by Ben Wolf
Garrick wanted to say, “No one asked you,” but he kept quiet instead.
“We’ve made enough noise as it was getting inside,” Coburn said. “Closing the door means more noise, and none of us want to risk anyone inside realizing we’re here.”
“Fine. Whatever. I don’t care.” Garrick pulled the diagram from his pack and showed it to all of them, Phesnos included. “This shows the layout of the temple. We’re looking for a secret room concealed behind a long set of curtains hanging in the main hall. There’s a door set into the wall behind those curtains. That’s where we need to be.”
Coburn took the lead. He picked the lock to the room’s other door, and it didn’t scrape or even creak as it opened. Soft, red-orange light flowed into the doorway, but Garrick couldn’t yet see where it was coming from.
Coburn slipped out of the room in perfect silence with one of his knives in his right hand. Noraff and Phesnos followed him, and Irwin and Garrick brought up the rear.
They entered a short, stone hallway devoid of life. Two torches mounted on the walls burned with red-orange flames. At one end of the hallway was one door, and the other hallway had just an open arch.
Coburn looked back at Garrick, who nodded toward the arch.
As they crept toward the arch, the light shuffle of footsteps sounded from ahead of them. They all froze in place.
Two bald-headed men in black-and-red robes walked past the archway, but neither of them looked into the hallway where Garrick and his team were waiting.
Once they passed, Garrick exhaled a calm breath and relaxed his grip on his battle-axe. He nodded to Coburn, and they started to advance once again.
The next hallway took them deeper into the temple, and they snuck past what appeared to be a kitchen, a barracks full of monks, and a bathing room. Finally, they reached a huge room full of tables and benches. It was dark except for a handful of torches that continued to burn, but they were just a fraction of the total number mounted on the walls.
“This isn’t it,” Garrick whispered. “Keep moving.”
The next set of doors opened to a room resembling what the diagram showed: a grand hall with high ceilings, pillars of black granite, and a handful of crimson torches burning. Ornate etchings of great, scaled beasts with sharp claws and fire billowing out of their mouths adorned the stone walls. A granite altar on a platform at the far end of the hall lay empty.
Smooth, black stone made up the floor and the walls. Two long windows stretched from the lofted ceiling nearly down to the floor, and on either side of them, floor-length curtains hung from iron rods. It all looked just like the layout on the diagram.
Each of the curtains bore the symbol Garrick had seen on the cultists’ chests back at the pub, only with the colors reversed: a crimson background with a black fireball in the center.
They glanced around the room to ensure they could cross to the curtains safely. Finding no one, they headed toward the right side. Sure enough, behind the curtain they found a rectangular outline cut into the stone, but it had no door handle.
“So how do we get it open?” Coburn whispered. “I cannot pick a lock that doesn’t exist.”
“There’s a lever somewhere nearby,” Garrick replied. “The diagram says it should be…”
He turned to face the altar.
“It’s under the altar?” Noraff asked. “The thing has to weigh a ton. It’s solid stone.”
“So we’re going to have to move it,” Garrick said.
“I could blow it up instead,” Irwin offered.
“Too noisy.” Garrick motioned toward the opposite side. “I’ll take one end, and the four of you can take the other end. We lift on three. Try to slide it toward the curtains.”
Noraff grunted and Phesnos sighed, but they obeyed.
Garrick counted down. “One… two… three.”
They all strained against the heavy altar, but it did move—slowly. Inch by miserable inch, they hefted it off of its spot, revealing a metal apparatus beneath. In its center sat a lever.
“Would you care to do the honors?” Coburn motioned toward it but looked at Garrick.
“You’re just worried it’s old and rusted. You don’t think you can lift it,” Garrick quipped.
“On the contrary, I didn’t want to break it with my unfathomable strength,” Coburn countered.
Garrick scoffed and reached down. He pulled the lever up with one hand, and it squeaked. It stopped with a metallic crunch, and the familiar sound of stone scraping against stone sounded from by the curtains. Garrick released the lever, and it slowly receded into the metal casing on its own.
