The Eagle Hall Revisited

In the years following the defeat of the Master’s lieutenant and his armies of beastmen, the Eagle Clan had struggled to return from the devastation it had experienced. Their new khan was Qorchi, a young nephew of the fallen chief who had distinguished himself during the war against the beastmen. Brave and well regarded as a warrior, he proved less successful in restoring a people broken by years of loss. Some among the Eagle Clan looked to the future, while others could not look beyond the ruin of their ancestral hall. Increasingly it was said that the clan could never truly be whole until the hall itself had been reclaimed.

Determined to end the dispute, Qorchi had gathered a company of volunteers and marched against the beastmen occupying the old stronghold. None of them returned. The attacks upon the Eagle lands continued, and yet the clan's shamans unanimously insisted that Qorchi still lived. So long as their khan remained alive, no council could lawfully choose his successor, leaving the Eagle Clan leaderless at the very moment it most needed unity.

The chiefs therefore sought aid from their oldest allies, the Sansar Clan, in particular Tetsukichi, the exile from Zipang who after marrying into the Sansar clan had brought it so much honor, both over the sea and in his previous to succor to the Eagle Clan.  They hoped that he would rally a sufficient force to retake the hall. In the meantime, the Eagle chiefs wished to better understand what had become of their ancestral hall and what had become of their young khan.

The enemy no longer resembled the disorganized howling masses of the Master's defeated armies. According to rumors, those few beastmen who had survived, had become even stronger.  Hoping that the same sorcerers who had helped bring about the destruction of first the Master’s lieutenant and then the Master himself might shed light on these mysteries, the chiefs traveled to neighboring Banua to seek the counsel of Bangqiu and Salt.

Bangqiu, Salt, and Salt’s apprentice Fen, now an accomplished wu jen himself, accepted the task. Rather than approach openly, the three assumed the forms of eagles and flew unseen toward the ancestral hall.

From above, they found the stronghold much as memory had left it, though more weathered by the passing years. Roofs sagged, walls crumbled, and banners of the Eagle Clan still fluttered from broken towers. Yet the place was far from abandoned. Wolves roamed freely through the compound, though they were continually harassed by nesting eagles that circled and stooped upon them whenever they ventured too close to the old rookeries.

The greatest surprise awaited in the central hall. Once the gathering place of the Eagle Clan, it had long ago lost its walls, leaving only a broad roof supported by heavy pillars. There, concealed among the rafters, the companions watched several distinct tribes of beastmen uneasily sharing the same space. Wolf-, boar-, and dog-formed beastmen greatly outnumbered a smaller band whose features resembled birds of prey. Though no battle erupted, old rivalries and barely restrained savagery simmered beneath every conversation. And the rumors were true. These beastmen, numbering less than 20, appeared larger and more imposing than those encountered during the Master's invasion years before.

Assuming the forms of smaller birds, the companions perched unnoticed near the avian beastmen and overheard a heated discussion. One argued that the boar clans had grown insolent and should be slaughtered to make an example to the others. Another counseled patience.

"Wait until Qorchi is ready."

The name alone confirmed the suspicions of the Eagle Clan's chiefs. Somehow, the missing khan remained alive.

Seeking further answers, the companions descended through a concealed stair into the ancient chambers beneath the fortress. There they found winding stone passages still in use and discovered a single prison cell occupied not by the missing khan, but by two listless giants whose defeated manner suggested they were captives rather than masters.

Further progress proved difficult. Doors barred many passages, and wings—even invisible ones—could neither manipulate locks nor open barred doors. At last Bangqiu resumed his human form while remaining invisible, hoping to continue the search on foot. Before long, however, he nearly stumbled into a patrol of smaller beastmen. Regretting that they had not enlisted anyone capable of speaking with the eagles and wolves, and judging the risk of discovery too great, the companions abandoned their search.

Bangqiu once again assumed the form of an eagle, and the three quietly departed the hall.

Though they had not found Qorchi, they returned to Banua with intelligence of far greater consequence than the Eagle Clan had expected. The ancestral hall had become neither a prison nor a simple monster lair. It had become the seat of a new society of beastmen, divided by old rivalries yet held together by an unseen authority. Whatever awaited beneath the hall, it was no longer merely a remnant of the Beast Master's armies, but the beginning of something altogether new.

