The party explores the chamber. Under the 15' ceiling, among the white marble columns carved with geometric patterns, they find three nests made of branches, twigs, and animals’ bones. In each is a mewling juvenile pterafolk. Seven open portals lead to rooms carved into the rock.
After some discussion, Ixtli steps forward and runs through the nearest juvenile with the
Blood Spear. Dolan, going to search the corpse of one the fallen adult pterafolk, is startled when it suddenly twitches and then staggers to its feet. The other three adult corpses also rise and attack.
Ixtli fails to dislodge the dead juvenile from his spear, so instead bites the nearest undead pterafolk, then delivers a roundhouse kick to its already battered head. Ndidi charges at another but misses the lurching creature. Chibuzo advances on the next, attacking with sword and spear. Dolan casts four magic missiles at the last, while Dunch swings at it with his axe, cleaving one of its wings from its body. The undead monstrosities retaliate with beak and claw, injuring Dolan, Chibuzo, and Ndidi.
Ixtli spears his opponent, then seizes its long beak in his jaws and rips its head from its shoulders. Chibuzo finishes the next with a slash of his sword and moves on to spear Ndidi's foe. A swing of Dunch's axe kills another, and the barbarian goes to aid Chibuzo. When the creature bites the ranger on the shoulder, Dunch retaliates with a mighty blow that chops its head off.
The columned chamber is quiet once more, save for the cries of the two infant pterafolk. After Ixtli finishes them, the group takes a short rest to recover and heal.
They start their explorations through the middle portal, to the southeast. Chibuzo activates the Gem of Brightness to illuminate a narrow rectangular room. The far wall is filled with niches, twelve across in four rows, some empty but most capped with stone. The left wall is carved with a representation of a female
Marakuran warrior, while to the right stand four short pillars, each some three and a half feet tall, with sealed jars atop them. The niches are large enough for a body. Chibuzo and Dolan can read the Old Marakuran text inscribed on the stone caps and the pillars, which lists the names of kings and interleaving sets of dates. None of the names mean anything to Dolan, whose study of Marakuran history prior to this expedition was centred on the city of
Mezro. He uses the Wand of Magic Detection but finds no trace of wizardry.
Chibuzo looks around the room. "These are the resting places of Marakuran kings," he proclaims gravely. "We should not disturb them."
They leave the room and move to the next portal to the right. In this smaller room, a stone the size of a person's head floats above a pool filled with yellowish liquid. From time to time, an arc of lightning runs across the stone's surface, and the room smells of a thunderstorm. A drop of the yellowish liquid has pooled at the bottom of the stone. A 5-foot-wide stone walkway extends 10 feet into the pool, stopping just short of the stone.
The stone and the pool both radiate magic. Dolan uses a twig from a pterafolk nest to dislodge the drop of liquid from the bottom of the stone, capturing it in an empty vial and removing it to the columned chamber. A test with flint and steel suggests it is not flammable. Dolan gestures and speaks a magic word, summoning a spectral floating hand to fill the vial with liquid from the pool. Examining the full vial, Dolan notes that the liquid appears to be of the same colour and consistency as the Potions of Clairvoyance they retrieved in the eagle village below, though those also appeared to contain a floating eyeball. From outside the room, he commands the hand to push the floating rock towards the exit; the stone moves slightly, but then there is a sudden flash of electricity and a popping sound. The hand dissipates, and the stone moves back into place.
They move on and enter the next portal to the right. The room within has the appearance of an armoury, with dozens of swords, yklwas, maces, and battleaxes racked on the walls. At the back of the room stands an 8-foot-tall stone statue of an armoured man with a regal countenance. His arms are crossed, one hand bearing a rod, the other a miner's pick, and the stone scales of his armour are carved to resemble feathers. The statue is flanked by two suits of armour that look to have been made from some kind of insect chitin. The weapons in the room, the two suits of armour, and the rod in the statue's hand all detect as magical.
The party stands outside the room, and Dolan summons his mage hand to pluck a short sword from the wall. As soon as he does so, the rod in the statue's hand flares with a continuing brilliant white light that fills the room. The hand carries the sword halfway to the exit, but then the weapon suddenly twists itself free. For a moment it hangs in the air, then moves forward to attack. Another short sword, two yklwas, and two battle axes rise from the walls to join it, and the two suits of armour come to life and clank forwards.
