Following a short rest, you elect to advance up the spiral stairway from the mausoleum level into the chapel above. The stone of the steps is wet and slippery, perhaps from the unnatural fog that previously filled the valley. You can feel a low vibratory hum through the ground and walls, like a hive of bees, that grows stronger as the stairs wind upward.
The stairs exit into the northwestern transept of the chapel. Even looking into the room from the archway of the stairs, you can sense that this space has undergone some horrific recent alterations. All the decorations -- tinted windows depicting the lives of saints, statues of winged angels, plaques bearing the holy words of the scriptures -- have been not simply destroyed but desecrated, vandalized to show unwholesome images and blasphemous words. Some of the angels have been decapitated, and their heads replaced by the rotting heads of farm beasts. You can see chains suspended from the walls that probably suspended the bodies of the chapel's priests and acolytes, though what few bodies remain are mostly mangled and unrecognizable. This is now clearly a sinkhole of great evil.
In the four corners of the chapel, along the front and back of each aisle, are enormous altars of formless unshaped stone, heavy enough that they have shattered the floor tiling. Above each of the four altars is a small plume of rising plasma, in small imitation of the two massive spires of energy outside. One is white, and its altar is surrounded by several dozen white-boned skeletons. One is black, and its altar is surrounded by a half-dozen black skeletons. One is deep violet, and it is veiled by what appear to be three ethereal apparitions. The last is a crimson smoking vortex, and is surrounded by several squads of the same fiery-eyed zombies that burst into flames below. The four plumes hit the ceiling and create lightning-like channels across the ceiling, blending their colors toward the middle.
The center of the nave is shrouded in a huge cloud. The outer edge of the cloud is covered in spinning jagged bone fragments. They spin within a hazy purple fog, and within the fog you can see thick black smoke, and behind it, a wall of solid flame. None of it looks especially conducive to health. From the center of the cloud you can see the crackling green sky-beam plummeting upward, like a waterfall inverted. It appears to have broken a rough hole directly through the chapel's roof.
From inside the cloud you can hear chanting in some foul language (perhaps understandable to anyone who speaks Zaharan). But just as some of the nearest undead become aware of your intrusion and turn to interpose themselves between you and their stone altar, the chanting suddenly pauses.
"Foolish intruders! Do you suppose you can hold back the Phlegethon Deluge? Stay here and witness the End as my guests, or pass through to perish to the Scepter of the Horned One, when Zur has fully summoned him. I have my orders, and they do not involve you." The vile chanting resumes, and the green sky-beam swells in diameter.
From the colossal doors at the far end of the chapel you can hear raucous laughter outside. "Yes, come out, and leave this most holy place in peace. We have such a warm reception waiting for you!"
