What the Guardian Let Through

The last record left the party among the broken stone of the stairs to eternity, with a trapped body behind them and the temple still above. This one begins on the stairs themselves, going up.

There were holes in the walls on either side. They were small and evenly spaced, the kind a dart leaves, or the kind a dart comes out of. He had seen what those darts did to a lashunta not long before. The note says he was searching as they climbed, actively, and that is the whole of it. I think it was the right amount of attention. You do not stop on a trapped stair. You keep moving, and you look harder than you walk.

At the top, up and to the left, was the entrance to the temple. In front of it lay a small plaza, open to the sky, with pillars arcing over it. The ground there was different. The paving stones were carved with markings. He doesn't say what they showed, only that they were there. I suspect he meant to come back to them.

There was a figure in the plaza. It was watching Bren.

He noted it the way he noted everything, in the order he saw it. Humanoid. Armoured, in ceremonial plate, ornate. A staff. An elf. Then, last: old, and desiccated. Whatever kept it standing in that plaza was not breath.

Before anyone moved toward it, he looked at the ground. Eight sets of prints crossed the plaza, running straight toward its centre. There was no scuffing and no sign of a struggle. Eight people had walked past this thing, and nothing had stopped them.

Then it spoke. The words were ancient Elven, and they came to the party through a data-pad. The first was a greeting, solemn, of the kind elves once gave to travellers: May the stars guide your path. The second was not: Hold. You must turn back.

The Fragments keep its speech, and they keep it close to the records. That is unusual enough to be worth noticing.

And at the head of the stair there was a plaza, and pillars bent over it like the ribs of a great beast,
and an elf stood in it, and the elf was long dead and had not lain down.
And it greeted them as the old ones greeted: May the stars guide your path.
And it said: Hold. You must turn back.
And it said: Centuries ago a child of Golarion came, seeking the secrets beyond for his own glory,
and I turned him away with violence.
And it said: A band of lashunta came, and an alien it did not know, and it knew them for pawns of the Star-Eater,
and it turned them away, and the conviction of their leader was strong, and the magic of their leader was strong,
and it relented.
And it said that the speaker of star did not wish it, and so they could not pass.
And it said: Some went in. Some went up.
And it seemed to say that the alien it did not know was inside still.
And the telling does not say who answered it, or what was answered.
And it did not relent a second time.

— Fragments of the Keepers, the Kopalo cycle, as it is usually told

Novitiates are fond of the child of Golarion, and they always want to give him a name. The guardian didn't, and neither do the records, so I won't either. The line I return to is the one about relenting. A guardian that has stood for centuries gave way once, recently, to a strong enough will. Then it stood again.

It came to a fight. The records set the fight down tersely, the way he set down all his fights. One blow struck it hard and solid. Something meant to burn or shock it went wide, then another, then a third. It was armoured against such things better than against plain force. A second heavy blow glanced off; a third struck home. Somewhere in the middle, someone judged it would take a good deal of putting down, and noted that it was undead, as though that needed saying.

Then it fell. The note says Dead!! Again!, with two marks of surprise. It is the closest his notes come to laughing. I have always liked him for it. He had just watched a thing that had already died once die again, and he found that, for one line, funny.

Its armour was ruined. Its staff was only a staff. But it carried a crystal, the least of the kind solarians set into their weapons. It was worth a good deal new and a tenth of that to sell. He wrote down both figures. He was not sentimental about salvage.

The Field Canon keeps one line from that plaza:

Before you answer a guardian, count the prints that passed it. They tell you what it allows.
(Kopalo, from field notes; Castrovel.)

— the Field Canon, on Guardians, later additions

The records stop there, with the guardian down and the temple door ahead. Eight people went that way before him. Some went in and some went up, and one of them was a stranger even to a thing that had stood there for centuries.