He stood up straight and surveyed the room to make sure there were no other threats. Then he slowly lowered his fists. There was still no sign of the cane-wielding undead, but he didn’t want to get his hopes up that they could still escape this floor before he arrived again.
Ermolt wanted to go get his hammer.
“A moment before you go,” Elise said as she sheathed her sword. “I need your help with this.”
She pointed to a hole in the wall. On the floor below was a ripped-down tapestry, along with a dented metal plate. Inside the hole was movement, and Ermolt almost flinched away. But it wasn’t thrashing undead or some other creature; it was instead a rotating metal shaft. He stepped up to get a closer look, and he could see it was like the central shaft of a windmill, rotating slowly and smoothly, with a many-toothed gear in the center.
“This is what I found.” She pointed to the other side of the hole, where there were a handful of mechanisms mostly comprised of gears like the one on the shaft. “This central shaft is powered by… something. I don’t know. I bet the rotating platforms are involved somehow. But when you connect it to these other gears, it powers things.”
“And this is what made that noise?”
“Yes,” Elise said, pointing to the gear at the top of the device. She poked it, and Ermolt could see how it moved on a hinge towards the rotating gear on the shaft. “I don’t know if it was supposed to make that noise, or if whatever it goes to is broken, but one of these must activate the transportation to send us up.”
“What do we do?” Ermolt asked, leaning down to examine the gears more closely. “Do we just check them all?”
“I think so. But carefully. One of these has to work. I just don’t want to test them alone… in case they draw more, um, unwanted attention.”
Ermolt nodded, his expression dark. “I left my hammer in the other room. Let me fetch it.”
A few moments later, they began testing the gears. Ermolt’s hammer was close at hand, and Elise held the torch to give him a better view of what he was doing. By the light of the torch, Ermolt could see that two of the gear arrangements wouldn’t work. The shafts they were connected to were rusted, and when he tried to move the gears on their hinges, the movements were stiff and there was a grinding noise from elsewhere in the wall.
If they were the right gears to open the path upwards, they would need to climb.
Ermolt didn’t dare try to connect them to the rotating shaft. It would be dangerous, and would likely destroy whatever mechanisms they powered. Perhaps forcefully.
He moved the bottom-most gear into place. It slid as easily as the top one had along its hinge. There was a satisfying click and it held in place as it began to spin. Elise and Ermolt looked around to the metal ring in the middle of the room, but nothing was happening.
“Perhaps it takes a moment to warm up?” Ermolt said with a shrug.
“No, it has to be the wrong one.” Elise pointed past Ermolt’s head and he turned. Above their heads, the glowing white globes in the ceiling were gradually shining brighter. “This one must power the lights. Or recharges them. Maybe that’s why they’re still working? Someone periodically flips this over to the lights to keep them going?”
“I’d rather not think of it,” Ermolt said with a shudder. He tried to not picture the lanky undead they had fought standing where he was, hunched over this very gearbox. With a frown, Ermolt reached out and pushed the gear out of place. The lights stopped brightening, but they didn’t immediately return to their dimmer state.
Perhaps Elise was right.
He shifted the last of the working gears into place. It didn’t quite click immediately, like the others had, but he wiggled it in place for a moment and was rewarded with the satisfying click. There was a whirling sound, and a cold popping from behind him. As he turned away from the gearbox, he saw a ring of white lights dancing around the metal structure in the room. Blue energies danced and hissed around the metal disc on the floor, and the runes around the rim glowed one at a time.
“I hope it’s supposed to do that,” Elise said, raising her shield up protectively in front of her.
“Definitely probably fine.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
When nothing dangerous followed for a few moments, Elise lowered her shield. Blue light winked and danced around the runes on the disc set into the floor, and each one in turn began to grow stronger.
“Any idea what’s happening?” Ermolt asked. He approached the device, his hand raised in front of himself almost protectively, as if it would help him if something happened.
“Not sure,” Elise said, though she gestured at the gearbox on the wall. “I assume that it takes time for it to generate enough energy to function.”
“How long, do you think?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” Elise sighed. She desperately missed Athala’s random spouting of knowledge. The wizard would likely know exactly how long it would need to charge, and maybe even know how to speed it up. “I could check the notes, but Catarin didn’t include much about this stuff. Apparently, a lot of it was Athala rambling.”
“We’ll just sit and wait,” Ermolt said. He walked over to the giant hole that marked the interior of the Temple.
Elise stayed near the gearbox, but kept and eye on the door to the room. She couldn’t help but worry that they’d wasted too much time, and made too much noise. There was no way to know how long it would take the created undead to make its way out from under the trap they had tricked it into, but as soon as it was loose, there would be nowhere for them to hide.
Tension strummed between them for what was likely around a quarter of a bell. Elise wasn’t sure, what with no functional bells as far as she could hear, but it seemed right. After about that amount of time, the metal ring began to hum and glow, and the flickering white lights around the edge solidified and enveloped the metal. With a shimmering chime, the ring filled with a glowing blue energy. Fingers of white rose and fell away from the membranous surface like condensation spiraling away from its center.
