Session 40: Digging for Meaning

The hilltop of Decay’s Rest stood eerily quiet in the midday sun, its dead tree casting twisted shadows across ground still littered with the charred remains of the undead. Hat’s eyes had taken on that distant, unfocused quality that meant his mind was reaching beyond the physical world, sensing the ebb and flow of magical energies that ordinary folk could never perceive. The overwhelming brilliance of the shard’s magic had finally faded from his mystical sight, allowing subtler currents to emerge.

“There’s more magic about,” the goblin muttered, his colorful pointed hat bobbing as he turned in a slow circle. His small hands twitched with excitement. “Old magic. Deep magic. Like someone cast something powerful here long, long ago.”

The sensation was peculiar—neither the sanctified blessing of hallowed ground nor the creeping corruption of a curse. This place had been made deliberately neutral, balanced on a knife’s edge between opposing forces. Hat’s fingers itched with the need to understand, to uncover whatever secrets lay buried beneath their feet.

“We should dig,” he announced with characteristic enthusiasm. “Maybe dig a big hole. See what’s under that tree.”

Thalmiir hefted his shovel with the practiced ease of one whose ancestors had delved into the earth for countless generations. The old dwarf’s weathered face showed a mixture of skepticism and grudging interest. “Digging up trees in a swamp? That’s a big job for a small goblin.”

But Hat was already scrambling for his own shovel, his puppet companion mimicking his movements with jerky, enchanted enthusiasm. Soon both were attacking the surprisingly dry earth of the hilltop with vigor, dirt flying in small fountains behind them.

While the diggers set to their work, Pebblesong settled herself beneath the dead tree’s gnarled branches, cradling the grotesque staff they’d claimed from Serath Hollowvoice. The thing was revolting—continuously oozing some viscous substance that no amount of wiping could remove, its beetle-shell decorations creating an unsettling shimmer of green. She ran her fingers along its length, feeling the pulse of broken magic within. Whatever grand power this artifact once held had been spent or shattered, leaving only echoes of its former glory.

Bhakris took up a watchful position, his earth-touched senses alert for danger, though his attention kept drifting to the disturbing absence of proper stone in this landscape. Waer’dara stationed herself opposite him, her crimson eyes scanning the swamp’s edge—until a miraculous sight stole her breath. A spider, delicate and perfect, walked upon the water’s surface as if it were solid ground, weaving a raft of silk that caught the dappled sunlight.

“So beautiful!” she gasped, completely entranced by this marvel of her goddess’s creation.

Bartholomeow, meanwhile, had found a dry spot near the tree and produced his lute. The tabby’s performance began as an improvised ballad about their zombie battle, complete with musical accompaniment, but the words weren’t flowing properly. The rhythm stumbled, the melody meandered, and his feline features showed increasing frustration as he asked his distracted audience for feedback that never came.

An hour passed with the steady rhythm of shovels biting earth. Hat’s excavations were enthusiastic but haphazard, holes appearing seemingly at random as his attention flitted from spot to spot. Thalmiir’s technique was methodical, each movement economical and precise. It was the dwarf’s shovel that struck something solid with a satisfying clang of metal on stone.

“Found something,” Thalmiir grunted, beginning to clear the earth around his discovery. The stone was large, far larger than anything that should naturally exist in this swamp. Its surface bore no tool marks from civilized craftsmanship, yet its placement here was deliberate. As more of it emerged from the earth, understanding dawned.

“Standing stones,” Pebblesong said, looking up from the staff with sudden interest. A cloud of insects had begun to swirl around her, summoned by the artifact’s residual power, obscuring her form in a writhing mass of tiny wings and bodies. “Ancient peoples raised these in places of power. If there’s one, there’s likely a whole circle of them.”

Sure enough, as they examined the exposed portion of the stone, Hat’s sharp eyes caught sight of carved runes on the surface facing what would be the circle’s center. His documentary knowledge stirred, that strange gift for deciphering the indecipherable, and he leaned close to study the markings. Even with Pebblesong’s magical guidance enhancing his perception, the runes resisted understanding—they were part of a magic so old the world itself had nearly forgotten it.

But something nagged at him. Opening the box containing the pottery shard with careful fingers, Hat compared the markings. Yes—there, along the ring of symbols surrounding the shard’s central image, was a rune identical to the one carved in stone.

“They match,” he breathed, his mind already racing ahead to new possibilities.

