As deep as graves, the eyeless sockets fixed on the old Wizard.
It creaked forward, loosing tiny landslides of debris and treasure.
It descended its miserly summit, then more than two elephants tall at the shoulder stalked the blackness beyond the immediate pillars, dragging ruin in its wake.
Achamian retreated, fairly stumbled doing so. "I-I'm not sure how to begin."
He glimpsed its dead-grinning maw between columns.
The will to lie leaned hard against the old Wizard's thought, but he resisted, understanding that the beast before him was as much spirit as flesh… Who can say what the dead hear, when their ears are pricked to the voices of the living?
So he began describing his Dreams, the way Anasurimbor Celmomas had charged Seswatha with the map to Ishual, the final refuge of the ancient Kuniuric High-Kings. But he quickly became tangled in words. Every name he mentioned, required more names to be explained-names piled upon names, all begging explanation.
The eyeless creature yawned, revealing the furnace that smouldered within the dead hull of its frame. " TRUTH IS OUR BARGAIN," it rumbled, croaking out of the blackness. The head, cadaverous and crocodilian, leaned forward menacingly. "WHAT IS THIS MAP YOU SEEK?"
The old Wizard blinked at the monstrous spectre, chewed his bottom lip…
"Vengeance," he said.