It was almost pretty.
“There,” Ermolt said, drawing Elise’s attention sharply away from the hypnotizing glow. He was pointing across the Temple.
On the opposite side, a floor up, there was a flickering blue glow visible above the pit, illuminating a distant room. It looked to be just above the entryway to the Temple.
“I was hoping we’d get farther than that,” Elise said with a disappointed click of her tongue. “Passage all the way to the top would have been nice.”
“Still better than climbing the walls.” Ermolt smirked at her and leaned out over the pit. He looked up. Elise could see the ceiling was still at least a dozen fen above him, and with the bottom of the pit so far below, Elise fretting about him leaning out like that. “Should be relatively safe. There’s likely another one of these right above us. All we need to do is circle the Temple a couple of times, and we’ll be fine.”
“In theory. If this thing is safe.” Elise stepped towards the teleporter and gingerly tapped the disc on the floor with her toe. “It hasn’t been used in centuries, perhaps. I don’t even know how to check if it’s properly calibrated.”
“A moment.” Ermolt stepped away from the pit, over towards the portal. “Pass me the torch, and go watch the room across the way.”
“Which room?” Elise handed him the torch, and moved towards the missing section of wall. “What are you planning.”
“Hush. Just watch the other portal. I have an idea.”
Elise watched as the barbarian pulled another torch from his pack and lit it. He hurled one of them into the glowing blue portal with all his strength. There was a crackle of energy as it entered the ring, and the surface shimmered for a moment. This was followed by a soft snap as the portal whirled away into sparkling motes of magic.
She turned and looked at the other side of the Temple. A bright orange light leapt into view from the blue glow on the other side before that glow crac
ked and faded from view.
“Alright. So, it works. Now what?”
“It’s recharging,” Ermolt said, pointing to the disc in the floor. The dancing energies were already flickering around the runes again. “We just need to wait.”
Elise sighed. Another quarter of a bell of just standing around. She almost wished they had just gone, now. Elise turned to look across at the other portal. She watched as the torch Ermolt had thrown in rolled across the floor, tumbling towards the crack in the wall that would send it plummeting into the pit. It was likely that the floor was uneven over there, perhaps even sloped. They’d need to watch their step.
Though they should have done that anyway. On the ground floor, they were confident that below them was solid stone. But on the second floor, one wrong step might cause the floor to give way and—
Elise watched as the torch finally fell over the edge and tumbled end-over-end into the pit. For a moment, the light illuminated the entryway. It was by that light she saw it.
The lanky undead in the black armor was standing in the entry room. It was leaning on its cane, of which the end was planted between its feet almost perfectly in the middle of its mass.
Elise could see its eyes for the briefest of moments. It was staring at her. Watching her.
After the torch tumbled away, leaving the alcove draped in darkness, Elise stared at where it had been.
Was it still there? Did it watch her even now? Or had the light’s passing, leaving its actions shrouded in darkness, spur it to break into a run around the Temple after them?
Elise strained to hear the click of its cane, but the distance was just too great.
“Ermolt.” She didn’t take her eyes off the spot where it had been. “Ermolt. The undead.”
“What?” Ermolt grabbed his hammer and rushed to her side. “Where?”
“There.” She pointed. “The entryway. That room where we came in.”
“I can’t see it. What was it doing?” She could see Ermolt lean forward, squinting as if it would help him see into a dark room across the entire Temple. “Is it coming?”
“Perhaps? It was just standing there when the torch dropped past, but I—”
She stopped as it leaned out into the pit. The white paint on the side of it’s face was clearly visible in the murky darkness of the Temple.
It was just staring at them.
“Blood of Dasis,” Ermolt whispered. “That’s eerie.”
“What do we do?” Elise was unable to tear her eyes away from the creature. It seemed to be grinning, although that was likely just the thick shadows playing tricks on her eyes. Undead didn’t smile. “Should we fight it?”
“He doesn’t seem eager to fight.” Ermolt gestured over his shoulder to the shimmering energies enveloping the disc behind them. “If he wanted a fight, he has us with our backs to a wall until the portal is ready again. He seems happy to just creep us out right now.”
“But why? It didn’t seem hesitant once I turned my back in that kitchen.”
“Perhaps that’s how he likes it?” Ermolt shrugged. “He’s more than a match for us, but he played that mirror game when we first saw him. Maybe he’s bored, and just wants to play with us first. He could want to scare us more than he wants to fight us.”
“That’s disturbing.” Elise shuddered. It was just staring at them. She found its unblinking gaze unnerving. “And it’s doing a fantastic job.” The thing was looking at her not as a foe, but as a prospective meal. It was a predator, and it considered her prey.
The thought irked Elise quite a lot.
“We should do something about it.”
“Like what,” Ermolt said with a smirk. “Want to go over there and start the fight for him?”
“Why not?” Elise looked up at the barbarian. “I agree that we need to get as far as we could, but I thought it was going to be trapped under that axe for the better part of the day. I didn’t know it’d be loose again before we even reached the second floor.”