Ixtli pulls Dolan out of the archway and behind the others, but the sword flies overhead and swings at him anyway, though he dodges the attack. The other weapons similarly float out of the room and surround the party. A battle axe strikes Chibuzo in the back, and the yklwas injure Dunch and Dolan.
In fury Dunch attacks the nearest short sword, the impact of his axe denting the blade. Chibuzo casts a spell and moves with the force of the wind, spinning to attempt a spear thrust at a floating battle axe, then retreating to stand near a column in the centre of the room. Ixtli shatters with the Blood Spear the same sword that Dunch attacked, then turns and bites at the haft of the other floating axe.
Chibuzo races forward and stabs one of the hovering yklwas with his own, then cuts the enemy weapon to pieces with his short sword before retreating out of attack range again. Dolan casts a particle of flame at the remaining yklwa.
One of the axes slashes Ndidi; the other descends on Ixtli but he dodges out of the way, sparks rising from the blade as it hits the stone floor. Dolan evades the yklwa, and Dunch blocks an attack from the remaining short sword.
The two suits of armour attack, one of them striking Dunch with an armoured gauntlet. Ixtli defends himself from the other, then snaps the haft of the nearest axe with his teeth and delivers a spinning kick on one of the suits of armour.
Ndidi bites at the remaining axe, while her companion Chibuzo darts forward to slash the short sword before retreating again. Dunch attacks the same suit of armour as Ixtli; the chitin cracks at the force of his blow but the enchanted thing remains upright. Another burst of flame from Dolan hits the remaining yklwa and its smouldering remains fall to the floor.
Dunch is slashed by the short sword, and one of the suits of armour punches him in the face. When the other attacks Ixtli, Dunch retaliates with a blow that chops off its upper arm. At a thrust from Ixtli's spear, it collapses in pieces. He kicks the remaining armour, which strikes Dunch again with its gauntlets. Dolan casts Fire Bolt on the short sword with minimal effect.
The axe wounds Ndidi again; she bites back, but the weapon stays active. Chibuzo advances and stabs the remaining armour, adding the force of the wind to his blow, then brings his sword down on the empty helm. The armour crumples to the floor.
Ixtli splinters the haft of the axe between his jaws, and now only the short sword remains. Dunch rings his axe against the blade, then blocks its counterattack with his shield. Finally, Chibuzo strikes it with his own sword, and it shatters into pieces.
In the aftermath, Chibuzo heals the worst of his own wounds, and Dolan heals himself and Ndidi.
They move on to the last room to the right. The walls are lined with a dozen upright sarcophagi, surrounding a central sarcophagus lying on the floor. All are inscribed with more names and dates. The central casket bears the inscription: "Here lies Kwalu Mbalawa, first king of
Mbala." Chibuzo is again reluctant to disturb the dead, and they move on. The brilliant light from the rod in the armoury is still shining as they pass by.
In the room just to the left of centre, ornate murals cover the walls, depicting six scenes:
- A man points at stars falling like tears from a deity-like figure in the sky. This aligns with stories known to Chibuzo and Dolan of the founding of Mbala. The first king of Mbala is said to have led his people to this place following a sign from the heavens, the fall of Ubtao's Tears.
- Men toiling in the mines uncover gold, gems, and strange, floating stones—the Tears of Ubtao.
- A man stands in armour that seems made or decorated with eagle feathers. This must be King Mbalawa, wearing a famous suit of armour he is said to have made.
- A woman bearing an axe kneels before a great serpent with a woman's face. Dolan thinks this could be Queen Ngozi, the first queen of Mbala, swearing fealty to Saja N'baza.
- Men and women bearing the symbol of the Kimbala battle with lizardfolk and unidentifiable monsters. This seems to depict the cult of Saja N'baza routing the Aldani from the place where Orolunga would be founded.
- A man in priestly robes weeps as the deity-like figure from the first mural—Ubtao—vanishes from the sky.
They find no apparent mechanisms or secrets in the room. When they re-enter the central chamber, they notice the light from the armoury has finally gone out.
The next room to the left bears a large symbol of Ubtao on the far wall behind an altar. Alcoves on both sides of the red-tiled room hold statues of robed men—priests of Ubtao, Dolan thinks. This room seems dustier than the others. Painted on the altar in flaking paint are words in Old Marakuran: "Why have you abandoned us?"
