Chapter 2: Local Heroes

The tunnel widens here into what appears to have once been a small shrine, for to the northeast, steps lead up to a platform of gray stone. Sitting atop the platform is an ancient altar, little more than a jagged block of black marble with a shallow concavity on top of it. The basin is filled with filthy water.

To the south east stands double doors made of metal.

The doors are plain, without any notable markings. Looking it over you are fairly certain that there is no traps on it. Though being heavy, you also think it would be hard to open them without making a lot of noise.

Grimwulf pushes the doors, and with a heavy creak they open a huge room that looks like nothing more than an immense underground cathedral. Stone doors stand to either side of the main entrance, but beyond this, the walls are carved with strange, spiky runes.

In the center of the room is a large pool with a ring of polished human skulls balanced on stone spikes arranged in a circle around the deeper midsection.

At the far end of the room, a pair of stone stairways leads up to a pulpit on which sits a second pool, this one triangular and filled with churning, bubbling water that looks almost like translucent lava. Yet while wisps of what look like heat and steam rise from the strange orange liquid, the room is deathly cold.

At the edge of the second pool a creature flies by flapping wings. It is small, at most a foot and half tall. It shrieks at you. "Who dares intrude upon the Mother's sanctum."

It slashes at its own wrist with her dagger, and you see blood flow into the pool of water. As she does before you have time to react, four of the creatures you've fought so far crawl out of it. As they crawl out, you notice the liquid in the pool glowing diminishes.

The creature is hit by Khel’s ice attack, but it seems ice has a limited effect on him.

Chigaru rushes into the room and slings a shuriken at it, but it goes wide, hitting the wall behind him.

The creature says some words in a strange language and light shoots out engulfing Chigaru. Then the creature says some more wounds and disappears from all of your visions. You can see a vague blur of it flying away from its previous position.

Then the sinspawns surges forward. Two of them reaching Chigaru, the other two moving towards the door. The first sinspawn attacking Chigaru misses, but the other one is able to get a claw across his chest.