Secrets revealed...

Now that the herd were settled the young siblings sat beside their small fire keeping watch on the night. It was unlikely that anything big enough to make off with one of the domesticated kank would appear, but it was a possibility and so the brothers always watched through the night. The old ashik had taken to joining them on their vigil and he filled the quiet hours with his tale.

The fiery skeleton stood stock still in the brazier and launched another ball of fire at Kank. It hit him square in the chest and his colleagues heard the big Mul grunt in pain, but he stayed on his feet and swung wild with Bone Crusher missing his foe. Miloch finally managed to land a blow on the thrashing skeletal snake tail but it is only a glancing blow and does not appear to inflict much damage. From his vantage point behind both Miloch and Scar, Balboa finally gets a chance to look at the skeletal snake in more detail. He realises that while it has a twenty foot long tail its torso is humanoid in shape with two arms and a head. This humanoid torso is not moving at all, and appears to be anchoring the snake tail in place.

Arthur rushes across from his brazier to land a blow of the flaming skeleton that Kank is battling, the strike from his iron maul breaks one of the creatures arms but it continues to spit balls of fire at the combatants. In the middle of the room the skeletal tail of the nagi strikes Scar a powerful blow and she is knocked to the floor as her legs collapse from under her. Miloch steps in and swings for the tail but it dodges out of the way of his slash with an intelligence that it has no right to possess. Scar drags herself out of the combat and Balboa steps into the battle with a look of trepidation on his face.

Kank dodges one of the fireballs and counter strikes with Bone Crusher, he lands a powerful strike against the flaming skeletons chest and it shatters in a hail of bone fragments and the skeleton collapses into a pile of burning bones. Arthur spins on his heels and joins Miloch and Balboa in battle against the snake tail, he hits it but it continues to thrash around. Kank joins them and the four friends rain blows against the skeletal tail while Scar administers first aid to herself. Eventually, Balboa lands the final blow with his iron banded mace and the undead beast finally stops attacking.

While Scar finishes tending to her wounds the others quickly search the dark serpentine temple. They find very little but do discover that the altar is covered in runes that none of them can read and in the centre of the altars top is carved the image of a one hundred foot snake. The giant reptile is wearing a crown, and that crown is surrounded by the halo of a dust devil. It can only be an image of the fabled Crown of Dust, a fragment of which is the object of their mission. Scar manages to heal herself enough that she is able to walk once again, although she is still weak with pain. Scar also tells the others that she has a greasey feeling on her aura, like something dark is trying to seep in. As soon as she has commented all of them agree that they are feeling the same thing to a lesser extent, all except Kank who seems blunt when it comes to spirituality.

They agree to press on and so Balboa steps up to the only other exit from the room and, unlocking them with the key, pushes the doors open. They open up into a passageway that runs for about forty feet ending in another set of double doors. Half way along the passageway a pair of doors face each other. Balboa steps over the threshold and walks to just before the midway point, the rest of the group follow him in and Kank makes sure that the door from the temple is closed and locked behind them. Once they are ready, Balboa opens the left hand door along the corridor and discovers a thirty foot square room. Around the edges of the room are piled skulls, with the only gap being where the door opens, as Balboa gazes in his gets a nervous feeling that all of the eye sockets are staring at him. In the centre of the room there is a snake sigil traced in ash. Balboa closes the door with a shudder.

Without a word he steps across the corridor and opens the opposite door. He finds that it opens into a rough hewn corridor that runs off into the darkness, deciding to focus on the temple proper he closes the door and heads for the double doors at the end of the passageway. He pushes the doors open and what he sees causes him to take a step backwards in shock. The double doors open in the centre of the rooms wall, the room is dominated by four huge, dark statues and at one end of the room sits a large stone cauldron. At the opposite end of the room from the cauldron, sat upon a large stone throne sits a massive skeletal creature. As he stares into the room Balboa tells the others that he can hear a very low mummering, but none of his friends can hear it.

The statues all represent beings that are human snake hybrids, similar to the skeletal creature that they fought in the snake temple. Having regained his composure, and not having been attacked by the massive skeleton sat on the throne, Balboa steps into the room. Scar quickly follows her and steps to one side putting her just behind one of the statues. As soon as Scar steps in behind the statue she is buffeted by a sudden wind that blows up from out of nowhere and seems to not be effecting Balboa. The wind is strong enough to throw Scar ten feet towards the stone cauldron, almost simultaneously two small dust devils begin to coalesce either side of the cauldron.

The suddenness of Scar predicament seems to freeze Balboa and Arthur to the spot, but Kank is quick to react and rushes straight into the room to Scar’s side and wraps his massive arms around her trying to pull her away from the cauldron. The invisible wind continues to buffet them as they struggle away from the stone cauldron and the forming dust devils. Balboa recovers his senses and rushes for the double doors opposite those through which they entered, but as he does so the gale gripping Kank and Scar lifts them off of their feet and deposits them in the cauldron. Both of them finds themselves unable to move with their fortitude ebbing away.