The Woman Who Disappeared

Bangqiu dreamed.

Not the usual drifting fragments of memory and nonsense, but something sharper—deliberate. A voice, or perhaps several, repeating the same simple instruction:

“Ask Lao Ren to send you to Khanbaliq. We found something strange. Kafka needs your help.”

He listened. Lao Ren agreed. "We will keep your ship until you return."

---

Kafka, Bangqiu’s companion on many an adventure in years past, had settled down in Khanbaliq. Not settled. Prospered, in all the ways that mattered to him.

After decades of corruption, the Monastery of the Two-Fold Path had been restored, at least in principle. No longer a hiding place for slavers, gangsters, and apostate monks, the still decrepit physical structure was now home to sincere students dedicated to correct teachings.

But beneath it…

Kafka spoke carefully. There were tunnels that at first seemed to be the home of scavengers or remnants of the Black Flower gang, stealing from the monks’ meagre food stores. But beyond these crude passageways, there were older thoroughfares. Older than the monastery. Remnants of something unpleasant—an ancient cult of death worshippers. And beyond that, passages that did not behave properly. Corridors that led not just deeper underground, but… elsewhere. Even… elsewhen.

Bangqiu was glad to hear about the success of Bo-Jing and Gwinch in addressing these issues. He discussed with Bo-Jing what, if anything, they should do next, how much further they should explore. But before any decision was reached, they were interrupted by a visitor at the gate.

---

There was no fear in her bearing. Just composure—and purpose.

She did not give her name at first, but she did not need to. Everything about her suggested someone accustomed to being obeyed, or at least taken seriously.

“I intend to disappear,” she said.

Not flee. Not escape.

Disappear.

She needed a place beyond reach—of the court, of her enemies, of anyone who might try to shape her son’s future. If they could help her, she promised, they would not be forgotten when that future was decided.

“You will be the most trusted friends of the next Emperor.”

Bo-Jing joked that he was already close friends with himself.

Bangqiu, used to wandering, knew of one such place.

Beatriss’s castle. The Happy Valley.

The woman seemed surprised by the suggestion but then smiled. “Yes, take me there. Tomorrow. Just me, and my son, and my bodyguard.”

---

In the morning there was a change of plans. At the walls of Khanbaliq, the party saw the woman speaking crossly to the man who must have been her bodyguard—a doughty, mournful warrior, a cloak thrown over gleaming armor.

“It’s only the Happy Valley,” she said. “They are more than capable, and I will return in a week.”

The bodyguard looked long and hard at the party—Bangqiu, Bo-Jing, Batzorig, Ryu, and Kafka—then shrugged his shoulders, turned his horse and re-entered the city.

The woman’s son was about fifteen. Like her, he wore a dull-colored but fine-woven traveling cloak that half-obscured his face. Mother and son were quiet, taking their place in the middle of the group, speaking little, and only to each other.

In the early afternoon, they left the imperial highway and took the smaller road that wound toward the Valley. Descending a gentle winding path that ran along a steep ravine, the party noticed a shrine at a bend in the road. And three men who were desecrating it, casting the offerings of flowers and coins onto the ground.

Bo-Jing and Bangqiu shouted jokes at the men, emphasizing how little they cared about protecting roadside shrines. Somehow, the men were able to register these jokes as insults. One of them walked down from the shrine, challenging Bangqiu to a fight.

“We’ll see who has learned the superior style.”

Bangqiu slipped from his horse as if to accept the challenge. But when the man charged at him, launching a flying kick at his head, Bangqiu summoned the elemental powers of fire and water and blasted him with scalding steam. There was a scream of pain—from the man’s compatriots next to the shrine. The duelist passed through the cloud unscathed and landed a flurry of kicks.

The duel became something else—
magic and motion, arrows from Bo-Jing and Batzorig,
and Ryu summoning snakes to incapacitate them.

Throughout the battle, the damage did not fall where it should.

Blows meant for one man were taken by another, standing apart, as if the group shared a single pool of endurance. The “bystanders” suffered in place of the duelist, staggering but not falling.