Dolan spots a small compartment concealed in the front of the altar. Examining the area more closely with the Gem of Brightness, Chibuzo spots a small button on the floor. Dolan can make out a glyph written on the compartment but can't read it.
With the party standing outside the room again, Dolan summons his spectral hand to press the button. The glyph flashes a magenta purple colour, detaches itself from the altar, travels down to the mage hand, then zooms directly at Dolan and dissipates. He becomes briefly disoriented but seems to recover.
In the altar's compartment, they find what looks like a spell scroll, but it reads to Dolan as gibberish.
The last room also seems religious in nature. A pathway of faded red tiles leads to a basin positioned in front of an enormous mirror. Both the left and right sides of the room are lined with two alcoves, each containing a small shrine bearing a bowl marked with a glyph. To Dolan's eyes the glyphs are suggestive of necromancy; a ritual employing the basin, or the bowls might allow one to speak with the dead.
After some experimentation with water, the yellowish liquid they retrieved earlier, and drops of Chibuzo's blood, they conclude that the yellowish liquid and blood are both key components in the ritual. Dolan takes the sludge-filled vials he retrieved from the regent's house, dumps out the black ooze within, and returns to the room containing the floating stone. Just as he is using his mage hand to fill the third empty vial with the yellowish liquid, a tawny yellow pseudopod silently emerges from the pool and slams into the side of his head. His skin burns at its acid touch.
As his scream echoes across the columned chamber, the rest of the party runs to aid him. Before they can arrive the ochrous ooze bludgeons Dolan with another acidic tentacle, and he falls unconscious.
Ixtli passes through the narrow portal, picks up the sorcerer, and expends some of his ki to withdraw safely out of the creature's attack range. He lays him down next to one of the columns in the central room. Chibuzo pours a Potion of Healing down his throat, and he begins to recover. Dunch stands outside the portal and readies an attack.
The large amorphous blob emerges from the pool and squeezes through the portal. Dunch chops at it with his battle axe but the blow cleaves the creature in two. Both jellies attack, buffeting him with their pseudopods and burning him with acid.
Ixtli comes to his aid, spearing and kicking the nearest ooze. It smites him heavily with a caustic tentacle; Dunch retaliates with a swing of his battle axe, but the slashing edge of the blade again splits the creature into two smaller ones. Ndidi claws at the same one that Ixtli attacked; it divides as well, making four of them.
Leaving his short sword in its sheath, Chibuzo takes in hand the skeletal club he received from Ixtli—Death Bone—and bashes one of the monsters, then stabs it with his yklwa. The thing loses cohesion and dissipates into a sticky goo.
Dolan, back on his feet, tries to cast Fire Bolt at one of the creatures, but is prevented by the curse inflicted on him by the purplish glyph. He loses focus on what he intended to do, and stares blankly into space.
Infuriated, Dunch sets aside his axe and instead punches and kicks at the creatures. The three remaining oozes counterattack. One injures Ixtli and Dunch repays it with a savage kick.
As Dolan continues to gaze into nothingness, Chibuzo orders his leopard companion to retreat from the fray. At a thrust of his yklwa, another jelly dissolves; he clubs the next with Death Bone, and it dies in turn when Ixtli pierces it with the Blood Spear. The monk then crushes the last of the monsters beneath his heel.
Dolan fills the remaining vials without incident. Returning to the mirrored room, they fill the basin and the bowls with the yellow liquid, and Chibuzo adds his blood to the basin. He feels an odd sensation, as if his mind is being pulled elsewhere, then hears the voice of his grandfather, Atsu. "Chibuzo, is that you?"
"Grandpa? Where are you?"
"In the afterlife. How is this happening?"'
Uncertain whether this is truly the spirit of his grandfather, Chibuzo asks him a question about his past, the gift that Atsu gave him for his fifth birthday, and the voice correctly identifies the small dinosaur that Chibuzo received as a pet, even naming it.
Atsu is pleased that Chibuzo now wields his
lance—it's this bond that enabled him to speak to his grandson. He knows nothing of the
Black Opal Crown that is the object of the adventurers' quest, but confesses that even though he has passed on, lately he has been feeling ill, as if his spirit were being pulled somewhere by a hungry, consuming force. Other spirits feel it too, though the long-dead less so. When Chibuzo asks of the spirits of the recently killed servants who rose as undead, Dofi and Makalo, Atsu is shocked to learn of their deaths, but cannot sense their presence in the afterlife.
