Act II – Taint of Chaos (Cont'd)

Her passage into the Mausoleum was slow, gingerly maneuvering the gloomy way past the rubble upon the stone steps. At times the immense granite chunks from the shattered gate had obstructed most of the space between the stairs and the high ceiling, forcing Blood Raven to crawl through narrow gaps above the debris. The Rogue's legs felt fatigued and her hand numb from touching the cold stone walls. As she clambered through another crevice Blood Raven let a sigh of relief to see the foot of the stairs end in a shadowy, open archway. She turned haul Cheyianne onto the stairs, and fluidly spun to face the swift flash of movement in the corner of her eye. "Does the darkness play illusions upon my senses, or did I see the rushing past of something as pale white as bone?" There no longer seemed to be anything visible in the shadowy archway leading into the chamber. Her short blade drawn and with tense cautiousness, the Rogue edged towards the archway of mottled stone. Thrusting her burning torch into the chamber, she warily peered within.

Blood Raven was assailed by the dank, stale air of the chamber, and the dim illumination of her torchlight revealed everything but life. The chamber walls were filled with narrow stone niches, containing the skeletal remains of countless fallen humanoids. If the tall decorated arches within the Rogue's Monastery were impressive, the Mausoleum's architecture could only be grandeur. Rows upon rows of granite burial niches layered upwards in an irregular arrangement along the walls to a breathtaking height. The ceiling of the chamber was even beyond the radius of her torchlight. The bare sandstone floor of the chamber and its towering design did not divulge any indications of how each of the entombed had been placed upon their recesses. It seemed that after the construction of such an architectural feat, its builders had felt it unnecessary to furnish adornments, and the walls were bleak and unmarked, absent of any decorations or engravings. Along the doorway where Blood Raven believed she had perceived the flash of movement, an unlit corridor stretched off from east to west into the darkness.

"My mother was not granted the boon of having her resting place within these hallowed walls, but at least as a request of forgiveness I can grant you this Chei." Blood Raven solemnly placed Cheyianne into an empty niche where she hoped her Sister would finally find peace.
"Rest in peace now my Sister. The Cause has willed your spirit to serve beyond the living, abarrach et' doit." The Rogue softly recited her final farewell. She had few material possessions to honour her comrade with, and instead cut a lock of her luscious hair to place within Cheyianne's skeletal hand.

The still silence within the ancient Mausoleum seemed forbidding, almost unwelcoming, and Blood Raven considered departing the Mausoleum without delay. The unnatural atmosphere within the tomb was depleting her resolve to investigate the source of the scream which had emanated from this place.

Her task here was done, and she had found no evidence upon the sandstone floor to confirm that she had indeed seen a living thing within this place of the dead. Returning her blade to its iron sheathe, she seated herself upon the floor to tighten the bindings upon her boots before beginning the long climb back to the surface.

A clammy rivet of liquid splashed upon the left shoulder of her tunic, and Blood Raven blurred with her sudden motion across the chamber into a crouching position, sword in hand.
"What the…?"
She stared upwards into the darkness which concealed the ceiling, searching for an upper level of the tomb. Glancing at her tunic, rivulets of a darker crimson had trailed down the leather from where it had first splashed upon her. A veteran of battles and of compassionately tendering for her injured Sisters, the Rogue almost instinctively recognised the scent of blood. As she scrutinised the upper burial niches, another droplet fell from the shadows and splattered upon the bare sandstone in a viscous stain of red.
"Is someone up there? Are you injured?" Blood Raven's hesitant voice clearly evinced her fear and uncertainty.

The Mausoleum remained in deathly stillness and silence for a moment, and as if in answer dark-red blood fell faster, at a more horrific frequency, pooling upon the floor and trickling along the crevices between the sandstone slabs which constituted the floor.

Another desperate and terrified shriek emanated throughout the ancient tomb. It resonated not from above but via the echoing subterranean corridor. Blood Raven moved swiftly without hesitation, heading east along the tunnel towards the source. Her torchlight cast flickering shadows around the broad granite pillars which lined the tunnel at regular intervals to support the ceiling. The corridor turned and twisted, each bend occurring at not more than several hundred metres, as though its builders had intended to impose a loss in the sense of direction upon anyone making their passage through it. As she pressed onwards, her surroundings distinctively became more aged and derelict. From her childhood memory of the Mausoleum, the Sisterhood utilised the more maintained section of the tomb to the west. Parts of the wind weathered walls here had crumbled in disrepair; this part of the tomb appeared to have been disused or abandoned for an extensive period time.

The Rogue halted as the passage eventually straightened, and widened expansively into a pillared hall which marked the intersection of two corridors. Four monolithic pillars carved in a polygonal shape had once stood at each corner, but the furthest column to her left had since toppled and its fragmented segments now obstructed the exit which faced her. Blood Raven keenly listened, but there were no further screams. She had reached indecision in how to proceed. The walls were bare, and did not reveal any purpose or destination of the corridors, nor was there a visible access leading to an upper level of the tomb. Her torch had begun to sputter; its flame had consumed most of the oil.

