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~~~ Chapter 4: Carved Stone ~~~

Location Unknown
Date Unknown

Kasumi Mizushima stepped carefully down the long stone corridor, cracked flagstones shifting treacherously under her sandals. The darkness was still omnipresent, still impenetrable, but the air was fresher here. She hoped that meant she was nearing the surface. Her feet were beginning to ache; she had walked much farther, before, near walked the breadth of three continents, but that had been in proper boots. The heroes from the stories all wore traditional robes and sandals, no matter the weather or the terrain. Kasumi figured that either the storytellers had embellished a bit, or the heroes were idiots.

At least this passageway hadn't ended in a collapse, or in a yawning fissure. With all of the backtracking she'd done, Kasumi wasn't sure she could find her cosy little tomb again. Not that she had any desire to revisit it, but she'd at least feel more confident that she wasn't wandering in hopeless circles.

This corridor was new, she was certain. Mostly certain. It was wider than the ones before, with a vaulted ceiling, and walls carved into elaborate friezes. No, not carved - even in her spirit sight the walls held a faint, pearly luminescence. Krytan marble, then, imported at considerable effort and greater expense. Whoever had built this complex had been wealthy, and well connected. They clearly hadn't been back in a while, though. Even her impromptu remodelling project had gone unnoticed.

A part of her was disappointed. As Jora used to say, there was nothing like a good fight to get the blood flowing. Used to say, now there was an interesting choice of words. She wondered, again, how long she had been asleep. Given the general state of disrepair-

Roughly she pushed the thought aside. Spend her time worrying about such things and she'd starve down here. Wherever here was.

She resumed walking, her fingertips trailing idly along the carved wall, then paused once more. Something about this frieze looked familiar, somehow. Most of it was worn near-smooth, eroded by some long-dried flow of water, but one scene was nearly untouched. The final moments of a battle, two men with swords outstretched, their points piercing the breast of a third man in a stylized royal guardsman's attire. Nearby, a figure lay in state, garbed in funereal robes and bearing the headdress of the emperor, the four envoys standing mute and solemn watch above.

And upon the transfixed man's swirling cloak was the mark of the betrayer, the harbinger of the wicked. The guild symbol of Shiro Tagachi. So. This was the scene of the traitor assassin's downfall, struck down over the body of the emperor he had sworn to protect, the emperor he had cut down in cold blood.

Scenes from Canthan history, then. Made sense, for a burial ground. Come to think of it, these carvings were about the only thing that did make sense here. They were impressively expensive, so where had the rest of the opulence gone? The altars were crumbling and empty of ceremonial offerings, the walls cracked and bare save for the eroding marble friezes. For that matter, the tomb complex was enormous. Even the family tombs of the old noble families were smaller than what she had already seen of this one. Few mausoleums were said to even approach this size: the Ascalon catacombs, destroyed by the searing; the old Krytan royal crypts, overgrown by the jungles; the ruins of the tombs of the primeval kings, swallowed by the desert-

And the city of the dead beneath Raisu palace, resting place of Cantha's emperors. Hurriedly Kasumi knelt down and started sifting through the broken rubble at the base of the wall. If she was right, and she whispered a quick prayer asking for once to be wrong-

There it was, mostly intact, a stele inscribed with the reign name of Emperor Angsiyan, whose reign was ended at the hands of his trusted bodyguard. So these were not simply scenes from Canthan history, but from the reigns of the Emperors, and this could only be the imperial tombs. A chill coursed down Kasumi's spine and lodged in her belly. The city of the dead could never have fallen into disrepair, not while the imperial line was intact, and certainly not have been looted and left to rot. Nor had damage she had seen been done quickly. Over decades, at the very least, and the Emperor had been in good health last she remembered.

Last she remembered. What did she last remember? A series of fleeting images. Heading south and east from the icy northern Shiverpeaks into Charr-occupied northern Ascalon. Evading, bribing, and sometimes battling patrols, to reach- Where? Rin. The fallen capital, now a field of rubble. Why had she made that journey? Why could she not remember?

And on top of her inner turmoil, now the chance that the entire empire had fallen while she was asleep. Figured. Save the world once and everything falls to pieces when you leave. Well, twice. Three times. Four. Five, if you counted that business with the civil war in Kryta. Anyway. Way she figured it, she'd more than earned a little rest. Then again, the world had never particularly cared what she thought.

The air was definitely fresher here, at least. It shouldn't be too long before she had at least some of her answers.

