A NOTE FOR READERS: The journals of Zong-Tossu, though fascinating, should not be taken as accurate. Even though he was considered a great ghav-urath, eventually many of his writings were dismissed as the products of severe psychosis by the ruling council of Thamasku and simply regarded as fiction or parody. It was rumored Zong-Tossu had a mental breakdown caused by his usage of the narcotic cam-rahn.

After Tr’Shadai, Choka, and I had experienced our visions, Oracle led the three of us up from the cavern of the Dervish Octopus and back to Pariahs’ village. As we walked, he told us the meaning of what we experienced: “What you, Tr’Shadai, saw in your vision of the future is the ‘Sky Ark,’ a place long shunned by our people. It is said that we once dwelt there, but we have long since lived in our village, as you have seen.”

I turned to our guide and asked: “What exactly IS this ‘Sky Ark,’ Oracle?” The small Pariah shrugged his shoulders from within his basket, still carried along by one of his bigger, more brutish kin: “That, we know not. Some of our oldest tales speak of it as a place of power, but others say the Ark is a place of fear and death. We Pariahs have avoided it at all costs for as long as any of us can remember… But it is your destiny to go there. I will show you the way soon.”

When we reached the village, we were reunited with our remaining entourage. After a much needed rest, Oracle led the way to a winding path that climbed the island’s central mesa. “This pathway will lead you up the mountain, but only part way, as the upper portions of the path collapsed years ago. From there, you must climb to reach the Sky Ark.”

Tr’Shadai gasped as he looked up at the towering mesa. “This… I remember this from my dream! I saw us climbing this mountain!” “Yes,” said Oracle, “The Dervish Octopus always shows the truth, though the visions do not always come to pass exactly as you may have seen…” With those words echoing in our minds, Tr’Shadai, Choka, myself, and the handful of surviving vher-etuil warriors started along the path up the mesa.

As Oracle had said, about halfway up the mesa we were forced to begin climbing to go any further. Luckily, there were a great many handholds, and each handful of stone was coarse enough to provide an excellent grip for the climb, as did a number of vines, roots, and branches. Nevertheless, it took a half day to complete the climb, and despite all the natural assistance, we all sorely missed our clingropes. At the end, our muscles were burning and our breath ragged, but we did eventually reach the top of the cliff.

Looking around in wonder, Tr’Shadai said: “I saw this… I remember this. We were standing on a plateau on the side of the mountain. All around me, I saw a jungle below… and the sea beyond that in every direction. In the vision, I placed my hand on the rock face here and then tremors shook the mountain before a gaping mouth opened in the rock face.” Cho’ka and I followed the young ghav-urath to the small mounded peak that rose up above us from the plateau upon which we stood. Tr’Shadai placed his hands as he did in his vision, and we all braced ourselves, expecting a quake to begin… but nothing happened. Eventually, we all began to examine the rock face, and one of the vher-etuils, Bal-olech, discovered a door-like shape on the surface of the stone; it looked startlingly like a closed sphincter-like doorway like we might have seen back in Thamasku, only encrusted with the dirt and grime of decades or more of disuse until it was nearly invisible… Just to the side of the doorway, we soon found a small raised section of stone on the wall, scarcely bigger than one of our hands.

We all looked to Tr’Shadai and he, with a small shrug, placed his hand upon the stone. We once again braced for a quake, but instead the sphincter-door simply quietly shuttered open, as if groaning under centuries of build-up. Within the doorway, we could see a short corridor leading deeper into the mesa - one with a startlingly familiar flesh-like texture. I heard Tr’Shadai gasp at the sight, but I was too stunned to respond. Instead, I reached over to the rock face and brushed away the accumulated dirt and grime with my hand. Beneath, instead of the weathered stone that I would have expected, I discovered a rough and slightly porous substance, one that was dramatically similar to the nen coral of which the homes in Thamasku are constructed. “What is this place, master Zong?” asked Tr’Shadai, “What does that mean?” but I could only shake my head in response. I did not know…

Cho’ka was the first to proceed into the corridor. “This looks familiar to me. I believe this was in my vision - tunnels made of flesh. This is how the Rhul-thaun create structures, is it not?” he said, ducking his large insectoid frame into the doorway. I could only respond with a mumbled “Yes, it is…” and follow him into the mountain. Within, we found the passageway ended in another round door. Cho’ka placed his claw upon the raised pad next to the door, but nothing happened. With a tilt of his head, the kreen then placed his clawed hands on the door itself, but the doorway still did not respond. “Curious.” he said. Then, “Tr’Shadai?” motioning towards the raised pad. When Tr’Shadai placed his hand upon the pad, the door contracted open. With only a comment of “Interesting…”, Cho’ka stepped through the doorway.