"Any direction will do I guess." She randomly chose the exit to her right, realising her limited time and that even with her leather tunic and her torch alight, the cold air of the Mausoleum still bit painfully upon her skin. Without warmth and visibility, she would quickly join the community of the dead in the pitch-black darkness of this subterranean tomb. The dust became gradually thicker along the corridor, and Blood Raven was soon forced to suppress a gag simply to breathe. She was being choked…everything was a dire shade of murky brown and black…she could not see more than several metres ahead of her…turn…she had to turn around.

She stumbled out of the strangulating haze, sprawling upon the floor of a chamber where the dust was thinner, and her heaving lungs could draw in vital oxygen once more. Her suffocated torch had also dwindled to a flicker, but its flame burst into renewed life once more. Blood Raven rolled upon the cold stone floor onto her back and was confronted by hundreds of small emotionless faces. Detailed miniature granite carvings of winged angels lined the skirting recess between the walls and the high ceiling. Each figurine had been artistically captured in various postures of deep contemplation, its glazed face gazing downwards without thought or emotion.

Complex patterns had been embedded into the walls in stark contrast to the sections of the Mausoleum which Blood Raven had visited. Trails of protruding granite snaked and intertwined across the ceiling. The chamber ran length-ways, and the furthest half of the ceiling disappeared from sight as it curved upwards into a shaft. Both of the two exits which were immediately visible to her, the curved archway set in the left wall, and a descending ramp at the end of the room just past the escalated ceiling, were shadowy and ominous.

Mysterious runes had been etched to border the arch and mysterious sheen of ethereal dark-violet, which rippled like the surface of a lake, obstructed any entry and view of what lay within. Blood Raven maintained her distance from the shimmering barrier. To the Rogue, the shimmering orchid-purple expressed an unmistakeable warning of caution and danger; it had always been the colour of the Monastery's flags which were flown upon the battlements before an impending attack.

Inscriptions had been etched above the arch, and Blood Raven stared hard with incomprehension as she slowly regained her feet. She was astonished to find had been written in an archaic form of the Rogue's language. Her foster mother, Silverstrom would have had little difficulty in deciphering the ancient script, but for the comparatively young Rogue, the words were fragmented and mystifying.

"Malevolent… lies…" Blood Raven attempted to translate the words which were adorned with swirls and waves, reflective of the ancestral Rogues' greater affinity with nature.
"No. That doesn't make sense." She re-examined the complex first inscription again, trying to relate the symbol to the more basic modern Rogue lettering.
"Herein lies…, that is more understandable."
The next set of inscriptions was obviously the name of the fallen hero within the arch. She deigned the elegant swirls far too intricate for her to translate and continued on.
"…ast' forlone…" These words were archaic, extracted from a reminiscent saying of the Sisterhood describing fallen comrades in battle. It meant to be borne, or to be the bearer of a comrade. Perhaps the words had a similar meaning at the time of the inscription.
"…nature's blessing…" Blood Raven was perplexed, and confused.
"Herein lies…the bearer of nature's blessing…" No legends of which Blood Raven was aware of spoke of a druid-like hero of the Rogues.
"It doesn't make any sense."

Then they came, soaring down from the heights of the ceiling shaft, their ephemeral forms garbed in torn, tattered cloaks which shifted and fluttered despite the lack of even a draft of air within the tomb. Blood Raven faced their ghastly skull-like visages unflinchingly and without fear. Her meeting as a child with the tomb guardians was an experience that would be forever entrenched in her memories.
The guardians drifted into a formation around her, blocking her path any further into the tomb.
"Tressspassser…your sssoul isss forfeit…" the tightly-drawn skin around their jaws stretched repulsively as they moaned hollowly in monotonous unison.

"Halt! I am Blood Raven, daughter of Gale, ancestor of Lyreira Elsvairel and a disciple of the Cause." Her shout resonated within the chamber, and the ghostly beings halted momentarily in their advance, but did not depart. A hint of doubt slithered through Blood Raven's mind. Had she recited the words which had been used by Silverstrom correctly?
The skeletal bodies of the guardians slightly jerked as if they fought an intense internal struggle. Their bodies drifted back and forth unsteadily, as if with uncertainty.
Blood Raven stared at them transfixed, realising that something was terribly amiss. Why had the guardians not departed as they should have? She peered closer into the hollow eye pits of the nearest phantom and thought she detected the flicker of a red-tinge for an instant.
Suddenly the eyes of each spectre flamed with fiery vehemence. "We…ssserve Elsssvariel no more…" Each word was spoken in a struggle, but the reasoning of the phantoms were clearly sundered by an overwhelming power. "The Maiden of Anguisssh demandsss… your dessstruction…" With outstretched arms all three guardians drifted towards the Rogue with demonic malevolence.

Blood Raven's blade flashed from its scabbard, the metal only a flashing arc striking towards the neck of a guardian with enough potency to behead a living adversary. But she could not harm the ancient guardians who had protected the tomb for several centuries. Her weapon passed through the ephemeral body as though through smoke. Icy skeletal fingers tightly gripped into her sword arm, numbing and paralyzing her limb instantly.