Chapter 6. Verminous Hosts

We'd left the tale of my lord's adventure in the midst of their first moments within Zuhal-sar's basalt ziggurat. Already they had overcome a deadly gas trap and has seen evidence of the earlier civilization's religion and technology. Presently they were in an old smithy and workshop where they'd disturbed a trio of deadly fire beetles, a not uncommon dungeon-dwelling pest in these strange times. These wouldn't be the last large arthropods our heroes would encounter—within the black ziggurat or in their explorations to come.

Fire in the Hole

Vremuk was the first of the companions to feel the burn as the incendiary insects exhaled hell. The bantam barbarian twisted and dodged a stream of fire, forewarned by the instinctive savvy of one born and bred to the wild. As the rest of the group descended into the smithy, the beetles began belching fire in all directions. Mogalu tried to take cover behind one of the three cylindrical chutes that led into the room from the tier above, only to find a forth angry beetle skittering on that side of the room. As the bug glowed with whatever inner alchemy enabled it's draconic breath, Onyesonwu stepped in between it and her shamanic teammate. The Nyamban sorceress summoned a burst of shadowy tendrils from the corner whence the insect emerged. The dark phenomenon broke and upended the bug, which blew its flames wildly, but harmlessly.

It was here that Mogalu and Onyesonwu noticed something new and sinister in the Amazon's inborn shadow magic. There was space in the darkness she manipulated. Space, as an emptiness gashed into the air; space that exposed and bled starry infinity. The effect was temporary, and like air rushing to fill a vacuum, reality mended its own wounds. This time.

But not all scars are so quick to heal, as Lilith would discover when she closed in on one of the glowing insects to dispatch it with her curved dagger. The beetle exploded in a flash of white heat, setting her beautiful head and hair aflame. Neferet was at her side instantly to smother the fire. Had she not been, the burns sustained by the sibylline priestess might have been worse, or permanent. As assured to her later by her Stygian companion, Lilith was only singed. Her beauty and hair would return in time, little marred.

For all the damage they could cause, the bugs were fragile and, after their fiery volley, fell easily to the arms of my lords. A quick search of the workshop revealed little of use to the adventurers, save a few balls of old lead that Mogalu pocketed as ammunition for his sling. Vremuk and Onyesonwu cut out the glowing glands of the beetles so prized by delvers of the world's buried places; these strange organs would remain luminal for days.

There were three alcoves leading away from the workshop. Rather than tarry with exploration, the party chose to track their undead query to wherever their accursed cult might be holding Neferet's lovely sister for their midnight sacrifice. Like a bloodhound Vremuk discerned their likely egress, and the hallway leading to a stairwell down to the third tier.

Creeping Doom

But even this passage was not bereft of skittering dangers. Disturbed by the light's intrusion, deadly centipedes descended, a cubit's length each, their knobby red carapaces hard as steer's horn. One of these curled about Vremuk's shoulder and buried its dripping stinger into his temple. Onyesonwu swatted the bug away even as more descended from the gloom over the heroes' heads. The Amazon knew that the pygmy warrior had but a moment before the venom oozed its way into his heart and brain. She pulled Vremuk close and upon his wound bit into his skull, then sucked intensely. The Nyamban was rewarded by a foul taste that would mean certain death to her should a smidge wash over even a pin-sized opening in her mouth, or a mere drop find its way down her throat. She spat as Vremuk swooned, and the foul substance was out of him.

Lilith discovered a concealed hatchway leading off from the stairwell landing, and worked it open while her companions swatted at and tried crushing what appeared to be an endless army of the predacious arthropods. Mogalu managed to smash one with the stone secret door before the others scrambled into the lighted hallway beyond to safety.

At one end of the hallway was a old storeroom presently ravaged by cockroaches as large as dogs. My lords had had enough of bugs and slammed the door in haste. Perhaps the legend previously expressed by Lilith, of a people cursed with the forms of insects, had some ring of truth… or perhaps they were experiencing for the first time a hard but cosmic truism, one that seemed alarming when first noticed but was quickly resigned to. That is: the insect, its kin and its giant variants, is the purest natural expression of any subterranean environment. The insect is foe and food to delvers, and even a friend to experienced spelunkers searching for a path somewhat hospitable to natural life. The insect is life, unique in the animal kingdom in its desire to persist in areas that would otherwise be consumed by the supernal and accursed. Bugs would be constant and ubiquitous for as long as my lords' adventures led to the dark and evil spaces below the surface of the earth.

