The Fortress of Donmar (The Tales of Zanoth Book 2)

by Aaron J. Ethridge

  “Do you recognize those runes?” Nyssa asked, turning her gaze to Myra. “Because, I don't.”

  “I don't, either,” the former lich said, staring down at the plate.

  “I do,” Paul interjected, with a hint of confusion. “They're characters from Earth.”

  “And, that is a keyboard,” Joey asserted, pointing down at the device.

  “What's a keyboard?” the fairy asked.

  “An Earth thing,” the apprentice wizard replied.

  “So, what do we do?” Paul asked.

  “Try opening the door,” Darek suggested.

  “With the keyboard?”

  “No,” he replied, shaking his head, “with the handles.”

  “Oh, right,” the paladin replied before reaching his hand out toward one of the massive metal rings that hung from the portal.

  Instantly, Myra caught him by the wrist.

  “How many times do I have to warn you,” she said, gazing at him with a look of concern, “not to just reach out and touch mysterious doors?”

  “Sorry,” he replied. “I forgot.”

  “Well, don't,” she demanded.

  “I'll do my best not to in future.”

  The former lich carefully inspected the door, chanting to herself as she did so.

  “It's safe,” she smiled.

  “Good,” Paul replied, reaching out and taking one of the rings before giving it a twist. “It's locked.”

  “See what happens if you push on them from the back,” Darek suggested.

  “Good idea,” the paladin replied, before walking behind the massive doors. “There's nothing back here.”

  “What do you mean?” Alena asked.

  “I mean...” Paul began before stepping through the doors as if they weren't there, “that was weird... Anyway, you can't see the doors from the other side.”

  “That's because they’re not here,” Nyssa asserted, having flown around behind them herself.

  “What are you saying?” Darek asked.

  “I'm saying,” the fairy replied, flying through the doors as she spoke, “that the doors aren't there when you're on the other side of them. Kind of like the door of the vault isn't there if you're behind it.”

  “At least it's obvious what we're supposed to do,” Joey asserted.

  “Is it?” Myra asked.

  “Of course,” he chuckled, kneeling down to put his hands in the indentations on the plate.

  “What is that supposed to do?” Nyssa replied.

  “I don't know,” he admitted. “I expected it to do something, though.”

  “Maybe it's not supposed to be your hands,” Alena pointed out. “Go ahead, it, give it try.”

  “Alright,” Paul chuckled, kneeling down to put his own hands on the plate.

  Nothing happened. Each of the companions in turn placed their own hands on the plate, with the exception of Nyssa, who couldn't reach both sides of the panel at the same time. The results, or lack thereof, was the same for each of them.

  “Maybe the hands are the last step,” Joey said, quickly typing open on the keyboard.

  “I don't know,” Paul replied, shaking his head. “The fact that the characters are written in glass makes me think it isn't on.”

  “What?” Joey chuckled.

  “I'm saying that, if the board had power, the keys might be glowing or something.”

  “I guess I can see that,” his companion ceded. “Ladies, can you power it up?”

  “We can try,” Myra replied, staring down at the device once again.

  After several minutes of futile attempts, both she and Nyssa came to the conclusion that they had no idea what, if anything, powered the device.

  “Hmmm,” Joey said, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “I wonder...”

  “Wonder what?” Alena asked.

  In response, Joey flipped through his spell book, found the particular passage he was looking for, and read forcefully from the tome. As he brought the spell to an end, his hands were covered in crackling electrical energy. He placed his hands in the impressions on the plate and, instantly, the keys began to glow with a bright blue light.

  “Brilliant!” Paul exclaimed.

  “I agree!” Nyssa added, gazing at the apprentice wizard with a wide smile. “You really are getting smarter and smarter. Or, less and less dumb. That might really be a better way to put it. You're actually becoming an asset to the team. In fact, I sometimes find myself almost wishing you weren't so ridiculously huge.”

  “Do you?” he asked with a smile.

  “Very rarely,” she replied with a blush. “Now, open the door.”

  “Absolutely,” he nodded, once again typing open.

  The word open appeared in glowing letters above the top of the plate, but nothing else happened. After a brief moment of thought, Joey hit the enter key. The glowing word vanished, but nothing else changed.

  “Hmmm,” Paul hummed thoughtfully. “Okay, bro, it's obvious we're supposed to use the keyboard to open the door.”

  “Agreed,” Joey nodded.

  “But, how do we use it?”

  “That's what I'm asking myself.”

  “Well,” the paladin continued, “the door is locked.”

  “It is.”

  “So, maybe we just need to enter the right password to unlock it.”

  “That's good,” Joey replied, snapping his fingers, “but, what password should we use?”

  “How would I know? You're the security guy.”

  “Okay,” Joey replied, before typing password on the keyboard.

  “Seriously?” Paul said.

  “It's the most common password there is,” Joey nodded, hitting the enter key. “At least, it is on Earth.”

  As soon as he pressed the key, the keyboard went dark and the doors began to slowly swing open.

  “And, for the second time,” Joey cried triumphantly, “the man in robes shows you the road!”

