Jocasta steadied her breathing, a life of petty crime and scholarship in Andred wasn’t the best preparation she might have had for desperate and headlong flight in a frozen wilderness. If she lived she might suggest a course in cardiomancy be added to the curriculum.  Her eyes flicked over the ancient serpentine script. It was ironic that she had come north of the Gate to study just such ancient sites, and now there was a better than good chance she was about to be skewered while attempting to do so. It was a difficult dialect and even under ideal circumstances it would have taken her days to fully translate. Fortunately Andernic had certain alliterative constructs which were depressingly familiar. Woe be to he who opens this portal. Death shall come upon swift wings. Cursed be the seed of the interloper to the seventh generation. May the manhood of he who breaks this seal shrivel and rot. Etcetera Etcetera. What was abundantly clear was that she didn’t have a snow flakes chance in Arad Lund of unraveling this spell before the pair of them were chopped to orc kibble. 

 

“Hurry up!” Beren urged as the big orc with the axes rushed him, windmilling its vast tendon lace arms alarmingly. Another orc burst from the brush, this one lifting a crude black bow and pulling a rust tipped arrow from a quiver that must have been made from half a deer. Jocasta lifted a hand.

“Yeshira adac anisoptera,” she snapped. A cloud of dragonflies burst from the under brush and swarmed the orc archer battering at its eyes and nostrils. The brute roared and pawed at the air, momentarily distracted by the swarming insects, though it was clear that the spell wouldn’t hold it for long.

“Less jabbering more getting through the door,” Beren called, flicking his strange staff up. To Jocasta’s amazement he was managing to keep both weapons away from his body. 

 

“Less helpful than you might think,” she admonished before reaching into her pouch and rooting desperately around her small collection of arcane tools and pulling out a stubby stick of wax wrapped in metallic foil. Hematallow was one of the tools she had used when a wizard was not polite enough to do the civilized thing and take a bribe to let her into his library, or when the Occult Bastion wanted a particular price for a lesson. Its making was unpleasant and limited by certain lunar conditions and the would be alchemists ability to focus. She carefully inscribed two glyphs and then added a third, then placed her hands on her hips.

 

“Redrecko mater putarii!” she shouted. Beren cast a shocked glance over his shoulder, apparently recognising at least some of the words. The rock seemed to boil up into a snarling face, thin lips spreading into a maw filled with vicious teeth. Jocasta grabbed Beren by the belt and leaped into the mouth. They hit the back wall but rather than smash themselves against the granite they splashed through it like children in a pool of viscous mud. Jocasta squeezed her eyes shut as they passed through the oddly liquid rock and burst into the pitch darkness on the other side. She dispersed the spell with an effort of will and she hit something in the darkness a moment before Beren hit her and sent her sprawling on her ass. She rolled downwards in the darkness, smacking frequently against unseen objects that gouged at her knees and elbows before finally coming to rest with a clatter. She swiped furiously at her mouth, dislodging a thin layer of mud that had air hardened into rocky flakes when the spell had ended. There was a muffled howling from the other side of the stone, the Orc trying to follow them was either very frustrated, or more likely, had become partially stuck in the newly solid rock. Lifting her hand she muttered a simple cantrip and a ball of light sprang into existence above her hand, casting a cool faintly greenish light around the chamber. They were in a circular room cut into the rock, a spiral staircase of crudely cut stone leading up to the portal they had entered through. Exiting corridors with monumental arches carved from stone lead in three of the four cardinal directions. The floor itself was covered with bodies. They weren’t quite skeletons owing to the fact that a kind of mossy fungus grew on the bones, its roots having sucked the moisture out of the ancient cadavers to the degree that they more resembled mummies. The preservation was good enough that Jocasta could tell that each of them had been laid carefully in place and then had their throat ritually cut. Shallow trenches gouged in stone were dusty with ancient blood which had been drained away for purposes unknown but which Jocasta doubted was black pudding. The whole place smelled of death and mushrooms.

 

“First thing,” Jocasta muttered disconsolately, “new paint, new cabinets.”

 

“Do all of your plans involve falling down things?” Beren asked a touch sourly as he picked himself up.

“Are you kidding?” Jocasta asked, “most of my plans scarcely involve plans.”