There was much idle speculation at the Temple as to what might be going on in the pyramid. It was blindingly obvious to Grettir that the only course was to go there and find out. Rebecca agreed and furnished them once more with a ship. She was keen that Ellia join them to give advice on lore, along with Samuel. Miriam, Esther would stay with the boat. Since the area was now known to contain hostiles, another knight – a large fellow called Jacob – was also assigned to them to help guard the ship. The adventurers had also been augmented by the arrival of the elf, Girindor.
As before they left the ship at the cove and a strong party of ten set off over land towards the pyramid. Perhaps they had been lucky to meet nothing on the previous occasion, or perhaps the party had been smaller and more discreet. However, it was not long before Trev was jumped by a demon spider, that was chased off back into its lair. Then Girindor managed to pick a quarrel with the first plant they had encountered since they had come to Lydius. He was extricated from the bloodthorn by Grettir and Wilf, who lopped it down to the roots with his axe. There they discovered a small amount of loot that plainly had once belonged to previous victims. At this point they decided that this was ideal ambush country and that it might be more sensible to fly, since they had sufficient flyers to transport the non-flyers.
Arriving at the pyramid, they swiftly identified the door. Trevillion whipped out his tools to work on the lock, but was bitten on the hand by a venemous snake – requiring rapid magical intervention from Ubaron to avoid death, or the loss of the limb. While this was going on Ellia examined the door and pronounced it to be a demon. Grettir rolled his eyes at this, for he knew what was coming. A wizard would want to borrow his helmet, and he would have to endure their disparaging remarks about his intellect as they told him that it was wasted on him. He sighed and handed the “Master of Fire” to Paradoxides. Paradoxides, spoke to the demon and told it to leave. It did so and they entered, leaving Kolgrim and Samuel to guard the entrance. Another demon – a creature of fire – guarded the interior. Once more Grettir handed his helm to Paradoxides with a look of resignation and this too was dismissed by the wizard.
The next doorway they came to appeared to be made of shadows. Rather than give up his helm again (the wizard was complaining about the depletion of his magical resources anyway), Grettir enhanced the light emanating from his holy spear. Wilf lit his Mitran Candelabrum and together they went forward, pressing back the shadows as they advanced. Ellia pronounced a ritual to banish evil and the shadows melted away. In the doorway they could see embedded in the door jamb, four skeletal hands. The elf turned rock to mud and they fell away and turned to smoke.
They followed a long passage inscibed with carvings and glyphs. Some of the carvings reminded Wilf of tales of Seth, a Mitran diety that had fallen from the path of good. Grettir thought that Seth sounded like a variation on Set – another god now considered evil, but as his ritual role in the defeat of Apep suggested, he might have once been on the side of good. For his part he thought that this place was not fundamentally evil, but there was a taint or corruption to it. The passage widened into an “L”-shaped room, full of shadowed niches and they were ambushed.
There were at least a dozen soldier demons of the sort that guarded the convoy carrying the essence of Ptah. There was also a larger and more powerful demon standing at the back. It shouted a Power Word. Only Grettir and Ellia resisted its effect. The others were paralysed or at least slowed by its sorcery. Grettir, however, waded forward, dealing death and destruction to the lesser demons, while his comrades recovered. The large demon continued to cast black magic curses, but Grettir was well-protected on that front. His comrades began to rally and shake off the effects of the Power Word. Paradoxides used a device to cast lightning bolts at the large demon. Wilf drew a Black Axe that had been taken from the demons they fought in Byzantos. In a gap in the combat, Grettir cast his shining spear at the demon and wounded it. In response, the demon drew a great two-handed sword and engaged with Grettir, while the lesser demons sought to surround him. One of them managed to get through his guard and strike him in the back, knocking him to his knees, but Wilf arrived at that point. The particular virtue of the Black Axe was to cast its wielder into a berserk frenzy. Grettir was not sure why Wilf should have chosen that weapon at this time – perhaps it simply reflected his earlier frustration at the efects of his ensorcelment. Nevertheless he was grateful for the intervention, which gave him a chance to spring to his feet and re-engage the demon leader. As the adventurers rallied, the demons faltered and at last Grettir and Wilf cut down their leader. All but a couple of the lesser demons were slain, and the survivors made prisoner.
Wilf stood for many minutes, hacking at the body of the leader with his Black Axe. It put Grettir in mind of his younger days, where he found himself acting as nursemaid to a band of berserkers – Eric the Axe, Clarence Fairweather, Grunt Monoslab – protecting them after they had exhausted themselves in their frenzy and occasionally punching them into unconsciousness when they turned upon their comrades in their battle-madness. In his view, a berserk rage gave lesser warriors an edge over equally inexperienced opponents, but Wilf was far too good a warrior to benefit much from it. A warrior’s wits were as important as his right arm in Grettir’s opinion.
There was a short passage in the far corner of the room. At the end of it was a door, marked with an inscription in silver runes:
PTAH’s PURDAH
ENTRY FORBIDDEN
Ellia examined the door, touched the runes and prayed. She pronounced it the real deal. There was no doubt in her mind that beyond that door slept the God himself.
They questioned a demon soldier who was still alive and compos mentis. The gist of his story was that he was a mercenary, under contract to a powerful demon called Gerion (“Archduke of the Fifth Circle of Hell,” supplied Paradoxides). The boss (he indicated the badly hacked body of the large demon) was one of his lieutenants. Their job was to carry (or oversee the carrying of) the urns to the pryramid of Sekhmet and bring back the empties. The latter were placed in the corridor by the door with the inscription and were periodically refilled. The Pyramid of Sekhmet was 75,000 paces away (about 50 miles Grettir thought). The pyramid of Sekhmet was much like this one – both had what he described as “white zones” where they could not tread. When pressed on “white zones”, he said that Grettir’s spear was one. Three hundred and four urns had been moved during his contract. Sometimes they went missing. There was a shipment overdue right now.
Amongst the loot was a pot of numbered bronze tokens. There was also a large brass bound horn. Ubaron thought both were associated with summoning the soldier demons. The two survivors were certainly keen to get their hands upon their tokens and said that they could leave and not return if they were given them. Grettir and his companions could think of no reason not to allow them to do so. The other artefact of note was the Demon’s two-handed sword. Paradoxides was of the view that it was a trapped entity, but neither Grettir nor Ellia thought that it emanated the evil they would expect from a demon – indeed quite the opposite.
After resting up a while, they gathered up the loot. Paradoxides blocked the entrance to the pyramid with a conjured stone wall. They flew back to the ship without incident and returned to Lydius. There they reported all they had done and seen to Rebecca, the Cardinal. She told them that Sekhmet was a lion-headed goddess of wrath and vengeance, more propitiated than worshipped. She was also the consort of the more pacific Ptah. They were aware that there had been some sort of rupture between them these last ten cycles (90 years), but found it hard to credit that she had involved a powerful demon from the fifth circle of hell in their quarrel. More investigation was needed.
G-19
OE Date: May 695
Characters: Grettir, Paradoxides, Ubaron, Jason, Wilf, Trevillion, Girindor NPCs: Kolgrim, Samuel, Ellia, Esther, Miriam, Jacob
Real World: Jan 2011; Where: Surbiton
See also Ubaron’s Diaries