Chapter 41
As the group beds down for the night, Gven takes the first watch. The sun has gone down below the treetops along the horizon and the last moments of twilight are hovering in the sky, when she hears a soft rustling off in the brush. Listening closely with her hand on Tempest Edge’s pommel, she can tell it’s purposely moving quietly, whatever it might be.
A moment later, a muscular tabaxi slowly enters the small campsite and looks at Gven. With a slight shrug of his shoulders, Nyx says, “I got hungry.”
For just a moment, Gven gives him a hard look and then points toward the dwindling fire. “Plenty leftover.”
While eating a not-so-small portion of the dinner Grindlefoot prepared, Nyx takes in the others, noting where they’re bedded down for the night around the camp. Gven lets him eat in silence, comfortable with the knowledge that he’s not an enemy, perhaps even an ally. Ten minutes later, the grey tabby tabaxi finds an empty spot amongst the others and curls up into a semi-circle.
Within moments, Gven hears a soft purring sound coming from that direction. She smiles to herself, thinking about how good it feels to be with fellow adventurers who she considers friends.
Long rest….
The morning pre-dawn light slowly grows brighter and Mond is enjoying a quiet watch, listening to the mountainous jungle around them begin to come alive for the day. A deep rumbling sound makes its way to them, seeming to come from the mountain they’re approaching. Curious, but not alarmed, the sorcerer decides to ask Nyx about the volcano.
The half-elf decides to poke the tabaxi with a lengthy stick, keeping his distance while waking him. Before Mond is able to react, Nyx grabs the stick and breaks it in two, without opening his eyes or moving the rest of his body. “Is that how you say good morning?”
Mond keeps his composure, trying not to reveal his nervousness at Nyx’s speed and dexterity. “Apologies, friend. I heard a deep rumbling and am merely curious about the volcano we approach. Have you heard it do that before and do you know how active it is?”
Slowly opening his eyes and stretching his legs, Nyx’s tail flicks softly against the ground. “It does that every now and then, usually not much to worry about. The last eruption was over a year ago. Any breakfast?”
The rest of the group wakes, eats a quick camp breakfast, packs up, and heads off towards the mountain temple. Nyx decides to join them, at least for the day. As has become their habit on the island, Dolor leads the way, with Bilwin and Mond close behind. Grindlefoot falls in behind Mond, still walking lightly although they no longer have the thick foliage to walk upon. Gven motions for Nyx to go ahead and the half-orc brings up the rear, keeping an eye and ear out for anything that might be following them.
Several hours pass uneventfully, the adventurers walking quietly in single file towards their destination. The trees have begun to thin out and the landscape is becoming more rocky, with intermittent grassy areas and less of the thick vegetation they’ve become accustomed to.
Dolor and Bilwin notice that the hills they’re walking amidst are actually burial mounds. Tombs to some forgotten leaders, perhaps kings or chieftains or shaman of old. The entrances around them are framed by cut stones and the doorways are sealed with stones of a different color, setting them apart.
As they walk through the somber burial grounds, Nyx notices one tomb where the stone doorway and frame has been blown apart. Rocks are strewn across the ground for several feet outward from the entrance, apparently from the force of the explosion. “That tomb, over there, something happened. I’m going to investigate.”
Bilwin hears Nyx and immediately follows, “That sounds lovely, let’s see what’s going on inside the not-so-scary cave!”
Seeing that the decision has been made, at least by Bilwin and Nyx, her hand gripping Tempest Edge’s pommel and a determined look on her face, Gven follows them toward the exploded opening. Under her breath she whispers, “Or we could, you know, mind our own business, like we did that spooky village, and continue towards the temple. Oh no, why not look into this creepy crypt instead. Lovely, it sounds just lovely.”
As Nyx slows down to take in the area, seeing what sort of clues he might find in the dirt and stone, Bilwin bruskly passes by and into the opening. He immediately loses his balance as he encounters stairs heading downward, into the ground, but quickly catches himself. “Whew, that was close! They should put a warning up about those steps. At least a sign or something. Oh, what are these on the wall?”
The entryway is roughly six feet high and wide, large enough for humans to walk with a casket. Looking closer at the wall by his face, about four feet high, Bilwin sees a repeating pattern of four images: leaf, snowflake, bird, and sun. “Hmm, I think those might signify the seasons: fall, winter, spring, and summer.”
