by Andrew Rowe
Then the other two bone piles began to rise from the ground.
We’d known that might happen.
“My turn.” I stepped in front of Marissa, swinging Selys-Lyann in a wide arc. The frozen shockwave that emerged hit both skeletons, extinguishing a portion of the fire around them.
That wasn’t enough to stop the bones from coming together and beginning to lurch toward us, but it had extinguished a good portion of the flames.
Each of the skeletons formed a blazing sword between their hands.
Their eye sockets burned with menace. Or maybe fire. It was probably just more fire, to be honest.
Marissa went left, while I went right.
I swung Selys-Lyann. It cut right through the skeleton’s flame sword without resistance, then smashed into the skeleton’s ribs. The latter part wasn’t very effective, though. Slashing weapons weren’t great against skeletons.
The skeleton fell backward from my strike and its own counterattack fell far short.
Marissa lunged at her skeleton, but had to fall back when it jabbed at her stomach. She had a disadvantage in reach, and that meant she had to wait until she found an opening.
Patrick made her one. As he pointed his hand, the flame sword the skeleton near her was carrying twisted, then shrank to the length of a dagger.
The skeleton swung it at Marissa again, or rather at the air in front of her. It didn’t seem to realize that its weapon had gotten shorter, and it missed entirely.
She closed the distance and punched its skull right off.
I dodged another swing from the skeleton that I was fighting, then swung upward at the skeleton’s sword arm, severing it at the wrist.
It charged. I side-stepped and hit it in the neck. That didn’t actually cut all the way through, but it fell to the floor anyway.
The skeletons ceased to move. We hit them a few more times just to be sure.
“Wanna drop some spheres on the other two?” Marissa asked with a grin.
I didn’t like the idea of wasting Patrick’s mana or more time, but honestly, it was kind of fun. And more importantly, it was a good way to get rid of the pendulums.
“Let’s do it.”
Clearing the remaining pendulums was a little trickier, since they were inside the room. That didn’t pose any problems for Patrick — he could levitate things at a distance — but it meant that Marissa briefly had to go inside the room to cut them down.
We took a minute just to memorize the timing on the flame jets coming from the floor.
The flames go for about three seconds, then off for three seconds before it rotates to the next section. It goes clockwise, then stops at the top-left corner and switches directions. Then it switches directions again when it gets to the top right.
Not as simple as if it was just rotating one way, but not particularly difficult, either. Still, I’m glad I’m not the one going in there.
“Patrick, be ready to deflect the fire for Marissa if she misses her timing.”
Patrick nodded seriously.
Marissa didn’t miss, though. The moment Patrick cast his levitation on the closest pendulum, she was moving.
I launched my shockwave, hit the next chain, and she smashed it apart.
Then she landed, kicked the sphere toward us, and followed it back to the main room with seconds to spare.
We repeated the process until all the pendulums were clear.
“We going through the skeleton room first or the pendulum room?” Patrick asked.
“After all that?” Marissa pointed to the pendulum room with a serious expression.
“Right. Of course.”
We made our way across the pendulum room. The grates made me nervous, but now that we knew the timing, it wasn’t particularly dangerous.
Still, I felt a chill spread-across my sword arm as we moved to the opposite doorway. It took me a moment to realize it wasn’t my imagination — a thin layer ice was starting to creep down my hand and wrist.
I flexed my hand, grimaced, and tried to command the ice to move out of the way.
Nothing happened. I didn’t have the ability to shape ice. And if whatever was causing the ice to spread was listening to my thoughts, it didn’t give me any response.
I sheathed the sword. Only then did the ice begin to melt away.
I need to be careful about using this too much. And I really need to figure out how it works.
We arrived in the safe spot at the entrance to the next room.
We’d chosen the doorway that was already open, with the hope that we’d find the team we were supposed to rescue inside.
We had no such luck.
The room’s contents were simple – two streams of flowing lava, and in between them, a single treasure chest.
The treasure chest was already open.
“Is that thing empty?” Marissa asked.
“Looks like,” I asked. “Patrick, float it here?”
Patrick nodded. “No problem. Levitate.”
He moved the treasure chest to us.
I had a moment of panic at the realization that it could be a mimic — a monster disguised as a treasure box — and re-drew my sword as it approached.
Fortunately, it didn’t bite.
Sometimes an empty box is just an empty box.
“Other team must have already been through here. Let’s check the other door.”
The other door in the pendulum room was closed, but we surmised that the empty box had probably held the key to it. We made our way to the door easily and checked, finding it unlocked. That didn’t prove what the contents of the box had been, but it still gave us another path to check.
I opened the stone door.
This room was very different.
For one thing, the ceiling was about thirty feet up.
For another, there was a steel statue in the center of the room. The statue’s head almost reached the ceiling. I could see some writing on the wall behind the statue, but I didn’t get a chance to read it.