“Do you really think it would go better than last time?” Ermolt shook his head, not taking his eyes off the staring undead. “Without a plan, our best chance is to avoid him. Even when we get Athala back, I think we could just run a rope down the outside wall and let him stare at us vanishing on the horizon back to Lublis.”
“What if the Favor of Isadon is why it’s here, though? It would follow us out of the Temple once the Favor is gone.”
Ermolt hesitated at that, and looked down at her. “I don’t like the idea of him chasing us to the ends of Neuges, ambushing us at any time.” He shuddered, and Elise found herself nodding. The image was grim and disturbing. “Perhaps you’re right, and we should deal with him now. But without a plan, I feel like it would be a suicidal idea to just charge right at him.”
There was a shimmering sound behind them, and they both turned to look as the blue portal reappeared, filling the metal ring. It was ready for them to pass through it.
As one, they both looked over to the other side of the Temple, where the blue glow filled the room where the portal would deposit them.
They also, of course, noticed that, in the space below, there was nothing. The undead was missing.
“Go,” Elise said, her voice filled with the dread that crept along her flesh. She grabbed Ermolt by the arm and dragged him away from the pit. “Through the portal. Before it gets here.”
“I thought you wanted to fight him?” Ermolt asked, confused. His feet dragged as he tried to stop before they got to the portal.
“You’re right! Not without a plan! He’ll dance around us again, and without another axe trap, we’ll be out of luck.” She pushed him, harder. “Go!”
“Together,” Ermolt said, grabbing her firmly by the shoulder. “It stayed open for a moment after the torch passed. We can both make it.”
Elise nodded and they both stepped forward. Ermolt vanished into the shimmering blue surface, and his enormous hand dragged her in behind him.
Before the magic enveloped them, Elise swore she heard the click of the undead’s cane.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Passing through the portal made Ermolt think of a cat springing through a door that someone was slamming closed.
Bright blue light filled his vision, forcing his eyes shut.
Something brushed against both shoulders, and it had a sharpness too it, like blade edges over his armor.
With that first step, his foot came down on something that wasn’t stone floor, and his equilibrium reported a mixture of confusing signals. It was a gooey, gelatinous surface. But it was solid directly under his weight. Yet also somehow giving away beneath him. It felt as if he would sink into it, and so Ermolt hurried his next step for fear that he would fall into the space between the two portals and become lost forever.
That second step brought his weight down on solid ground, and Ermolt stumbled forward. His eyes opened.
He was in the room on the other side of the portal.
The air felt refreshingly cold when it hit his skin, but he returned to normal as he staggered forward.
He felt Elise shudder under his grasp.
Ermolt turned to look at her, but she seemed fine. Nothing seemed to have been lost in transit. Ermolt had almost feared the portal closing too fast behind him, and her becoming injured. Or forcing her back out the other side with the undead. But they had made it across unharmed.
Or, so it seemed.
“That was…” Elise paused and shook her head. She seemed out of breath and her cheeks were red.
“It got us here,” Ermolt said, walking towards the crack in the wall. He could see that they were on the floor above, and part of him was keenly aware that the lanky undead creature had been, moments ago, just a few fen below where he now stood. The thought was sobering. “We should get moving.”
“I just need a moment,” Elise said. She put a hand to her chest and bent forward. Was she crying? Or was she just truly that out of breath? Ermolt wondered briefly if she had
experienced something different than he had, and if so, what?
“We don’t have time,” Ermolt said, although he softened his tone. “We can’t turn off the portal from this side, right? That monster could leap through it at any moment.”
“You’re right.” Elise grimaced but marshalled her strength, standing up straighter. Ermolt could see the tracks of tears on her cheeks, and felt a bit bad for bullying her into moving. “Let’s go. If we can find a side room that we can make defensible, we can catch our breath and try to form a plan.”
Ermolt nodded, and then looked to his right and left. There were two doors, just like below, and Ermolt could see out into the pit that there were more gaps and holes along the interior shaft. He could see some of the rooms, but he couldn’t tell if there was one direction that was better than the other.
“Let’s go to the left,” Elise suggested, pointing towards that door. “Do you remember the mess of rubble past the dining hall? You said it looked like the floor gave way. If an entire room fell into the first floor, we might have some trouble traversing it.”
“Smart thinking,” Ermolt said with a smile. He started towards the left side, and Elise followed.
The room beyond the door was another half-rotted sitting room, sealed with large stone doors. They hurried through it. There didn’t seem to be corpses or skeletons, but they didn’t want to wait long enough for some to arise from behind the crumbling furniture.
Ermolt was sure to push the stone door on the far side of the room closed behind them. It wasn’t a barricade, but it might slow down the created undead if it followed.
Beyond the room was a hallway, but it clung to the interior wall, with doors on only one side of it.
Ermolt tried to avoid thinking about getting caught in this space with the undead man who was roaming the place, hunting them. In such and enclosed space, his hammer would be a poor weapon. And the lanky creature’s blade would be more than capable of spearing his armor.
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