Varlum ended the Judge's life then, crushing him. The aukari adored of Faldrun crumbled then, almost as if what was left was made of charcoal and ash. He crumbled beneath him. When Varlum tried to listen to the sound of the heartbeats, it was very clearly heard where he was, yet with his detection and navigational skills what they were, he'd have a hard time telling what direction it was emitted from. So he would be lost in those galleries deep underground for some time before he found a direction from which the sound of their beatings became more pronounced. It was a game of errors and false starts and chewed-up time. Luckily, he was closer to the source than most of the others, who were making a far superior pace.
Stone Talon nodded to Faith without a word and held a hand over his heart. The Sevrath spoke to Faith and Padraig, "We'll try and lead these people somewhere safe. The Dragoons will likely want to investigate soon."
As she said this, Stone Talon helped her down from where she was and propped her up as they walked toward the congregation, which was so moved by Faith's speech and the revelations that they had just about changed their hearts. They hadn't realized how enthralled they were by the call to carnage, and it awoke something inside them that'd long lain dormant. A spark of humanity.
And so Padraig guided Faith down into the Nave and the under-galleries beneath the Cathedral. There they found the long corridor that Jasper had traveled through. The Spirit of Turmoil had since been extinguished by Varlum's defeat of the Judge and troubled that corridor no longer. There was so much, as Padraig and Faith passed through the undercroft. So much history and art and exquisite stonework, that it was almost a shame they wouldn't have time to study it in depth. Perhaps another time...
They made it to the chamber that Jasper was in, as he pulled the lever that was a candlestick. Thus, as he pulled it, the hidden door swung open, with the weight of stone pulling it up. And there was a long cavernous passage that was poorly lit.
Eldloga spoke to Jasper then, "It is not something that we know of. It appears to belong to a person at times... but then something creeps in, and changes the way it strikes me... Hard to say without seeing it for ourselves?" It wasn't much information to go on, but that was what Eldloga had to say of it. So it probably wasn't a spiritual presence that he was aware of.
Padraig and Faith arrived at the site of the door, and through it, they could see a long dark corridor leading deeper into the earth. If they followed it, they would find no resistance, no traps, no assailants barring their way. Nothing but ancient stonework and bas reliefs depicting technological wonders of ages past. Perhaps imagined wonders or things that had existed in times past. One couldn't say. Perhaps the Quacians had been more optimistic upon a time in their artwork? At any rate, some of the scenes and things depicted were not known to be possible to this world.
If all three of them carried on into the galleries beneath the earth, they'd follow the heartbeats to a larger chamber. There, at the innermost chambers of the Underway, they'd find a series of mounds of flesh. It was around this time, that Varlum finally found his way to the source of the noise. He arrived at that chamber.
All four of them, having been drawn toward the beating heart, would find it led straight to a centerpiece of sorts. One mound of flesh that was larger than all of them. Beneath the mounds of flesh, they would hear a horrid screeching, muted by the layers of overgrown meat.
If Faith tried to identify any Unidentified Foreign Objects or things that might have caused this condition, and through her advanced senses of blood, she'd tell that there were two beings of sorts within the mound of colossal flesh, and one smaller lifeform. None of them were harmed, necessarily. But the sounds issuing from the flesh were those of someone giving birth.
While the flesh of this mound was mostly biqaj, there were others besides. Other mounds of flesh all around, but they were different in form somehow, not quite any race she'd encountered in her travels.
