5 months and a week ago

  All four of them were exhausted after the fight and each was at least a little beaten up. They all, more or less, felt lucky to be alive. Sidian had used up a lot of his energy, Leni had burns on her claws from reaching into the constructs chest and Chell was covered in bruises and was clutching her chest where she likely had broken a rib or two from being thrown into the wall so hard. Cal, however, despite his close proximity to the construct had come away with only cuts, scrapes, bruises and exhaustion.

  He felt incredibly lucky.

  The group sat at the edge of the room, breathing hard and staring off into space. Doing their best to recuperate before even trying the next door.

  None of them were too badly injured to continue, they just needed to rest. Cal had already been tired from the teleport, but the adrenalin had seen him through the fight. Now that, that was wearing off he needed to catch his breath.

  Cal looked over at Sidian for a while, watching him meditate, trying to force his body to recover it’s magic. It was a dangerous thing to do regularly, but now and then a mage like him could get a bit of a boost by taking in magic from the air. Cal didn’t do that sort of thing though. Unlike Sidian when Cal felt like he shouldn’t use any more reasonably powerful magic, he didn’t have to. Cal just focused more on his sword play. On the flip side Sidian could keep the roof from coming down on their heads in a cave in, Cal could set fire to maybe a few guys.

  Leaning his head back, Cal took a swig of water from his canteen before offering it blindly to Chell. She took it without a word then handed it back. He swished it around a little to see how much was left, then returned it to the void-bag.

  “We should get moving.” Chell said eventually. She was the most injured, so it was her that they were waiting on, to announce time to move. As soon as she did, they stood up and walked over to the other door.

  As with the last door, Chell checked it over for traps before stepping back. “Huh… it’s a magic lock,” She said. “I can’t pick that.”

  “What do we need?” Sidian asked.

  “A key I think.” Chell replied pointing to an indent in the door. It was a long hexagon with a flat bottom and two short sides at the top.

  Cal frowned. “Crap.” He said. “That’s the gem we smashed. From the top of the constructs head.”

  “Oh, right…” Chell noted. “Did yours-” she began, turning to Leni and Sidian, but was cut off as Leni smugly offered up her gem.

  She flashed a self-satisfied grin at Cal who raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know what you’re looking at me like that for it was Chell that broke it.”

  Chell took the gem and stepped up to the door.

  “Hey, maybe someone else should do that.” Cal suggested. “This place has been chock full of traps and we just took that out of a blade construct that tried to kill us… maybe best someone else less crucial to the rest of the raid risk it. Someone like Leni whose gem it is anyway.”

  “I’m not getting stabbed. You do it.” Leni argued back.

  “Whoa, it was my suggestion, I’ve done my part. Besides I’m just a weak fleshy human. Aren’t you always telling us how strong your people are?” Cal retorted.

  “I co-” Sidian began, but Leni cut him off.

  “Strong and smart enough not to intentionally get stabbed.” Leni growled.

  “That’s fine. Based on the other magic traps it’ll probably be a flame trap. Aren’t you like fireproof or something?”

  “No, I’m not. Don’t you have elemental magic to deal with this stuff?” Leni argued.

  “I’m a fire mageblade, more a warrior like you than anything else, and certainly not an elemental wizard. Besides, I’ve already used my big spell for the day… but…” he sighed and shook his head, “yeah I guess I do have something that won’t knock me out.” Cal admitted, stepping up to Chell.

  “You sure?” she asked.

  Cal nodded. “Yup, I’m an idiot.” He said, taking the gem and shooing her back behind him. “I just want to point out before I do this that if I’d been only using fire magic I’d have been able to do way more spells than this. These teleports and shields aren’t my thing.”

  “Just get on with it wind bag.” Leni said.

  Cal rolled his eyes but stepped up to the door. He took a breath and held his main hand up in front of his face. He stuck his index and little fingers up in the air and curled his middle and ring finger down to meet his thumb and create a circle. He held his hand up to look through the circle with his right eye.

  “Also, I do want to point out that I will be bringing up over and over again that I did this while Leni was too chicken.” Cal added, then, before Leni could respond, took another deep breath and held it. He pressed the gem with his other hand into the slot.

  Instead of shooting fire back at him, etchings that were previously hidden in thick dust vibrated and lit up, making them visible and covering the door in white lights. The etchings were mostly patterns, but there was writing as well.

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  “Is that Elvish?” Cal asked, stepping back and releasing the shield spell he’d been preparing to release.

  Chell nodded. “Yeah, it is. It says Tomb of a Liberator.”

  “What’s a liberator?” Cal asked.

  “I don’t know…” Sidian said, frowning. “I’ve never heard of it before… unless it’s just-”

  Sidian was cut off by a rumbling sound that began as soon as the lights finished etching out the entire door. Then it opened, dragging slowly inwards to reveal the end of their money troubles.

  The shine of gold was the first thing that Cal noticed, almost a glow that reached out through the barest crack of the door and expanded as it opened further. As the door opened wide it was revealed that the room was about fifteen meters long and three wide, but so opulently decorated, so full of treasure that it looked smaller.

  Pillars stood at regular intervals leading to an alter or a pedestal at the other end with something resting upon it, atop a velvety cushion.

  The walls of the room were made of some kind of white and gold marble that must have been brought in because there was no other marble in the area - though it all looked like a single solid piece - with gold trimmed around and used for additional decoration. The wall coverings seemed to alternate between bookshelves filled with treasures and paintings or tapestries that depicted fire and flame, magical and non-magical.

