Hypogean Embrace

The descent was treacherous, but the old scroll did not fail me. Beneath the Hypogeum, past the crumbling corridors and whispering empty halls, I found the passage. The air here is thick—ancient, and eerily quiet I dare not call it silence, for the darkness breathes, shifts. Something unseen watches.

I move carefully, my Stoneform cloak drawn close, merging with the shadowed recesses of the rock. The giants—or what remains of them—stir in the gloom. Their hulking silhouettes loom against the faint, otherworldly glow of the walls. A light unnatural, pulsing, casting spectral shapes across stone that gleams like black obsidian in the darkness. This place is older than the oldest tongues, and I wonder if my intrusion has been felt, but if the giants suspected anything, they did not show it.

I press on, following the map inscribed in my mind from long study. There—at the corridor’s end—stands the wall I seek. A seamless black surface, untouched by time. From my satchel, I retrieve the delicate glass rod, its edges smooth, humming faintly in my fingers. As I held it close to the wall, it seemed to move of its own accord in my hands, gravitating to a almost imperceptible indent in the wall. With a steady breath, I press it determinedly into the indent

A soft click. Then a deep, resonant shift, like a sigh from the bones of the earth. The wall parts, revealing the hidden vault.

There was a strange glow in the room, a way for the ancients to identify the contents perhaps? It was large, and surely filled with all kinds of trinkets & baubles but I am here for only one thing, and I do not want the ancient wrath of the giants to fall upon me. Scanning the shelves, I spot them lined in careful rows - ceramic pots, their surfaces untouched by dust or decay. I lift one, feeling the weight of ages in my hands, and pry open the lid.

White. Soft as clouded moonlight. The scent—subtle, clean, reminiscent of sea mist on an summers eve.

This was their gift. The giants crafted this for the ancient ones, an elixir of longevity, of beauty unwithering.

With swift, practiced motions, I opened my bag of holding, inserting the entire pot inside. The bag envelops, then shrinks to the size of a coinpouch. The vault door closes behind me, its secrets locked once more, I sense a shift, the sound of heavy footsteps coming my way

Reaching into my robes, I unseal the vial of my recall potion and drink deep. The taste of crushed stars and elder roots floods my senses, and the Hypogeum fades.

The moonlit sky fills my vision as I materialise on the Maltese coast, a long journey back home awaited me, but a smile did spread across my face. “What secrets will they send me after next?” I wondered…