The Magi of Usamigaras

The other end of the hallway led to a t-intersection, with a statue and a door at either end. The door was ornately decorated and of clean molded bronze. In fact, the entire area beyond the secret hatch from the stairs seemed fairly well-kept, its alcoves dusted, its mosaics scoured of mold, and its floor swept. Save for the giant roaches in the storeroom—and they had to be eating something in there—this part of the ziggurat bore every appearance of habitation.

The statue depicted a chubby, smiling winged child with a sorcerer's stave and serpents coiled around each wrist. None recognized the cherubic effigy, though that it represented a god—albeit one forgotten in contemporary times—was certain. Lilith sensed it was some kind of trickster deity, an innocent figure bearing deadly gifts, and advised her friends that they shouldn't trust appearances. The seeress immediately noted the faint grooves of a concealed hatch behind the statue. This was enough of a cue for Vremuk to examine the smiling idol with care, and saw that there were hinges on the jaw and the wrist bearing the staff. The hand could be rotated either left or right. The babyish belly was hollow. The adventurers came to the correct conclusion that the statue was filled with gas. Twisting its hand in one direction would open the secret door, turning it the other way and that innocent face would open its mouth, likely to spew poisonous vapor.

Not content to stake their lives on even odds, the group broke one of their voulges' shafts to a length equaling the span of the statue's chin to its jolly belly. Fastening it thus, one of them turned the hand clockwise. Sure enough, the jaw was heard to click over and over, as if it was trying to open. Turning the hand the other way made the jaw-clicking cease as the door behind the statue swung open.

The short hall beyond had a tall arched ceiling and was lit with ambient white light, as if the flagstones and tiles themselves cast their own eldritch glow. Onyesonwu was visibly disturbed and shaken by the absence of shadows of any kind. It was the first time any had seen the cool and collected sorceress affected thus. The art in the gallery depicted the cherubic god in several fanciful and light-hearted scenes, casting illusory spells and merrily playing its foes for fools. A chant droned from the door opposite their entry into the hall.

A debate broke out amongst my lords as to how best to proceed. None could know what sort of ritualism was happening behind the door, and Mogalu cautioned that there was a lot they didn't know about these clearly inhabited ruins. Vremuk normally dealt with the unknowable, especially the occult, with a swift, incantation-stopping sword stroke. Neferet was inclined to agree, especially if it could mean the difference between life and death for Amunet. Lilith seemed content to let the goddess guide her to victory or failure, with the fatalism endemic to most Shemites. Onyesonwu just wanted out of the hallway, and had been pacing like a caged tigress. In the end, that decided the matter, because there was wisdom in not standing in the way of anxious Amazons or tigresses.

The door swung open, and the party beheld a lavish ceremonial chamber. Standing around a star-shaped altar were thirteen beings in voluminous velvet cloaks of purple and silver trim, with tailed hoods. Their faces, all of them, were concealed by silver masks depicting the creepy cherubic face of the figure in the prevailing artwork. Their chanting had risen to a nigh-crescendo before it was broken into a confused stammering by my masters' intrusion. One of the masked cultists shouted "infidels" in a queer dialect of Stygian and they all commenced to sorcerous incantations and gestures.

To distract or disrupt them, Mogalu murmured for his spiritual ancestors' intervention. This time a warlord of his bloodline responded in kind, smashing the cultists' altar, spreading ritual accoutrements and the contents of its reliquary across the room. The witch-doctor used the distraction wisely. He called for parley, and stepped in the midst of the fray making motions of peace. Without knowing it was he who caused the altar to break apart, one of the magi—he having a mantle, and richer embellishments upon his robes and mask—demanded the stranger speak quickly.

Diplomacy commenced, at first with hesitation, and then with more ease when it was established that Mogulu's band were adventurers questing against the minions of Mordiggian. The cultists' leader introduced himself as Auriga, and his Magi of Usamigaras presently gathered in this modest outpost represented a rebel faith to the Charnel God's cult, whom they called the Sleepless Myriad. The party had interrupted a ritual intended to disrupt whatever bleak sorceries Mordiggian's newly risen votaries were going about on behalf of evil priests. Apparently, there was a settlement beneath the ziggurat, and some of these subterranean folk opposed the dark, but dominant religion of the Charnel God.

Auriga agreed to reveal more, but was discomfited by the presence of Mogalu's companions, being all females or nonhuman. "Come to my chambers while your servants help clean this mess up." This wasn't an unusual attitude even in modern times, much less an civilization in isolation for untold millennia. The women let the affront slide, but a glance at the rich treasures littered amongst the broken altar pieces had Vremuk reconsidering the truce between the party and the Magi of Usamigaras.

He reached for a coin…