Within seconds, the secret door was open. They rushed to move the altar back in place, and then they headed over to the door. Just inside, they found another lever, and Coburn pulled it down. The door started to shut them inside.
“You’d better hope that same lever opens the door back up,” Garrick said.
“I’m certain it does.” Irwin had his glowing yellow vial out again. He adjusted his spectacles and studied a network of gears and chains along the wall inside the room. “We should be fine.”
“So what now?” Noraff asked.
Garrick looked around as the door shut. The room contained nothing but a few unlit torches in brackets mounted to the walls and a smooth gray floor. “I’m not sure. There’s supposed to be a—”
Something clanked, and the secret door came to a stop, now shut. Then stone scraped against stone once again, and a section of the floor opened, revealing a staircase that spiraled down under the floor.
“That’s what I was looking for,” Garrick said. He grabbed a torch from one of the brackets. “Everyone get a torch. We’re going down.”
The staircase descended into a subterranean realm like almost every cave Garrick had ever seen. It opened into a large, cavernous space, full of darkness and the sound of dripping water echoing off the walls.
As they descended deeper into the cave, Irwin used a single drop from a vial of red liquid to light his torch, then the others lit their own torches using Irwin’s flames. The light from all five torches illuminated enough of the cave to show them their path.
When they reached the bottom of the stairs, they found a single path to follow, punctuated by stalactites and stalagmites and pillars of minerals and rocks. It perfectly matched the path drawn on Lord Valdis’s diagram.
Aside from the near-constant dripping noises, Garrick heard only the shuffling of the group’s footsteps and, occasionally, other sounds in the darkness. Scraping. Scurrying. Skittering.
Whatever it was, they weren’t alone down there.
Garrick glanced at Coburn, who shook his head with wide eyes. Whatever Coburn could see beyond the reach of the flames, it wasn’t good.
Garrick stayed on his guard, constantly turning his head and moving his torch around for a better look at his surroundings, but there wasn’t much to see except dozens of holes in the walls and occasionally on the cavern floor beyond the path.
Don’t want to know what’s in those, Garrick told himself. Just get past this part.
As they progressed, orange light filtered into the cavern from the direction they were headed, and it grew brighter with each step, but the cavern narrowed as well. Moments later, they reached a small opening only about the width of two men and just barely tall enough so Garrick didn’t have to hunch to get through it.
Garrick stepped through it first, his battle-axe ready for anything, and hot, humid air enveloped him.
Inside, he found a cavern bigger than any they’d encountered thus far. The edge of the stone floor ended in a steep drop-off about fifty feet from the opening he’d just come through. Below, a roiling river of lava provided ample light and explained the oppressive heat in the cavern.
The cavern’s jagged ceiling had to be several hundred feet high, and the air wavered and rippled from the molten rock below. In the distance, he saw a steep cliff face like the one Noraff and Coburn had climbed to reach the temple,
but shorter.
The river of lava flowed between the edge of the stone floor and the cliff face, but a series of stone pillars jutting out of the lava formed a perilous and erratic path over to it. Garrick couldn’t see them all clearly, but those he could see didn’t look particularly sturdy.
The others stepped through behind Garrick.
“By the gods,” Coburn said from behind Garrick. “This place is magnificent and wretched all at once.”
“I’m certainly not cold anymore.” Irwin fanned himself with his hands.
“Have we descended all the way into the underworld?” Noraff asked.
Garrick shook his head, still taking in the sight. “No. It’s a dungeon of some sort.”
“So there’s something in here we need to retrieve?” Noraff asked.
Garrick nodded. “Yes. Something very specific.”
“And you’re still not going to tell us what it is?” Noraff prodded.
“No. You’re here to help us get to it and get it out.” Garrick glanced between Noraff and Phesnos. “That’s all you need concern yourselves with.”
