A stone corridor extends out for a while, lit dimly with clumps of burning burning grass softly simmering with flame. Four rooms branch off from the main path, each with its own staircase into the darkness, with a vast door barred by a smoothly sculpted stick of stone. 

An impressively tall woman stands before the door, holding aloft a hulking dull-grey sword burning with power with an effortless idleness. A tide of gently curling ruby red hair spills down her back, spread out along the rippling muscles of her back. A belt wraps around the width of her waist, a handful of empty potionglasses filling out a bandolier empty save a single beaten up satchel. She wears little, pale brown grey clothes wrapping around her ass and her abundant breasts. Her skin is a toned bronze, and simmers to her more arcane sight - like rivers of magma flowing along her back, coursing with power, invisible to those without a certain penetrating sight. Plain sandals adorn her feet, with little silvery wings wrapped around her heel. 

The satchel, the sandals and the sword are all strongly magical to her gaze. 

She snorts faintly to herself, and rolls her shoulders a little. 

She murmurs quietly to herself. "Ooh, what do we have here..." 

Someone's got some decent cohones to go poking quite this deep, especially if they're coming alone - and without a proper trapfinder, she'd bet. That merits a looksee, even if she's not exactly expecting anything spectacular. Besides... There's a certain weight to their presence she shouldn't dismiss too quickly. 

Her mouth is suddenly very dry, but that is not relevant. 

Wizards can change their shapes sometimes, but that would be an... unusual choice. And it would be a difficult illusion for the clothes and the things of power.

 Especially since nobody should know about the iron warrior's charm that grants her visions of - power, strength, beyond the ordinary. Faking that is probably archmage territory. 

Well. 

"Hail, stranger." Her voice is like steel. "I am Aeolyn, of the Kingsguard. Who are you?"

She snorts dryly herself, and swings her head around to check her out. That's a nice set of armor - the sort that you'd give decent odds of being enchanted, just because of how finely worked it is. And even if it isn't... She does have the bearing of a proper warrior. She smiles wryly, a little cheery glint in her soft red eyes. 

"'m Scarlet, from strange and sordid lands a good bit beyond here, and an interested interloper and adventuress." 

Can't say she knows shit about how they organize things over there, but she sounds like she's locally senior enough to not be a waste of time working with, at least. 

She looks rigidly into her eyes and not elsewhere. Will she clasp her arm?

"Well met. I am hunting an extremely dangerous wizard supposed to have fled here. Have you seen anyone suspicious?"

'Sordid' is bad. But that has no bearing on this specific woman. 

She may have been a little sarcastic. 

"Beyond just you? Nah. But well..." 

She crouches down, and waves her sword, a glimmering wave of too-red fire illuminating the dust, showing strange skeletal footprints. 

"Saw these, and figured that anything that got corpses walking around couldn't exactly be a good omen." 

"I think that I am not at all suspicious. I strive not to be. But well spotted. Will you join me? The practice of Necromancy should disgust us all, and this one is more dangerous still."

She shrugs her shoulders, and smiles lightly. 

"Sure thing." 

She hefts her sword back, and then pauses, for a moment, before sticking her hand into her bag and drawing out a stick, tossing it up and down in her hand. 

"Or... we could try the door? I bet I could get through it decently quickly, but there are the other staircases. Thing for these kinda dungeons the juiciest bits tend to accumulate near the bottom, but the traces of them are old enough they could probably be anywhere in here, even if they aren't using magic to cheat the distances or walls. Got any leads for where here a nasty would want to run off to?" 

Those are very nice shoulders. However, she has a quarry and this is important.

"...These are old, strange, and cursed lands. Terrible things have lived and died here, and this wizard sought after terrible things. So probably the bottom as well. However - I believe they were fleeing from me, in coming here. Let us at least scout the staircases first. Please, do stand behind me."

"Trusting, aren't we?" 

She'll toss the stick up in the air, watching it turn about in the air for a moment before landing with a soft clatter. She nods in satisfaction, and sweeps it back up in the pouch, before pointing to one of the stairwells. She casually strolls over to her, her feet sometimes not quite touching the ground in the flow of her steps, and slips in behind her. Her sword flares a little softer, this time, the warm light givng them illumination at least as good as a quality lantern. 

