Chapter 16: Underground Part 1

Written by Skarth Diem to Dronaet Klingstone

I regained consciousness suddenly and sat up, which proved to be a painful process. My head throbbed, my muscles ached, and my entire body felt bruised and battered. It was pitch black and I was sitting on rough ground – possibly rubble scattered over a stony surface.

And I had absolutely no idea where I was or how I came to be there.

As I tried to figure out what was happening, I heard groans and the sound of movement around me. I heard Kelshann’s voice and then Wrack’s. I called out to let them know I was there, my voice sounded rough – I think my throat was coated with dust and grit. The air smelt dank and stale.

I heard Riellian say something. Everyone sounded as confused as I was. I counted off the voices and realised that we hadn’t heard from Jenny. I called out for Jenny but got no response.

It was still pitch black but I could hear the others shifting around. Our voices were echoing which suggested we were in some kind of room. The complete absence of light and the smell of the air suggested that we were underground.

I changed into my star form and called on the constellation of the Chalice since I thought perhaps healing would be needed.

The soft glow of my starlight filled the chamber and revealed a large stone-built room – long and narrow – with alcoves along two opposing walls and a plinth in the middle. A beaten bronze door stood closed at one end of the chamber. Behind us it looked like the entire roof of the chamber had collapsed and there was nothing but a pile of rubble from floor to ceiling. As we watched, a small trickle of dirt and rock rolled down the face of the pile, suggesting the collapse was recent.

We looked around and there was no sign of Jenny. Wrack, Riellian and Kelshann all looked as bruised and battered as I felt. Standing a little apart from us was an elf with pale blue hair - like some of the wood elves have. Like many elves, the gender of this one was hard to determine at first glance. They were dressed in fine but practical clothing. A well-made brooch pinned to the elf’s cloak might have been decoration or it might have indicated some sort of rank, but it had no meaning to me.

The elf introduced themself as Shaywenys of Silverstand. Shaywenys seemed to be suffering similar memory loss to ours but was able to tell us that we’d been patrolling together through the edges of the Dreadwood for at least two weeks.

We asked about Jenny but Shaywenys didn’t know who that was. Then Riellian had a memory of Jenny leaving Saltmarsh by ship to go to Korvosa. It was something to do with getting training so that she could control her powers. Jenny had been quite distraught when her magic had accidentally killed that man – one of the cultists who we’d been trying to subdue.

Next, we checked our belongings. Realising that some things were missing we searched around the base of the rockfall. There we were able to locate most of our missing items – some of them were wedged under rocks and had to be removed carefully so that we didn’t bring more of the fall sliding down on our heads.

During this time, I had a flash of memory. I recalled arriving in Burl and Wrack handing a packet of orders from the city council to Kiara Shadowbreaker, Castellan of Burl. From there we’d set off into the Dreadwood, where we’d patrolled with a group of elves from Silverstand – including Shaywenys.

One of the things I was able to retrieve was my scimitar. When unsheathed, it glows with the light of the moon – brighter than my star form, but not as bright as sunlight. I held my scimitar aloft and we explored the room. We discovered that each of the alcoves contained a small diorama made of clay figurines showing humans, dressed in skins and decorated with feathers, hunting and carrying out various other tasks. The central plinth contained a larger diorama with better dressed figures performing similar tasks. The deeper meaning of these dioramas eluded us as they seemed to represent some form of culture that was unfamiliar to everyone present.

The others were now also getting little flashes of memory. One which seemed important was of us in the council chambers at Saltmarsh where the revelation about the Primewater family was discussed with Manistrad Copperlocks and Anders Solmor. They had suggested that we should immediately leave town and go somewhere like the Dreadwood where he and his minions would not dare to follow. I guess that explained why we were in the Dreadwood, but not what had happened that left us underground. The rock fall seemed to explain our shaken memories.

Everyone seemed to think that we’d been in some sort of fight before the rockfall – we all had cuts and bruises and I felt as if I weren’t at full power with my spells. Wrack mentioned that he thought we’d been fighting undead creatures and that felt right to me. I had a flash of memory of seeing Shaywenys striking and destroying skeletons with fists that glowed with power.

Deciding that the only way out of the room was through the door, we investigated it. The door was not locked, and it opened easily. The passage outside the door was carved from stone but the carving was crafted to resemble a wood-cabin entrance. Again, the cultural aspect of this style of carving was unfamiliar to everyone.

We followed the passageway around a corner and stopped when Riellian spotted a pressure plate embedded into the floor. After careful prodding and poking, she determined that whatever the pressure plate was for, it was inactive and we were able to cross it safely. Beyond the pressure plate, the passageway ended in heavy bronze doors that had been shaped to represent a stylised forest of seaweed. This seemed very strange to all of us but it gave us no further clue about who had built this structure.

Beyond the doors was a large chamber with an exit in each wall. A thin layer of wet mud coated the floor. In the middle of the chamber was what at first appeared to be a large single boulder, almost as high as a man, though later we realised that it was the shell of an extremely large hermit crab that appeared to be dormant – either sleeping or dead or magically stilled in some way, or possibly just lurking and watching us without moving.

As we entered, an extraordinarily large crayfish emerged from the mud to one side of the central boulder. It made threatening gestures and spoke in some strange language. Wrack used a spell to send it a message that we meant it no harm and it seemed to calm slightly though it clearly did not want us to approach – something we were happy to avoid.

We skirted to the left, sticking to the walls and walking carefully due to the slippery mud on the floor. The crayfish watched our every move and gestured threateningly and spoke its strange words but it made no move to approach us.

The door to the left opened easily and led into a short hallway that led to some stairs going down a little way and then another door.

Beyond this door, we found a smaller chamber that also had mud covering its floor. The ceiling was painted with a star-speckled sky. Scattered around in mud were various broken statues and fallen pedestals. A single pedestal stood in one corner. On the standing pedestal was a single metal triangular pyramid about the size of a large hand. It appeared to have been made out of silver and was covered with motifs of lightning bolts and moons.

I went to one corner and found a fallen pedestal. I stood it up and seated it firmly down into the mud. The top of the pedestal came up to my waist. I fished around in the mud and picked up the two pieces of a broken statue that lay nearby. It turned out to be ceramic rather than stone as I’d originally thought. The break was clean so I fitted the two pieces together and, singing softly to myself, I let my power trickle through my finger as I ran it around the line of the break. It took a bit of time but soon I had a statue in my hands as solid as when it had been made. It was in the form of a stylised dog of some kind – not much different from the wild dogs that lived in the wild places beyond the caves of my captivity. I stood the canine statue on its plinth and stepped back to admire my work.

Then I went to another corner and repeated this process. This time the ceramic statue had a humanoid body and the head of a crab. It was stylised but I could see what it was supposed to be.

In the third corner, I stood up the fallen plinth and restored the statue. It was another humanoid body with an animal head, but this time the head was that of a crocodile.

When I got to the last corner, I saw that Riellian had already taken the silver pyramid and tucked it away in her bag. I dug a last broken statue out from the mud and restored it using my power. This last one was a stylised human warrior standing tall and proud. I stood it on the remaining plinth and looked around the room. The floor was still covered in mud, but the mended ceramic statues now stood proudly on their plinths in each corner. There was no magic power in this room and nothing I had done could have restored any lost magic but perhaps it was showing respect for this lost society that had lived here some unknown time ago.

The door at the other end of the small chamber had done nothing to slow the spread of the mud. A hallway beyond the door had wet mud trickling along the floor and walls covered with a layer of slime. The glowing silver tracks of some small slug-like creatures wandered randomly over the walls.