The hallmarks of Dragon Claw, which Bangqiu and Bo-Jing had seen in Guibao.

The fight escalated until a wall of fire sprang up, isolating the party from their wards. Bangqiu rose into the air, sealing the flames within a dome of force. Kafka charged forward to attack the still-unscathed duelist with his frost brand. Two more figures emerged from nowhere—previously unseen, now very real—striking at Kafka from either side.

Ryu and Bangqiu employed more fearsome magic, transfixing the duelist and sending the other two fleeing in terror. The other shrine desecrators were killed by the swords of Bo-Jing and Batzorig. And lots of snakes.

---

The wall of fire died. The wall of force shimmered and vanished.

There had been no scream. No struggle.

And the woman, her son—their charges—were gone.

---

Batzorig dragged the dead bodies out of the road. Ryu sent the snakes into the ravine.

Then came a surprised half-scream from below.

The boy.

---

Certain they had been tricked, Bo-Jing demanded that Ryu call down divine punishment into the ravine. Ryu protested that although the ravine was narrow, calling a flame strike into the forest could have unpredictable consequences.

And so Bangqiu and Bo-Jing shrugged it off.

They had been part of something they did not fully understand—something with strange and dangerous components. Bangqiu had been badly wounded in the battle. Kafka began to question the wisdom of leaving his monastery without a leader.

---

They let it go, for now. They returned to Khanbaliq.

Along the way, they passed by an inn. A drunk man stumbled out and pointed at Bo-Jing.

“A man passed by this way—he was looking for you.”

They bought the man a drink and got a description.

“A sad-looking old warrior. Fine armor beneath his traveling cloak. I told him you were going east, to the port.”

Beyond the Slavepits of the Undercity

An Account of how Gwinch, Kishi, Bo-Jing, and Salt answered the call of a friend and made their descent beneath the Monastery of the Two-Fold Path in Khanbaliq

---

The Summons

Ten years after his exile—and his eventual acceptance—Gwinch had settled into something like permanence. In Pasar, he was no longer an outsider but a fixture: Abbot of the Two-Fold Path, respected, careful, and largely removed from the kinds of dangers that had once defined him.

Then the letter came.

It was from Kafka Tamura, a former student who had followed him from Zipang to Khanbaliq—earnest, observant, and marked by a seriousness that had always suggested future responsibility. Gwinch had sent him north for precisely that reason: to restore the monastery that had once been corrupted by apostate monks and slavers.

Kafka had succeeded. The Black Flower gang was gone. The monastery stood again, at least in spirit.

But not in peace.

“Master, we have discovered something beneath the monastery.
It should not exist beneath Khanbaliq.
We fear we have opened a door that was meant to remain closed.”

Gwinch read the letter, understood what it implied, and chose to go.

---

At the same time, far to the east, the Crimson Reprieve crossed the ocean under new ownership. With Acererak destroyed and Captain Hu laid to rest, Bangqiu claimed the ship. Against all odds—and with more than a little luck—the voyage ended at Jade Harbor.

There, the party rested.

Salt shed the last of her homespun garments and exchanged some of the gems from Acererak's tombs for clothes-- luxurious silk in colors that would remind her of the warm ocean on a calm day. Because it was time to return to the steppes.

 Bangqiu hosted them for a final stretch of calm before their paths diverged.

Then Lao Ren gathered the Clever Ones, traced his careful geometry, and returned them to Banua.

  

What they found was a world that had already mourned them. Bo-Jing’s wife—and much of the Naran Horde—had assumed his death. His return brought not conflict, but relief. The interim khan stepped aside, and order reformed itself around him.

In the quiet that followed, Salt and Nekhil married without ceremony.

Then Kafka’s letter arrived.

---

The Gathering

And so they came together again at the ruined monastery outside Khanbaliq:

Gwinch
Kishi.
Salt.
Bo-Jing
Nekhil.
Ryu.
Wu Jin Fen
QiGongJin

Kafka explained what he could.

At first, it had seemed mundane: missing food, unseen intruders. Then passages sealed themselves only for others to open. And finally, something deeper—evidence of a cult older than the Black Flower gang, older than the Two-Fold Path, older than Khanbaliq and perhaps any of the settlements that preceded it.

Something below had been disturbed.

