Amongst the possessions of the dig team, we did find one interesting item. A diary. It described finding and opening an entrance, finding the shadow monkey statue that Lavim had had, and also a cylinder covered in writing that was described as Builders' script.
We decided it was time to investigate the third tunnel. Leaving Alqadi behind, we descended into darkness.
We first came to a large diamond shape room, which lead into a corridor. The floor appeared to be some kind of black marble, streaked with blue. Our path took us down a series of long curved paths, with either pebbly, blue streaked or gold streaked marble, and short straight paths of plain black stone. It seemed like we were doubling back on ourselves several times. There were also some sticky pads and tape on the floor, as if someone had been trying to leave some kind of marking. What did it mean?
The corridor walls were extremely smooth. No tool marks, no seams. It seemed like the stone had somehow been melted and moulded rather than carved. Who had the technology to create something like this?
Remembering the game of Dungeons and Dragons they'd played while in transit on the Aliya, Sayah suggested it might be a gelatinous cube. Did those really exist? We all hoped not.
Lila deployed her environmental scanner, after noticing some odd features of both the tunnel and the sticky pads. She found that there was a slight heat differential between the wall and the floor. We were beginning to suspect that somehow these tunnel sections could move.
Gurgeh's drone was scouting ahead when its camera picked up something unusual. A corpse.
Tahir, wearing his exosuit, went in to investigate. The man was dressed for digging in overalls. He looked dry and dessicated, but more obviously, had a third arm growing out of his chest with scaly greyish skin and three long clawed fingers. The name badge he wore identified him as one of the dig team, Islir. There was also a strange tattoo on his arm, which Lila thought looked familiar, and a small amber cylinder in his hand with markings that Gurgeh thought looked like those on the stone cylinder that the dig team had found.
Gurgeh and Sayah, the latter of whom was refusing to get any closer to the corpse than necessary, found a damaged tabula on the floor. With some work they managed to get it up and running sufficiently to break into its messaging app. The tabula had clearly belonged to Islir, who had been messaging someone identified only as Z.K.
Z.K. appeared to have some kind of ulterior motive, whoever they might be. From the messages, it looked like they were paying Islir to scare away the others once the artefact had been found. Islir's instructions were to activate a cylinder, then wait for the others to panic and leave. Islir was concerned that whatever it was might not prove effective on the guard, but was reassured by Z.K. that he only had to fire on the others to make them fear Sarcophagoi and flee.
Obviously things had not gone according to plan for Islir.
We were approaching the centre of the spiraling tunnel now. Tahir thought about the Kuan system, and realised that the long curved passages could match up with the planets and asteroid belts orbiting the star. Realising that the tunnels with the pebbly floors matched up with the asteroid belts convinced us that he was correct. Perhaps this entire tunnel system could move?
We had reached the centre. A large, long room with eight tall pillars, and at the end of it a strange frame covered in glyphs. And more corpses.
The first was by the first pillar. A gun lay beside him, and one of his legs had turned into a tangle of tentacles with hooked suckets. It looked like he'd attempted to shoot the tentacles, but judging by the marks on his throat, the tentacles had attacked and killed him.
More worryingly, he looked exactly like Lavim Tamm.
The second corpse lay by the frame. A woman this time, presumably Frolia from the dig team. No extra body parts on her, just a massive stab wound. And nearby we found a camera drone.
The battery was almost dead, but Hamsa had one in his knife that would do the job. We watched the recording. Islir shouted something about something being 'in the walls'. Then a shadowy form appeared, stabbing Frolia, attacking Lavim and Islir. And Zhar falling out of the picture as the lights went out.
Something terrible had happened here. We needed to find out what.
Lila, fascinated by anything related to the portal builders as usual, examined the frame. The glyphs looked familiar, similar to the ones on the amber cylinder. There was an indentation on the frame, meant to hold a cube, and the video had shown a cube on the frame. Sayah suggested searching the two corpses to see if they had it (while refusing to go near them herself). No luck, but with some careful use of the cylinder, Lila managed to get some of the glyphs on the frame to light up.
Tahir and Hamsa were struck with a sudden sense of foreboding. Sayah felt fine, but seeing the normally fearless Tahir acting nervous made her worry too, and she attempted to persuade Lila to put down the cylinder and walk away. But it was too late. The corpse of Frolia sat up and grabbed Lila's leg.
Frolia wasn't the only corpse to wake up. The tentacled remains of Lavim got up and went for Tahir, who was very glad to still be wearing his exosuit. While Gurgeh and Tahir battled Lavim, Sayah shot Frolia, but was unable to stop her from biting off Lila's arm. Hamsa joined the fight, and Sayah finally finished off Frolia while yelling for Gurgeh to come and help Lila.
With Lavim's corpse dealt with, Gurgeh dashed over, and with the aid of Tahir's trauma kit, was able to stabilise Lila. All the same, it was critical that we got her back to the Aliya's medlab as soon as possible. So it's unfortunate that at this point the corpse of Islir came charging into the room.
Everyone (except Lila) opened fire. It threw itself at Hamsa, but being made of slightly sterner stuff than Lila he survived the assault long enough for the others to finish taking it down, destroying one of its legs in the process.
We were still a corpse or two short of a full dig team. We would just have to hope we didn't meet any more of them before we got back to the Aliya.
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