"Yes. People rise to it." 

Additionally, her back is also armoured. 

The first pair of stairs lead to identical small chambers, containing identical stone coffins. One has been hauled open; there's a misshapen clay statue inside, its head elongated and disfigured. 

A faint little chuckle slips out of her lips at her comment. 

"I suppose. Never felt like got too much of a chance - when you wander enough in mixed company, you learn enough to keep yourself on your toes. It's not a bad way to go, tho." 

She furrows her brow a little. 

"A canopic jar or something...? Not sure if there's anything to do with that kind of thing. Usual assumption is that shit like this is cursed unless proven otherwise, but dunno if you've got any tricks going on with those eyes of yours. Wish the ancients invested in tamper proof seals for their coffins, given how much people go for ripping into these places. But alas, such modern tricks don't seem to have occured to them, for all the wonders they had." 

Beyond a talent for keeping her eyes fixed exactly where she wants to camp 'em, heh. Don't think she didn't catch you intentionally Not Looking, though~

...These lands must be mightier than they thought, if they are building things with tamper-proof seals. She will advise the King to send emissaries. 

"When I am in mixed company, I try to walk with purpose. That is wise of you."

She speaks a prayer, in a loud clear earnest voice that is apparently fairly embarrassing. She has never been entirely sure why she is supposed to care. 

"...There is something unclean inside. ...I do not think a curse. Stand back."

She shatters it with a clean blow from her gauntlet. 

A cloud of poisonous vapour issues from it. There are also dry, crumbling bones - no skull - a leaden amulet, and gold coins of an unfamiliar style, thick and cut with tiny runes and a twisting, sinuous symbol. 

Her flesh is not corruptible. 

"Stay up the stairs. It will not rise. Are you well? - These are lawful salvage. Are you willing to divide treasure afterwards?"

She'll step well back, and wander out a bit past the visible gas. No point in testing her endurance against it, for all that she's had decent luck with poisons and I-can't-believe-they're-not-poisons. 

"Doing fine. And sure, can divvie it up - do a loot claim circle or if you're feeling especially rigorous, that's the sort of thing we can settle with a priest of... moradin, right? Don't feel the need to super sweat  the details right here and now, at any rate." 

"Oh, you have heard the Word. Good."

She's never tried to convert anyone and is relieved she does not have to try. She probably does not have the talent. 

The other rooms contain similar tombs. 

The door at the end of the hall is solid, made of petrified wood that has twisted and cracked and settled in to be almost as hard as stone and twice as nasty. 

The stone bar that blocks it rests on solid iron pegs, tilted down at an odd angle, and completely shiny and unrusted, as though newly polished, despite the layers of grime and ancient dust elsewhere. 

"I'm not sure I would say I've heard the word as much as I've heard of the word."

She'll take a looksee at the door - any inscriptions on the metal or anything like that? 

"I could try to cut down or burn through the wood? I can tolerate smoke fine, and I doubt you'd have much trouble, either. A little worried might be animated or something? Not sure if makes any sense to tryt to set up something from afar to try to be extra safe? Not sure if you have any special tricks in mind for this sort of thing."  

"Ah. I will explain when we rest, then. It is not my skill but it is my duty. Burning through it looks difficult, but together - cutting through it could work. My blade is mithril, it should suffice."

(It is indeed a long, broad blade of something silvery-blue that ripples like an oiled mirror.) 

A nod.

She settles up aside her. 

"On your mark?" 

"Now."

She is all perfect form and precise motion and quite a lot of strength. 

Doors - real fortified doors - are not easy to get through. Normally you can force them, make the bolt fail, but this one opens outwards. What they're trying to do is chop a hole through it. 

You can technically do that with a sword, but it's really not what they're for. It is not going to be good for your symbolic weapon of nobility and power / specialised piece of military equipment.

Happily, mithril does not care. 

Her blade is not exactly the biggest giver of fucks re: such things either. You can hardly be a proper rugged individualist if you need to spend half your time twiddling your fingers and nursing your blade, can you? 

