#oh hey it wasn't angsty who'da thunk it

[starswornoaths]

Prompt #5: Vault

Sometimes the victors who write history completely obliterate all traces of the opposition, thoroughly and utterly. Sometimes, the fallen still manage to find sanctuary in the shadows.

Or:

Uthengentle Arcbane: Tomb Raider is my new favorite thing

Only the Mad King Theodoric would have a vault, within a vault, within a vault, and then shove all of his transformed and anguished relatives in them to guard the treasure he was hoarding from them in the first place, Uthengentle thought.

While all of the spelunking and fighting was plenty to keep his focus, he found himself scanning the floors and walls of every room, scrutinizing every nook and cranny he could, in the vain hope there was some sign of those who came before the Empire, those who had served— and died— under the broken minded tyrant.

At least a glimmer of the family he lost. Of the loved ones he couldn’t remember. Something to reclaim in their name.

His sister noticed him lagging behind and slowed her pace for him.

“I know you want to look.” She said softly so as not to be overheard by their two compatriots. “Let’s clear it out first so you can do so in safety. There’s some...thing...deeper in that’s making my skin crawl.”

When she shuddered, he took the hint; if the aether she was sensing was even half a stifling as the air surrounding them, he could only imagine what lie at the end of the myriad vaults for them.

Evidently, he couldn’t imagine it; he hadn’t been prepared to fight Theodoric himself.

And really, Uthengentle guessed he should have been expecting Theodoric’s own magic to betray him and make him a beast; the man inspired so little loyalty it wasn’t exactly surprising that even his own aether turned its coat.

Still, there was a strange sort of satisfaction that he was able to finish what his father had started decades prior. He only wished there was some semblance of Rhalgr’s Fist left to tell.

As Serella had promised, they worked their way back through the winding, convoluted tunnels and pathways of the temple while Alphinaud and Arenvald began to tally up what treasure they could of the main vault. 

Now that his focus was more honed on the hunt, Uthengentle’s senses were alight with awareness. Salt clung heavily and scratched in his throat. He wrinkled his nose in displeasure. With every step, he could practically feel trench foot setting in deep from the water that readily seeped in through his greaves. 

Undeterred, he continued hunting within the Temple of Skalla itself. An old, weathered engraving upon the wall obscured by an out of place statue of a griffin caught the corner of his eye as they neared their original entry point. Encouraged, he drew near the statue, hands smoothing along the surface in search of a false stone or some hidden passage of some description.

“Find anythin’, Ellie?” He called over his shoulder.

“Nothing.” Serella shouted back. Though he didn’t look behind him she sounded far away. “Is there something specific you’re looking for?”

“Just...something.” He huffed.

“Helpful.”

“I mean something from...I dunno, Rhalgr’s Fist, or something…” Uthengentle trailed off when his fingers skimmed a stone that gave, ever so slightly, when pressure was applied. 

Encouraged, he pressed harder on the small, oblong stone that made the griffin’s eye. Despite the faint wheeze of stone grinding against stone, it pushed into the statue with an unnatural smoothness— the stone must have just been a facet in a larger mechanism, then. 

As the wall behind the statue began to tremble, Uthengentle exclaimed over his shoulder, “Ellie? Might have something!”

By the time she had traipsed back over to him his hand was alight with mageflame and he was one step into the newly revealed space.

Even with the orb of light dancing over his palm, the dark within this hidden passage was thick. The air was heavy and stale, though the saltiness of the air in the Temple proper softened into a scent akin to moss, damn and clinging to his nose all the same.

“Is that...running water? Do I hear that right?” Serella said, and her ear swiveled and perked up when she leaned deeper into the passage.

Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t hear anything but the distant static of white noise. His attention was pulled, almost as if enchanted, by the markings on the wall— significantly different from those of the Temple of Skalla.

The symbol of Rhalgr, with paintings depicting warriors with fists charged with lightning. 

“Is this...what you were hoping for?” Serella asked softly. 

Uthengentle did not look away from the markings, even as his manic grin threatened to split his face in half. 

“Either Ramuh’s been worshiped here longer than Rhalgr...or we just found one of the havens for the Fist of Rhalgr.” When he glanced down the yawning darkness of the hallway, his grin only widened, and his nerves sparked with the energy of those that had come before. “And I mean to figure that out. Now.”

@sea-wolf-coast-to-coast