Beyond, we could feel a strange breeze, first gently blowing out past us, then soon reversing and blowing back into the mesa: in, out, in, out. The air coming out of the mountain was not as stale as I expected, trapped as it was within for untold centuries; instead, it smelled fresh and moist, like the jungle after an afternoon rain. We found ourselves in a small chamber, just big enough for the handful of us to fit. In each of the other three walls stood doorways just like the one behind us. Two were sealed, but the one to the left lay open. Cho’ka slowly laid one of his claws gently on one of the sealed doors, tilting his head strangely, and clicking with his mandibles: “We must find a way through this door. I feel a familiar presence…” Looking around quickly, the thri-kreen seemed to determine there was no way to open the door, and, after a quick glance back at us, Cho’ka led the way through the open doorway.

We found ourselves in a long passageway. With each step, the corridor looked more and more distressing, with the flesh of the passage increasingly dried out and shell-like. At no point did the composition of the material change, but rather the passage’s living tissue seemed to be increasingly dessicated as we walked along, having shrunk back to show its underlying structure of ribbed supports and raised circular shapes. At one point, our kreen friend stopped to examine the material, remarking “Odd, it looks like ribs and other bits of flesh, but it has the consistency of kreen resin. How strange…” The passageway featured a number of intersections and doorways, but each connecting passage we could traverse was a dead end, and each doorway we came to was stuck shut. All of them, that is, until the last.

At the end of the passageway, we found a single good-sized chamber - one more than big enough for ten times our number to stand in comfortably. Within, there was row after row of shelves - niches, really - built into the walls and extending from floor to ceiling. All of the niches were empty save for one; here, there was a dried, yellowish membrane across it, and inside lay a body… a Rhul-thaun body. We all just stared at it for a moment, boggling at the implications it suggested.

Wir-avios, one of the vher-etuils, was the first to speak. “One of the Pariahs?” he asked. “No.” replied Cho’ka, “Look at the features, it’s not deformed.” I finally found my voice, though it was barely more than a whisper: “Oracle DID say that his people ‘once looked much as you do,’ but I thought he meant they didn’t have any deformities. I… I didn’t imagine he might have meant they were Rhul-thaun.” Everyone grew quiet again at that thought.

“What is that?” Tr’Shadai suddenly asked “That blue thing on the back of his hand?” Without a word, Cho’ka tore open the yellowed membrane with a clawed digit and reached inside. He seemed to only wish to turn the hand to get a better look, but instead snapped the ancient limb off the dessicated corpse. We all gasped quietly, horrified.

As we all stood around the niche, however, something had been stirring on the ceiling above us. Tr’Shadai caught a glimpse of the movement, but the creature dropped into our midst before he could shout a warning; sharp, serrated mandibles ripped into Fen-Aghoun - one of our companions - rending his armor with a great bite and catching him completely by surprise. He screamed in horror as the monstrous, armored centipede-like creature bit into him again and again, puncturing his armor and flesh in multiple places. The creature’s long serpentine body swiftly wrapped around Fen, enfolding him in its thick, chitinous plates.