Nyx is visibly frustrated with the dwarf’s bluster and lack of caution. He shakes his feline head while continuing to search the outside area for tracks or clues, but finds nothing helpful. Mond joins Nyx, but is also unable to find any useful information in the area.
Given his halfling size, Grindlefoot easily pushes past Nyx and Gven to join Bilwin in the entryway. The halfing and dwarf continue down the stairs, which Bilwin can tell are well constructed by whomever built them. Grindlefoot comments, “sure is hard to see anything down here.” Bilwin quietly pulls out his magic tankard and casts Light on it, holding it up so the halfling can see.
The pair follows the stairs down and to the right for twenty steps or so before it opens up into a room. The walls are smooth and the pattern of the seasonal images continues around. They look around in curiosity as they enter the room.
Gven reaches the bottom of the stairs and, standing at the entry to the room, can see that it’s actually part of a lava tube. The ceiling has a bit of dampness and it appears structurally sound. Whoever decided to turn it into a crypt took advantage of the tunnel previously created by the nearby volcano. The walls are smooth and there are no light sources or empty sconces to hold torches.
As Bilwin and Grindlefoot reach the center of the room, they notice a doorway to their left. It’s constructed of stone, like the rest of the tomb around them, with four horizontal sections. Each section has a 1-foot square tile in the middle and on each side of the tile is one of the seasonal images. To the left of the door there are eight levers, all in the up position, with the seasonal images, in different pairings, below them. Finally, a single button is located in the wall, to the side of the levers.
“Hmm, that looks like a puzzle. I can’t see it in this dim light,” and Bilwin covers his glowing mug. With the room suddenly enveloped in darkness, Bilwin’s darkvision allows him to see the door and its markings much more clearly.
Startled by the sudden and complete darkness, Grindlefoot Wild Shape’s into a giant spider and scurries up the wall to the ceiling—and presumed safety. Now that he also has darkvision, as a spider, Grindlefoot peers at the door and its mechanisms with curiosity. He shrugs two of his legs, acknowledging that it doesn’t make much sense to him.
Following Gven into the chamber, Nyx is surprised by the giant spider on the ceiling and moves to draw his scimitar. Gven rests her hand on Nyx’s and gives him a shake of her head, “it’s not a threat.” Slightly incredulous at the half-orc’s comment, he keeps his scimitar in its sheath, obviously prepared to draw it in a moment’s notice.
Mond joins the rest of the group in the chamber as they’re studying the closed door and the hieroglypics carved into the stone on and around it. Looking around the room, the half-elf sees the same pattern of images covering all of the walls. It always begins with a leaf, then a snowflake, a bird, and, lastly, a sun. This repeats in a horizontal line around the room at the midpoint between the ceiling and the floor.
Looking at the closed door to the left, Mond can see the four sections, each with a tile containing the images. Turning his focus to the left of the door, he notices there are eight levers, grouped into four pairs and a button to the side. Below each pair of levers is one of the hieroglyphs: leaf, snowflake, bird, and sun. “A puzzle. How interesting!”
For the next hour, the group actively debates how to open the door. They posit theories, move the levers in various ways, and push the button in several attempts to open the door. With each push of the button, the tiles on the door sections rotate for a few seconds then stop, usually in a different position from where they started.
Gven and Nyx quickly become bored with the process, preferring challenges of the body to those of their intellect. Bilwin is intrigued and enamored with the thought of solving the riddle before them, but offers little in the way of actual help to Dolor and Mond. Grindlefoot offers a few suggestions, but none of the others understand the scritches and murmurs of the giant spider.
Feeling stumped by the mysterious puzzle, Dolor is sitting on the cold stone floor, silently resting his head in both hands. Mond is pacing in the back of the room, murmuring to himself about possible solutions.
Suddenly, Dolor jumps up from the floor. “I think I figured it out!” Moving to the levers, he begins pushing them up and down. “We’ve tried just about every simple combination that’s possible. I think it’s more complex, most likely an exclusive binary operation. We need to match the two levers with the image below them to the pattern on the section of the door associated with that image. By setting the pair of levers like so,” he points at the final lever as he moves it into place, “the patterns should match and the door should,” and he pushes the button, “…open.”
The door slowly begins to slide open, revealing yet another stony room. It’s dark, except for the faint flickering of torchlight coming from the center.