As Michy vanished from sight, Mirvelle and Tilamo turned to face the next doorway. A faint wind whistled through the gaps in the frame. "Ready?"
   
Outside, Falcher had taken a seat beside a tree. He pulled off his shoes and rubbed his aching feet. The fog had only gotten thicker, heavier and reduced any sort of visibility to zero. He sighed and leaned back against the tree. "Oh what fun it is to get lost." He grumbled and mumbled to himself.
   
There was a distant howling of wolves followed by a very heavy gust of wind. The fog thinned slightly as it was blown aside, revealing several man sized wolves. Among them was a human female with a cat tail and animals ears atop her head. She smiled brightly upon seeing Falcher.
  
Falcher stood up and rested his hands on the hilts of his rapiers. He shifted glances between the three beasts and the female in the middle. "So much for being lost."
   
"Falcher is it?" The female asked him.
   
"Yes. And you are?"
   
"I am Sura, goddess of the Hunt and queen of the werewolves."
   
"Then my assumptions of those beasts was accurate. What brings you to this part of the fog?" His hands still rested on the hilts of his blades.
   
"I've come to set your path."
   
"Set my path to where?"
   
"The foe whom you and your friends are searching for is not here, nor will he be easy to find. If you want to find your friend, the Catholic, then you need to go south to the Fummau city of Lattia Delmus. Seek the one who Oswald informed the Aldail about."
   
"I'll pass the message along then. Since you're here, how in hell do I get out of this fog?"
   
"Follow the mud until you reach a hole, your friends are in there." Sura stepped backwards into the fog and vanished from site. The three werewolves that were with her did the same thing.
   
"The aldail? Tilamo or Storm then." Falcher looked to the ground and saw footprints in the mud and began walking.
   
Into the next room they went. A lone lit torch hung from its wall mount. There was a fresh scent of decay in the air. Tilamo plucked the torch from its mount and waved it around. Its flickering light didn't travel very far but it revealed enough to allow them to keep moving forward. "Good God, this place reeks."
   
"Smells like my grandma's monthly crock pot." Mirvelle commented, pinching her nose shut with her fingers.
   
"One of those people who put a bunch of incompatible leftovers into a single meal?" Tilamo held the torch to the left and its light revealed a standing but empty sarcophagus.
   
"Ever had week old fish mixed with month old fast food?"
   
"No but I can safely assume it was horrible." He faced forward again and resumed his walk, keeping an eye on the uneven cobble floor.
   
"I got two weeks of stomach flu because of it." Mirvelle resisted the urge to vomit. "Blegh. Just thinking about it makes me nauseous."
   
"Then don't think about it." Tilamo saw a shimmering string ahead of him. He pressed the torch to it and it burned away. "Weird..."
   
"I'm not used to an actually dark crypt... Brutal Warrior really went for the realism on this one, didn't they."
   
"You can thank Richer for that. He said he wanted the best game on the market-" Tilamo's foot caught a small gap in the cobbling and tumbled forward, hitting the ground with a loud thwack. The torch bounced out of his grip and off to the side. "Damn it... freaking invisible objects..."
   
Mirvelle knelt down where he'd tripped. "Gap in the floor. Missing stone." She stuck her hand into the gap and winced. "Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww!" Out came her hand and along with it a massive ball of spider webbing. "Ew ew ew ew ew!" she flailed her hand around and the ball of webbing bounced off the wall and landed beside the torch, catching aflame and briefly illuminating the room; and the draugr standing in front of them.
   
"Draugr!" Tilamo called out as he scrambled to his feet.
   
Mirvelle quickly chanted a spell and lobbed a small dark magic orb. It hit and made a small explosion. She rattled off another one and another, pelting the draugr with single target spells. Tilamo equipped his dual headed scythe and ran at it. He drop kicked it and it stumbled backwards. He leapt up and spun his scythe, catching its crescent edge beneath the draugr's neck and decapitated it.
   
Mirvelle lowered her hands and took a deep breath which she immediately regretted. "You opened it, dude! It's even worse now!"
  
Tilamo covered his nose with his undershirt and tried to not breathe through his nose. "I realize that, Mir. If there's anything in here, it's probably further in." He leaned over and grabbed the torch, quickly igniting the torn rags on the draugr before continuing down the hallway-like room.
   