---

I. The Whisper

Gwinch began with caution.

He staked out the main entrance to the buried cult complex, a stone platform along the foul canals of the city. There, amid the slow black flow, he heard it:

A whisper.

Not wind. Not water.

Something within.

Gwinch conferred with the party and together they chose the smaller entrance—through the monastery cellar—and descended.

Wu Jin Fen heard his name first.

Ahead, six ash-wights stood chained together, their forms barely holding shape. When Ryu turned them, they did not scatter. They drifted—purposefully—toward the source of the whisper.

The party followed.

They saw the idol beyond a collapsed wall: a four-armed figure of black stone.

As the wights approached, the chamber woke. Stone ground against stone.

The guardians rose.

The party withdrew—not in panic, but in discipline—taking shelter in a chamber of four sealed sarcophagi. They did not open them.

When they returned, the wights were gone.

Only chains and ash remained.

And the sense that something had noticed them.

---

II. The Invisible Man

Salt and Wu Jin Fen returned to the surface. The rest pressed on.

Gwinch and Bo-Jing led the pursuit.

The corridors narrowed and twisted. Doors opened and closed where none should exist. Always ahead: footsteps.

Measured.

Deliberate.

And beneath them—the sound of stone moving.

The unseen figure drew them forward into danger.

Three coal-black hounds emerged, their breath burning in the confined space. Kafka did not meet them head-on—he moved along the wall, over them, striking at the invisible man as he opened yet another hidden door.

Bo-Jing held the line. Gwinch finished the work.

The hounds fell.

Beyond, an ogre mage revealed itself only briefly before retreating deeper.

Ryu, spent, was escorted back to the surface.

The rest continued.

---

III. The Ogre Mages

They found the ogre mages in a chamber of strange normalcy—seated around a game, as though they belonged there.

The illusion ended quickly.

Cold filled the room in sudden, devastating bursts. Several of the young monks nearly died where they stood. But the creatures faltered when pressed.

One by one, they were forced into the open.

Their tricks failed. Their disguises failed.

Gwinch and Kafka turned the fight with patience and positioning—drawing one into the corridor, isolating another.

Only one escaped, dissolving into mist with its treasures.

Gwinch returned to the surface with a simple truth:

The dungeon was not empty.

It was defended.

---

IV. The Idol

They returned stronger.

Salt and Nekhil.
Kishi.
New initiates.

The ash-wights came again.

This time, the truth emerged: they were not evil, but bound. The magic that judged wickedness struck the new recruits instead.

Impostors.

Dragon Claw agents, hidden among them.

Kafka executed the last without hesitation.

Salt held the wights. Their chains held the rest.

They reached the sarcophagi again. Kishi confirmed their fears: a priest of the ancient cult of Duvan’Ku lay within. And the idol wanted blood.

They left it sealed.

At the idol, blood was offered.

The idol responded.

A hidden door opened.

Within: a basilisk—and a sword.

The creature died quickly.

The sword spoke.

It named itself the relic of Makurian, a hero who had failed to destroy the cult centuries before. It had waited.

It chose Gwinch.

---

V. The Destruction

The sword gave Gwinch more than purpose.

It gave him leverage.

He lifted one guardian from the ground—separating it from its twin. A monk baited the second.

The collision ended both.

The idol remained.

They removed it—not through ritual, but through effort. Out of the chamber. Into the sewers. And finally, into the daylight.

Where it was broken.

---

VI. The Door Beyond

Only then did they understand what the ogre mages had guarded.

Not the idol.

A door.

Beyond it lay something stranger than a dungeon.

A place where time itself could be crossed.

---

The monastery was reclaimed.

But not emptied.

Because beneath it still lay doors unopened—

And paths that did not lead merely downward,

But elsewhere. And elsewhen.

Tomb of Horrors (Salt's account)

 We entered the Tomb of Horrors twice, though only one passage was real. The first time was by magic alone—a deliberate vision, thin and cold, meant to teach rather than to save. There were only four of us then: Bojing’s steadiness, Bang-Qiu’s brilliance, Lao-ren’s quiet vigilance, and my own careful reach into things better left untouched. We did not know where the tomb wished to be entered, only that planes mattered, that Acererak could not be fought from just anywhere. The tomb was bright—offensively so—full of color and beauty that begged to be trusted. We learned quickly not to. 