  “Alright, I admit it,” Paul said, a tone of disappointment in his voice. “It's not a dress.”

  “Spoken like a gentleman,” his companion chuckled.

  The portal opened to reveal a large hall of golden colored stone. From its vaulted ceiling, which was supported by a number of elegant columns, hung several candle covered chandeliers which filled the chamber with a warm and merry light. Door after door lined the walls and, at the far end of the room, a magnificent staircase led both up and down.

  For several seconds, the companions stood; staring silently into the chamber beyond before Paul drew Telseir from its scabbard and stepped inside the massive room. His allies immediately followed his example and, as soon as the last of them had entered, the doors slammed shut behind them.

  “Alright,” Joey said, turning his attention back to the portal, “I don't like that.”

  “There's evil here,” Paul said, staring into the distance ahead.

  “I like that less,” he replied.

  “We knew there was evil here,” Darek pointed out. “The prophecy warned us about it.”

  “It's one thing to be expecting to run into some monster,” Joey asserted. “It's another to actually run into it.”

  “We haven't run into it yet,” Nyssa replied.

  “Exactly!” he agreed. “Which is why we have the time to come up with a plan.”

  “What kind of plan?” Alena asked.

  “Go get help stands out as obvious.”

  “If we would live,” the ogress replied, “we must be bold.”

  “Oh, I agree with that,” he nodded. “However, bold is not synonymous with stupid. If there's some horrible monster down here, we might as well bring our whole army with us to kill it. I don't see any reason to do it by ourselves. This isn't a movie, you know.”

  “How do we bring our army here?” Nyssa asked.

  “The vault,” he replied, raising his hands.

  “We don't know what the coordinates of this place are,” she explained.

  “True,” he nodded, “but, w
e know the coordinates of the temple.”

  “Once again,” Paul said with a smile, “brilliant.”

  “I think so,” Joey agreed. “I certainly don't see any reason to risk getting ourselves killed if we can help it. We know how to get inside the fortress now. There's no reason not to bring everyone here. Depending on the size of this place, we may not even need Kal Tammon.”

  “Well, the sooner we search the place, the sooner we'll know just how big it is,” Darek began, turning back toward the door. “So, let's get going. It'll take us two weeks, at least, to get the rest of the Warriors here and...”

  He stopped speaking mid-thought as he pushed one of the doors open to reveal an overgrown sward bathed in golden light. The grass covered expanse stretched perhaps fifty feet from the portal before coming to a rather abrupt end.

  “And, that,” Joey said with a sigh, stepping toward the entrance, “is why we should have gone back for our packs.”

  “Or, we should have at least grabbed them when we ended up back in the temple,” Paul replied.

  “Isn't this just lovely?!” Joey said sarcastically.

  “It is!” Nyssa exclaimed, fluttering beyond the doorway to bask in the gleaming sunlight. “It's absolutely beautiful.”

  “I wasn't talking about the view,” he explained. “I was talking about the fact that we may be trapped here with the whatever-it-is and that we don't even have any food.”

  “Before we overreact,” Myra interjected, stepping through the doorway, “let's find out exactly what our current situation is.”

  Paul quickly followed the maiden. The scene that he encountered on the far side of the portal was a strange one. Above their heads was a dark blue sky filled with soft white clouds, in which both a gleaming sun and a sea of twinkling stars were clearly visible. The grass covered area on which they stood seemed to run along the entire front of the colossal building they had just stepped from; although, at no point did it extend more than fifty feet from the walls.

  The young man crept cautiously to the very edge of the sward in order to get a view of what might lie below. The only thing that met his eye was what appeared to be an endless expanse of night sky.

  “I don't know where we are,” he said, gazing into the star-filled abyss, “but I don't think we're gonna be able to just leave.”

  “No...” Myra agreed, standing by his side and holding his arm as she took in the view below. “Wherever we are, magic brought us here. Only magic will be able to take us back.”

  “That figures,” Joey said, approaching the pair. “And, of course, it's the kind of magic you and Nyssa can't perform.”

  “We might be able to,” Nyssa said thoughtfully, hovering out over the abyss. “If...”

  “Come back here,” Joey interrupted.

  “Why?”

  “If you fall,” he replied, a touch of annoyance in his voice, “we won't be able to catch you.”

  “I'm not going to fall,” she giggled. “I can fly.”

  “I don't care,” he said, shaking his head. “Something crazy could happen. You could get knocked out, or...”

  “By what?” she interjected.

  “Does it matter?!” he exclaimed. “There's no reason for you to be flying above the bottomless nothing! You're just tempting fate! Besides, your making my feet tingle.”

  “Alright, fine,” she sighed, fluttering once again to the side of her companions. “As I was saying, before I was so rudely interrupted; we might be able to cast a teleportation spell depending on a number of factors.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, knowing where we are,” Myra replied, “having months to prepare, and having a number of magical items that we don't have with us.”

  “I see,” Joey replied. “So, even if you had everything you needed, it would take months?”

