"So, yes, that was boring," I said, as we concluded a thorough search of what was undoubtedly the Chaldean ruin on the map. As far as we could tell, it was uninhabited by monsters, and the most exceptional thing about it was that it was remarkably well kept. In a way, it was almost as if the inhabitants left two months ago, rather than two thousand years ago. Three large, completely intact and column-flanked buildings still encircled a beautiful town square, which was dominated by a towering, staff-wielding statue of Eanna, the Chaldean river-goddess.

"Don't give up just yet," Zelensha said, "I have a couple of hunches that I want to follow up on. That medallion has got to be for something, and I have a feeling that it might unlock something that hasn't been opened in a very long time." She asked me to stand guard, and then proceeded to examine the big statue very thoroughly. Shaking her head, she walked to the centre of the westernmost building's eastern wall and sat down beside it, tools at the ready.

After no more than a couple of minutes, she called me over. "Look at this," she said, while brushing eagerly at the building's facade with the sleeve of her shirt. Slowly but surely, her efforts revealed a thin circle of still-shining metal embedded in the marble wall. If there had ever been symbols inside this circle, they had long since been erased by time and the weather. Satisfyingly, however, the outline of the metal circle matched the size of the medallion, which I now handed over to a smiling Zelensha.

She aligned the medallion with the circle and pressed it against the wall, but even though it was a perfect fit, nothing very exciting happened. Then she turned the medallion around and pressed the wave-bearing side against the silvery circle. Immediately, a grating sound was heard as the marble blocks around the circle began to recede inwards. With an audible sigh, trapped air and a strong musty smell escaped from the dark chamber beyond. As we hoped, this was a well concealed entrance that hadn't been used for a very long time indeed.

The doorway opened up into a narrow stairway leading down into darkness. The walls and floors were made of the same marble as the outside structures, and they seemed remarkably free of dust and signs of wear and tear. The silence of the dark stairway was broken as I dug up a torch from my backpack and lit it.

No matter how carefully we walked down the ancient stairs, the halls beyond seemed to seize upon our every movement, turning small sounds into reverberating echoes that somehow grew louder as they moved into the darkness. We kept our weapons ready as we stepped into a chamber which opened up at the bottom of the stairs. The light from my torch seemed stifled and weak in the tomb's oppressing air, and we were expecting trouble: The old Chaldeans valued their dignity in death as well as in life, and their tombs are often protected by traps as well as guardian creatures.

But nothing stirred as we stepped into the broad, low-ceilinged room. As we walked carefully accross the marble floor, the torchlight struck something golden to our left and to our right. On closer inspection, we found that two seemingly identical, goat-headed statues flanked the passage, and that light from our torch had struck beautiful, golden decorative patterns which ran along both plinths. Behind the statues, large slabs of black granite were decorated with pictographs which seemed to show the everyday life of a Chaldean community. At the far end of the room, two large and beautiful urns flanked the entrance to a long, narrow corridor, the end of which lay outside my torchlight's reach. Before we stepped through, Zelensha checked for traps on and near the doorway, but she didn't find anything.

The corridor beyond was empty and devoid of all decoration. There was a row of recesses in each wall, but nothing occupied any of them, and there was no sign that anything ever had. At its far end, the corridor ended in another chamber much like the first one, but slightly larger. Within it, golden reflections indicated the presence of more statuary bearing gilded pictographs.

Upon entering this second chamber, we immediately heard the sound of heavy footsteps from our right. "I zogging knew it!" Zelensha spat, while lifting her bow and pointing it in the general direction of the approaching sounds. For my part, I threw the torch in a low trajectory towards the footfalls, and as it clattered along the marble floor, I saw that three humanoid figures with animal heads were running towards us. One of them was snake-headed and wielded a large, elaborately decorated halberd; another had a leopard's head and wielded twin scimitars; the third was jackal-headed and wielded no weapon, except for a golden dagger hung from his belt. As the trio approached, jackal-head slowed down, assuming a position well behind the others.

"Revenants!" I shouted, recognizing the famous guardians from tales and books rather than from experience. "The one at the back is a spellcaster," I continued, "nail him as best you can."

For my part, I dropped my sword, grabbed a Grenade Potion from my belt and lobbed it at the approaching Revenants, hoping that the distance was still great enough for us to avoid the blast. The green bottle struck the floor between Leopard and Snake, and with a hollow, roaring sound - like a dragon breathing - the far end of the chamber became an inferno of fire and shattering glass. The Revenants were engulfed by flames, and a wave of heat struck me and Zelensha, singeing hair and the odd eyebrow but not causing us any damage.

When the flames died down, the two weapon-wielding Revenants were almost upon us, and I barely had enough time to pick up my sword and raise it to meet a downward slashing blow from Leopard's left scimitar. Zelensha, meanwhile, was firing a rapid sequence of arrows at Jackal, who had stopped moving forward and was casting a spell. "Don't even zogging think about it you mangy old…" she hissed, while reloading and firing her bow with amazing speed and accuracy.

Slightly off balance after parrying Leopard's blow, I had no chance of avoiding a halberd blow from Snake, who swung his impressive weapon towards my unprotected torso. My chain mail took some force of the blow, but I could still feel the halberd's blade sink in rather too deeply. Ignoring the pain, I thrust my blade towards Snake's soft and slightly fire-scorched belly. It sunk in, and the reptile-headed creature froze for an instant before staggering backwards, badly wounded. At the far end of the chamber, Jackal succumbed to Zelensha's hailstorm of arrows, keeling over with his arms still raised, but without having managed a single spell.

I dodged Leopard's next blow, and parried his immediate follow-up with the scimitar in his left hand. I then drove my blade fiercely towards his neck, but he somehow managed to twist away slightly, and I only struck his shoulder. Somewhat surprisingly, large quantities of very human-looking blood gushed from the resulting wound. Gasping soundlessly with pain, Leopard dropped the scimitar in his right hand, but he still managed a sweeping, headward blow with the blade in his left. I ducked it, and once again swung my own blade towards his neck. Striking true, I ran my blade through Leopard's throat, and after stumbling three or four steps backwards, he fell down dead.

While I was busy with Leopard, Zelensha had dispatched the grievously wounded Snake with yet another of her swift-flying arrows. Once more the tomb was silent, but the smell of burnt flesh hung in the air now, and three ancient guardians lay broken on the marble floor.