When the arch stripped us of clothing, weapons, and certainty, I feared the vision would end almost before it began, fruitless and humiliating. Instead, it sharpened us. The tomb did not watch. It did not gloat. It simply functioned. We learned what worked. The shatter spell broke what arrogance could not. Planes were doors and knives both. We learned the cost of standing too long in the Astral, where devils arrived like clockwork to bleed time and strength. I remember wondering if we would all “die” and still be forced to learn. 

When we returned for the true descent, we carried knowledge like a fragile flame. We moved only between the planes we needed. We chose spells with intent—fewer tricks, more teeth. When we found the crown and scepter, gold and silver ends waiting for error, memory saved us. Rules remembered became survival earned. Acererak’s appearance felt exactly as expected. That was the greatest gift. I shattered him again, precisely and without drama. And then it was done. Not just the tomb, but the curse that had haunted us—the captain and crew bound to undeath by bodies buried under Acererak’s shadow. They were laid to rest at last. Everyone walked out alive. That mattered more than victory. 

I closed my spellbook afterward with relief—not triumph. Some horrors are meant to be finished, recorded, and never repeated.

Tomb of Horrors Part 6 (End of Acererak)

They destroyed Acererak once in a dream.

In that shared nightmare, they learned what he was.

A flurry of magic missiles from Salt and Bangqiu struck the floating jeweled skull and burst like rain against stone. Acererak did not even seem to notice. But when Lao Ren spoke a single word—Shatter—and a hairline crack split the demi-lich’s jaw, the skull turned its ruby gaze upon him. In an instant, the sage became a bubbling ruin of flesh, his soul pulled screaming into one of those gleaming gems.

Bo-Jing did not hesitate. Testing the angel’s gift—the two-handed blade that burned with a purifying flame and had felled so many undead fiends—he struck twice. Bone split. The skull broke.

The dream ended.

They woke on the deck of the Crimson Reprieve, gasping, surrounded by companions who had watched their bodies writhe and scream in shared terror.

Salt rose first.

“We know what to do.”

---

Preparation

Captain Hu’s seadogs dug out the long-buried central entrance. This time there would be no wandering through false doors or painted deceptions. Knowledge was their lantern.

Bo-Jing gathered those who would enter for the true descent:

His brother-in-law Batzorig.
Ryu the priest.
Malekandathil of the Order of Mar Thoma.
Akana Kiku, the majou from the island port near Guibao.
Ma Tsu, guardian of the Library of Tushuguan.
Fen and Nekhil at Salt’s side.
Captain Hu himself, and four seadogs who would not be denied redemption.

They entered the mosaic corridor in disciplined silence. Lamps were lit. Eyes adjusted.

The tiles were bright and beautiful. They did not trust them.

Without touching the floor, Bo-Jing, Salt, and Bangqiu moved the entire company past the hidden pits.

“Do not put your hand in the green devil’s mouth,” Salt said plainly.

Bangqiu and Lao Ren marked the wall and carved a passwall into the throne chamber.

“Do not go near the glowing purple gem.”

They obeyed memory. Memory obeyed them.

The crown was bagged.
The silver scepter touched the throne.
The secret door opened.
The bronze key was taken.
The gold end of the scepter opened the mithril doors.

There was no hesitation.

---

The Efreeti

Bo-Jing freed the efreeti from the urn. The being regarded them with a curious familiarity, as though dream and waking were less separate than mortals believed.

The party wished for a map.
They wished for notice of the keys.

For the third wish, Bo-Jing claimed his right:

“A sword strong enough to destroy Acererak.”

The efreeti vanished and returned with a blade so sharp it sang in the lamplight, cutting drifting dust in two. Bo-Jing placed it in Malekandathil’s hands—for use within the tomb only.

The iron statue was toppled by the seadogs. The secret tunnel lay open.

One task remained.

Bangqiu turned the ochre jelly into a flounder and retrieved half the gold key. Salt’s unseen servant braved the vat of acid for the other half.

The key was made whole.

Endgame.

---

The Final Plan

In the dream, they had learned the cost of delay.

