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Chapter 3 by jessi010111 jessi010111

Which path do you head down?

Investigate a tangled growth on the wall

One exit to the chamber catches your eye. The doorway is a very isolated mass of dense, hairy vines, and plush-looking moss. Perhaps this distinctive-looking growth is an indicator that this direction would be a wise choice. You move closer to investigate.

Moving the torch closer to the doorway, you see the vines and moss aren't growing here by random chance; they've chosen to anchor themselves to a constructed stonework you can see peeking through the tangled mass. You decide to get a better idea of what you're dealing with, and use the bottom of the torch handle to scrape away at the overgrowth. Fortunately, the vines and moss must be malnourished at this depth, and they easily release from the wall. Once you feel you've cleared a sizable amount of vines and moss away, you take a step back and hold the torch up to see what you've uncovered.

The flickering torchlight reveals exquisite stonework, and although you have only uncovered a few square feet of the overgrown wall next to the door, you have never seen anything quite so ornate. The section you've uncovered has pictures of people, buildings, animals... The closest thing you are reminded of from your days in your farm village are the carvings your grandfather would whittle, but these put him to shame.

You get the impression from the section you've uncovered that the images and symbols are meant to tell a story, but you're guessing a majority of the tale is still hidden underneath the continued overgrowth. The symbols appear to be a written narrative explaining the pictures. Even if you bothered to uncover the entire wall next to the doorway, the "language" is unlike anything you've ever seen before. The picture you HAVE uncovered appears to be a throng of creatures, human and otherwise, surrounding a larger female figure. You can tell she is female because of the care that has apparently gone into carving her impressive, large breasts. You assume the artist took some flattering liberties in interpreting their literal size. Without being able to read the inscription below, it's difficult to tell exactly what is going on, but the large female figure is encircled by all of the smaller humanoid and bestial creatures. It's impossible with your limited knowledge to tell whether the lesser creatures are worshiping her, cowering from her, or attempting to restrain her...

At any rate, other than the torch, you decide that you haven't seen any other signs of human presence in these caves. This seems like a good sign of a passage that actually leads somewhere, as opposed to leading into the den of a bear, or troll. The only drawback you can see is that immediately through the doorway, a spiral staircase leads downwards... You aren't sure if down is the way you want to be going to escape the caves. Regardless, you decide it can't hurt to investigate, you can always come back up if it doesn't lead anywhere promising.

What do you find?

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