Jocasta’s curiosity as to what had just happened fizzled momentarily as Beren’s light played across the room. The chamber was oddly curved on both edges, as though the walls themselves were bowed outwards to accommodate what was within. One wall was covered in a lattice of carved wood, each hole in the lattice serving as the repository for a scroll of paper or vellum. The other wall contained a vast mural depicting strange beings in various scenes. Some seemed to be arcane in nature, ritual or dance related, others seemed very mundane, hunting and domestic scenes. All were bizarre. One of the beings in a cooking scene appeared to be slicing up her own hand with a knife made of light.  Strange arcane script, obviously a later addition, had been scrawled over everything. Every set of eyes had been carefully gouged out and chips of stone about the right size to be eyes lay on the floor before the mural like gravel. The back wall contained lab equipment and a bench covered in dusty but still visible jewelry, either enchanted or waiting for enchantment. The most salient feature of the room however was in its center. Standing on a small stone pedestal was a huge archway. It seemed to be made of large opals the size of a man’s head, each fused to the next like a tight string of pearls. The stones blazed when Beren’s light hit them, giving Jocasta a queasy, oily feeling, like the whole thing might slide down at any point. It didn’t go anywhere, just an archway standing in the center of the room. Jocasta crossed to the scrolls and opened one up beginning to read. It was an ancient script, a precursor to the one that the sagas and enchantments on the barrows were written in.

“We don’t have time for that,” Beren said urgently, “those dorcha will be after us and I’m sure they won’t take too long to figure out where we are.”

 

“You’re right,” Jocasta agreed and began shoving scrolls into her bag furiously, crumpling them tightly together to make them fit. Beren let out an exasperated sound.

“I meant, stop looting and lets find a way out of here,” Beren said, sounding tense, no doubt his prior experience with Dark Elves urged him against lingering. There was no obvious way out of the chamber and backtracking did not seem like a good plan. Jocasta ignored him, collecting every scroll till her pack bulged so tightly she struggled to pull the straps to close it.

 

“Waste not, want not,” she said tartly as she hurried towards the jewelry. Beren intercepted her and redirected her to the archway.

“If we don’t find a way out of here, you and I are going to spend a very long time with some very unpleasant beings,” he told her.

“I’m sure the Dark Elves aren’t nearly as bad as people say,” Jocasta objected.

“They are much worse,” Beren said in a voice that brooked no contradiction. Jocasta made an irritated sound but turned her attention to the archway. It stood to reason that it might be some kind of gateway, though to where she had no idea. As she got closer she saw there was an incantation scribed in the stone.

 

“Well at least get the jewels while I’m working,” she told Beren tartly, though her heart wasn’t really in it. Her eyes were already working on the incantation. She opened her mouth and began to speak. Her lips working uncertainly around the strange magical tongue. The opals began to shimmer, then blaze. Jocasta’s chant grew smoother and her eyes, at first only reflecting the opalescent glow, began to glow with the same energy. Chill darkness engulfed them, as did a sudden and overpowering sense of evil.

“Jo, I think you should stop,” Beren said, fingering his axe. She continued to chant and the sense of wrongness increased. Darkness gathered across the archway like oil spreading atop a pond, growing deeper and more opaque by the moment.

“Stop!” Beren shouted, grabbing her and shaking her, but she couldn’t. The words continued to pour from her lips in spite of her best efforts. She tried to cover her mouth with her hands, but her lips kept moving, muffled words still emerging. Beren looked around in something like panic, then drew his axe back, as though preparing to knock her senseless. Before he could strike the last strident word of the incantation left her lips. There was a tremendous ripping sound, like the sail of a ship being parted by a falling mast. A charnel stench exploded out of the archway as the darkness parted and something stepped out. It was twenty feet tall and made of plates of blackened chiton. Hulking and massive, its long arms were far out of proportion to its body. They were weirdly jointed and seemed to be all sharp edges and points, giving the impression of a spider that was somehow wearing stilts and walking upright. Its shoulders hulked up around its head, which was skull like but elongated like a horses. Its mouth was filled with foot long fangs, and its three eyes glowed like coals in a dying fire. It had a terrible smell, something between burning hair and cardamom, and arcane energies crackled over its bodies as it stepped free of the arch, three of its hands gripping the stonework as though climbing through a window.

 

“Uh-oh,” Jocasta gulped, somewhat superfluously.