24. Chambers, Chapels, & Challenges

We return to the village for the evening. We describe what we were looking for to the locals, but they hadn't seen anything like it. We may be interested in a proving ground they described in the direction we need to go, so it seems a good place to start. The day of travel is uneventful, but the next morning, we see a light from the old temple indicating that someone is partaking in the challenge. We hope to make better time, so we make haste to the proving grounds. We are greeted by a large stone block entrance in the hillside with several unmoving bodies outside. These people have the same yellow and black garb on that we had found on other previously. Swift Mark investigates the corpses and can't find anything to identify the group, but they all seemed to succumb to wounds while fighting. Above the entrance on the hill is a large statue of the locals' deity, Brightstar. This is the light we had seen illuminated before.
 
We enter into a muddy hallway with a relief carved into the wall that activates with a light source; the locals use these for certain meeting areas and whatnot. Thaddeus casts light onto his hand and illuminates the lock to open a staircase moving down. The mud is quite the hazard, but we make it down without any slips or falls. This room appears to be a foyer of sorts - a beautiful pillar in the center of the chamber is made from a bright white stone, engraved with thousands of tiny suns which emit enough of a glow to bathe the room in a gentle pulsating light. The floor around the pillar is covered in a beautiful mosaic depicting a massive sun with curved rays of light reaching out into the room. Its walls are built of highly reflective polished bricks that reflect the light of the column back to its source. The floor is made up of highly polished marble tiles, each one 5' square, that are warm to the touch. The aura of this room is very calming.
 
Suddenly, the floor falls out from under Swift, but he manages to jump away before falling. Not everything is as it seems. Thadeus unfortunately falls when his section of floor gives way, but he is quick with feather fall magic to keep him from hurting himself on the way down. We pull him up with some rope and Swift almost takes a tumble, himself, but we manage to get him up and I cautiously start to continue down a hallway.
 
There are statues of golden warriors that seem to be regenerating from injuries and wounds. We decide that these may be defensive statues and best be on our way down the hall to some more stairs. The next chamber is square with a circle of ashes and collapsed bones piled in the center on the floor. I check and open a door on the wall to see an undead direwolf. Immediately closing the door again as it sees me, I inform the others, but they insist on opening the door to see for themselves. The fools let the creature out and we had to fight it back into the small room. Ashe became paralyzed from some dark green fluid it emitted, so as I pushed the beast back, I used some energy to get Ashe moving again. We manage to finally bludgeon it back far enough to close the door on it and be done.
 
We follow Swift down more stairs, through some wooden doors with runes inscribed in them, into a chapel area with pews and an altar at the end. Thadeus translates the runes into some sort of riddle, "Through darkness you hath traveled, Your path at first unclear, Now that you hath found these words, The answer burns quite near". As we head to a smaller door in the rear of the chapel, we are surprise attacked by a werewolf hiding behind the altar and some kind of spellcaster from the doorway. I take a beating, but manage to kill the werewolf as Ashe and Thadeus move in to take out the spellcaster and other foes that appeared further down the hallway. Swift Mark retreated back through the chapel to where we came from; it seems very unlike him to flee.
 
I take a moment to heal and follow Ashe and Thadeus into another room with a warlock and some type of shadow water creature. There are portals on the walls of this room not unlike the ones at our base, but not elemental in nature like ours. The fight continues without Swift Mark.