“Crap!” Antefalken exclaimed as they emerged into a larger room. The group stopped, as there did not appear to be any place else to go.
The corridors for some time had been mostly masonry. The front half of this room was the same; however, the back wall was rough brown stone leading all the way to the top of a forty-foot-high ceiling. There were no doors or other exits.
“This is not good; we will have to backtrack,” Talarius said as he moved around the room, apparently searching for secret doors or who knew what. He shook his head and walked back to the center of the room near the back wall, staring down the corridor through which they’d entered.
Tom blinked at the wall behind the knight. He thought he could see what looked like a drawing on the wall. The knight’s armor light was off, so the room was completely dark, but the drawing on the wall seemed to be softly glowing. It had not been doing that when they’d entered.
“Does anyone else see that?” Tom pointed to the wall behind the knight.
“Yes,” Antefalken said.
The others looked and nodded. Talarius turned and clearly saw it as well.
“What the...?” The knight walked up to the wall. As he did so, the writing grew brighter. There was what looked like a door drawn on the rock wall, covered with all sorts of runes and designs both on the door and on the door’s drawn frame.
“Do you recognize the writing?” Tom asked.
“It seems to recognize you,” Reggie said.
The knight’s helmet moved back and forth. “Some of it looks familiar. It may be very old Etonian, or even Ætòênyân. However, I’ve only seen it in some very old books and engravings.”
“I don’t suppose you can read it?” Tom asked Tizzy.
“Sorry. Not big on reading religious propaganda, so never learned,” the demon said.
“Talarius, step back. Let’s see if it goes dark and if it will light up for anyone else,” Tom instructed.
Talarius stepped back, and the light dimmed and then went out as he moved further away. Each of the others moved close to the back wall; however, the wall remained dark.
“So for some reason either Talarius, or maybe something on him is causing the runes to show,” Tom said.
“So these are Etonian runes? How would they get here in the middle of nowhere in the Abyss?” Antefalken asked, clearly troubled and puzzled. More noise came from the corridor.
“They are getting closer,” Tom said. “Any of you know much about rune magic?” They all shook their heads except for Antefalken, who made a so-so motion. Tom looked at the bard. “What do we need to do? Read them out loud?”
Antefalken shrugged. “Not necessarily; they could be instructions or maybe a riddle, or maybe you read them aloud to a particular response. It’s hard to say without actually reading them. You really have to get into the runes and understand them somehow.”
Get into the runes? That might be an idea. Maybe Tom could trace them like a link or something. “Talarius, move up to the runes so I can see them.” The knight did as Tom asked. As he did, Tom opened one of his belt pouches and carefully removed an arrowhead and hid it in the palm of his hand. He stared intently at the writing, looking for a starting point. The lower right-hand corner looked as good as any. He got down on his knees up close to the runes and carefully, so that the knight could not see what he was doing, tried scratching at the first rune with the arrowhead. It did not seem to do anything.
He concentrated his essence into a strand, as he had on the battlefield, and channeled it through the arrowhead. Thinking more, he tried to reach into himself to the wad of god mana that had been giving him indigestion. Trying to separate it out was not easy, but it was the only thing he could think of. As he scratched, he tried to force his stream into the arrowhead and insert it into the rune. He imagined himself, his essence stream becoming part of the rune, even as he had done with the mana streams, treating the rune, which was clearly magic, as if were a stream or a priest that he wanted to possess.
There! It caught; he was coursing through the rune. In his mind he heard a noise that somehow he knew was the verbalization of the rune. All the runes were lightly connected. He allowed himself to flow from one rune to the next, and as he did, he could mentally hear the runes speaking their sounds.
“They are getting closer! Any luck?” Antefalken asked.
Tom could not spare his attention to answer; he was too busy flowing through the runes. He did try to speed up the process though; he poured more of the god mana into the runes.
“Whoa!” came a voice behind him — Boggy’s, he thought.
“He’s doing something; they are getting brighter, rune by rune,” Estrebrius said.
“I’ve never seen runes do that, but then I don’t usually deal with hidden glowing runes,” Antefalken said.
“They are definitely powering up,” Talarius said. “For something.”
“All the rune words are lit; the door and frame are still dim,” Reggie observed.
The sounds of the runes were echoing in Tom’s head. He did not need to touch the runes to keep the link. He stood back up, palming the arrowhead. Find the starting one — there. Tom proceeded to intone the sounds he heard in his head aloud one by one; with each completed rune word, he injected more mana.
“I don’t know that language at all,” Antefalken said.
Talarius shook his head. “Nor do I.”
Tom completed the intonation and felt a cracking sensation. Suddenly the dimmer outlines of the door and frame flashed brilliant blue. As the light faded, they could clearly see the door and frame as real objects. The barking was very loud now from down the corridor, accompanied by what sounded like shouts of victory. Tom reached out and twisted the door handle and pushed the door open. Behind it was a landing with stairs leading upward. “Hah! A stairway to heaven!” They all cheered.
“You better hope it’s not going to Tierhallon!” Tizzy shouted.
Tom went through the door and made room for the others to come through. They all quickly did, even as a large arrow slammed into the rock frame of the door before bouncing off. Tom looked through the door to see a large horde of very big and angry D’Orcs charging into the room. He quickly slammed the door and began pulling himself out of the runes, with luck depowering them. “Everyone go, up the stairs! I’m trying to lock the door behind us.” The handle he was holding suddenly vanished, leaving a solid stone wall with no markings.
Tom leaned against the wall to rest. He could hear angry shouts and yells from the other side. The stone wall and door had been rather thick, but not insurmountable. They might be able to break down the wall, given time. They needed to hurry. He charged up the steps after the rest of the group.
The stairs went quite some distance and ended on a landing that had more steps going upward on the other side of the landing. The more interesting thing, however, was on the wall to their left. In the center of the wall was an ornate marble entranceway, or rather door frame, with a very white marble door with a heavy vault handle, a wheel sort of thing, and giant stone hinges on the right. It looked to Tom a little Greek or colonial in style, but the door and the frame were heavily inscribed with more of the same runes.
This time as Talarius approached the door, it was his armor that started to light up. “This is most unusual,” he said.
“Why would Etonians be wandering around in the Abyss making runic doorways?” Antefalken asked.
“How would they even get down here? That would be an act of war that would trigger all sorts of repercussions,” Boggy said.
“Do you know anything, Tizzy?” Tom asked.
Tizzy shrugged. “Never been through that invisible door. Certainly never been in this room. Back in my day, no Etonian in their right mind would have set foot in the Abyss.”