Episode LXXII - The Deadly Rune

And, so coming upon the base of the great idol, anticipating all the jewels and gold that had been sacrificed to it as our rightful due, we found to our dismay evidence of the true sacrifice, the bones of beasts and men recently slain in horrendous ways and the scent of something unknown burning. Clawing the stone base in what seems to have been fits of morbid delirium of unknown cause, we came upon a carving of a lizard most foul.

If we had only judged it rightfully, we would have seen it as a warning of what was already happening to us and foretelling of worst to come. But, we knew not and passed it off as merely a heathen mark of no import to righteous pilgrims as ourselves and with club and blade defaced it as we would any unholy defilement. Thereupon, we turned away from this place of sacrilegious death and struggled onward, even as the landscape grew ever more steep and the odd stench of burning grew more intense.