Titus rolled his eyes. No. That would be st--Okay, yes, the cliche was probably the way to go. He turned to the group's tracker.<br/><br/>'Head back to camp. Let the First Centurion know what's up. Meanwhile, we'll check out the waterfall.'<br/><br/>The soldier saluted and set off in the direction the group had come. Titus trusted him to make it back on time. They'd blazed their own trail on the way here, cutting aside vines and roots and carving telltale markings into the mushroom stalks pointing back in the direction of the next nearest marker. After the initial stumbling, any of them could have easily made the journey back.<br/><br/>Titus dipped his gladius into the pool at the waterfall's base. The water level reached about halfway up the blade when he hit ground. Thankfully, the water was also transparent, once one stirred up the coating of spores on the surface and swept it aside. No aquatic threats, then, except if one got a foot stuck in the pool's small exit, which presumably led to a stream underneath.<br/><br/>Satisfied that nothing horrible would jump out at him from the depths of the shallow pond, Titus led the way. As it turns out, there was indeed a cave behind the waterfall--an artificial cave, at that. Carvings lined the walls and ceiling of this curious cave, most too weathered from age and water damage to be legible. Those that remained intact depicted strange, often horrific scenes. One carving depicted a stepped ziggurat, at the top of which lay an altar. Bipedal figures knelt on each tier, prostrating themselves as another figure at the top ate the entity which lay on the altar. Another showed more of those people in a circle around what appeared to be a burst of light. The one closest to the burst of light was engulfed in flames, while its peers seemed to be dancing. Titus got the feeling that the burning one's back was arched, not in pain, but in pleasure. Every few meters, he passed a sconce on the left with a torch of sorts, its head wrapped in a cloth covered with the glowing mushroom spores. He had no idea what it would have taken to keep such spores preserved and luminescent for so long in such a seemingly ancient place. And then he found them.<br/><br/>Titus stepped into a wide, tiered circular chamber, reminiscent of the great amphitheater of the Imperial capital. While the walls outer floor  appeared to be of the same stone which made up the cavern outside, the amphitheater's tiers were smooth obsidian, intricately carved with hieroglyphics. Deep grooves ran down, down, down, into the impossibly distant floor at the bottom of the chamber, filled with what Titus belatedly realized was freshly spilled blood. He found the skirmishers. Every single one of them lay dead, arranged at even intervals, face-up, their legs straight and arms folded over their chests. Cold, dead hands gripped daggers while deep red blood flowed from slit throats. There were no signs of struggle. Around the pit, Titus saw the bones of visitors from stranger, older aeons, their skeletal structure strangely piscine, their poses in death eerily identical to those of the newly dead.<br/><br/>What the hell had happened here?