Salvation Outpost - Chapter 2

The rat darts into the darkness below with Vice climbing down after him. He enters a dark chamber below. The light from the shaft fills the room with dim light. The little gnomes keen eyes quickly adapt to the light and around him. He finds a partially collapsed room with a number of sarcophagi.

A faint clicking sound can be heard in the chamber. Followed by a scraping of stone on stone. Vice’s rat turns tail and scurries back up the shaft as a skeleton hand emerges from the sarcophagus and begins pushing the lid off.

With his background in Cyre, 37 recognizes the routine patrol method the warforged guard are using in town. Having gathered this insight, he makes his way to Sheriff’s.

The skeleton, still in its sarcophagus, did not notice the gnome dash quietly across the room. From the doorway, he gets a bit of cover, just as the skeleton begins to sit up, bones creaking and popping.

Vice makes across the room to find a short flight of stairs that lead to another darkened chamber. The light from the shaft does not reach this room. The gnome’s keen eyes have more difficulty adapting to the total darkness, but he can make out another short flight of stairs to the left that leads up to a door. Across the chamber is a locked heavier door. To the right, a large ornate locked door.

Another stone, scraping sound begins in the chamber behind you. Followed by cracking and bumping coming from all the sarcophagi in the crypt.

Vice makes it to the wooden door and finds it locked. He hears another lid crash to the floor. The hollow clacking of bone on stone begins to echo in the crypt behind him. Still more stone lids grind from their old cases.

Distracted by the continued clattering in bone in the next room, Vice races to pick the lock on the door.

Vice deftly unlocks the door with ease and darts through, only to find himself staring at another rattling sarcophagus. To his left is a locked door. To his right, a narrow hallway with several alcoves and stone crypts. A short distance up, the passage widens into a stone chamber. The end of the hall breaks to the right, about forty feet away.

In the darkness, Vice’s eyes cannot pick out much detail, but the sound of scratching and clawing echoes all around him. Through the stairway behind him, two dusty, grey skeletons enter the room. Their empty, black eye sockets begin to scan the chamber the gnome left behind. Rusty swords in hand, searching for something. Or someone.

Vice barrels down the hallways, hearing more and more crypt lids begin to scrape. The clattering of bony fingers and clanging of metal eminantes from every sarcophagus he passes. To his left, a set of stairs goes downward and he presses on. Two chambers, three chambers. The cacophony is terrifying. At the end of the hall he sees a set of steep stairs spiraling upward. Without hesitation, he dashes up the stairs to find they disappear into a stone ceiling above.

The little gnome is certain he was stealthy enough to evade the hoard of skeletons. Down below, the undead do not seem to be headed his way.

Vice knows that based on the halls he’s seen so far, this must be the entrance to the catacombs. However in the panic and rush, where the entrance leads outside and how to open it, eludes him.

In the light of the candle, a flicker of red immediately catches Vice’s eye. A red gem gleams, clutched in the jaws of an iron dragon skull set into the stone wall.

The light from the candle does not travel far past the corner and the shuffling sounds of the skeletons below do not seem to change.

When Vice touches the gem, it flashes red for a moment and he is blinded momentarily by the daylight pouring in from the edges of the slab as it rises up. Despite the size and apparent age of the slab, it moves silently out of the way.

Vice finds himself in a room with two doors. Based on the light entering the room, the one in front of him leads outside, the other, into the building. The light spilling down the staircase seems to have caught the skeletons’ attention.