Chapter Seventy-eight

Tunnels of Antiquity

I was cleaning off my arms from the insides of the worm when I felt a rumble in the ground. It felt distant, but it still made me nervous. I pressed my hand against the wall, trying to tell where it was. I couldn't determine where it was coming from, but it was getting closer, and coming in fast. I didn't know how long we had, but whatever was coming felt bigger than the worm we'd just slain.

"What's that?" Melima asked, eyes wide.

"There's something big coming," I replied. I was starting to get an idea of what direction it was coming from, to the right of the direction we needed to go, underneath us. That wasn't a good sign. "We should go, now."

We all took off, flying down the tunnel. The passage turned to the left, then split into two, both of them seeming to be carved by monsters. The one to the right went slightly up, the one to the left went down. I made a quick decision and took us down the left path, I didn't want to go up to the surface.

The tunnel took some odd curves, but soon the tunnel split again, one tunnel obviously being carved by a monster, one by tools. We continued down the tool-made tunnel at a fast pace.

We reached another fork with three archways. It looked like at one point they might have had doors. The one going straight leveled out, the one to the left had stairs leading up, and the one to the right had stairs going down. We chose the path to the right.

Sounds echoed down the tunnel. Whatever had been coming our way had broken through the walls. The sounds stopped, then started again for a few moments. It seemed like it had stopped in the cavern where we'd killed the worm. Hopefully, the corpse would keep the bigger thing occupied for a while.

Those flying by spell floated down to the ground, the magic ending. They were going to have to walk, but I stayed on my broom, trying to keep us as quiet as possible. The tunnel we were now in was much smoother than the others we'd gone through. It was more laid stone than carved dirt. This area had been very purposefully made.

Something ahead of us looked odd, it looked like a sheet of glass was on the stairs, blocking our path. Once we were closer, I realized it was water— the tunnel was flooded.

I analyzed the water, looking for any threats or anything wrong with the water. It all seemed fine. Ari'yasa stripped down to her undergarments, telling us she could hold her breath as long as she needed to and would scout ahead. I didn't love the idea, but we didn't have much other choice. We didn't want to use up magic or potions if we didn't have to, and we didn't know yet how long we'd have to be underwater.

I had Ari'yasa take Melima's earring so she could communicate with us if she found a place to surface. I considered following her with the necklace Sindus had that allowed him to breathe underwater, but realized I'd have to take some time to connect with the magic. She was going to have to go alone.

She shuddered as she stepped into the water— it was cold. We tried giving her the ring of warmth Sindus had, but again, it would take some time to connect to. She swam down into the water, leaving the rest of us. I pressed my hand to the wall again, feeling for vibrations. Nothing seemed to be getting closer, yet.

It seemed like Ari'yasa was gone for a long time, but she came back about five minutes later, reporting what she found. There were a couple of different rooms, one small, one big. The large room had columns and rubble, a hole in the ceiling was where the water seemed to be coming from, even colder than the rest of the water. There were three archways in the room, the one in the center being larger than the others. The ones to the left and center had stairs going up, the one to the right had a set going down.

We needed to go left next, so we asked Ari'yasa to scout out that tunnel. A few minutes later she came back, letting us know that the stairs went up past the waterline and turned right. It only took a couple minutes to surface, we thought we could all hold our breath that long.

Ari'yasa started gathering her gear and putting her clothes back on. We put anything we didn't want wet into Melima's bag. I worried about my arrows, but my quiver seemed to keep any more than one arrow in a space like Melima's bag did. I did take my armor off. I didn't want it slowing me down, nor did I want the leather to shrink.

Jörgen cast a spell that made it easier for him to swim and allowed him to breathe underwater, then he stripped all the way down. I tried as much as possible not to look in the direction of the old man. We decided that Ari'yasa would lead, since she knew where we were going, and she'd guide Jörgen, who couldn't see. I'd be right behind her, then Sephra and Melima.