At its other end was a set of engraved doors. They had a collection of various symbols, nordic writing and what seemed to be pushable squares. "Puzzle door?"
   
"I hate puzzle doors but knowing MMORPGs, these things are designed to kill you in as many brutal ways as the dev's can think of and knowing Richer's crew, they've got some good ones in place."
   
"What do we do then?"
  
"Find some clues."
   
Falcher followed the mud all the way back to the hole. He leaned over its edge and looked down. The gap was formed by a cave in and the little light that came through the fog revealed a cobblestone hallway. The gnoll jumped down and looked to his left and his right. Both sides looked identical. "Eenie meenie miny moe, let's go right."
   
The hallway opened up into a small room with a lit torch hanging off the wall. Several sarcophagi leaned against the wall with their lids partially moved aside. He walked over, grabbed the torch and then turned to the upright tombs. "Draugr. Hopefully none of these guys come alive." He waited a minute to see if he jinxed himself but nothing happened. He shrugged his shoulders and went through the next doorway.
   
The next room was unfinished. Piles of cobblestones littered the room and the walls were regular untapped stone.  A couple of skeletons were scattered about as well suggesting that the workers died here or the corpses were brought here in hopes of finishing this segment. Falcher approached one of the skeletons and knelt down beside it. They weren't in armor and there was a pickaxe beside it. "Miners?" in the skeleton's hand was a lump of coal. "Probably died of asphyxiation... Coal miners, digging out a crypt, that's definitely bizarre."
   
He stepped away from the skeleton and walked over to the next one. It wore similar clothing but it was missing a hand. The third skeleton was sprawled out across the floor rather than propped up against something. "I wonder if they all died of the same cause. What a hell of a way to die though."
   
"There was much suffering." Echoed a feminine voice. It was calm, sad and sympathetic to the bodies.
   
Falcher turned on a dime and drew his rapiers with haste. "What is with you people and sneaking up on me?!"
   
The female was human, clothed in black robes with a veil draped across her face like a mourning widow. "I'm not here to harm you, Falcher. I am Syna, Daughter of Odis and goddess of the life cycle of all living creatures. The bodies here were Dwarves, once." She sounded very sad for someone of her type. "Your time is coming, friend of the Catholic. To undo the sins of the past and liberate the future."
   
"Uh-huh... I'm not the religious type, you know." Falcher sheathed his rapiers and shook his head. "I don't care much for this world, I'd rather be home in the real world."
   
"We all know. Why not do some good while passing through?"
   
"You sound like Tang. You here to give riddles like Sura?"
   
"Partially. I wanted to see you in person. I heard rumors of you and your friend. Even we gods get curious from time to time." Syna patted his shoulder and turned her back to him. "When you find him however, be wary of his new partner."
   
"New partner? Does anything you people spout make sense?"
   
"Should it?" Syna giggled and faded into a white silhouette and faded away.
   
Falcher looked over at the skeletons once more. They were short in height. "Undo the sins of the past, seek the one Oswald told the Aldail. Damn these riddles. Why can't they just speak common english?" Falcher grumbled and headed back to the main hallways as this route had become a dead end.
   
The puzzle door was becoming a nuisance to them, a very long and needless delay. They spent quite a bit of time looking around this room for the clues but there was nothing that remotely resembled such things. Tilamo held the torch up to the door again.
   
Four squares in the center, two per door. It was either a case of pressing the order or figuring out which tiles needed to be pushed. The symbols on them were simple, pine tree, whale, snake, dragon. "What do you think Mir?"
   
"You're the bookworm here. You'd know more about this than me on any given day." Mirvelle shrugged her shoulders. "If I had to guess, I'd pick the pine tree and the dragon."
   
"But those are on the same door."
   
"So?"
   
"It doesn't seem right. There should be clues around here somewhere."
   
"We checked everything in here, there are no clues."
   
"Maybe it's in a previous room? I've seen that before."
   
"We can try it."
   
They travelled backwards into the previous room. The pile of rubble was still there and the arachne was still buried beneath it. It was a creepy relief to behold. Its legs twitched from time to time but it was confirmed dead. That room also contained nothing useful for the puzzle door which frustrated Tilamo.
   