  “Unless we had something like another capture stone,” Nyssa pointed out. “We could modify one of those in a day or so.”

  “If we could be sure we were close enough to whatever fortress they were connected to,” the former lich added. “Which, obviously, we can't be.”

  “On top of which,” Joey replied, shaking his head, “we don't have one.”

  “Right,” Nyssa nodded.

  “So, we just starve to death, then?”

  “No,” Sarrac asserted. “We find the table with wine and bread.”

  “After we kill the deadly beast?” Joey asked.

  “Probably,” Sarrac asserted.

  “Alright,” he said, throwing up his hands. “Then, let's get to killing.”

  The band quickly made their way back into the hall and headed for the staircase. Whatever the creature was that inhabited the stronghold, Paul could feel that it was currently in the chambers below. As they stepped on the stairs, a number of torches hanging from the walls burst into flame.

  “You know,” Joey said, following along at the end of their descending column, “I'm thinking this isn't the best idea.”

  “What would be the best idea?” Paul asked over his shoulder.

  “I think we should search the whole place,” he explained, “and, after that, we can come back for the evil thing.”

  “How big is the place?”

  “How should I know?”

  “Then how do we know how long it will take us to search it?” the paladin asked. “I'd rather kill the thing now than spend the day searching through empty rooms only to have to face it tonight. Or worse, have it attack us while we're trying to sleep.”

  “Maybe,” Joey replied, “but we might find something to help us kill it.”

  “Like what?” Paul chuckled, stepping out onto the first landing they had yet to encounter.

  “I don't know. A gun maybe.”

  “I haven't seen any guns in Zanoth.”

  “Maybe we could make one.”

  “This is weird,” Nyssa asserted, flying across the narrow chamber to inspect what seemed to be a stone filled portal. “Why would you make a doorway without a door in it? I don't see what the point...”

  Here, she paused; her attention caught by a small rune stone at the side of the door. Without pausing for thought, she reached out and pushed the button. Instantly, the stone filling the portal vanished to reveal an expansive, and familiar, chamber.

  “The vault!” Paul exclaimed.

  “It must be part of the fortress!” Myra speculated.

  “Awesome! Now we can get out of here and get some help,” Joey replied, stepping through the doorway and turning his attention to the runes that controlled it. “Or not... It's not charged up.”

  His companions stepped inside the chamber only to discover that his assertion was perfectly correct.

  “This is bad,” Darek said, shaking his head.

  “It is,” Joey agreed. “If this thing was ready to go, we could get out of here.”

  “That's not what I mean,” Darek replied. “If the vault's here, then it's not at Kal Tammon, or the catacombs, or wherever the Warriors had it.”

  “You're right,” Myra agree, gazing over the runes. “And, it looks like it was at the fortress.”

  “We need to find a way to send it back,” Alena asserted. “For all we know, the place could be under siege at this very moment. We may have taken away the Warrior's only means of retreat.”

  “You mean I may have,” Nyssa replied, before sighing heavily.

  “It's not your fault,” Joey said, giving her a smile. “You didn't know what that button did.”

  “No, I didn't,” she agreed, “which is exactly why I shouldn't have touched it. My curiosity got the better of me and it may cost who knows how many lives.”

  “Or, it may not,” Sarrac pointed out. “We can't be certain what's going on at the moment. However, the fact that the vault’s no longer packed with food strikes me as a good sign. Whatever's been happening over the last couple of weeks, the General and Gregory obviously felt it was safe to unload the provisions. If Kal Tammon was currently under siege, I don't think th
at would be the case.”

  “I hope you're right,” the ogress agreed. “But, whatever the case may be, we need to get the vault back to them as quickly as possible.”

  “Especially since it'll take another five days to charge after we manage to get it back,” Darek added.

  “Could you scry on Kal Tammon, Nyssa?” Joey asked. “At least then we would know what's happening.”

  “I might be able to,” she replied thoughtfully. “I can't be sure, of course, because I don't know where we are. I can only see so far from where I am, you know? Still, it's worth a try.”

  “You can try it after we've killed the whatever-it-is and searched the place,” Paul replied. “Until we find a way to get back or at least send the vault back, it's not going to do us any good to know what's happening. We won't be able to do anything about it one way or the other.”

  “That's certainly true,” Darek nodded. “So, we need to get moving.”

  The entire party agreed with this sentiment and instantly resumed their search. The remainder of the floor was filled with other storage rooms; most of which were completely empty. One chamber did contain the remnants of what had once probably been food. At least, a number of torn, empty, and rotting, sacks littered the floor.

  Having made these limited discoveries, the party once again made their way to the stairs. Paul was certain the beast was still below them. He felt as if its evil presence was growing stronger the further they descended. After a brief discussion, the band decided to make their way to the very bottom of the staircase in order to continue their search. The paladin argued that, if they started there, they would be sure to encounter the monster as they worked their way up, floor by floor.

  After passing two more landings, the staircase terminated at a third of much smaller proportions. A single metal door obstructed their further progress.

  “Myra,” Paul said, waving his hand toward the portal, “would you do the honors?”