The long corridor came at last to an end, blocked by yet another ceiling collapse. Kasumi loosed a sailor's curse, then frowned. Pile of rubble notwithstanding, the corridor could not be blocked completely, or the air would be stagnant here. And there was definitely a whisper of a breeze, now, which meant there must be a passage. Whether it was large enough for her, of course, was another matter entirely, but- there. Right at the top of the collapse, nearly filled with chips of stone and bits of rubble. It would be a tight fit, but manageable.

A few preparations first, though. Kasumi slipped off the silken burial robe and took it in both hands, then with a swift pull tore the left sleeve off at the shoulder. Another quick pull for the right, and then taking a sharp-edged stone from the rubble began to to cut through the liberated lengths of cloth. A few minutes effort and she had four roughly equal lengths of silk, which she wrapped carefully around her knees and elbows, and a bit of extra silk around her palms and the soles of her feet. Not enough to restrict her motion, but hopefully enough to protect against sharp edges in the rubble field. She looked ridiculous, but she hadn't lived this long by worrying about appearances. As it was, this was not going to be pleasant. As a final measure, she tore another strip from the hem of the robe and tied her sandals about her waist. She would likely need them on the other side.

After all that, the climb was an anticlimax of sorts. The pile of rubble was more stable than she had feared and less deep than she had dared to hope, and cleaning the loose rubble from the top revealed a gap more than wide enough to permit her passage. She had a scare near the midpoint, her breath catching in her throat as her robe snagged on a particularly vicious spar of broken stone, but with a push and a wriggle she tore it free. A half-slide, half-scramble got her down the far slope and she was through, with only a few more cuts and bruises to mark her passage.

It had definitely, Kasumi thought, been worth the effort. The ruin of the corridor's end gave way to a grand open chamber, circular in shape and ringed by columns, some fallen; judging from the patterns of rubble, one of these had struck and nearly sealed the corridor from which she had come. At the far end, nearly a third of the chamber had collapsed entirely, leaving a field of debris sloping up to twice her height and more- and past the top of it Kasumi could glimpse tree branches. The air was fresh, and she could smell sea spray from the nearby ocean and woodsmoke from the city below. There was a faint echo of birdsong.

Freedom at last, and none too soon. Her stomach rumbled uncomfortably. She needed food, and some of the cuts she had acquired and hastily bandaged could use a monk's healing attentions. She took a step toward the de facto exit, and then paused. She had been here before, once. When?- Of course, the burial procession of Master Togo. Half of Cantha, it seemed, had come to pay their respects; certainly anyone who had studied at the monastery under his gentle guidance. Only a select few had been permitted to accompany the procession even this far into the crypts, to send their offerings for the departed at the imperial family's private shrines.

Shrines. There were five, or perhaps now six, in sheltered niches arranged around the perimeter of the room. Freedom could wait; here was a chance to get some answers. The gods owed her that much.

Two shrines had been buried by the collapse of the chamber's far end. Kasumi frowned. Simple decay could not have caused this much damage. Had some sort of catastrophe struck-

There was a sound of grinding behind her, and Kasumi whirled around, reaching reflexively for her now-missing staff. There was nothing there, nothing but the jumbled stone of a toppled column- stone that was moving, now, pushed aside by a hand of carved rock, as broad as she was tall and inscribed with runes that glowed with mystical energy. An arm as thick as a tree's trunk followed, then with a great heave cast aside the collapsed rubble pinning down the creature's torso, a great slab of carved stone she had taken for yet more rubble, now with eldritch engravings flickering to fitful life. Another great heave and the fallen stone covering the creature's legs was tossed aside, landing with enough force to shake the ground and disturb the dust of gods knew how many years into choking clouds, and with a tortured grinding sound the creature stood.

It was nearly three times her height, even in its hunched posture, with a great slab-like torso and arms that hung ponderously down to the broken flagstones. Arm, on a closer glance; the golem's entire left side had crumpled in from the fallen pillar. A lucky break, and one she needed. Badly. One solid hit and there would be splattered hero halfway across the courtyard.

She'd have to make sure it didn't hit, then. Of course, that was assuming it was unfriendly-

"IN-TRU-DER". So much for that. The damn construct sounded like a miniature avalanche, too. Fortunate that she wasn't expecting a lot of conversation from the thing. Not, come to think of it, that bringing the golem down would be much easier than chatting it up. Normally she left this sort of thing to people with more steel than brains, gods bless them. Of course, the rubble on the far side wasn't that far, and she doubted the golem was particularly agile. A bit of misdirection, a bit of luck, and she'd be out of the ruins before its arcane processors realised she had gone.

The golem lurched into a ponderous charge, and Kasumi grinned. Run. Her. Damn golem didn't know who it was dealing with.