“Don’t take it personally,” Coburn said. “Neither Irwin nor I know what treasure we seek either.”
Truth be told, Garrick didn’t even know what the treasure was. Lord Valdis had simply told him to bring back everything he could find that looked important. You will know what I’m after, Lord Valdis had said. When you see it, you will know.
“So what now?” Irwin asked.
Garrick looked at the diagram. It appeared to end at the point where they’d left the old cavern behind, but some notes scrawled along the bottom gave him additional insight. He folded it up and tucked it back into his pack.
“The diagram ends here, but it looks like there are two paths that continue moving forward. At the end of each path is a key, and the diagram says we’ll need both keys to access the treasure.”
He pointed toward the cliff face beyond the river of lava. “Some of us need to traverse those pillars leading toward that cliff face and climb up there, and the rest of us will take this other path to the right.”
The other path continued on solid ground, but it led up an incline, away from the lava river, to a towering archway clearly carved by skilled stoneworkers rather than shaped by nature. Inside loomed more of the same blackness they’d just left.
The implication was clear: risk death by traversing the lava river on those pitiful pillars, or risk death by venturing into the territory of whatever had carved the archway. For Garrick, the choice was easy: he could fight against whatever had carved the archway, but he couldn’t fight against a flowing river of lava if he were to fall in.
“Apparently, you expect me to take the lava route,” Noraff said.
“You climb. I fight. It makes sense,” Garrick said. “And since you insisted on bringing a fifth along, you don’t have to do it alone. Phesnos can go with you.”
“Why not Coburn again?” Noraff asked. “He’s a better climber than Phesnos.”
“Because where I’m going, it’ll be dark. Coburn can see in the dark. You’ve got all the light you need in here.” Garrick continued, “And don’t even think about taking Irwin. He can’t make the jumps between the platforms, and he won’t be able to climb the wall, either.”
“And if I fall into the lava?” Noraff said.
Garrick shrugged. “Then you’ll die, and we’ll have to make do without you.”
A screech split the air, then a black thing the size of a small dog skittered out of the archway on eight legs, right toward the group.
Irwin and Noraff jumped back, and the sight of the thing startled even Garrick. But decades of training made him drop his torch and raise his battle-axe, ready.
The thing pounced at Irwin, the smallest of their group, and he gasped.
Garrick took a huge step and swung his battle-axe down at the thing as it careened through the air. Crunch.
The thing shrieked upon impact, and it went down with Garrick’s battle-axe to the floor. It lay there, writhing and wriggling with the battle-axe’s blade sticking out of its back, unable to advance further. Dark blood oozed out of its wound.
“Absolutely revolting,” Coburn said. “What an abomination!”
The thing looked to be part spider, thanks to its eight legs and beady eyes, but the rest of it was something else entirely. Its body was thick and black, covered in an insect-like shell, and it had two pincer-like claws at the front of its body.
“What is it?” Noraff asked.
“It appears to be some sort of hybrid species. Perhaps part scorpion and part spider,” Irwin replied.
“So, a ‘scorper?’” Garrick said.
“Very apropos,” Coburn said. “Vile and repulsive as it is.”
The scorper thrashed, threatening to slip free, still screeching.
Garrick motioned to Irwin to get back, and he reached over and picked up his torch, all while keeping his battle-axe firmly embedded in the scorper’s back. Then he put the torch’s flames under its back end.
The scorper’s shrieks intensified as it caught fire, and the flames soon engulfed it. Its legs burned off first, and then its pincers, and it finally stopped squealing as the fire charred its head. Like most bugs, it burned quickly.
For good measure, Garrick left his battle-axe in it until it was reduced to ash. A bit of fire wouldn’t hurt his weapon, but the thought of the thing scurrying around while ablaze seemed even worse than when it had emerged from the archway.
Garrick shook the excess ash off of his battle-axe and eyed Noraff. “Still want to go through the arch?”
Noraff scowled, but he said, “Let’s go, Phesnos.”
