Head Through the Door

After making sure they had everything, Evan and Glarka headed through the door beneath the stairs. The hallway was just barely more than a little snug for Glarka. It took a few minutes, but it felt like hours, or possibly even days, before they came to a new doorway. The door before them looked like it was made from obsidian, surprisingly enough, and its shiny black, mirror-like, surface had no handles, grips, or knobs but Evan knew his stone, growing up in a town that mines stone almost exclusively will do that for you, and he was aware of how brittle the material could be. But he wanted to be sure his companion was aware of the risks.

"Are you familiar with the material that is blocking our way," Evan asked Glarka.

"I have seen some desert tribes, and a few monsters, use jagged pieces as the tips of their spears," said Glarka. "Do you know what this strange material is?"

"Yes," said Evan, "it's a stone called obsidian, it's known as 'Dragon Glass' in some circles. I've never seen so much of the material in one place. Unlike most stones, it's very good at withstanding the extreme temperatures forges will sometimes be able to reach, I've heard that an adventurer arranged scales made from various flakes of the stuff on his shield and the whole thing survived dragon fire at full blast but the rest of their gear wasn't so lucky. On the other hand, the material is usually quite brittle, it's easy to chip with almost any other stone but if you know how to shape stones then you can shape the material to points so fine that some metal arrowheads or spearheads are known to penetrate."

"You really can't get out of my way, so I'll try to keep you from taking damage."

"What about you?"

"My hide is pretty tough, random breaks in the material shouldn't be as dangerous to me as they would you." With that Glarka stepped forward and gave the door a mighty kick. As if by magic, which wouldn't be so farfetched, the whole door blew apart in chunks and splinters of various sizes and all fell into a neat pile at the center of the room, not a single piece or splinter was in Glarka's foot. The room beyond was quite big, where they stood outside the entrance didn't tell them about anything within the chamber.

"Well, that's...unusual," said Evan as they entered the chamber. The two could hear the sound of a heavy door sliding behind them after they entered, when they turned around they saw a piece of stone the exact size of the door Glarka destroyed, and the exact color and shade of the stone wall for the room they were in.

The room was filled with fluorescently glowing mushrooms, so many that they lit up the place as if it were early twilight on the surface. Looking around the large room, the two managed to find a single door on the other side of the chamber, a good 120 feet from the door that had closed behind them, it appeared to be made of some kind of metal that Glarka couldn't force her way through, even with her halberd. To the far right and left of them were two sets of 4 chests, for a total of 8 chests in the room. In the very center of the room, taking up almost 40 feet of the floor on its own and stood almost all the way to the ceiling 60 feet over their heads, was an ancient idol-like statue that seemed to have all the feminine features exaggerated to ridiculous proportions; The breasts basically took up most of the torso, the hips were exceptionally wide to the point of making it beyond clear they were meant to be birthing hips, and even the rear of the statue took up so much that it barely stopped shy of the knees of the statue. And the whole thing was standing erect like none of these features even bothered it, but the head and face had their features covered by a shroud-like design.

"I'm starting to think this dungeon is trying to say something to everyone who enters it," said Evan. "But I'm not entirely sure what."

"You might be right," said Glarka, "this statue is clearly a fertility idol. And likely part of the solution to the puzzle to open the door."

"Well, at least we have a rest area to fall back to, assuming we can figure out how to backtrack in this place, but I have a feeling we'll be seeing this room again, no idea why."