I stepped into the water, recoiling at the cold. I jumped in, knowing I just had to get it over with. The crushing cold arrested my lungs, forcing out some of my breath. I resurfaced, gasping for air. "That was cold! A lot colder than I expected!"

I followed Ari'yasa, struggling to keep up. Soon Sephra passed me, then Melima. My muscles didn't want to move in the frigid water. I felt myself tense up at the sight of a low altar, much like the one in the trapped room at the church of Loltha. Was the water getting colder, or was it just me?

We made it through the door and started up the stairs. I wasn't going to be able to hold my breath much longer. I forced myself to kick harder to reach the surface. My friends grabbed my arms and pulled me out of the water, letting me gasp for air. That had been close. What were we going to have to go through to get the Water Stone?

The air was cool and still, but we were able to dry off a little bit before I donned my armor again. I was grateful for Melima using her magic to help us dry off. I was cold, and memories of frostbitten skin, red robes, and shivering against a wall flooded my mind. How long would that church haunt me?

The tunnel turned right, continuing with the carefully constructed, smooth, stone tunnels. We hadn't climbed as high as we'd been when we started down the other stairs, but that also meant that we were farther away from the big thing that had been heading our direction. It didn't quite have the underdark feeling as low as we were, so I still felt a little out of my element.

We came to another three-way fork and chose to go straight. It continued straight for longer than I was used to— the tunnels had been curved back and forth a lot. We came to another fork, but this time it was just a branch that went off to the right, the main tunnel continued straight. Sephra and I agreed we wanted to go straight.

"Wait," Melima said, "are we missing treasure?"

"I almost got eaten!" I said. "It could be, but the rooms could also be booby-trapped, and we're in a bit of a hurry."

The tunnel continued straight for a while longer, then curved slightly to the right. It went on straight from there for a while, then went down another set of stairs. There were occasional landings, but it continued down for several minutes. We came to another landing that had a hallway off to the left. The stairs continued down, but the hallway also had stairs going down in two directions, parallel to the stairs we were already on. We agreed to stay on the course we were going— the directions told us to keep going straight.

We went down another three or four storeys, then there was a left turn to a straight hallway. It went a short distance, then divided left and right. Both hallways widened, ending in large sets of doors. We chose to go to the right door— the last turn. That was where the directions indicated we should be at the door. We'd made it.

The area in front of the door was not wide enough to cast the dome, it wouldn't be safe to rest before we went inside. We knew there was an enemy inside, but we had used a lot of magical reserves and I was still hurting from the worm's sting.

The door was large and metal. The bottom was etched with decor of gears, tools, and people building things. They were all shorter, probably gnomes. The top continued the ornamentation of gears. Four hands were carved at the top of each door, the symbol of each school of magic carved into them. More hands were towards the bottom. The ones closest to the ground looked Gnomish in size, then Human, Elven, and Goliath, gradually getting higher.

A ten-sided geometric shape was carved on the inside of the two doors, close to where they met. A gem was set in the center of each shape, about the size of an open fist. Jörgen set a bonfire in the hall so he could see. The gems in the shapes were purple.

Jörgen poked Sephra in the eye with his ethereal hand. "Code raven!" Melima shouted.

I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to the door. Jörgen wasn't doing anything too dangerous. Not that would attract a lot of unneeded attention anyways.

Each of the hands had a small, white gem set into the palm, cut into a rhombus shape. In the center of each door was writing in the Dwarvish script, but it looked like nonsense to me. Jörgen took several minutes to cast a spell to allow him to read it. He translated the left door first.

The greatest sacrifice

Was given to protect

Their creations

We protect now

He then translated the right door.

What is given

Will be taken

Until your worth

Proved you are

I noted the order that the schools were etched on the door— illusion, evocation, necromancy, abjuration, conjuration, transmutation, enchantment, then divination.

Melima tried pushing on the doors, which didn't budge. I stepped closer to inspect them and realized that the gears weren't decor, they were working gears inside the doors.