The party leaders were confident they could destroy Acererak as they had done it in their dream. But could they do it like lightning, before Acererak had a chance to suck out anyone’s soul?

Bangqiu made the decision he had been avoiding for months. He had studied the spellbooks of the necromancer Mouru Zhai.

Mouru Zhai—once Acererak’s apprentice, later his intended victim—had written of a word of annihilation, a syllable to be spoken from the Astral Plane that would burn itself from existence as it destroyed its target.

Mouru Zhai had never lived to test it.

Bangqiu would.

If the word failed, Bo-Jing and Malekandathil would strike. Salt and Lao Ren would shatter. Nekhil stood ready with his rod of smiting.

There would be no second attempt.

---

The Tomb Within the Tomb

Salt dropped the bronze and gold keys for the unseen to carry. The seadogs stood behind while the vanguard stepped with Ma Tsu into the Astral Plane.

The servant turned the gold key three times. The wall descended. They entered the bare chamber.

The bronze key turned in the floor.

Stone ground against stone.

The vault rose.

Bangqiu glanced again at Mouru Zhai’s book, and another spell caught his attention. He cast Haste upon himself and felt his reflexes sharpen to those of a viper. He knew he would strike first.

Akana Kiku, with faint amusement, cast the same spell upon Bo-Jing.

“Or perhaps your sword will be faster than his word.”

History will argue which was quicker.

It was not Acererak.

Bo-Jing’s blade split the jawbone in a single downward stroke.
Bangqiu spoke the word.

The skull burst apart.

Ruby eyes and diamond teeth spilled across the stone floor.

The Tomb of Horrors ended not in terror—but in precision.

---

When silence settled, they gathered what remained.

There was no hoard of coin. Only fantastic jewels.

An opal the size of a large man’s fist. Diamonds cut like teeth. Sapphires that seemed to hold captive lightning. Jewels from the skull itself and others hidden in alcoves.

There was a sword that tempted Bangqiu for a moment before he saw and grasped Acererak’s staff.
“Mine. I relinquish claim to the rest.”

There were scrolls, potions, and other arcane objects whose enchantments felt layered—and perhaps not entirely benevolent.

Some items would demand study. Some caution. A few might yet require destruction.

They took them all the same.

Captain Hu and his seadogs did not claim a single gem. Their debt was paid. The body of Niao would be laid to rest, and the centuries of undeath that had bound them to her would come to an end. They met mortality not as punishment, but as peace.

Lao Ren stood with Ma Tsu and Malekandathil among the fragments of the skull and allowed himself the smallest smile.

“What did I tell you? The clever ones.”

---

Aftermath

Every living soul who entered the tomb had walked back out.

They did not divide the treasure immediately.

The gems were gathered and shared in principle—claimed as common spoils of a common descent—but they remained in chests aboard the Crimson Reprieve while the ship turned westward in search of quiet water and the right place to bury Niao. Captain Hu and his crew taught Bangqiu how to sail the ship that would be his—or perhaps more wisely, how to defer to the one who already could: Bo-Jing.

They found it far from trade lanes and flags—a small green island rising from a blue sea, untouched by continent or crown.

There, the crew went ashore for the last time.

The sailors and seadogs set to work with shovels and laughter that startled even themselves. They dug not trenches for war, nor pits for punishment, but simple graves in neat rows facing the sea. Some argued over depth. Others over alignment. One insisted on a view of the sunrise.

It might have seemed macabre to an outsider.

It was not.

These were men who had labored beneath borrowed centuries. To dig one’s own grave is a grim business—unless one has waited three hundred years for the chance.

When the graves were finished, they dug one more.

Niao was laid to rest again—properly this time. Her bones were washed, wrapped, and placed beneath the open sky with words spoken only for her.

The wind was gentle.

Captain Hu stood a long while. Then he knelt and touched the earth.

“I am finished,” he said simply.

Together with his crew, one by one, they lay down in the graves they had prepared. No screams. No ceremony. Only long breaths exhaled in relief.

By dusk, the island held only stillness.

The Crimson Reprieve sailed again before dawn. The next morning, Salt met with Bo-Jing to negotiate how to divide the horde of gems and magic.

