After the Ruby Scarabs returned the naga's crown to him and bid him farewell, they decided to continue their search for the Sightless Sphinx, exploring the desert around the river and beyond. They directed their search first to the southeast. Gradually they passed beyond the rolling dunes into an area of flat sandy land. Tetisurah the sphinx expressed regret that they had left the dunes behind. Both she and Sula found them more diverse and beautiful than their companions did.
When they entered the flat lands, the Scarabs could see off to the east the obelisk they had observed previously during their travels. They decided that it was time to investigate the structure and see if it might mark the location of the Sightless Sphinx. When they came close enough to the obelisk to see it well, they spied a burnt corpse at its base. Approaching nearer they could see that it was the corpse of a person, but there was no sign on the harder ground that anyone else had been nearby. When Kaa examined the obelisk he realized that it had been equipped with a magical trap that would blast the unwary with lightning. The friction of blowing sand would recharge the trap after it was triggered, though it would require a week or more for it to be fully recharged. Such obelisks as this had once represented the boundaries of the ancient Osirian empire, Uto recalled.
Kaa also realized that the charge from the obelisk could be captured in weapons and used to temporarily empower them with lightning. The group members decided that they should all take advantage of this, and each of them offered up a weapon to be charged with the power of lightning for a week. After this had been accomplished, Kaa spent a little while making drawings of the obelisk as he found its construction very impressive. Uto also took a rubbing of the corpse of the poor person who had fallen afoul of the lightning so the unknown individual could be remembered.
The Scarabs rested that night beside the obelisk, and continued on their quest the following day. A few hours after they left the obelisk behind them, Tetisurah returned from a reconnaissance flight to report that she had seen some ruins approximately an hour's walk to the north of their current location. The Scarabs decided to go to look at the ruins.
When they reached the spot that Tetisurah had seen, they found a cluster of low broken walls that showed signs of current habitation. Blue and white striped cloths had been suspended from some of the more intact walls to create shade, and there were sealed barrels stored among the walls. They also saw creatures there, winged beings with legs that bent the opposite direction of humanoid legs. At first they thought these creatures were harpies and they began to discuss how they could protect themselves from the song of the harpies, though none of them could remember much about harpies beyond that they had a dangerous song. Tetisurah then offered to use her ability to magically spy on the creatures to find out more, and she discovered that the inhabitants of the ruins weren't harpies but instead were moftets, a race of beings with the upper bodies of humans and legs like the hind limbs of lions. Maftets were somewhat related to sphinxes, and Tetisurah informed her traveling companions that maftets were typically more contemplative than combative. The Scarabs decided to approach the maftet camp and ask if the maftets knew anything about the Sightless Sphinx or the Cult of the Forgotten Pharaoh.
When they were within perhaps thirty yards of the camp, a female maftet emerged and commanded them to halt, asking who they were. Uto and Azzaria both explained in the Osirian language what it was the Ruby Scarabs sought. In response the maftet asked what gods they followed. She told them that they could meet with the elder of the maftet pride, but only if they would lay down their weapons. The Scarabs decided to comply, so they set down their weapons before approaching closer to the ruins. An elder maftet came out to meet them, a male with white hair whose wings had also begun to whiten. He introduced himself as Erayu. When he welcomed them to the camp, he mentioned that while this was where his pride lived, it was not their home. This provoked Kaa to ask where their home lay and why they weren't living there. Erayu explained that the pride had lived near the Sightless Sphinx, but their home had been invaded by red-skinned horned creatures twice the height of a man who carried burning blades, who had driven the maftet pride away. He wasn't willing to tell the Scarabs where to find the Sightless Sphinx until he knew what their intentions were. As a test, he asked if they could get rid of the creatures that had driven the pride away from their home. The maftets worshipped the lion goddess Sekhmet, and the creatures were also denying them access to a shrine to their goddess. The Ruby Scarabs didn't know what manner of beings Erayu described, but they were angered when they heard these creatures had driven the maftets out, and readily agreed to try to remove them.
The shrine the creatures had claimed access to lay thrity or forty miles to the east from the ruins. For the next two days the Ruby Scarabs traveled to the east, until they found themselves looking at a stone fort with a round tower at one corner. They could see palm trees rising above the walls. Sula transformed herself into a falcon and flew over the fort to see what lay inside. She saw only one humanoid creature, which didn't meet the description that Erayu had given, and what appeared to be a dragon lounging beneath the palm trees beside a pool of water.