“Ack,” Patrick reflexively took a step back. I caught him before he stepped back onto the grate just a moment before another blast of fire came up behind us. “Sorry, sorry! That’s just...uh, big.”
And it was moving. The statue knelt down, opening a palm toward us.
At first, I thought it might be a friendly gesture of some kind. Maybe everything in here wasn’t trying to kill us.
Then I saw the hole in the center of its hand.
“Resh!” I stepped forward and swung, launching a shockwave of ice.
The blast of flame that emerged from the statue’s hand obliterated the shockwave.
Patrick reacted fast, pushing both hands forward to try to stop the flames. He only managed to slow them for a moment.
In that moment, Marissa shut the door.
The flames must have impacted the stone, but they didn’t blast through.
We all took a few deep breaths.
“Did you see anything other than the giant statue in there?” I asked.
“No people,” Patrick replied.
“There was something written on the back wall about three flames lighting the way,” Marissa offered.
She must have great vision to pick all that up from here.
I considered for a moment. “I’m betting this room was just a clue for the three torches in the entry way. We can come back here if we need to...but I’m going to be honest, I don’t think we should try to fight that thing.”
Marissa looked marginally disappointed, but Patrick nodded quickly in agreement.
We made our way back to the entrance, then to the skeleton room. The skeletons were still pinned beneath the spheres and unmoving.
From there, we checked the next chamber.
“Soulbrand’s forge,” Patrick whispered in awe.
Lava flowed freely down the walls of the room. Even being a few feet away, the temperature was absurdly hot, almost too difficult to bear. Fortunately, the air within seemed breathable. Th
ere was probably an enchantment keeping the space habitable, but just barely.
The room itself was divided into rings, each separated by a section of about two feet of flowing lava.
In the outer ring there was some sort of stone pipe toward the back of the room. Lava flowed freely through it, then into the rings in the floor.
To the side of that chimney, I could see a stack of blacksmithing tools. A huge hammer of blackened metal, tongs, and an apron.
Beyond that fiery ring was a section with a stack of silvery and golden metal bars.
Then there was another fiery ring, and in the center of it, a raised platform with an anvil. And next to that, a raised stone table with some other objects on it. I couldn’t see them clearly from a distance.
Ice was spreading across my hand again. I sheathed Selys-Lyann, tucking my hand under my opposite arm to let it warm up.
“I want to make a magic sword here. I want to make all the magic swords here,” Patrick mumbled.
“Wouldn’t mind a few new toys to play with myself,” Marissa chuckled, “But I don’t think we’ve got time for that.
Patrick looked sincerely dejected.
I cautiously stepped inside to take a closer look. The sections of flowing lava were a danger, but easily avoidable. I didn’t see any monsters or any signs of other traps.
There was another doorway on the left side of the room, but it was completely blocked by a waterfall of lava flowing from an open hole in the ceiling. The door itself beyond was open.
The next thing I noticed was a series of large cracks on the back wall of the room. That was a bit suspicious.
“Marissa?”
“Hm?”
I pointed at the cracks. “Want to punch this?”
She frowned. “As much as I do love punchin’ — well, everythin’, really — are you sure there isn’t gonna be a flood of lava behind that?”
I paused. “No. No, I am not. Good point, let’s not do that right now.”
“See that up there?” Marissa pointed at the central platform.
I turned my head toward it. “Sure. What about it?”
“I think that raised stone area next to the anvil has a mold.”
I raised an eyebrow. “For making a sword?”
She shook her head. “No. For making a key.”
I nodded in understanding. “That’s probably how the other team opened the door to the next room.” I pointed at the door beyond the flowing lava. “But I suppose it could be for a later room, too. Do you know how to use a forge like this?”
Marissa shook her head. “Never did any smithin’ with lava. Wager we could figure something out, though.”
I turned to Patrick. “Take a minute to rest outside. You’ve been doing most of the real work.”
“Thanks,” Patrick replied, clear gratitude in his tone. “Heat is killing me in here.”
Marissa and I hopped across the lava to the middle section, grabbed some metal bars, and then made our way to the raised area in the center. I had to use my ring of jumping to get there, but it still had plenty of mana left, so I wasn’t too worried.
There were, in fact, multiple molds on the top.
Including both a key mold and a sword mold.
“We making both?” I asked Marissa.
“We’re definitely making both.”
As it turns out, I am a terrible blacksmith.
I initially assumed we were just supposed to heat the metal in the lava, then pour it into the molds.
It turns out that if you heat metal in lava, the metal just melts right there, rather than cooperating and staying in a solid state until you have it in exactly the right position.
It was only at that point that we realized that there were levers on the platform.
And when we moved the levers, a mechanical arm moved the entire platform.
The next thing we discovered was that one of the directions moved the platform directly into the path of one of the lava falls.
After frantically pushing the lever back in the opposite direction, Marissa and I made running jumps back to the center of the room.
