Moktark’s ears twitched as they heard a groaning and a shuffle in the darkness. He gradually opened his eyes. Somewhere off in the darkness he heard mumbled cursing.

  “Whys it so bloody dark?” The voice called out hoarsely, before breaking out into a hacking cough.

  “Because there’s no light.” Moktark replied lazily. He yawned and moved to get up, but the sudden pains in his body reminded him of why he was laying in the dark in the first place.

  “Very funny. What happened? Where are we?”

  Moktark briefly explained that he had been knocked out by a rock and they had dropped him down a hole into the pyramid. Semthak grunted something that could have been a curse, and Moktark could hear him slowly shuffling towards him.

  “Where’s my damn bag?” The old orc grumpily asked.

  “I’ve got it… ouch, watch what you’re doing you old fool!” Moktark cried out as Semthak bumped into him and started pawing at his face in the dark.

  “Ah there you are. Give me my bag.”

  “Here.” Moktark said, tossing the bag at the old orc. “Quit pawing at me.”

  “Where are the others? Are they alive?”

  “They went deeper in.”

  “I see.”

  Semthak rummaged loudly through his bag, various pots and jars bonking around in the dark.

  Moktark couldn’t see what he was doing, but was thankful when the noise finally stopped.

  “Did you find what you were looking for?” He asked.

  “Be silent.”

  Moktark laid back down in the darkness staring at nothing. Little spots danced in his vision. He always wondered what that was about, but figured he just hit his head one too many times.

  There were lots of different colours of spots dancing around. Red ones, green ones, even some purple ones. There was a blue one. He didn’t think he’d ever seen a blue one before. The spots seemed to grow a little brighter, and they flowed around in a circle above him. They didn’t usually do that either.

  Gradually the little motes coalesced into a ball of light, and floated down. Down into a bowl that Semthak was holding. There the ball hovered for a bit, before seeming to settle into the curvature of the bowl like a glowing pool of water.

  The light from the bowl illuminated Semthak’s features with a soft blue glow. He whispered something, and the glow seemed to increase, bathing the chamber in luminescence.

  “You look like shit.” The old shaman said, looking over Moktark. “Who did these bandages? You’re bleeding out.”

  “You don’t look great yourself. What the hell did you do? What is that magic?”

  Semthak smiled mischievously, his big teeth shining in the light.

  “Oh, just a trick I picked up from somewhere. It occasionally works in old places like this.”

  “Is that a ghost?”

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  “I suppose it could be, yeah.”

  “I thought they’d be… scarier.”

  “Roll over, I need to check those bandages.”

  Semthak removed Moktark’s blood soaked bandages. He ground up some herbs in a bowl, and smeared them on Moktark’s wounds. The sensation was chilling, like sticking your hand in cold water. Gradually, the pain began to dull, bit by bit.

  “Hey that stuff’s pretty good. What is AAAAAAAHHHHEERRGG!”

  “Your brother didn’t set your ankle properly. If it had healed like that you’d never walk straight again.”

  “DAMN YOU WARN ME BEFORE YOU… ARRGG!” Moktark yelled, thumping his fist onto the floor to resist the urge to knock Semthak out. Semthak chuckled cruelly.

  “You’ll be alright. Here, drink this. For the pain and the swelling.”

  Moktark drank something pungent smelling which had the same cooling sensation as the ointment spread on his wounds. Gradually he began to feel better. His heart rate slowed, and he started to feel sleepy.

  “In a better world I’d let you lay there and recover, but we should go find your brother. Which way did they go?”

  “That way, I think” Moktark said, pointing to a doorway. “Or was it that one?”

  “One way to find out.”

  Using the last pieces of the spear haft, Semthak managed to lash together a crude crutch. Placing it under his arm, Moktark found that he could hobble along on one leg. Together the two orcs picked a door, and by the magical blue light of the bowl, started down, deeper into the temple.

  As they hobbled along through the gloom, Moktark started to notice flickers of light at the edges of his vision, but when he turned his head, they were always gone. He rubbed his eyes in annoyance, and then squinted at the bowl of light Semthak held.

  “So, you know when you look at the sun and you get those bright spots in your vision?” Moktark asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  “Is that, those ghost things? Can you put them in a bowl?”

  “It just means you’ve been staring at the sun too long. You’re going to go blind doing that.”

  “Yeah but, when you summoned up those ghosts, they were coming out like the funny shapes you see when you look at the sun.”

  “How the hell should I know? I don’t… wait, there’s something ahead.”

  The two orcs passed into a large room, with a ceiling so high that the ethereal light from the bowl faded away long before it touched it. The walls were carved in deep set angular reliefs that reminded them of the floor of the entry chamber, and Moktark felt his eyes drawn down into them, tracing their paths.

  Semthak quickly walked around the perimeter of the chamber, and swore under his breath.

  “Dead end.”

  “What is all this? These symbols? They’ve got to mean something.”

  Semthak sighed, and looked at them, and then looked some more. He felt...

  “They’re cool right? No matter how far I follow one of the lines, I never seem to reach a dead end in the maze, but they all branch off constantly. How do they do that?” Moktark said quietly.

  He felt... old. A sort of nostalgia welled up inside of Semthak, like a little bit of kindling was thrown on an ember from a fire that had nearly burned out. He remembered a bright eyed young student of the mysteries who seemed to find wonder in everything. He remembered sitting in awe as he watched his first casting, and listening to the priests as they explained the different properties of the metals…

  “You’re right.” He said softly. “They’re… very cool. I wonder what this place is made out of? I’ve never seen anything like this black stone.”

  “Isn’t it just obsidian? Like we use for tools?”

  “No. It looks sort of similar I’ll grant you, but you wouldn’t be able to carve obsidian like that. It would flake away, whereas these grooves look like they were carved in a much softer material.”

  “Like clay?”

  “More like metal. It feels almost as if these blocks and the reliefs in them were cast out of some sort of black metal.”

  “Huh. That is cool.”

  “Yes. It doesn’t help us get out of here though. We should head back and look for another way.”

  “Feels kind of like they all lead in one direction, yknow? Like, if you follow the lines long enough, and they never lead to a dead end, then they’ve gotta lead somewhere.”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Moktark.”

  “Yeah me neither probably. Feels like they all kind of converge over here.” Moktark said, pointing to a spot in the wall. It didn’t really look any different to Semthak. Looking at the relief was starting to give him a headache.

  “Huh, something in there?” Moktark asked. He jabbed a thick green finger into the wall and started feeling around. “I think I can pull it out. Damn! It fell into a hole or...”

  In almost complete silence, a triangular section of the wall began to slide backwards, revealing a secret passage. Semthak held up the bowl, and the two orcs both peered through the new doorway.

  “Well that’s just weird.” Moktark said.