the skeletons lurched into battle, replaying the conflict that led to their demise.
Battling through the skeletons, the party continued down. At a staircase, Dogface felt a butterfly land on his shoulder. Next to him walked a phantom knight, continuing a conversation with someone long gone. The phantom spoke of a Codex Stone up ahead that perhaps they could harness to fend off the enemy that pursued them and of the woman he was betrothed to.
When the phantom vanished, Dogface felt a searing pain in his leg. He had stepped into a pool of magical shadow that had scorched his leg. Several shadows like it were stretched out on the floor, the remnants of creatures destroyed by some catastrophic spell. The party navigated around them, coming at last to the chamber that held the Codex Stone.
The phantom appeared again, acting out his last moments. The knight, Sir Quentin the Valiant, tried to harness the power of the Codex Stone, but it overwhelmed him, and the party watched the spectral memories of his fellow knights writhe in agony and disintegrate. Sir Quentin called out to them, begging them to sever his connection to the stone and end his suffering. The party launched into battle. Heavy Metal threw himself into combat with a skeletal ogre, and Fergus ensnared the skeletons of the knights. It was Dogface who found himself head-to-head with Sir Quentin. As Dogface undid the phantom knight, Heavy Metal crushed the ogre skeleton into a cloud of dust. When the Codex Stone was removed from its fixture in the chamber’s ceiling, Sir Quentin’s soul was freed, and the party felt a great magical energy ebb to a trickle in the catacombs.
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