Together, they started toward the first of the pillars jutting out of the lava.
“You think they’re going to make it?” Irwin asked. “I calculate their chances at about fifty percent.”
“After seeing that wretched creature come for us, I’m more concerned about our chances,” Coburn said.
“I estimate our odds to be about one in—”
“They’ll be fine, and so will we,” Garrick cut in. “Come on. We’ve got a dungeon to raid.”
Several steps later, as the archway swallowed them into the darkness within, Garrick stepped on the first of what appeared to be a series of stone tiles stretching beyond the reach of their torchlights.
The architecture didn’t stop there. Pillars of carved stone rose to the dungeon’s rounded ceiling, but most of their facades had crumbled with age. Unlit torches and candelabra were mounted to the pillars and to the dungeon’s walls, and black, iron lamps hung on matching chains from the ceiling at regular intervals.
Someone or something had built this part of the dungeon.
At first, Garrick guessed it was dwarves, but then he saw a large symbol carved into one of the pillars. It was a four-pointed star with an eye in the center. The iris resembled that of a cat’s eye, only it lay horizontal instead of vertical.
It was the symbol of the ancient Aletians, the people who brought order to the continent of Aletia and who founded Etrijan and its surrounding countries several millennia earlier. They were people of legend, long extinct and obsolete, but they had left behind a widespread, long-enduring legacy, apparently including this place.
Garrick started to point the symbol out to Coburn and Irwin, but his next step depressed one of the tiles with a click.
He pulled his foot back, wary of what he’d just done. Had he sprung some sort of trap? Had he alerted something within the dungeon?
The torches, candelabras, and hanging lamps sparked to life with violet fire, casting a warm, yet haunting glow into the space.
“What did you do?” Coburn hissed.
Before Garrick could answer, a loud rumble sounded behind them. They whirled back for a look in time to see a massive stone slab rising from the ground. It covered the archway completely and trapped them inside.
“Now what?” Irwin asked.
“It changes n
othing,” Garrick said. “We have to keep moving forward anyway.”
They turned toward the dungeon’s tiled path once again, and in the violet light, they saw that it rose at a steady incline toward another archway. The room on the other side of that second archway glowed with faint teal light.
But ahead of the archway, not twenty feet ahead of them, stood a lone figure with a curved, chipped sword in its hand.
It wore an iron helmet over what remained of its head, which amounted to a gray-white skull with decayed flesh clinging to its cheekbones and chin. On its chest, the upper half of a torn metal breastplate exposed its rib bones underneath. It had one metal gauntlet on its non-sword hand and one metal shin guard over its bony left leg but no other armor to speak of.
Overall, it was far more bone and tendons than flesh, yet it stood there as if it had the strength and musculature of a fully intact warrior.
“What sorcery is this?” Coburn asked.
“It’s a skulk,” Garrick replied. “A fell being. Once a normal human or elf or whatever, but something stole its essence and reanimated it with dark magic.”
The skulk raised its sword and opened its mouth as if to loose a battle cry, but with no throat, only a low howl of rushing wind sounded throughout the cavern.
The crackle of smashing rocks reverberated as random floor tiles fractured and shattered. A dozen more skulks crawled up from the fresh holes in the floor, their bones and sporadic armor clacking on the stone tiles.
Garrick glanced behind them. The slab still covered the archway door, but more importantly, four skulks had climbed out of the tiles behind them as well. A bulbous, black scorper clung to the face of one of the skulks, gnawing on what little flesh remained around its eye sockets, but the skulk didn’t seem to notice.
“Disgusting.” Coburn tossed his torch to the floor and unsheathed his other knife with his free hand.
Garrick had never encountered skulks before; he’d only heard about them in the myths his tribesmen had told around the campfire when he was a child. To hear the men talk about them, Garrick gathered that cutting them down was a viable option, so that’s what he would do.
“How do we kill them?” Irwin fidgeted with his bag, which he now wore on the front of his body for easier access to his concoctions.