After she reported this to her friends, the Scarabs decided to approach the fort as travelers seeking the oasis. But they cautiously armed themselves with spells before they did so. Sula gave Nyema armor of bark and then turned the lioness into a figurine and put her in her pouch so that whoever was inside the fort wouldn't see the big cat. Uto cast several beneficial spells on Azzaria to make her stronger and better able to withstand enemies. Then the whole group, along with Tetisurah, approached the gate of the fort.
The single sentry Sula had seen suddenly flew over to the wall above the gate and shouted at them in a booming voice, "Leave this place, there is nothing for you here." When Uto replied that the party wanted to visit the oasis and the shrine of Sekhmet, the guard repeated, "There is nothing for you here," and added, "Turn away or pay the price." Uto asked him what the price was. A wall of flames sprang up between the Scarabs and the fort. After hearing that the creatures the maftets had encountered were fiery, the Scarabs had prepared themselves with magic to resist harm from fire, and the wall did nothing to them. Uto walked through the flames unharmed.
When Sula stepped through the flames a moment later, she saw that the person on the wall wasn't an ordinary person but an efreet. The efreet hurled a ball of flames at Kaa, but like the rest of the group Kaa was protected and the flame didn't injure him. Azzaria and Kaa both began to fly, as did the efreet. Uto had already begun flying, and he now summoned lightning to strike the efreet. A second efreet appeared and Azzaria flew at him in a rage, her image blurred and moving at great speed. Tetisurah flew up near the top of the nearby tower. The second efreet sent three rays of fire at Tetisurah, while the first did the same to Kaa. Neither attack did any harm. Uto continued to blast the first efreet with lightning. Sula followed his example, blasting both efreet with lightning of her own. Azzaria attacked the first efreet repeatedly until he went limp and dropped to the ground motionless.
The dragon Sula had seen under the trees rose and flew toward Uto, blasting him with its breath and surrounding the area with a cloud of sand that blocked sight. Azzaria finished off the second efreet and moved to do the same to the drake. After she pounded it with a few fierce and well-placed blows, it lost consciousness and fell slowly to the ground. By the time it landed it was dead.
The Ruby Scarabs entered the courtyard of the fort, observing heaps of bones around the pool and a canopy providing shade to two chairs. The door of the tower was open. Erayu had mentioned four creatures when he told of the interlopers who had driven the moftet pride away, but there was no sign of other efreet. The Scarabs decided to enter the tower first. Inside they found a table with four chairs, and a staircase leading upward. Sula had tried to peer through the arrow slits in the tower when she flew over the fort, but had been unable to see inside. The Scarabs climbed cautiously up the stairs. At the top Kaa disarmed a trap that would have blasted them with fire, and Azzaria smashed the door to splinters. Beyond it lay a chamber completely engulfed in flames with a floor covered in lava.
A spark of heat from above the door exploded into waves of fire around Kaa, Azzaria, and Uto. Then a feminine voice spoke in the language of creatures of fire, "Interlopers you will die!" The warning was immediately repeated in the common tongue. When the Scarabs put their heads through the trapdoor they saw a female efreet. Kaa offered her a chance to surrender rather than suffer the same fate as the other two efreet outside, but she sneered that they were pathetic. The room filled with another burst of flames, and Uto blasted the efreet with lightning. Kaa began to fly again, and as he prepared to blast her with cold the efreet hit him with a backhand blow that disrupted his attack. Then she vanished. Three rays of fire appeared from the center of the room to strike Azzaria. Azzaria cast a spell on herself to enable her to see invisible things and spied the efreet by the trapdoor that led to the roof. She called out to her comrades to tell them where their enemy stood. Sula sent her lightning toward the place Azzaria pointed to but Azzaria saw it glance off the efreet's crimson hide. Kaa sent a spray of frigid cold at the same area and heard an angry response as his attack connected.
Tetisurah made the mistake of poking her head through the trapdoor just as the efreet filled the room with flames again. This time the fire was powerful enough to overcome the magical resistance and Sula was burned. Azzaria and Kaa both attacked the efreet, while Uto attempted to use the touch of his hair to curse her. But he couldn't see her, and even with Tetisurah's help he wasn't able to touch her. Then Azzaria saw the efreet transform into a gas and float toward the roof trapdoor. Determined not to allow her to escape, Azzaria struck her, and she became solid again, trapped partly in the roof of the flaming room. She was unconscious. A minute later she became visible again and it was apparent that she was dead.
