Chapter 14 – The Temple Approach
Latta stood at the head of the two roaring mountain rivers, at the point where they forked from the river flowing out of Snow-Throat. She was carrying the crystal that Meridia had given her, but could not see how it was going to grant them access to the volcano's caldera, the location of the temple. The river was thundering out of the caldera down a sheer, vertical-walled ravine, and a lethal torrent of white water. To fall into it would mean instant death.
Ariel walked over to where Latta was stood. Latta was examining the floor, looking for a keyhole of some sort.
"I think it might be a polariser," Ariel suggested. When following one of the north-flowing rivers, the group had encountered a sharp right-hand bend, meaning that the river was flowing directly due east out of the crater, directly into the path of the still-rising sun.
Latta nodded and held the Varla stone high above her head and something incredible happened – as the sun struck the black crystal, it began to hum loudly and develop a bright blue glow, before a bolt of lightning lanced out of it, down the ravine. The lightning must have hit some distant unseen trigger, because a deep rumbling began to echo around the ravine as a huge stone bridge began to raise up out of the river, coming to a halt at the point where the two rivers split – the bridge extended all the way down the ravine, running parallel to its walls, offering a path leading all the way to the innermost reaches of the volcano.
Camri's heart sank when he examined the bridge and saw it was laced with trigger stones and tripwires. The walls of the ravine were also coated in deep slits, which obviously concealed blades, and many small holes.
"Let me go first," Camri suggested. "If there's anyone who knows booby traps, it's me. Ariel, follow me. Tell me if anything doesn't look right"
"We've got you covered" Pasqual said. His Battlemages prepared a variety of ranged attacks, some drawing bows and others preparing themselves to cast spells.
Camri and Ariel carefully began to pick their way across the bridge, stepping over trigger stones and tripwires. One trigger stone took up the whole width of the bridge and could not be bypassed, so Camri stood on it then took a leap backwards, just in time to avoid a large rock that was catapulted out of a gap in the ravine wall by some unseen force – had he still been stood on the trigger stone, it would have thrown him clean off the bridge and into the raging river.
Another similar trigger stone caused the whole section of the bridge to rotate on its lateral axis by 90 degrees, throwing any potential victims into the water.
"They've got this place pretty well-guarded" Camri said to himself.
"Camri! Someone's coming!" Ariel cried suddenly. Camri looked up, just in time to see a fireball roaring towards him! Camri leapt to the ground but Ariel cast a spell on herself at the last minute, the fireball simply dissolving into her as she felt a small surge of magicka.
The source of the fireball was a necromancer stood at the far end of the bridge. But then Camri heard a familiar roaring sound approaching from above him, and lunged forwards just in time to avoid a fireball cast from the top of the ravine hitting him. Camri landed clumsily on a trigger stone and heard a crossbow bolt shoot over him, passing through where his head would have been had he been standing up.
"Ambush!" Camri shouted. "Cover us!"
An arrow soared over the pair from behind them, flying in a graceful parabolic arc and landing square in the necromancer's chest. A bolt of lightning hit the necromancer at the top of the ravine, sending him tumbling down the cliff face into the river, but another soon took his place. Camri and Ariel kept running, leaping over trigger stones and tripwires. More necromancers were appearing at the top of the ravine and casting spells at them, then three skeletons appeared out of thin air in front of Camri and Ariel on the bridge, summoned by an unseen foe.
Camri didn't miss a beat, ploughing into one of the skeletons and shoving it into a tripwire, causing a bolt of lightning to blast out of a hole in the cliff face, annihilating the skeleton. Drawing his sword, Camri hewed the head from the second skeleton, the third beating a retreat back along the bridge, stepping on a trigger stone and activating a similar rotating-floor trap that Camri and Ariel had encountered earlier, hurling the skeleton into the river.
"Trigger that trap, Camri" Ariel said suddenly as the pair carried on running. Camri momentarily hesitated but realised that Ariel must have known what she was doing, and kicked a tripwire, causing a crossbow bolt to shoot out of a trap-hole, which Ariel stopped using telekinesis mere inches from Camri's head, twisted it in mid-air and launched it down the bridge, nailing a necromancer who emerged out of a small cave.
The pair reached the comparitive safety of the end of the bridge – they were now in a wide gully that led into the heart of the crater.
"Keep coming!" Camri shouted back to the others, who were still trying to hold back the necromancers with volleys of magic and bow-fire.
Staada and Captain Pasqual came next. Pasqual looked formidable – wearing a full suit of ebony armour, and with his long grey hair and beard blowing in the wind he looked like a true war wizard. Just as the pair set foot onto the bridge, a necromancer at the top of the ravine began to cast a summoning spell, but Pasqual cast a bolt of lightning, hitting the ravine wall just below the necromancer, causing it to crumble away and plunge the doomed mage down the 300-foot drop into the river.