Falcher happened by on his return from the right side of the crypt. "Where's Gelmen and Storm?"
   
Tilamo turned and saw Falcher. "Welcome back to the party. This pile of rocks knocked out Storm so Michy is taking her back to town and Gelmen ran off. Frickin arachnophobes..."
   
"If the giant spider is dead, then why are you still here?"
   
"Looking for clues to open a puzzle door."
   
"Richer put one of those in?"
   
"Unfortunately, yes. But he didn't leave any clues in that room."
   
"This is Richer, the clues are there." Falcher stared walking into the next room. "Come on, I'll show you."
   
The three of them reentered the puzzle door room. Falcher walked up to the door and studied the four pictures in the center. "Knowing Richer, he'll keep his clues close to him." He scanned the door several times looking for repeating patterns. Surely enough, amidst the intricate carvings were smaller almost invisible copies of the four big pictures. They were in a row and ordered. "Bingo." Falcher raised his arm and pointed to it.
   
"Why would you keep the passcode to unlock your door on your door?" Mirvelle stared at it confusedly.
   
"Because it works. Most people look for hidden things or objects that hide something. The last place your going to check is right in front of you and it fooled me." Tilamo sighed heavily, feeling defeated by the puzzle door.
   
Falcher read the symbols aloud as he pushed their buttons. "Tree, Gecko, Whale, Snake."
   
A locking mechanism click and roared as it retreated. The doors came loose and swung open revealing a deeper and much larger chamber. It was dark, wet and stunk of death, more so than the rest of the tomb did. Towards the back end of the room was a dimly lit stone altar. Only its shape was outlined by a black candle whose flame was the color of coal.
   
"And demonic candles..." Tilamo groaned. "Is there a tomb or a crypt that isn't overrun with satanists?"
   
"Welcome to fantasy MMORPGs." Falcher replied sarcastically. "Hand me that torch." Tilamo gave Falcher his torch. Falcher took a few steps in and looked around. Beside him were unlit sconces; decorative candelabras that were mounted to the wall for funeral services. Falcher raised the torch and lit one of them. Like a dynamite fuse in old pre-2000 cartoons, sparks shot up and started lighting up the neighboring candelabras until all the walls glowed in flickering candle light. However that still left most of the altar shrouded in darkness. A sickly green fog washed over the altar and rushed across the floor towards them.
   
"How about no..." Tilamo started walking backwards.
   
"It's not poison gas, it's probably just some deployable fog for a lich or something of sorts." Falcher said, unsheathing his rapiers. The fog rolled up to him and doused his lower legs. Then came the burning sensation. "And my legs are on fire..." Falcher turned around and walked out of the room with the fog following him.
   
Tilamo quickly coughed up a weak fire spell and threw it at the fog. The fog lit up like propane the wave of fire shot all the way upstream to the altar where it exploded. The altar was in a thousand pieces afterwards with its black candle extinguished. "Well that was easy."
   
"You know it never is just that simple." Falcher warned. "My guess, we just woke something up."
   
With the altar itself gone, the area it once stood at was fully lit up. Behind it was a square hole in the wall with an urn resting in it. The urn was metallic, black with lime green symbols etched into it. "What do you think that is?"
   
"Either it contains the ashes of someone horrible or it's a jar of unspeakable power."
   
"I like the sound of that-" Tilamo was abruptly cut off by more trembles. The ground shook again and again for several long minutes. The pattern wasn't footsteps but a continuous rumble like a real earthquake. "But not that."
   
Falcher walked across the room and approached the urn that glowed green. He picked it up off its seat and opened it. More of the sickly green fog poured out of it and washed over his arms. Falcher let go of the urn and it shattered on the cobble floor. The fog quickly dissipated leaving behind the shattered remains of the urn along with several purple crystals. "Soul gems?" He picked up a couple of fragments of the soul gems. "That means this is the place they're pulling the corpses from for their giants."
   
"So where's the necromancer?" Mirvelle asked
   
"Probably somewhere else. These fragments look too small to be useful."
   
"Which means there's another lair somewhere else. Suppose there's multiple people working this project, where could you hide a group of people?"
   
"I'd go for large caves or..."
   
"Abandoned Forts!" They both exclaimed.