Jörgen mentioned that the stones inside of the hands were siphoning stones that would collect and hold magic. Melima let out a deep breath. "I don't know what schools of magic we all have access to, but my theory is that we have to—like a blood sacrifice—use our magic to open this door with our different types of magic, and it will strip us of that power until we prove our worth. I don't know what that means. I don't know how we prove our worth. And I don't know if that will be shown to us until after the doors are opened. But we very well could be facing a whole lot of dangerous enemies without our powers. Depending on how we manage that experience will depend on how we get them back. That's my theory."

"I was having the same theory," I said.

Sephra asked how I was doing, which wasn't bad. I felt like I could take more hits than Jörgen still, and possibly Ari'yasa. Melima reminded me about the scroll she gave me, but I wasn't sure that it was the right time to use it. We wondered about resting before entering the room, but we could still feel rumbling coming from above us. There wasn't enough space for the dome, and we probably wouldn't be safe without it.

Melima walked up to the door with lightning sparking in her hand. She tried to reach the hand with the evocation symbol on it, but it was just out of reach. I suggested using the hands below each school, which did have scorch marks around some of them. I figured each hand connected to a different school. Another interesting thing I noted was that all the hands were right hands—none were left hands.

Melima put her sparking hand into one of the hand-shaped recesses, but nothing happened. I bit my lip. "I wonder if it has to be more than a cantrip."

"I don't want it to be more than a cantrip!" Melima said.

Jörgen shook his head. "The schools aren't in the same order they're normally taught in."

"It might be some type of cipher," Melima said. "IENACTED, does that mean anything to anyone? Maybe backwards? DETCANEI? Maybe it's scrambled?"

We jumbled over the letters a little bit. Finally, Ari'yasa spoke up. "I enacted?"

We tried to see if it led into the script, but didn't get anywhere with it. We started talking about what spells we had and what schools they belonged to. I didn't have many, especially if cantrips didn't do anything.

Another rumble passed by us, really close this time. We may have been making too much noise, and probably didn't have much time. Melima asked what spells people could cast at the fourth level of power. I hadn't yet learned how to harness that much power. I hoped we could just use spells at the first level of power, we didn't want to use up all of our arcane reserves.

Jörgen cast a spell that caused the air around his hand to frost and touched the human hand, the rightmost one, on the right door. The conjuration symbol lit up in orange, and a small stone in one of the faces of the ten-sided shape lit up purple. I hadn't noticed those before. There were five of them, plus the big one in the center. The gears inside the door moved slightly as well.

The wizard took his hand away, the crystal in the recessed hand now glowing white. He cast another spell into the human hand on the left door, the leftmost hand. The abjuration symbol lit up in blue, and a small stone lit up purple. Ari'yasa cast a spell with a black aura and touched the Gnomish hand, the rightmost one on the left door.

The necromancy symbol lit up in green, and four of the small stones lit up, as well as the large one in the center. "I cast that one at fourth level," Ari'yasa said.

Melima cast a spell in the Elven hand on the right door, the second hand from the left. The transmutation symbol lit up in yellow, and one more small stone lit up. We were going to have to be careful if we wanted to light up all the schools. Sephra worried about making sure we did the schools in the right order, going from where the doors met and going out.

Jörgen asked me what schools I had access to, and I mentioned that I could cast an enchantment spell, but I didn't want to cast it at the third level of power, or I wouldn't be able to use that level until I regained all of my arcane reserves.

Ari'yasa tried casting a spell with her staff, but the door didn't accept it. Sephra pushed in front of me and touched the Elven hand on the right door after casting a spell. The divination symbol lit up in an aqua color, and the last three small stones and the large stone lit up as well.

The ten-sided shapes shifted back into the doors and turned around, all the gears in the door turning with them. When they had rotated to their original position, they moved back to the front of the door.

I worried that something bad would happen to me because I hadn't given any of my magic. Would I be allowed into the room? A rush of air came from between the doors, putting out the bonfire Jörgen had cast behind us. It took a second to adjust to the darkness. The doors opened towards us.