"The Temple of Immortality? Looks more like the Ruins of... of..." Dragoon began.

"I think you should've figured out the punchline before you started talking," Cleric replied. As always, his unfailingly polite tone made it sound more like advice than mockery.

"That's Dragoon for you. Shoot first, think later," Archer teased.

"It matches the description we were given. That's what matters," Rogue added.

After leaving the town of Shum'Ará, the group agreed that the best way to find out where they needed to go—and what awaited them there—was to locate another bandit camp and interrogate its occupants. After all, no one knew the Alfíteres Desert better than the bandits.

It didn't take long to find one. Not with Master's ability to advance hours in a matter of seconds.

The plan was simple. Wait until nightfall, then have Rogue infiltrate the camp with one companion, locate the largest tent—on the assumption that it belonged to someone important—kidnap whoever was inside, and question them safely back at the wagon.

Naturally, Dragoon volunteered.

Naturally, several members of the group objected.

In the end, Swordsman went with Rogue.

Unfortunately for the group, Swordsman wasn't particularly skilled at stealth. Or at least, not as skilled as Rogue needed him to be.

He ended up alerting the entire camp after running headfirst into a guard as he turned a corner. Even so, the mistake amounted to little more than a minor delay. The Adventurers' Group was outnumbered, but they were far better trained. And they had Master.

"We should've done it this way from the start. Poor bastards," Dragoon commented just after Master wiped out half the bandits with a wave of her hand, engulfing them inside an enormous fireball.

Rogue handled the camp leader's interrogation with remarkable efficiency.

Though, truth be told, the man was far more terrified by watching his camp burn to the ground in a matter of minutes than by the knife Rogue held to his throat.

Either way, he told them what they needed to know.

Their destination was a sacred temple three days away. It lay hidden beneath a massive rock shaped like the tip of a spear. Its entrance was marked by majestic columns and a doorway carved into the stone. The Temple of—

"...the Ruins. Right, the Temple of the Ruins." Dragoon corrected himself.

"Not even close to funny." Archer replied.

Before them, the spear-shaped rock rose some fifteen meters into the air, as though ready to pierce the sky.

At its base stood six columns of varying heights, barely still standing, while two more lay broken on the ground.

The columns were made of a porous yellowish stone, completely plain, without carvings or ornamentation.

The doorway they guarded, however, was another matter.

Rather than an actual door, it appeared to have been carved directly into the rock itself. Its surface was covered in engravings that seemed to tell some kind of story.

"Are those people?" Archer wondered as she stepped closer.

The door was divided into three panels from top to bottom.

The first showed eight figures standing one behind another, arranged by height. Each wore a different ornament upon their head.

The second depicted two lying on the ground while five ran in different directions. At the center, one figure stood firm, pointing toward the sun.

The third panel was much simpler. It showed only a single person seated upon a throne.

"Yes, I think so..." Swordsman began, but Archer suddenly lit up.

"It's a puzzle! A puzzle!"

"She loves this kind of thing," Dragoon said to Cleric and Rogue, who immediately went on guard, startled by her reaction. "Though, to be honest, she's not very good at them."

Master, meanwhile, simply leaned against the rock beside the doorway and watched.

"Look, look. Eight people," Archer began, pointing at the carvings. "Eight columns. Two of them have fallen, see? There's only one left. That's the one we have to activate!"

"I follow you, but... activate what? And how are we supposed to know which column is which?" Swordsman asked.

Behind them, Rogue began examining the columns.

"We have to figure out which person represents each pillar," Archer explained. "See how they're all wearing different headpieces? Well..."

She turned toward the columns and frowned when she realized they all looked exactly the same.

She walked over to the one Rogue was inspecting.

"Any carvings? Anything underneath all this sand?"

She brushed the column, but couldn't make out anything.

"No."

Rogue rolled a mental die.

Seventeen

.

"I've tried detecting traps, but I can't sense anything yet. We'll have to inspect them one by one. Maybe... No, no…"

"Archer, let Swordsman do his thing. You know he's better at puzzles than anyone," Dragoon said. "It's the only thing he uses his brain for, after all."

"Oh, enough already. You two should just get married," Archer complained, crossing her arms and leaning against the very column she and Rogue had just examined.

"What I think," Swordsman began, studying the carvings, "is that the headpieces aren't meant to identify the columns. They're there to identify the people."

"Wow. You should become a detective," Archer replied sarcastically.

Swordsman sighed.

He knew his friend well enough to recognize that sarcasm meant she'd reached the peak of her bad mood.

"I mean we have to identify the people in the carvings. Look." He pointed to the second panel. "We need to figure out who's standing in the center. The tallest one. The oldest brother, or something like that. Likewise, the oldest is the one sitting on the throne."

"Okay, so the answer is the tallest one?"

Archer stepped away from the column, nearly slipping as her foot slid against its base.

"That was easy."

She caught her balance and pretended nothing had happened.

"I was expecting something more complicated. More abstract."

"See? She's not very good at this," Dragoon whispered to Cleric, though loudly enough for Archer to hear.

Cleric answered with a restrained laugh.

"And how do we activate it?" Master asked, joining the conversation.

"Well... I think the clue is in the last panel," Swordsman replied. "The oldest brother is sitting on a throne. My guess is that it has something to do with... sitting on the column?"

"That doesn't make much sense, Swordsman. I'd say we have to knock the column over," Archer said.

"And then the bandits stand it back up every time they want to come in?" Dragoon replied. "I doubt it. Let me try. All I'd have to do is jump—"

"Wait!" Rogue warned just as Dragoon crouched to leap. "I think it's a trap."