Cho’ka and the other vher-etuil roared in rage and defiance, leaping forward to strike at the armored horror with their armblades and spineshields, but their blows harmlessly glanced off the creature’s impregnable shell. Meanwhile, Fen-Aghoun could only scream in terror as the massive insect drove its mandibles into him over and over again. Then the thickly armored parasite reared up and swallowed the unfortunate warrior whole! We could still hear Fen-Aghoun’s muffled screams as the monstrosity skittered back up the wall and into a hole in the ceiling, vanishing deep into the fleshy structure of this horrid place…

After the bizarre creature had snatched Fen-Aghoun away, we quickly fled from the room with the niches, terrified that the monstrosity would return and too shaken by the experience to linger. Instead, we retreated a good distance down the passageway, only pausing when we reached an intersection. As we attempted to recover from the ordeal we had just witnessed, hoping the memory of our companion’s screams would fade, Cho’ka, the least shaken of us, began to examine the doors around us. “Curious,” he said, gesturing with the dessicated limb he still held, “the wall near this doorway seems to have the same blue symbol on it that this hand has.” With that, he began to experiment with the hand and raised pad by the door, pressing the blue patch on the hand up to the pad and waving the hand in front of the door. Eventually, he picked at the blue patch on the desiccated hand until it peeled off. After placing the blue patch on his own chitinous hand and attempting to open the door, Cho’ka said “Tr’Shadai, come and try this door,” handing the blue patch to the young ghav-urath.

Tr’Shadai placed the patch on the back of his hand and, to all our surprise, the door opened at his touch. Within was a short passageway that ended in a collapsed ceiling, but Cho’ka grew quite animated at this, shouting “Come with me, quickly!” and running down the passageway pulling Tr’Shadai behind him. When we finally caught up with the pair, we found ourselves in the small chamber of doors near the entrance to this strange place. “Open this door, Tr’Shadai.” Cho’ka said, gesturing to the middle door. I suddenly understood why he was so excited, as I could see a blue symbol next to that door from where I was standing. Tr’Shadai complied and the door yawned open, displaying a long corridor leading deep into the strange complex. We found several more doors in the passageway, but one by one, none of them opened for us.

As we were checking a door about halfway down the corridor, one of the vher-etuils spoke up “What is this, master Zong-Tossu?” He seemed to have found a gash in the wall of the corridor’s flesh. It had exposed long, thick bundles of fibers running through the wall that seemed quite familiar, though at first I could not place their appearance. “I don’t know Wir-avios,” I said, reaching out to touch the strange feature, “They look like muscle fibers, but…” as I laid my hand on one of the bundles, it whipped out of the wall and wrapped around me! I yelled out in shock, but quickly saw that dozens of fibers had torn their way out of the corridor walls at the same time, and were lashing back and forth in search of prey, wildly groping for my companions!

To their credit, they immediately leapt to my defense, hacking with their blades at the lashing tendrils. Some of the fibers seemed to find victims of their own, with even Cho’ka being caught up by one of the tentacle-like horrors, but his claws and the blades of the vher-etuils made quick work of the tendrils and soon freed me. As they chopped back the last of the fibers, I examined one of the longer severed bits of tendril. “What were these vicious creatures, master Zong-Tossu?” asked Tr’Shadai. “I don’t think they were malicious, Tr’Shadai. Look how they still writhe and lash about - they don’t seem to have been targeting us. I think they were simply reacting, whipping out when I stimulated one by touching it.” The young ghav-urath only quietly nodded at this, seemingly thinking upon it.

We reached the end of the passageway without further incident, finding and opening another door sealed with a blue patch. Beyond we discovered our strangest sight yet - a large chamber filled with a webwork of connective fibers and pulsing tubes, all connected to a central ovoid mass hanging suspended in the center of the chamber. The mass was a light gray color and covered in wrinkles, and was strangely bulbous in places, looking quite a bit like the ghesh-luses we used to store and maintain our most precious knowledge back in Thamasku.

Cho’ka stepped forward and laid his claws lightly on the fleshy bulb’s surface, cocking his head to the side as if listening to something the rest of us could not hear. Finally, he said: “This place is alive, and this is the Sky Ark’s mind, in a way. It wants to know if we’re here to fix the sickness.” “What sickness, Cho’ka?” I asked, confused. “The one amongst the Pariahs? What does it mean? Is the Ark speaking to you?” “No, clutchmate Zong-Tossu,” he said, “not speaking; but we are communicating. It says its flesh is sick - it’s dying, it has been for a long time - but parts of it are diseased and leaking corrupt fluids. It wants this disease purged, and believes YOU can do it, master Zong-Tossu!”