---

Historical Note

In later years, when the tale was told in Guibao, Zhou-Song, Zhou-Deng, in Zipang and across the steppes, the argument was inevitable.

Akana Kiku insisted it was Bo-Jing’s blade that ended Acererak.
“The jawbone split first,” she would say. “Bone fell before sound. The baghatur with a face like the morning sun.”

Bangqiu would smile thinly and reply that without the word spoken from the Astral, the skull would have reformed, as demi-liches do.

“The sword struck matter. I struck essence.”

Those inclined toward balance noted that the gem-eyes shattered at the same moment the blade cleaved. Some argued that neither alone would have sufficed.

Ma Tsu would only say that timing is a kind of wisdom.

Lao Ren, when pressed, would close his eyes and answer:

“Bo-jing, Bangqiu, Salt. Even Tetsukichi. They were the clever ones. Slow is smooth. And smooth is fast.”

And refuse to elaborate.

Tomb of Horros Part 5 (All the Keys)

On what felt like their third visit to the throne room—though by now “third” was an unreliable category—the party acted decisively.

They left the crown untouched and took only the scepter.

Noting the small silver symbol set into the throne itself, Salt directed her unseen servant to touch the silver end of the scepter to it. The result was immediate and mechanical: the obsidian throne sank smoothly into the floor, revealing once more the passage to the multicolored stairway below.

They descended, retrieved the bronze key, and returned to the mithril doors. This time, Salt used the golden end of the scepter. The doors opened without protest.

Inside the anti-magic funerary chamber, Bo-Jing once again opened the bronze urn.

The efreeti emerged, as before—contained, intelligent, and apparently resigned to the strange rhythms of this place. Bo-Jing wished first for a new map of the tomb. The efreeti obliged. Then for a complete list of all magic items in the tomb.

From this list, the party learned something critical: access to Acererak’s true tomb required two keys—the bronze key they already possessed, and a gold key divided into two parts.

For the third wish, they asked for Acererak’s real name.

The efreeti gave it.

It was Acererak.

Stepping back out of the anti-magic chamber onto the multicolored stairway, Lao Ren attempted something bold and very nearly catastrophic. Using the “real name,” he attempted to gate Acererak directly into the room, hoping to end the matter immediately.

A gate opened. . .

. . . and they saw a small chamber overflowing with gems and magic items. Funeral biers stood empty save for dust. At their center lay a skull with rubies set in its eyes and diamonds for teeth.

The skull rose, drifted toward the gate, and spoke a single blasphemous insult.

The gate snapped shut.

Shaken but alive, the party retreated to the funerary room.

Frustration now gave way to brute force. Bo-Jing, nearly giving himself a hernia, managed to knock over one of the massive iron statues, revealing a secret tunnel behind it. At the end of the passage lay a hallway that, according to the efreeti’s map, led toward Acererak’s true resting place.

There was a keyhole.

They had no way to open it—except with the gold key.

Using the map, they began a systematic search.

They navigated pit-filled corridors, passed through a natural grotto veiled in silvery mist where a beautiful woman spoke freely but knew little, and eventually located the laboratory: three large vats exactly as described by the efreeti’s list.

One vat contained acid.
One held muddy water.
The third churned with half-sentient goo.

In the acid vat, an unseen servant retrieved one half of the gold key without difficulty.

According to the list, the second half was supposed to be found in a spiked pit outside the laboratory.

It wasn’t.

They searched carefully: the pit, the surrounding corridors, the nearby library cluttered with rubbery green-brown tapestries that Bo-Jing nearly tore from the floor. Nothing.

Finally, Bo-Jing suggested the unthinkable: the efreeti’s list might be wrong.

Or incomplete.

They returned to the vats. Acting on a hunch, they poured a potion of invisibility into the vat of goo. The liquid vanished from sight, revealing at the bottom the second half of the key.

Bangqiu polymorphed the goo into a flounder. The unseen servant retrieved the key.

With both halves joined, they attempted to teleport back to the sealed hallway—and instead found themselves outside in the muggy swamp, on top of the tomb, far above the ground.

Too high.

They used passwall, straight down.

This time, they arrived exactly where they intended.

The bronze key went into the first lock. The slab of stone descended into the floor.