The second hour brought better results for Bartholomeow’s performance, his words finally finding their rhythm as he sang of digging into magical hills and uncovering ancient secrets. Waer’dara watched in wonder as her discovered spider wove an entire web-raft and sailed away on the water’s current. The sentries’ successful vigilance revealed a troubling truth—while Serath Hollowvoice’s death had ended his direct control, the zombies in the swamp hadn’t simply collapsed. They were beginning to wander back toward the hilltop, drawn by unknowable instincts as the party’s earlier defensive preparations lost their effectiveness.

“The altar should be east or west of center,” Pebblesong suggested through her insect shroud, consulting her knowledge of ancient practices. “Near a larger standing stone. Why don’t you race to see who finds it first?”

Hat immediately abandoned his current hole, but Bhakris had developed a sudden obsession with the pottery shard. The earth genasi insisted on examining it himself, comparing the rune on the stone with those on the shard, searching for connections and meanings. His religious contemplation, however, led him to an unfortunate conclusion.

“This is blasphemy,” he declared with disgust after studying the markings. “Someone defaced perfectly good stone with… with juvenile graffiti. This might as well be obscene vandalism.”

Hat’s protests fell on deaf ears as Bhakris elaborated on his theory that the runes were essentially the ancient equivalent of crude drawings, possibly explaining why zombies were being directed toward innocent farms. The debate grew increasingly absurd, with Thalmiir finally growing impatient enough to thrust the shard at Bhakris just to end the argument.

The third hour saw Thalmiir attacking the western side of the circle with renewed vigor. His shovel bit deep, and his dwarven constitution served him well as he excavated with an efficiency that would have made his ancestors proud. The broad, flat stone he uncovered could only be an altar, and his thoroughness revealed not only the altar itself but hints of another standing stone just beyond it.

Among the altar’s ancient offerings, time had consumed almost everything—wood carvings reduced to splinters, leather pouches crumbled to dust. But within the remnants, semi-precious gems glinted in the afternoon light, their value undiminished by the passing ages.

“Thalmiir has proven that digging makes you rich!” Bartholomeow announced to anyone who would listen, while the old dwarf merely grunted and gestured for Hat to examine the altar’s inscriptions.

The goblin’s twenty-ninth attempt at understanding the runes—aided by all his knowledge and intuition—finally broke through their ancient obscurity. The central symbol from the shard dominated the altar’s carvings, surrounded by seven additional runes in precise arrangement. These weren’t describing seven stages of something, but rather all working together to define a single moment in some vast, cosmic cycle. Ancient ritual magic of tremendous power had been worked here, for purposes lost to time.

One of the seven runes bore subtle emphasis, and when Pebblesong applied her cartographic skills to the problem, the direction it indicated became clear. The ancient magic pointed like an arrow directly toward Baroldson’s farm.

“It’s been this way since the stones were placed,” Hat explained to the others as afternoon shadows began to lengthen. “This isn’t something we can just adjust or redirect.”

The debate that followed was predictably chaotic. Bhakris suggested simply smashing the “dick arrow” to solve their zombie problem. Hat protested that destroying ancient magical ruins without understanding them could unleash far worse troubles. Thalmiir gestured meaningfully at his hammer, suggesting he could redirect the pointer wherever they wanted. Through it all, the uncomfortable truth remained—somehow, this ancient site connected to their current troubles, though whether by coincidence or design remained a mystery.

As the sun descended toward the horizon, painting the swamp in shades of gold and crimson, the party faced a choice. They could rush to reach Baroldson’s farm before nightfall, risking the treacherous swamp paths in gathering darkness, or make camp here among the standing stones and buried secrets.

“There’s no reason to rush,” Thalmiir decided, surveying their excavation work with satisfaction. “We can camp here and study these runes more come morning.”

“Besides,” Hat added, still entranced by the magical puzzles surrounding them, “we should look at these runes more. There’s so much we don’t understand yet.”

The irony wasn’t lost on any of them—they would spend the night sleeping above an ancient shrine to neutrality, surrounded by the burned corpses of the undead, while more zombies shambled ever closer through the darkening swamp. Bartholomeow had already begun composing verses about it, something about the gods of neutrality being too indecisive to object to their presence.

As darkness began to fall over Decay’s Rest, the standing stones seemed to loom larger in the gathering gloom, their ancient runes holding secrets that had waited countless generations to be discovered. Whatever cycle they represented, whatever ritual they had once powered, the party would face it come morning—assuming the wandering dead gave them that long.

The swamp settled into its nocturnal chorus of croaks and buzzing wings, while somewhere in the darkness, things that had once been human continued their endless, shambling approach toward the light of the living.