  So much coin and so many artefacts were piled up around the pillars' bases that Cal almost missed a beautiful carpet running up the centre of the floor. The carpet was gold and red with flickers of yellow, orange and blue, and it led right up to the pedestal. How the carpet survived so long without rotting away or simply disintegrating Cal had no idea.

  With so many other treasures in the room seemingly discarded or haphazardly stacked in shelves, Cal’s eyes locked onto the pedestal. It had to be the most important thing there.

  “Whoa.” Sidian whispered and the others murmured their agreement, eyes wide.

  “We could get rich just picking the room apart…” Chell noted, eyes wide, staring around at all of the gold. “Forget the treasures, the walls would buy me a villa in the Blood Coast.”

  Cal eyed the doorway, then looked back over his shoulder at the two constructs. He turned to Chell. “Is it safe?” He asked.

  She blinked a few times, then looked around focusing in on the room. “It looks fine.” She said. “But that last room - and the door - was magical, not physical so it’s not as easy for me to tell.” She admitted. “Sidian, can you sense anything?”

  The mage stepped up beside Chell and held up a hand, closing his eyes. He took a long breath, almost as if he were smelling the magic. As he did so Cal also closed his eyes, reaching out with his own magic to sense anything that might be there. He wasn’t nearly as talented with core magic as Sidian, but two magical eyes - or a nose and mouth as the case may be - were still better than one. Cal sensed a little magic from the far end of the room, but nothing else.

  After a moment Sidian let his breath out again, opening his eyes. “The thing on the altar is magical, and until we opened the door I think there was a protection spell of some kind-“

  “That's probably why everything looks pristine.” Cal advised.

  Sidian nodded his agreement. “That’s all I can sense from here though.”

  “All right, lets still be careful,” Chell said. “I’ll go first. Everyone stay behind me.”

  Chell stepped into the room and paused for a long moment, half crouched and ready to leap backwards. She waited to see if she’d set anything off, but when nothing happened she straightened, looked back at the others and motioned for them to follow.

  The group walked out onto the carpet, eyes darting around the room. Now that he was inside, Cal could make out the treasures much more clearly. The room was littered with expensive accessories, tableware, statuettes, books with gold gilding. Still, it was the magic item up on the pedestal that he was really interested in. Who knew what such an old artefact could do.

  “Chell, is it safe for me to go over there?” Leni asked. When Cal looked over she was pointing towards a display cabinet of golden goblets, practically drooling.

  Chell frowned and took a moment to look the area over. “It seems safe, but…” She sighed, stepping back into her place in the formation, “if anything feels like it’s stuck or like you you need to put with more effort to pick it up than you'd expected, then leave it.”

  Leni nodded enthusiastically. “I’m going to start loading up on treasure.” She announced and practically skipped over to the display.

  Cal rolled his eyes and continued to follow Chell up to the pedestal. As he looked away from Leni he grinned and whispered to Chell, "I'm going to make her suffer so much for doubting my plan later."

  She let out a snort of laughter and then they continued, moving slowly, but not at a dungeon pace. They walked past a bookshelf full of books and Sidian paused. “I’m going to look at these books, same rules as Leni’s, but I think it’s probably best if I stay around here, in the middle of the room just in case something happens; I can get to everyone.”

  Chell frowned but nodded and Cal continued walking with her up to the magical item on the pedestal. When they reached it Cal stepped around the side of the pedestal, careful not to touch anything that seemed out of place as Chell stepped up in front of it. There was a step that helped her to reach the top, likely built for Feylings and Halflings.

  Cal peered down at the artefact from the side as she eyed it from the front.

  “It’s a dagger.” Chell whispered.

  The dagger was sat on a black velvet cushion and covered in dust and spiders webs. Despite that, they could see that it was of elven design - it could have been Feyling, but it was too big for someone of their diminutive size. It was forged almost into an S shape so that the blade curved one way and the handle the other. It’s handle was rose gold with a small ruby at the pommel and a thick line of what had to have been a different red crystal running down the back of the grip - it was preposterous to think it was ruby, with that much ruby the dagger would be worth half a kingdom, more if it had interesting magic. The blade was equally beautiful. It was rippled like the mithril of Cal’s blade but darker and it seemed to sandwich more red crystal which stuck out ever so slightly from the blades spine.

  It was perhaps the most beautiful weapon Cal had ever seen, even including his own mithril sword.

  “What do you think it does?” Cal asked. Even without intentionally reaching out he could feel the weapon’s magic.

  Chell shook her head leaning her face in close to inspect it. “No idea, we’ll have to hire a diviner when we’ve got paid for everything else.” She told him before taking in a deep breath and blowing.

  The dust blew away instantly but the spider webs clung on. Cal frowned. He was surprised that the whole place wasn’t covered in dust. It must have been hidden here for, what? Centuries? Millenia? But then; the rug hadn’t deteriorated at all in that time. It must have been the work of the protection spell that Sidian had noticed.

  That made Cal’s frown deepened further though. As he watched Chell check around the cushion for a pressure plate he wondered, if the protection spell protected every other part of the room, why hadn’t it protected the item? Surely the item was the part that needed protecting most, wasn’t it?

  Chell reached out and placed her hands under the dagger. She paused, waiting for a response, but when none came she lifted.

  The dagger came away easily. The webs all snapped and fell away so Chell lifted it higher. She turned to look at Cal and grinned. “We did it.” She said.

  Cal’s eyes caught the problem as soon as it was visible, but his brain wasn’t quick enough to react to it. It happened so quickly that Cal and Chell were still grinning when her body hit the floor.

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