Behind it waited another door.

They opened it.

Tomb of Horrors Part 4 ("Are You Living in My Dream or Am I Living in Your Dream?"

Remembering the price of the silver choice, Salt directed her unseen servant to take the golden end of the scepter and touch it to the mithril doors. There was no lightning. The doors opened.

Beyond lay what appeared to be a funerary treasure chamber, bright beneath a silvered ceiling that reflected light much as the stair chamber had done. The walls were ivory inlaid with gold. The floor was polished agate—common stone, but worked to a mirror sheen.

In each corner stood a nine-foot iron statue, black as pitch and radiating both magic and evil. Each bore a different weapon: a saw-toothed greatsword, a spiked mace, a vicious morning star, and a voulge. Their faces were monstrous and deeply unsettling.

They did nothing.

Salt and Bo-Jing soon learned why. The room was lined with lead and suffused with anti-magic. Spells failed. Magic items fell silent. Even the unseen servant winked out of existence.

Bo-Jing, convinced the statues would animate at any moment, tried to wrench weapons from their grasp or deface them. The iron would not yield—though disturbingly, the statues did shift slightly, as if resisting.

Against one wall stood a granite sarcophagus, its lid inlaid with platinum glyphs spelling ACERERAK. The far end had been smashed open long ago. Inside were rotted remains: fragments of bone, torn wrappings, ruined jewelry, dust, and the unmistakable wreckage of a magic staff . When Salt probed further, a cracked skull rolled free.

Whatever had once lain here was gone.

There were also massive iron chests, triple-locked and set directly into the stone. They did not yield.

And then there was the bronze urn—large, ornate, sealed with gold fill, a thin thread of smoke escaping from a tiny vent.

On a whim—perhaps out of frustration, perhaps out of instinct—Bo-Jing opened it.

Fire poured out of the urn and resolved itself into a towering efreeti, a being of living flame and intelligence. It demanded to know who had opened its prison.

When Bo-Jing stepped forward, the efreeti surprised them all.

It owed him three services before returning to the Elemental Plane of Fire.

Chastened by what wishing had already done to Lao Ren, Salt and Bo-Jing deliberated carefully.

Their first request was cautious: a map of the tomb.
The efreeti vanished in a puff of smoke and returned moments later with a singed parchment. Compared against the crude map they had found earlier, this one proved to be essentially perfect.

For the second service, they asked for a list of the twenty things needed to defeat Acererak. This disappointed Bo-Jing: the list was mostly mundane preparations—ten-foot poles, methods to counter gravity, potions of flight. Sensible. Practical. Unheroic. He already had a magic broom. Or at least, he used to.

The third service required the most care.

They wanted their equipment back. Their weapons, armor, clothes. Their companions. Their strength.

Before they could finalize the wording, the efreeti interrupted:

“Are you living in my dream, or am I living in your dream?”

Salt and Bo-Jing admitted they did not know. They acknowledged that whatever freedom they were offering him was likely temporary—illusory, even—contained within a vision.

Then Salt said something different.

“We are coming to destroy Acererak.
We are coming back for real.
And when we return, we will free you for real.”

The efreeti considered this. He could not reshape reality. But he could reshape a dream.

If that was what they wanted.

It was.

In an instant, Salt and Bo-Jing found themselves outside the tomb, reunited with Bangqiu and Lao Ren. They were clothed, healed, armed. Spells returned to memory. Strength returned to limbs.

But the crown, the scepter, the efreeti’s map, and every other artifact taken from within the tomb were gone.

They were in a dream inside a dream—but they remembered some things from the first dream.

For instance: do not take the northwest tunnel where the rocks fall.

This time, rather than digging through the middle entrance with swords, they used passwall, tunneling through the mud and into the now-obscenely familiar mosaic corridor with the green devil mouth at its end. Bangqiu could not remember what had happened to him inside that mouth—but he knew, with absolute certainty, that he did not want to return.

Between the four of them, they had enough magic to move quickly. They evaded the pit traps, ignored the temptations, and at the end of the corridor phase doored through the wall.

They emerged once more into the throne room.

The place where, in another dream, they had found the crown and the scepter. And the glowing gem. Once again, all these deadly tools were waiting.