The pair crossed the traps with ease, Pasqual using summoned scamps to trigger the three unavoidable traps whose trigger stones covered the whole width of the walkway. They both soon reached Camri and Ariel – Camri was knelt down on the riverbank with his bow, continuing the wave of suppressive fire towards the top of the ravine.
Halisman, Latta and Assurrani also made quick progress across the bridge, and were soon in a position to lay down enough covering fire for the Battlemages to cross the bridge.
By this point, enough of the necromancers had been killed for the rest to retreat, knowing that they were outnumbered. Camri and Captain Pasqual breathed huge sighs of relief – they had all crossed the trap-laden bridge under heavy fire from the necromancer ambush without any casualties.
"I dread to think how well-defended the temple is if the bridge into the crater is guarded like that" Assurrani remarked.
The bridge had emerged on a semicircular outcrop of rock, which reached out over the river, concealing some underground tunnel that the river emerged from into the ravine. Beyond it lay a huge stone stairway leading up at least a hundred feet into a gap in the rim of the crater. Camri and Latta cautiously led the group up the stairs with no difficulties, and eventually they reached the crater of the Throat of the World.
The crater was enormous, at least the circumference of Lake Rumare.
No, Camri thought to himself. It's the exact size of Lake Rumare.
In the centre of the crater, built over the vent itself, was a great temple-fortress built out of dark grey stone – it was circular in shape, its walls interspersed by six large towers. Directly in front of them, wide open, was a huge doorway with a series of Daedric runes inscribed above it.
"Can anyone read Daedric?" Camri asked. "Ariel?"
Ariel gazed at the Daedric script. "The number 3 is in there several times – it also says 'Mantella' and 'Hallowed Ground'"
"The Mantella" Pasqual said. "I should have known"
The others turned to look at him.
"The Mantella was the stone at the heart of the war of Iliac Bay. They say it's Numidium's heart. Mannimarco was one of the players trying to get the Mantella for himself"
"I wonder how it ended up here," Assurrani said.
"Perhaps this was its resting place all along," Pasqual said. "Perhaps the Empire came here and stole it to power Numidium. This fortress looks pretty old to me…"
"I'm just wondering where the tower is," Camri said. "If the Mantella is a counterpart to the Chim-el Adabal, would it not be placed atop a huge tower, like White Gold Tower?"
"It must be in here," Latta said. "Why else would the necromancers be defending it so fiercely? Mannimarco isn't in here"
Camri recalled the map of the interior of the temple that he had seen. The doorway they could see marked the start of a route that led all the way around the temple wall's perimeter before emerging in whatever was beyond the great stone wall – the circular void marked simply as 'Hallowed Ground' on Chancellor Ocato's map. There was no other way in, and Camri expected the route to be well guarded.
"Skeletons" Ariel said suddenly. Sure enough, many summoned skeletons began to appear at the doorway, all carrying weapons and ready to attack.
"Form up!" Camri ordered. "Give them a volley!"
Pasqual gave a signal to his men who let loose a ferocious barrage of magic, decimating the skeletons' number, as the skeletons began to charge at the group. Camri, Latta, Halisman and Staada all drew their swords.
Ariel noticed something strange, however. The broken remains of the skeletons' bodies remained on the ground. They weren't summoned.
The two groups clashed spectacularly – Halisman collided with one skeleton, brandishing his shield in front of him, with such force that the skeleton was simply smashed to pieces where it stood. Never missing a beat, Halisman swung his right arm forwards and cut down another skeleton. Next to him, Staada and Latta held off the skeletons, occasionally getting in a killing blow, but Camri was unstoppable, barely giving each foe chance to attack before they met their end. Every so often, an arrow would soar through the air, fired by Assurrani, hitting its intended target right between the eyes.
Silence fell over the huge crater.
"That the best they've got?" Halisman asked, sheathing his sword as he paused for breath.
"Don't speak too soon" Camri replied. Halisman was right though – the group made up of amongst the best fighters in the world, backed by a detail of elite Imperial Battlemages, was almost unstoppable.
"Life detection's showing nothing inside the temple," Ariel said. "Where are they all?"
"Don't be surprised if this is it," Latta said. "The location of this mountain, and that bridge, is a near-impenetrable line of defense. The skeletons would have most people beaten too. We needed a black Varla stone to get in here, which is almost impossible to get hold of without getting yourself killed"
"And I bet there's a few traps inside the wall too" Assurrani added.
