Then one of the horrors struck Hutt again, and in an instant the mage dissovled into a puddle of gelatinous goo, his possessions tumbling to the ground beside him. Limbs, eyes, faces, and other body parts emerged from this puddle and then submerged again as it shifted constantly from one form to another.
Azzaria had already hit the creature nearest her several times, and when it flew within reach of Nyema's claws she knocked it to the ground and Kaa kicked it until it stopped moving. When it died it transformed back into a statue, albeit a broken and malformed one. Kaa dodged and weaved, avoiding the blows of a second monster. Azzaria raged, her form becoming blurry and flickering. Sula summoned a storm of lightning and directed bolts at the creature that had attacked Hutt. Hutt meanwhile was able to reform himself by an effort of will, but he realized that the effect was a curse and would require special magic to remove.
Kaa valuted into the air and sent a stream of acid at a creature, causing some of its extra appendages to melt. Azzaria knocked a second monster down, though it didn't transform into a statue. Another creature managed to connect its tentacle with Sula, but she was able to fight off the curse while Nyema took a bite out of it. Uto also avoided being transformed. Hutt filled the area with flames and the third monster turned to stone and exploded. Kaa's blows knocked the remaining beast to the floor, allowing Azzaria to surge across the space and slam her flail into it. When was nearly gone Nyema began to maul it and in moments it joined its brethren as a broken statue.
With the monsters destroyed, the Scarabs looked around the room. The niches the monsters had emerged from were deeper than Uto was tall and behind where the 'statues' had stood were wooden sarcophagi. When opened they revealed carefully wrapped mummies with fine jewelry, possibly those who had served the pharaoh in life. While the others were looking at these, Uto removed the curse that afflicted Hutt, restoring him fully to his natural form.
Beyond this chamber, the Scarabs came to a huge vertical shaft, its circumference more than ten times the height of any member of the group. At the top, far overhead, they could see clouds and flashes of lightning. Nearly as far below on the floor were what appeared to be an image of a bird and a large black disk. Opposite where the Scarabs stood was another ledge, and they could see two more, one above them and the other below.
Uto wanted to know what the black disk at the bottom of the shaft was, so he and Azzaria decided to descend to examine it, Azzaria granting herself magical flight and carrying Uto. As they descended she felt some magical force trying to affect her but nothing happened. The two of them observed that a statue of a man with the head of an ibis stood on one of the ledges, which they thought at first was a figure of the ancient Osirian god of knowledge, Thoth, but Uto realized that the statue held scrolls rather than the traditional ankh symbol. This reminded him that Pharaoh Hakotep had had a single son, Haktothes, who had been renowned as a scholar and known as the Ibis Prince. He surmised that instead of Thoth the statue might represent the Ibis Prince.
When he and Azzaria reached the bottom of the shaft, they found that the bird image was that of an owl. Beside it, the disk in the floor was made of iron divided visually into quarters. In each quarter was a different symbol that seemed to represent one of the four elements. Uto also detected strong magics on the disk. After learning this they decided to return to the rest of the group up above. But while they ascended they encountered the same magic Azzaria had noticed before. This time they suddenly felt her flight magic desert them. Uto quickly cast a spell to allow himself to levitate and they continued to embrace one another as they floated up the shaft to the ledge where the other Scarabs awaited them.
Once Azzaria and Uto had rejoined the party, the group began to discuss what they should do next. Should they go up or down? Hutt declared they should go up, but Kaa worried what the consequences might be if they bypassed the "four-fold path" the woman outside had spoken of. Uto also expressed a desire to go up, and the others acquiesced. But now they had to decide how to accomplish that, as the ledge above was quite far from their current location. It was decided that Uto and Azzaria would fly and carry the others. Uto was strong enough that he could even carry Nyema, though he took her and Sula at the same time so Sula could keep the big cat calm during the journey. Hutt flew on his own.
The passage leading away from the next ledge was blocked by a massive chunk of black basalt. In the center of this block of stone was an indentation in the form of a face that precisely matched the Forgotten Pharaoh's funerary mask that Uto wore. Glyphs on the block read, "The Ibis Prince makes clear the path."
This made the Scarabs reconsider. Would they need something from the passage beyond the Ibis Prince statue to get past this stone? They decided to descend to the Ibis Prince to find out.
The Ibis Prince ledge led into an antechamber where four statues stood against the opposite wall. Kaa was leery of them after their experience with the winged lions earlier. Hutt detected a spell of illusion on one of the statues. As soon as he sensed it, the faces of the statues melted, releasing several swarms of vicious wasps.
The wasps filled much of the space, stinging Sula badly before she summoned lightning down on them. Their sting was poisonous. Kaa breathed lightning at those near him as well, then turned on the swarm around her, destroying them. Uto melded himself into the stone wall to avoid them. Another swarm attacked Sula, draining her of all her agility until she was paralyzed. Then they began to crawl into her nose, mouth and ears. Hutt realized these were hell wasps, which were capable of invading and possessing a paralyzed body. Azzaria surged across the room with her flail and smashed the swarm by Sula to paste while Hutt used more lightning to help eliminate the swarms in the other part of the room.
With the wasps destroyed, the Scarabs saw the stone block in this passage descend, opening the way into a hall that descended. Before they entered the hall Uto restored Sula's mobility with a spell. The hall led to a pillared chamber. The chamber smelled of incense. At the far end of this chamber stood a curtained bed surrounded by several people in priestly robes. One of these figures turned to Uto and told him that there was nothing more they could do for the person on the bed and his body should be taken to prepare for burial. Uto moved closer, to see that the person on the bed appeared to be sickly but the bed curtains partially blocked his view.