Master smiled at the conclusion.

"What do you mean?" Swordsman asked. "That the puzzle itself is a trap? I'm sure I'm overlooking something. Let me think..."

"No. I think the solution is correct. It's just that the bandits tampered with the place so anyone trying to get in would always fail."

"What makes you think that?" Master asked.

"That, ma'am."

Rogue pointed to the column Archer had leaned against. More specifically, to the spot where her foot had slipped.

"The stone there is a different color."

Sure enough, Archer's boot had brushed away enough sand to reveal a white stone block.

Dragoon and Cleric hurried to inspect the other columns, trying to find the same thing. They found nothing.

"Only this one has it," Cleric said. "And it just so happens to be the tallest column."

"I get it now," Swordsman murmured.

He began walking around all the columns.

After examining each one from top to bottom, he made his way to the fallen ones and measured their length by pacing them off.

"They're brilliant cheaters!" he exclaimed. "The tallest one is this one."

He pointed at one of the fallen columns.

"They knocked it down, then raised the other one on top of a different stone to throw people off."

Rogue walked over to the white block and examined it.

A die rolled.

Seventeen.

"That's right. This isn't a stone. It's an explosive trap. If Dragoon had jumped onto that column, we'd all have been blown to pieces.

In fact, we're lucky Archer didn't trigger it by accident."

Archer blushed with embarrassment and looked away.

"So now we know for sure..."

Swordsman paused for dramatic effect.

Then he rested one foot on the base of the fallen column.

"...this is the answer."

The base of the column sank into the ground.

Behind the stone door, the sound of an enormous lock disengaging echoed through the chamber. A moment later, the rectangle carved into the surface began to glow. Then it vanished, revealing a staircase descending into a dark tunnel.

"Well done, everyone," Master said.

------------------------------------------------------------------

They descended hundreds of steps in darkness, guided by the flame burning at the tip of Master's index finger and, behind them, by the faint glow of Cleric's blessed hammer.

Beyond the staircase, they entered a corridor that gradually became illuminated by crystals scattered across the ceiling and walls, resembling enormous stalactites.

None of them could explain why they glowed. Apparently, none of them cared much, either.

The walls of the corridor were covered with carvings much like those on the door.

"Hieroglyphs, maybe?" Dragoon suggested. "Something like that, at least."

Cleric stopped to study them.

"Look. Haven't we seen this symbol before?"

The whole group gathered around what he was pointing at.

One of the carvings showed a person kneeling before a symbol twice their size.

It resembled the letter H, with three horizontal bars.

The middle bar extended farther to the right before bending downward at an angle. The two vertical strokes weren't completely straight, but slanted inward, leaving a wide angle between them.

"Yes. Here it is."

Rogue pulled a round stone from his pocket.

The very same symbol had been carved into it.

"Where did you get that?" Archer asked.

"I borrowed it from the old man's laboratory," Rogue answered. "Along with these."

He produced a dozen strange devices and two notebooks written in an indecipherable language.

"What? I thought they might come in handy. Look. There's all kinds of strange alchemical stuff. Will-o'-Wisps, oxygen bombs, water stones..."

He answered the disapproving looks from the others before anyone could speak.

"While the old man was asking us to rescue his son, you robbed his laboratory?" Cleric asked, though without raising his voice.

"Look at it this way. It helped us, didn't it? Besides, the kid wasn't going to use any of it."

"Rogue has a point," Master said. "Still, it was unnecessary. Knowing the boy copied the same symbol we see in the hieroglyphs of a mysterious cave doesn't really tell us anything we didn't already know. We already knew he was meddling with mysterious forces."

"Unless we try following the story," Swordsman added.

He looked back at the carvings.

"They're telling us more or less the same thing old Arman'Ará told us." He pointed to the first figures. "This person found the symbol and knelt before it."

Then he moved to the next section and continues:

"After that, he starts working the stone. Here it looks like he's inside a mine, though there are more people with him. Didn't the old man tell us his son tried to recruit several people from the village to help him with something no one understood? Maybe the protagonist of this story actually managed to do it."

He moved farther along the wall.

"Look here. He found something. Although I honestly can't tell what this carving is supposed to be. A beetle? A spider?"

"No," Dragoon said. "I think it's the same symbol, just smaller."

"Okay... then maybe the symbol represents a creature." Swordsman continued along the wall. "Look here. Something happened to the miners. They all have their hands raised, and their picks are on the ground. Are they protesting?"

"Do they even have labor unions here?" Dragoon asked.

"We're far from any civilized city that understands such a concept," Master replied curtly. "Go on, Swordsman."

"Right. Something happened to them. Now they're gathered around the other man. But now he's bigger... Or they're smaller."

"Look," Archer said. "He has the symbol above his head."

"You're right. Maybe the creature gave him power. Or maybe it's controlling him." He pointed to the next carving. "Look at this one. The same giant figure is surrounded by... triangles? ...piles of sand?"

"Ah!"

Archer's scream startled everyone.

"What!? What's wrong?" Swordsman asked, his hand already on the hilt of his sword.

"Nothing. Sorry. It's just..." She pointed farther down the wall. "Look at this carving. It looks much more realistic. It's almost grotesque."

Unlike the other hieroglyphs, the realism of this image was extraordinary.

It looked almost impossible to create with the same style and tools used for the others.

Except...

It wasn't a carving.

They realized that when the face began to emerge from the wall.