"You seem to be the best at getting past traps, Camri," Captain Pasqual said. "I would recommend you go on point again. We've got you covered"
And so the group made their way into the remote temple of evil, spearheaded by Camri Everlight, Falas Assurrani and Ariel Lasaille – the three who had been prophecised to rid the world of evil.
The inside of the temple was deserted, just as Ariel had deduced, but was by no means undefended. Every few metres, Camri encountered a new trap to bypass, but his years of exploring Ayleid tombs and ancient forts meant that none caught him out.
The three bypassed countless trigger stones and stepped cautiously over tripwires. One impassable trigger stone that covered the whole hallway opened a hatch in the ceiling leading to a sloped tunnel, down which an enormous, perfectly round boulder crashed, but Ariel halted it with telekinesis and gently lowered it to the ground.
A concealed tripwire, hidden by shadows, caused a volley of darts to blast out of wall-mounted blowpipes at chest level but Camri reacted immediately and rolled under the blowpipes' line of fire, waiting until they stopped and letting the others through.
At one point, the corridor narrowed until it was only wide enough for the group to proceed in single-file.
"Don't step on that grate," Camri said, indicating an iron grate over a hole that plummeted down into unseen, dark depths. The grate was not actually attached to the ground around the hole, rather resting on porcelain struts, which supported the weight of the grate but would give way should anyone step on it.
Cautiously, the group stepped around it…
Until one Imperial Battlemage lost his footing and stumbled onto the grating, which gave way immediately. Pasqual tried to throw out a hand to grab the doomed Battlemage but failed – the Battlemage screamed all the way down, until the others heard a distant splash.
"Damnit," Pasqual said to himself. Shocked at the sudden death of their comrade, the remaining Battlemages took great care in crossing the void.
Camri reached another corridor-wide trigger stone and cautiously stepped out onto it, only for the whole trigger stone to suddenly crumble under his feet. But Camri's reactions were quick, and he leapt forward and grabbed onto the edge of the gaping hole, which again led down into nothing but inky darkness, and pulled himself up. Assurrani and Halisman threw the rope-ladder that they had used in Vilverin, which Halisman had been carrying, across the hole, Camri anchoring it to the ground securely with its two grappling hooks, allowing the others to cross.
Eventually, the corridor made a sharp right-hand turn. Camri ran around it, only to instantly be hit with a bolt of magic that sent him flying back into the corridor in a crumpled heap. Latta and Staada bolted around the corner and unleashed twin bolts of lightning, just as a menacing-looking black wraith wielding a Daedric sword unleashed another spell, narrowly avoiding Staada. Pasqual cast a fireball which delivered the killing blow to the wraith.
Ariel and Staada both raced over to Camri, who shakily got to his feet. He was shivering, in a cold sweat, and looked visibly weakened. Ariel placed her hands on him and a wave of purple light engulfed Camri, accompanied by a strange high-pitched discharging noise. Camri screwed his eyes shut then opened them again.
"Are you alright, Camri?" Ariel asked.
"I am now," Camri replied. "Thank you. I've felt many more pleasant sensations than that in my life"
"They're nasty business, those wraith curses," Pasqual remarked. "They can linger on you for days sometimes"
"We're in the middle," Latta said reverently. "The 'hallowed ground'"
Latta was indicating a very strange sight in the centre of the huge, otherwise empty circular chamber. It appeared to be a section of an enormous tower, forged from the same pale grey stone as White Gold Tower. And around the tower's flanks was a gap in the floor, a few metres wide, interrupted at one point by a stairwell which led down into what the group guessed must be the vent of the crater. Camri walked over to Latta.
"Ready?" Latta asked.
"Ready," Camri replied. "Falas, some cover would be appreciated"
"Right on it" Assurrani said as he drew his bow.
Latta and Camri gingerly descended the stairwell, which led down into an absolutely, mind-bogglingly huge cave. It was perfectly circular in shape and unimaginably deep – Camri kicked a loose stone down into the cave and never heard it hit the bottom.
"Welcome to the Throat of the World" Camri thought out loud as the pair reached the bottom of the stairwell, which led onto a precarious rope bridge spanning the gap between the stairs and a wide, spiralling ledge which led down the perimeter of the cave. Carefully, the pair began to cross it, as Assurrani reached the bottom of the stairwell, still ready to fire his bow in an instant.
When Camri had reached the halfway point of the bridge, he turned around…
"Oh, you have got to be joking…"
The tower that they had seen in the large circular chamber continued downwards, an exact replica of White Gold Tower but turned upside-down and suspended over the enormous chasm. It was the most amazing structure Camri had ever seen in his life. And at the base of the tower, the surrounding rock was lit by a vivid blue glow emanating from the Mantella.