The platform was briefly bathed in molten fire, then moved back to its original position, seemingly unharmed. A few moments later, there was a brief flash of light and the remaining lava on the central platform vanished.
“That went well,” I offered.
Marissa giggled hysterically. “That is my least favorite lever now.”
After a bit more tinkering, we figured out that we could rotate the section with the molds, put a bar of metal into a slot above the mold, then move the platform to a section where the lava would pour from the chimney into a pipe that led to the metal...melting the metal and sending it into the mold.
This probably wasn’t the best solution available. Some of the lava escaped the pipe and nearly got into the key mold, but I managed to freeze it with Selys-Lyann while we moved the platform again.
Then we had a new key.
The second time, we rotated it to make a sword, too. Neither of us knew what the silver or gold metal were, so we made the key out of gold and the sword out of silver.
I froze them both with ice from Selys-Lyann. There was probably a better way to cool them properly, but I didn’t know how. This made them retrievable, at least.
After that, we returned to Patrick and took a break.
“How much time do you think we have left?” Marissa asked.
“At least an hour,” I replied.
Patrick looked contemplative. “You think? I figured we were almost out of time.”
I groaned. “I hope not. I need a break.”
I retrieved my flask of endless water from my bag. We drank deeply.
In retrospect, an infinite amount of water might have helped with some of the other problems we’d been running into.
After a brief rest, we made our way back into the room. Patrick held onto the new silvery sword, even though it was an awful weapon. Whatever metal it was made out of was heavy, and it didn’t have a proper grip on it.
Still, he wasn’t allowed to use his Dawnbringer Replica in the tests, so it meant he had a weapon if he needed one. Maybe I should have asked for him to have permission to use that here, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
I could have just given him the transference sword if I’d thought about it, but he seemed happier with this new and shiny one.
We made our way to the lava fall blocking the doorway, then Marissa hopped to the central platform. “Ready?”
We acknowledged, and she hit the levers on the central platform to move it. The platform moved to right below the lava fall, blocking the lava’s flow.
We still had to be cautious, but it made a path to get into the doorway.
We followed the hallway to the next room.
In the center was a fountain with clear blue liquid.
We knew exactly what that was. A mana fountain. We were almost at the end.
There were a few possibilities about what that meant. Maybe we’d missed the people were meant to rescue in a previous room, like the one with the giant statue. Or maybe we were supposed to bust down that cracked wall after all, and they would have been beyond it.
Maybe there never were people to rescue.
Or maybe they were those skeletons. That would have been really awkward.
Most likely, though? They were in the final chamber alongside some sort of horrible monster.
We took another break.
We needed it. It was really hot.
Then we made our way to the single door on the opposite side of the room and opened it.
Inside, we saw three fallen human bodies.
One was right near the door, unmoving, with three huge claw marks across his back. He was facing the door.
That told me that the door was probably going to close as soon as we entered, or that whatever had hit him had been fast enough to prevent him from leaving. Either was a concern.
Another was near a differen
t door, this one on the right side of the room. That was a woman, and she was trembling, a bleeding wound across her forehead. She had a golden key in her right hand.
Unfortunately, that right hand was no longer connected to rest of her body.
The final body was near the center of the room. A sword and shield were lying next to him. I couldn’t see any obvious injuries at a distance.
More importantly?
I couldn’t see a monster, either.
I turned to the woman that appeared to still be conscious. “We’re here to rescue you. Can you talk?”
She didn’t even turn to acknowledge me. She just stared at her severed hand.
“She’s in a bad way. Don’t think we’re gettin’ much out of ‘er.” Marissa frowned. “Think the monster is going to show up the moment we go in?”
“Seems likely,” Patrick replied.
I frowned. “And the door is probably going to close behind us.”
“Think that key is for the other exit?” Marissa gestured to the other doorway. “We could make a run for it.”
“I think that was her plan.” My eyes narrowed. “And it didn’t go well.”
“What’s our plan, then?” Patrick asked.
I briefly debated going back to get one of those giant metal spheres to block the doorway and prevent it from closing behind us, but we were short on time. I didn’t know how a person with a severed arm had survived this long, but I wasn’t going to gamble on taking a few more minutes when she was in that bad of shape.
“We do what they didn’t do.” I glanced to each of them. “We stick together.”
Patrick and Marissa nodded.
We stepped inside as a team.
The door slammed shut behind us.
And the injured woman screamed.
The monster descended from the ceiling.
But after our lesson at the entrance, we were a little more ready for a threat from above.
A long tail lashed at Patrick, but he expertly dodged out of the way.
He wasn’t ready for when the tail paused, revealing a snake-like head atop it. The snake head opened its jaws and exhaled a jet of fire toward us.
I countered the flames with a shockwave from Selys-Lyann, but as with the giant, it didn’t have the power to stop the fire completely.
Patrick waved both hands and fired a burst of fire right back at it. The two flame attacks slammed into each other and spread outward, sending burning energy across the room.