Kaa had moved up beside Uto, and he warned Uto that the bed was armed with a dangerous trap that was meant to shatter the bones of the unwary. Uto then realized that the priests, the sick person, and even the curtains were illusory. The speech the priest had made to him had been part of the illusion. The priests were now statues, with gaping holes where their vital organs would have been and showing clear indications that they had been deliberately vandalized. Azzaria remembered that an apparent name the priest had spoken when referring to the sick man was actually a derogatory term for a person who betrayed their master. With the illusion now recognized and the trap on the bed now disabled by Kaa, the body on the bed revealed to be a contorted corpse, long dead. Uto decided to make a fetish of the dead man and use the effigy of Anubis he carried to speak with the dead man's spirit.
Uto placed the effigy inside the abdominal cavity of the corpse and summoned its spirit to speak to him. The dead man told him he had betrayed the Sky Pharaoh by conspiring with the Shory Empire and providing them information about a battle the Pharaoh planned. He had been punished by being afflicted with all sorts of diseases. The priests had been charged with keeping him alive and suffering. When he died they, too, were punished.
Once Uto released the spirit, Kaa went out to the ledge and used his immovable rods and some rope to descend a little way down the shaft. He found the magical trap that had caused Azzaria's flight spell to fail and disabled it. Hutt then cast a flight spell on Nyema and Sula rode astride the lioness as they rose back to the upper ledge.
The ledge on which the statue of the Ibis Prince stood led into a long hallway lined with pillars. The walls were covered in paintings of ibis. The chamber at the end of this hall held a sarcophagus set in an alcove. The floor around the sarcophagus was littered with numerous bones. The alcove was surrounded by an inscription describing the life of the Ibis Prince Hakmothes. The prince had been a scholar, who showed no interest in his father's martial pursuits. Nevertheless, Hakotep had required his son to go on a hunt, during which the prince was slain by a manticore. The Scarabs speculated that perhaps the bones were those of the men who were meant to protect the prince during the hunt. Closer examination by Sula indicated the bones were probably human, and that the men the bones had belonged to had been subjected to terrible torture.
Kaa searched the chamber, finding a trap on the sarcophagus itself. It proved to be extremely difficult to disable. As soon as he disabled one trap, he realized there was another, and another. Layers and layers of very challenging traps. After Kaa had been struggling with all of these traps for some minutes, Uto grew doubtful and used a spell to identify that there was an illusion on the sarcophagus that Kaa had failed to recognize. In fact there were no traps at all, only the illusion. Once Uto dispelled this, the sarcophagus proved to contain the mummy of the prince, wearing a silver funerary mask that was identical to the mask Uto wore except for the precious metal from which it was made. Because the stone block on one of the other ledges had an indentation in the shape of the pharaoh's face, the Scarabs decided to take it with them. Kaa carefully removed it and the easily accessible jewelry from the mummy, but otherwise left the wrappings undisturbed. None of the other Scarabs wanted the jewelry so Kaa claimed it for himself.
The Ruby Scarabs left the Ibis Prince's and descended together to look at the iron disk at the bottom of the shaft. When Hutt examined the enchantments laid on it he recognized that one of them was meant to prevent living creatures from approaching it, along with other protections. Overcoming those protections seemed like a very difficult task. They decided to leave the disk again and go to the uppermost balcony that they had yet to explore, which was located only a little over three times Uto's height below the lightning clouds at the top of the shaft.
The block in the entrance from that ledge had another face indentation in it. Azzaria used the Ibis Prince's mask in the indentation. As the block descended, the Scarabs heard the sound of bells from somewhere in the shaft. The block only descended a slight amount. At the same time, the storm in the top of the shaft lowered untll it was almost level with the ledge. Then the Scarabs heard the screams of a bird-like creature. Two massive birds came swooping out of the clouds, lightning dancing over their huge feathers. Severe gusts of wind began to sweep the ledge. In response, Sula transformed herself into an air elemental. One of the birds sent a bolt of lightning toward Hutt. The rougarou granted his companions hastiness and then summoned up a small magical structure that he could retreat into to be hidden from the eyes of the gigantic birds. Sula encouraged Nyema to go nto the shelter, joining Hutt, Azzaria, and Uto.
Kaa took flight, breathing a gout of flames at one of the enormous birds. Uto cast a spell on everyone to protect them from the birds' lightning. Sula summoned a fiery sirocco wind into the center of the shaft, which did little harm to the birds. One of the birds caught her airy form in its claw. Azzaria flew out of the shelter to attack. Soon all of the Scarabs were in the open but for Nyema. Lightning struck Uto but did him no harm. Sula slammed her fists against her captor, but these birds were fiendish in nature and the bird responded by smiting her. Kaa attempted to petrify the second bird. As they fought, the block in the entrance began to descend again with a grinding sound. Glancing back through the opening it left, Uto spotted a creature pacing inside the chamber beyond the stone.
While Uto looked into the room, Sula smashed her fists against the bird gripping her again and it released her and fell to the floor. She moved toward the second bird, but before she could strike Kaa brought it down. The storm surrounding them dissipated with the deaths of the two birds, but there were still clouds and lightning at the top of the shaft. Meanwhile Uto saw that within the chamber stood a pyramid of glowing crystal as tall as a man. The creature in the room with the pyramid stepped in front of the opening, revealing itself to resemble a mummified sphinx. Its gaze met Uto's and it grinned.
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