She's all strength and surety and flowing fluid muscle. Her sword sears into the wood, tight fiery fury breaking it apart and leaving nothing but ash in its wake as she chops her way through it. 

Literally hot

"Good work."

A light little smile, and a little shimmy of her hips. 

"Nice sword." 

She takes a looksee at what's past the door. 

A grim chamber, walls lined with stone coffins. A great granite sarcophagus in the centre, ornately wrought with the figures of some kind of monstrous upright snakes.

Beyond, a small room in which stands some dark idol, difficult to see in the darkness.

She gestures her forward with a smooth wave of her arm, and slips in behind her, watching the idol warily. 

The glint of water or polished metal. A hideous mass of something like writhing intestines. 

A surge of flame, and a wary step forward, and a glance at her adventuring partner. 

She's not going for a strike quite yet - it doesn't do to discriminate or jump ahead of things, but you gotta call a spade a spade sometimes. 

Indeed.

She crosses the chamber in great strides and plunges her sword down.

Smite Evil.

The idol cracks asunder. 

The water trickling through this chamber has worn through the floor around the horrible serpentine statue, revealing a long dark hallway underneath.

Oh that is a nice trick. Good to see she's got more of those in her pocket. Though it looked flashy enough she doubts it's too spammable...

She follows along, and glances up a little dubiously at the roof and floor. Dungeons tend to hold up pretty okay, but it's not exactly the sort of thing she wants to trust. 

The roof looks solid, but the floor in here does sag down a little under the weight of the broken idol, around the hole through which the water trickles. 

Looking down below - a damp, cramped corridor that opens suddenly onto a gigantic, echoing underground hall, far larger than anything up here. Dim outlines of statues just barely visible in the torchlight. 

"A false tomb."

She secures a rope to the broken idol, tugging to make sure, and hops down through the hole, landing with a crash of metal, and scans around herself. 

Nothing. 

"Jump. I will catch you."

She raises her eyebrows a little, and then shrugs her shoulders. 

With a little hup, she slips down through the hole. 

She catches her neatly and sets her on her feet in a firm and businesslike fashion, because she has a job to do. 

A huge stone hallway, oppressively gloomy; it seems to swallow the torchlight, extending into darkness. 

Vast, worn statues line the walls. One of them is visibly askew, the square base no longer quite flush with the wall. 

Aww. She'll let that slide, still, and slip out. 

It's cute that she thought she needed to catch her, but it feels like it's a part of what, her... professionalism? That if there's a thing to do to help out, she may as well slip into that task, because she's become inured to it enough that it's no 'real' burden. 

She shakes her head slightly, then takes a look out at them, before inquisitively glancing over at the skew statue, taking a moment to catch up to her and tilt her head in its direction, beckoning her off to take a closer look. 

Aeolyn is in fact not quite thinking about it in those terms. She is doing the right thing to do. It really is not that hard. She does not truly understand why people tend to find it so. Of course it is her duty to help. She is strong and people can benefit from it, and if everyone could think that way they would be halfway to heaven.

She can dimly tell that Scarlet is - bothered by something? 

She would like to fix that. She will make a note of it.

There's a gap about a hand's width between the statue and the wall, and a hollow space behind it.

This is what pokey sticks were made for. In it goes? 

The statue can be levered aside, with a pokey stick for a lever and enormous strength! Gold and silver glint inside!

Into their stores it goes. 

On they go down the hall, then. 

"Bipedss." It seems to have congealed out of the darkness. "You have come to vissit. There are certainly many of you today."

"Yeah. A necromancer made their way here and that makes things here our business, unfortunately. Plan is just to deal with 'em and then get out without lingering. Apologies if that imposes, but needs must, y'know?"

This is really, really not good. She drops her hand casually to her sword. 

"It's only a petty criminal. Let us deal with it."

It shrugs, a ripple of bone and old dust. "The priests will take care of it. Their law is like iron. Are you here for a tour?"

...She'll have to ask after that later. 

"- Sure, we can do a tour."

'like Iron' isn't exactly the most flattering comparison. She's seen plenty of warriors who boast of 'iron bodies', but that sort of thing is only a journeyman's effort, in her opinion. Still, it's strong enough for most mortal things, so hopefully they haven't made asses of themselves.