The party descended through the serpent door into a spiral staircase that led deep beneath Southaven. Dravencoles spotted the passage first. At the bottom, Momeline picked a locked door with ease, and they stepped into an ancient temple filled with statues—warriors in scaled armor, frozen mid-stride. Too lifelike. The party realized they were looking at people who had been turned to stone.
A voice slithered into their minds. Lirielle instinctively reached for the snake creature in her component pouch. The voice demanded to know if they were of the Coil or merely intruders, and before the party could answer, the creature’s words sealed their fate, outing the party as outsiders. The stone snake statues came to life and attacked without mercy.
The party fought back, but their petrifying bite or gaze found them one by one. Dravencoles turned to stone first, then Talan, then Brenlan, Ferinthria, and Velara. Only Momeline and Lirielle remained standing long enough to bring down the last of the serpent heads.
Then the Oracle’s voice returned—not with wrath, but curiosity. She demanded to know who they were. The party tried to explain, but she didn’t believe them. Momeline, ever practical, gestured to the snake creature corpse and said, “Well, you could ask your buddy over there if he wasn’t dead.” The voice agreed, raising its body to speak. The dead creature, who called herself Yu’man, told of how the coil had allied with the Order of the Black Star to take back their home.
The voice’s fury was terrible. She spoke of the Unmaker, the Void-That-Hungers, the force behind the Black Star cult. If her people had truly allied with such evil, they had doomed themselves and everyone else. She sensed the threads of fate wrapped around the party: “Khasim’s Eyes, Vaelkor’s Touch, the Bitch God’s Blessing, and the Wild Spark”. She released them from stone, but freedom came with a price.
Two vows, binding as the curse that had turned them to statues. The Vow of Silence: they would speak of this place to no one. If they broke it, the heart of one they loved would turn to stone, and the curse would spread to whoever learned the secret. The Vow of Restoration: when the time came, they would help the Syth’kari reclaim their homeland. The land beneath Southaven was sacred to them. The party would not stand in their way—they would stand with them. Each of them swore, feeling a cold weight coil around their hearts. In their minds, they each saw the face of someone they loved: Velara thought of Lyrian Brightwind, Brenlan of Velara, Dravencoles of Ferinthria, Ferinthria of Dravencoles (and perhaps also Leonard), Lirielle of Master Thorin who trained her, Momeline of her brother whose name she could no longer remember, and Talan of Momeline.
The party emerged from the tunnels and returned to the keep. Lord Kael was waiting, but they could say nothing of what had happened. He didn’t push. Instead, he announced that the next day would bring a celebration—the siege had broken, the food stores in the farmlands were secure again, and the people of Southaven needed hope. That night, the party gathered and debated what to do next: go to Solaris so Dravencoles could decide what to do with the Hammer of Elandria, travel east of the Witchwood to find Khasim’s Crown and learn more about the Crown of Judgement, go to Fadrín where Finn and Tilly awaited them (hopefully with news on Vel Seryn), or journey to the Ember Halls where Lyrian Brightwind and hopefully Leonard had fled after escaping Lusteris.