TIME August 14th (continuing) LOCATION Deeper within the temple complex, Borthanza
BACKGROUND:
A fireball had bought a few seconds of breathing room in the birthing chamber, but grimlocks were pouring in from every direction – walls, ceiling, floor – and there was nowhere left to retreat to but forward.
WHAT HAPPENED
They fought a running battle back through the corridor, Ash’s fire clearing gaps that closed again almost as fast as they opened, eyes catching the light everywhere they turned as more of the creatures scuttled along the walls and ceiling rather than the floor.
Pushed left at every branch, herded through room after room rather than simply chased, the grimlocks weren’t just attacking, they were driving the Agents toward a specific pair of heavy purple-wood doors at the end of a side passage.
Pulling them open revealed exactly why.
A huge pillared chamber, the columns themselves carved to look like tree bark wrapped in vines, small animal shapes worked into the foliage on close inspection – an ape, something cat-like, birds, even a water dragon, and here and there, pairs of watching eyes carved into the stone alongside them.
At the far end, cut into the rock itself, a 20-foot statue of a hooded, masked figure stood half-emerged from the wall rather than simply carved on it – the same watchful likeness they’d find again deeper in, body wrapped in stone foliage, a heavy tooth carved at its throat, eyes rendered as nothing but two more of the same hamsa-marked sockets.
Beneath its gaze, a raised platform lit up under its own power the moment they crossed the threshold – a silvery, four-armed construct wielding two scythes, its eyes glowing dull amber as it woke from some kind of standby state.
It didn’t answer any attempt to reason with it, and didn’t need to.
Krusha called on KemerLexi for a burst of borrowed strength before wading in, and between that and Raven’s blades the two of them made short work of it before it could do more than land a few glancing blows – it collapsed like a folding chair the moment the last strike landed.
Behind them, the grimlocks surged into the chamber in force while Ash worked a puzzle mechanism at the platform’s edge – two solved quickly, the third holding out just long enough to make the wait genuinely tense before a section of wall ground open with a hiss of stale, ancient air.
The grimlocks, seeing the door open, redoubled their charge.