Having finally formed, the two dust devils spin away from the cauldron with one heading for Balboa and the other heading towards Arthur and Miloch. But Balboa is deafened by the noise within the room and does not hear the dust devil coming for him. He throws open the double doors and discovers a long corridor that runs away towards what appears to be a large room. He turns to shout to Arthur and finally realises that he is about to be enveloped by the dust devil. The other dust devil envelopes Miloch just as both Arthur and Miloch swing their iron weapons at it. Balboa also attempts to strike the dust devil that has enveloped him but cannot get a firm stance due to being buffeted.

Kank and Scar somehow manage to free themselves from the sucking grip of the cauldron and again start to fight against the invisible wind, but it is a fight that they lose and they are once again deposited within the cauldron and once again they feel their life energy being drained away from them. Once again they manage to combine their strength and drag themselves out of the trap and fight once again against the tearing gale.

Arthur and Miloch both manage to land blows against the dust devil that has enveloped Miloch and it dissipates in a shower of grit and dust. Balboa is badly buffeted and his arm is so badly damaged in the hurricane that it hangs limp at his side, at least it would if it wasn’t being flapped about by the gale. Arthur and Miloch rush to Balboa’s aid and start to attack the dust devil. Again a flurry of blows from all three of them sees the dust devil explode in a shower of dust and grit.

Once again, Kank and Scar find themselves sucked back into the cauldron with Scar landing on the paralysed form of Kank. They lay there for what seems like hours, but is in fact mere seconds, while their lifeforce is drained away. It is then that Scar feels something land on her chest, she manages to force herself to move and sees that it is a rope that has been thrown by Arthur. She ties it around herself and grabs hold of Kank while the others pull them away from the cauldron. Slowly, step by step, they manage to haul Scar and an unconscious Kank into the new corridor opened by Balboa. As soon as they are in the corridor Balboa slams the doors closed and everyone slumps against the walls.

Taking stock of their current state of fitness, the group agree that they have to rest long enough for Balboa to heal them all. And so, even though they are not sure that their surroundings are safe, they collapse into a fitful sleep. By the morning of their third day within the temple Balboa has called upon the gnomes of the earth to heal all. Balboa takes the lead as they set out once again, half way along the corridor Balboa looks left and right through the two openings and sees that each is a twenty foot long corridor that ends in a pedestal. And each pedestal has a single urn mounted upon it. Balboa ignores the corridors and continues towards the large room at the end of the corridor.

He discovers that the large room has steps that lead down five foot to the floor of the room, in each corner of the wall that the doorway enters from there is a large brazier alight with what can only be magical flame. That fire casts an eerie light across the rest of the room, plunging areas of it in deep shadow, and in others revealing that the floor of the room is covered in the bodies of skeletal and mummified, snake skinned humanoid corpses. Opposite the entrance sits a shelf that runs the length of the room, the shelf is full of urns. In the centre of the floor, from underneath the piles of bodies there is a scarlet glow emanating.

Taking a moment to tie a rope around his waist, Balboa descends the steps and steps onto the floor of the room. He squishes and snaps his way across the room heading for an exit that he has spotted in the right hand wall. He pushes the door open and finds another corridor running off into the dark. Scar catches up to him and they begin to head down the corridor, they turn back when they discover that it runs for fifteen foot as a dressed stone corridor but then becomes roughly hewn.

Meanwhile, Arthur heads down to the floor of the room and begins to clear away the bodies covering the area of the floor that is glowing. He finds several glowing lines that must be part of a larger design. With the help of Balboa and Scar they clear away all of the dead bodies and find a large, scarlet glowing snake sigil. They back away from the sigil and Arthur suggests that they search every urn for the piece of the Crown of Dust. But they finally agree to search all of the areas that they have not thoroughly searched yet.

So they head in single file back across the cauldron room and Kank investigates the rough hewn corridor there. It ends after twenty feet in a pair of niches, in one of these Kank finds nothing but a small patch of fluorescent fungus. Next they take a closer look at the two urns on pedestals and find that there is writing in ash on the floor in front of each urn. Finally they head along the passageway from the room full of dead bodies, the rough hewn passage leads towards another set of double doors, it then doglegs back to the right. Balboa steps forwards and shoves the doors open, inside is what looks like an old storeroom. There are several large patches of fungus and mold growing across the room and in the centre of the floor is a rectangular pit. Kank steps up to the edge of the pit and can see that it drops about thirty feet and contains nothing but debris.

They leave the room and continue to follow the passage into the darkness.