He who does not follow caution deserves what follows.
Photo credit: Public domain, Wikipedia
“If you stopped tapping your foot, I could concentrate better.”
Daerona sighed. Anqearo had been working on translating the ancient symbols over the door for over an hour.
Besides, Thono was making noise, too. He sat, a small mountain, crushing pottery shards one by one, apparently intent on turning the whole pile to dust.
Stomping his foot a few times, Daerona rose to pace the musty stone chamber. Any valuable grave goods had been pilfered long ago. So why was that entrance still sealed?
Anqearo cleared her throat. “I’m done, no thanks to you. This is the name of the person buried here.” She pointed to symbols as she spoke. “This part says… To any who seek to enter, be warned. Here lies my daughter, most blessed and beautiful and powerful… It goes on like that a while. Any who look upon her will lose their eyes to flame. Any who disturb her will be eternally eaten by… beetles, I think. Any who touch her tomb will be tortured by hordes of iztalak.” She turned to the others. “Those are nasty demonic creatures. Definitely to be avoided.” She pointed to the last symbols. “Any who touch her will meet her.”
Daerona stared at the symbols a while, as though he might come up with an alternate translation. Finally, he scoffed. “Eh, they all say that. Open the seal.”
Anqearo retreated to the doorway. “Not me. Whoever that is, I have no interest in meeting her.”
“You’ll stay, and you’ll open it, and you’ll cast something that protects us. Blood contract, my dear.” The fat man growled, then sweetened his voice as he turned to their armored bear. “Thono, would you like to go first?”
Thono looked up from his pile and smiled. “I like to go first.”
Submitted for The Blog Propellent’s Fair Warning writing challenge. Thanks LRose!
This is an earlier adventure featuring the same exploring team we saw in the flash fiction pieces “How Not To Explore Ancient Temples” and “Steps Up.” So apparently they survived this encounter. I’m happy to accept suggestions for how.
UPDATE: Since everyone seemed to want to know how things worked out for our apparently doomed adventurers (including me) I wrote this to continue the story: Empty Memory.
Tales from Eneana 
Fun! What if she translated it entirely wrong?
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Aha, good idea. Maybe it actually says, “I’m lonely, please come visit me!”
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I would still like to know what happened when they opened the tomb. It could be an interesting sequel?
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Glad I piqued your interest! And yes, I’m curious what happens next too. Hm… Maybe another photo prompt will inspire an interesting answer.
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This is great. I especialy love the line, ‘they all say that.’ I have no idea how they could get out of this…
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Thank you so much for saying that, that was my favorite line too! Glad you liked it! I’m struggling for ideas on how they survived too…
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Poor Thono. I do hope that was a mistranslation, for his sake!
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Yeah, it doesn’t look good, does it? Thanks for reading!
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Intriguing symbols, intriguing story. You’ve painted the scene so well and made the characters come alive. I’m not sure opening that seal would be such a good idea … A mistranslation is deperately needed here!
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Thank you Millie! Yes, I seem to have painted my characters into a corner with this story, but perhaps some new solution will arise soon.
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Thinking cap time.
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Hm… an idea is percolating. I’ll see where it goes. 😉
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