"I will do what I can to restore the peace of the afterlife to you," Chibuzo promises. "Good-bye, grandfather. It was good speaking to you again."
The sensation fades. To the others in the altar room, Chibuzo seemed to be speaking only to empty air. The basin is now empty of the yellow liquid.
Chibuzo lets some of his blood into the bowl at another altar, hoping to speak to Korb, the guard killed by zombies a few days ago. But he experiences only a searing pain and concludes there is some limitation on the use of the spell. As for the others, Dunch declines to attempt the ritual, and Dolan cannot think of anyone to speak to. Ixtli seems about to do so, but then thinks better of it.
With all of the adventurers now injured, and low on spells or other abilities, the group decides to return to camp. Before they depart from the
Tomb of the Sky Kings, Chibuzo scans the landscape below with his spyglass. He sees their own camp below, apparently in good order, but no signs of smoke from any distant fires. He does spot something odd out in the
Aldani Basin, some 40 or 50 miles distant: a clump of earth hanging in the empty air, hundreds of feet above the ground.
They arrive back at camp as the sun is going down, first visiting
Nanny Pu'pu, who welcomes them back and is pleased that they have killed the pterafolk. She has a pot of some foul-smelling concoction bubbling over a fire.
Burning with curiosity, Chibuzo asks her about the floating patch of earth. "That's Ubtao's Heart," she answers. It was a sacred site to the priests of Ubtao, but no-one has been there for hundreds of years. The Aldani have claimed it for some purpose.
The floating stone that they saw in the Tomb is said to have been the first of Ubtao's Tears to fall to earth. The Tears are what drew people to this land in the first place, she explains—to mine the fallen Tears. As for the glyph's effect on Dolan, she shakes her head. "Sounds like a warding glyph. You should have been more careful." The curse should go away on its own—eventually.
Dunch asks why
Ras Nsi hadn't looted the Tomb. He never went there, she answers, he was looking for the King, and for the Kimbala in the shrine at the top.
"I believe I owe you for getting rid of the pterafolk," she says, as she turns to stir the pot on the stove. "I've started already. Just missing one ingredient." She turns back, drawing a knife: "I just need a little bit of your blood."
She can brew each of them an elixir to do one of three things: an Elixir of Eyes, to aid vision and perception; an Elixir of Adrenaline, to aid physical exertion; or an Elixir of Heroism, to grant extra resolve and the blessing of the spirits. There may, she cautions, be some after-effects. Dunch and Chibuzo opt for the Elixir of Heroism, while Dolan and Ixtli choose the Elixir of Eyes.
Leaving the hut, Chibuzo next seeks out
Gero. At first his brother is full of enthusiasm to hear all the details of the Tomb, but he sobers quickly when Chibuzo relates his encounter with the spirit of their grandfather. He agrees that something strange is happening with the spirits of the dead, but what particularly doesn't make sense to him is the randomness with which the newly dead rise again. Why doesn't it happen every time? As for Dolan's curse, his magic doesn't give him any ability to remove it.
Finally, they locate
General Voss, staring into a campfire. Chibuzo starts to relate their encounter with the pterafolk, but Voss cuts him off with grim news:
Akachi is missing.
She left camp this morning shortly after the adventurers. When Voss shared the news of
Mokomoko's espionage, they agreed that she was the best choice to scout the jungle and determine if the party was being followed and would work best alone. But about an hour after she left, they heard her calling out for help.
The general and some of the guards formed a reconnaissance party but couldn't find her. One of the
Asturian guards, Shale, was killed during the search. The group had split up but then heard him screaming. Rushing to the scene, they found that he'd been torn apart by some kind of taloned creature. The scout, Rahima, spent an hour searching the area where he was killed, but found only Shale's footprints. The only trace they could find of Akachi was her equipment. Mokomoko found it a few hundred yards from where Shale was killed, hidden in a tree trunk—much like the tent and other gear that Ixtli found concealed in a tree earlier in their journey.
As soon as the general finishes his tale, Chibuzo rises to his feet at once. "Take us there," he commands. But the sky is already darkening, and the sun is about to set. Given their injuries, and the difficulty and danger of exploring the jungle in the darkness, he reluctantly agrees that they should rest for the night and pick up the search at first light.
