Danger! Four German grenades came tumbling towards the crew! Beating a mad retreat, the team leaped back into the maze as the grenades exploded and collapsed the unstable entrance. Everyone managed to scramble to safety except Archie, who was knocked unconscious while the rest were generally unharmed. As the dust and debris settled they all realized they were now trapped in the dark labyrinth of stone.

Penelope checked on Archie, determining he had just been hit in the head with some of the rubble and was only unconscious, not seriously hurt. Eleanor volunteered to stay with him near the collapsed entrance while the Penelope, Malcolm, and Iris tried to look for another way out. The trio set out, cautious not to go too far from their fallen friend, but only found dead ends nearby.

Unconscious on the cold stone floor, Archie’s mind slipped into dream. He found himself lying on a stone parapet of some unknown, possibly European, castle. Before him was a beautiful blue sky, with the sun to his right. The sky was an impossible hue, a polarized blue he had never seen before, and he wondered where in the world he could possibly be. Looking around, he noticed a black spot in the sky, a strange inky blot floating above the land. This shape moved rapidly to the right, sending out black rays like an inverted star. It eventually reached the sun, eclipsing it. As the light faded, Archie heard a roaring scream growing louder and louder from behind him. He could feel something closing on him, and spun around to see what it was…only to wake up in the maze.

With Archie recovered from his weird nap, the team regrouped to explore deeper through the network of tunnels, bypassing traps and narrowly avoiding danger as they went. They passed by many twists and turns, taking a winding route through the trapped and treacherous halls, until they finally came to a downward sloping passage. They followed this long corridor to a set of stone doors carved similarly to the Aztec medallion. Malcolm pushed the doors open revealing a curious round burial chamber.

The room beyond the doors was circular, ringed with large standing sarcophagi ten feet tall, each with strange windows at the top that revealed what looked like moldering skulls, though whether they were real or carved into the stone was impossible to tell from the floor. In the center of the room was a golden bier holding a mummified, human sized, body. The body looked incredibly ancient, dressed in tattered robes and priestly vestments, and clutching a book in its bony grasp.

Archie rushed over to the book, a mad look in his eye, and tried to pry the skeleton’s fingers off one by one. He had a hallucination of the mummy trying to fight him for the book, its eyes opening and the mouth contorting into a scream. None of the others see this, and Archie fell backwards on his ass, prompting laughs from the others. Despite warnings of traps, he dusted himself off, grabbed the book, and wrenched it free from the dead man’s grip. Pleased with himself, Archie began looking through the ancient Aztec codex.

While Archie happily investigated his prize, Malcolm looked about for another exit. He found a crawlspace between two of the sarcophagi leading away from the room, and after convincing Archie that it was time to go, everyone crawled out of the chamber. The passageway led to a shaft that seemed to be open all the way to the surface, an ancient bone ladder still sturdy enough for them to climb to the top against one wall. Cautiously they climbed upward towards the waning sunlight above.

As they reached the surface they saw out in the bay the tower of a German U-Boat slip beneath the waves. Angry that they lost the heart but glad to be free of the ancient tomb, they returned to the boat, making their way back to La Paz and the waiting Cygnus. Aboard their seaplane, they considered their options. With no other leads and nothing else to go on, they decided to return to Bailey Manor to check in with Eleanor’s uncle Thomas.

Back at the manor the team gave a briefing to Uncle Thomas, then took some down time to clean up, eat, and in Archie’s case, begin digging into the discovered tome. Thomas told the group that he knows someone who may be able to shed some light on things, and the group rested for the night.

The next day Archie had a breakthrough on the book, and tried to force everyone into a lecture. This was interrupted, however, by the arrival of Uncle Thomas’s guest, an older man in a dark pea-coat, balding with only wisps of hair on his head, intense eyes and strong, jowl-like chin. Eleanor knew the man, having met him many times before, and both Archie and Iris recognized him instantly – the famed occultist Aleister Crowley.

Mr. Crowley met with the team and inspected the tablets. After hearing their story, he told them the script on the tablets was Atlantean. He suggested that the clues on the tablets pointed to Mount Everest, and a fabled Temple of the Snake hidden somewhere on the mysterious mountain’s slopes. He let them know of his interest in their search, and took his leave.

The group decided their next step was to plan an impromptu expedition to Mount Everest.

While the team put together plans and supplies, Penelope built a spectacular gadget – a web shooting carbine that could be used to make rope-like bridges or entangle foes. She then went to work modifying the Cygnus to have treaded landing gear. Archie worked on translating his book, which he named the Codex Eztli, and accidentally caused a rain of blood from reading one of the rituals in the book. Undeterred, he continued reading, much to the rest of the group’s dismay.

As plans came together, the team charted a course for Rongbuk Monastery in Tibet, the last point of civilization before the mountain itself…