The Scarabs found nothing of interest in the burning room but a well made map. The flames and lava proved to be an illusion designed to make the efreet feel more at home. The Scarabs decided to move to the low square structure in the opposite corner of the fort. That building held various sealed clay vessels and crates, but Kaa noticed an arrow trap and realized the crates were sitting on a trapdoor in the floor. He disarmed the arrows and the crates were moved aside to give access to the trapdoor. The room beneath held a small pool or well. When Kaa put his head through the opening, he saw a large figure of stone which spoke to him in the language of earth creatures, warning that it would not allow him to pass. Kaa asked, "Who can pass?" to which the elemental replied, "She who passes through stone." Kaa's efforts to find out who that was gained him nothing. Uto wondered if it could be a god, but couldn't think of any entity know by the name 'She Who Passes Through Stone.' Kaa tried to elicit more information from the elemental, which told him that this person was "stone and flesh with the ability to pass through stone."
Uto then decided to use his own ability to pass through earth and stone to descend into the underground chamber and see if the elemental would accept him as the person it referred to. The elemental responded by slamming its stony arm into him while half its body sank into the floor. Sula tried blasting the elemental with lightning through the trapdoor opening, but the lightning didn't seem to have much effect. Uto used his wand to try to reshape the elemental's body, but it did little beyond smoothing out the surface. Azzaria raged again and descended into the room to attack the elemental with her adamantine flail. Only some of her strength seemed to carry through to the creature as harm. Uto cast a spell on her weapon to give it more ability to harm such a creature and moved into one of the corners of the room, shouting that he needed a distraction. He has absorbed a great deal of injury from his companions by this time and was sorely wounded.
The elemental appeared to be guarding another door on the far side of the room. Kaa darted over to this door, provoking the elemental to swing at him. The door wasn't locked, but appeared not to have been opened for some time. When Kaa pulled it open he saw that at the far end of the next room stood a statue of Sekhmet in a red dress. The room was also occupied by a very tall woman with marbled skin that had a stony appearance. She didn't look like an efreet. There was a huge bed in the room that presumably belonged to her. The woman said, "My guardian wasn't enough to deter you," and charged through the wall next to the open door. Kaa attacked her but his attack appeared not to do her much injury. She pushed him downward, and Kaa sank into the floor! Fortunately he broke free and emerged a moment later. Sula dropped into the room and immediately took the form of an ankylosaurus, lashing out at the woman with her tail, but failed to connect. Uto blasted the woman with lightning, which she evaded. The elemental, evidently unwilling to die for the woman, withdrew into the floor and disappeared.
The woman pummeled Kaa with a series of rapid blows very like what the tengu could do. She also hit Sula several times and left her on the edge of death. Sula abandoned her dinosaur form to get out of reach. She had realized that the woman was protected by magical armor of stone, and she now used her own magic to dispel it, leaving the woman vulnerable. Azzaria dropped her flail and drew her other weapons before rushing the woman, defended by blurring and a series of magical images of herself. Uto assumed his living monolith form. The woman missed a strike against Kaa and stepped backward through the wall into the shrine. Kaa pursued her through the door and hit her, followed by Azzaria flying through and losing one of her images to the woman's attacks. Uto flew into the doorway, realizing as he did so that if he used a spell to turn the stone wall into some other material when the woman tried to pass through it, he might be able to trap her. Just as he thought of this she tried to walk through the stone again. Uto turned the wall from stone to flesh. Entangled, the woman began to tear a gaping bloody hole in the fleshy wall. Bits of mica and other sparkling minerals sprayed from her. Sula realized that the woman was a creature of earth and might be vulnerable to fire, but her attempt to hurl a handful of fire at the woman missed. Then Azzaria stepped in and for the fourth time that day finished off an elemental creature. When they were sure the woman was dead, Kaa vindictively urinated on her corpse.
Next: part 27, A Brief Respite
Hi, I play Kaa. Kaa's Qinggong Monk power of 10d6 Dragon's Breath of cold was instrumental in helping to winnow down the hitpoints of the efreets both outside and in the tower. During the fight the stone woman told Kaa that he "hit like a water princess". He then proceeded to strike her three times, once critically, and told her "How do you like me now? You'll like it even better when this princess pisses on your corpse!" I am a bird of my word.
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