Chapter 10
An Unknown Repercussion
"Just a little closer, Tasha," murmured Madam Olwen as she stretched her right arm as far through the left bars of her cell as possible.
"This is as far as I can go," Tasha whispered back, leaning to her right as much as her chains would allow. She was also trying to keep a sharp eye on the guard slumbering on a stool nearby.
After Riley had brought back the three members of Clay's search party, he had handed them over to some of his friends from the Crypt for interrogation. They had first tried using bitter potions and incense in order to drug the three prisoners, hoping they would reveal some secrets in their semi-conscious state. When that failed, the members of the Crypt began resorting to physical torture. The three prisoners were punched, kicked, and generally beaten like dogs until they were bruised and scratched all over. Finally, Riley ordered them to be thrown into the dungeon until the interrogations would continue the next day.
Chester, Tasha, and Madame Olwen had been locked in separate cells. They were forced to sit with their wrists chained to the wall, leaving their arms spread out on both sides. Normally, this would render most movement impossible, but Madame Olwen had discovered that the manacle binding her right wrist wasn't as securely anchored as the left. After a few hours of persistent tugging and twisting, she managed to detach the chain from the wall entirely.
When Chester realized what she had done, a plan appeared before him. Since Madame Olwen was in the cell between him and his wife, he ordered her to grab Tasha's lock-shaped necklace. Now Madame Olwen was trying to use her free right hand to reach through the adjacent bars and take the pendant from around Tasha's neck.
Chester wanted Tasha's necklace because it offered their only way of escape. He had created the lock-shaped pendant to contain a hidden compartment. In this compartment was curled a thin but sturdy piece of wire: a lockpick.
Finally, after a full ten minutes of effort, Madame Olwen managed to get a firm grasp on the necklace. She gave a hard yank, and the chain broke, causing Tasha to flinch and leaving a red mark that circled her neck. Madame Olwen opened the locket, fitted it into the keyhole of her left manacle, and began twisting it around. With some helpful tips from Chester, the lock soon sprang open, and Madame Olwen was now able to move freely about her cell.
Five minutes later, she managed to free the Ambroses, and all three overpowered the guard. Chester relieved the sentry of his keys and chained him in Tasha's cell, and Tasha used her kerchief to gag him. The guard struggled and mumbled furiously, but now he was in no position to protest. Once Chester had locked the cell, he turned to the two women.
"I made careful note of all the passageways back to the surface," he confided. "The fools never considered blindfolding us."
"But how do we get past all the guards?" Tasha wanted to know. "It's a long climb back to the surface, and someone is sure to spot us before we get there."
Chester's eyes lit up. "Do either of you remember passing any doors that looked like they led to a storage room?"
"Storage room?" repeated Madame Olwen. "I don't understand."
"I'm hoping," Chester explained, "that they store powder kegs on these lowest levels. Think about it. If they ever wanted to expand their hideout, I'm sure they couldn't mine out more space by hand. We're surrounded by solid rock, for which they would certainly need to use explosives. I saw several places along the passages that were especially damp, meaning that the sea is just on the other side of the rocks. If we can detonate a keg or two, we can simply swim out of here."
"That's quite a dangerous tactic," Tasha worried. "If it doesn't work, everyone will come running to investigate the noise. If it works too well, we could cause a cave-in and potentially crush ourselves beneath the falling rubble."
"We must set the kegs off on a level that's above the seabed," Chester decided. "I think we should progress upward at least three more levels. We're underground right now, so setting them off here would get us nowhere."
Chester unlocked the dungeon door, and all three stole silently up the staircase. Madame Olwen went ahead, lay flat on her stomach, and cautiously peered over the top of the final step. Seeing that the passage was deserted, she beckoned to the others to indicate that it was safe. They repeated this process for three more floors, quickly checking the doors they passed to see if any lead to a storage room. The escapees had a few close calls when they heard footsteps advancing toward them from either in front or behind, but every time they were able to duck into an open door and hunker in the darkness until the passerby was gone.
Most of the rooms they hid in seemed to be bedrooms. They consisted of a few pieces of rough furniture: a bed, a dresser, and a small table. Skulls, animal bones, crystals, and bunches of herbs such as sage hung from the walls and ceilings. There was always incense or a brightly colored candle burning on every dresser top, filling the room with a sickening smell. Runes drawn in blood-red paint covered most of the stone walls. Madame Olwen couldn't help but study some of the foreboding decorations more closely.
"I must say," she murmured to the Ambroses as they emerged from the fourth room they were forced to hide in, "I'm surprised this faction of the Crimson Crypt wasn't eradicated long ago. Just by studying the runes on the walls and some of the crystals and skulls, I can tell these people are experimenting with some of the most dangerous supernatural forces known to mankind. I've seen mentions of multiple entities that the Order of Souls has long forbidden its members to even attempt to contact."
Once they reached the fifth floor above the dungeon level, Chester felt the walls.
"The rocks are a bit more damp than before," he reported. "We must be just above the ocean floor now." His eyes roved the doors lining both sides of the passage. The third door on the right was different from the others. Instead of being painted with a dark, mysterious color or carved with runes, this door was built of mundane, light wood with a small barred window at the top. Chester pulled out the sentry's keys and tested each one until the sixth undid the lock with a click.
The floor and shelves were littered with barrels of grog and salted meat, crates of fruit and tea, boxes of ammunition, and stacks of lumber. Chester carefully picked his way through the mess, trying not to knock anything over or make too much noise. Just as he had hoped, hidden at the very back of this jumbled cache, sat a hefty keg of ancient black powder. Of the three types of powder kegs that were bartered for on the Sea of Thieves, this keg was known as the most destructive.
"I found one-" Chester was whispering back to the others, when all three heard two pairs of footsteps clomping down the next set of stairs toward them.
"If you hadn't left that last barrel of fruit open," snarled one man's voice, "then we wouldn't be down here fetching another."
"I didn't leave it open," the second man's voice responded testily. "I'm sure I nailed the lid back into place."
"I'm quite sure the barrel didn't just remove its own lid," the first voice needled. "If you had shut the barrel properly, no one would have known we filched those pomegranates. Now, thanks to you, we're stuck cleaning out the mess hall for the next week."
"Shut up," grumbled the second voice, "and let's just get this over with." Chester frantically beckoned Tasha and Madame Olwen toward him and motioned them to squeeze behind a large stack of lumber. Once the two women were hidden, he managed to wiggle behind two barrels of salted meats. All three held their breath as the footsteps stopped outside the door.
"What the-? Why is the door open?" the second voice demanded.
"Stealing more goods, are you?" the first voice smirked. "I thought our latest escapade would have taught you something."
"You have no room to talk!" the second voice spat. "I know this work detail won't set you any more straight than I. Someone probably just forgot to lock this when they left. Just grab the barrel and let's get out of here."
The three fugitives heard the two men shuffle into the room and grunt in exertion as they lifted one of the barrels. The second one lost his footing and stumbled heavily backward into the pile of lumber behind which Madame Olwen and Tasha were hiding. The topmost plank slipped from the pile, and one end of it gave Tasha a nasty whack across her ankle. The woman bit her lip until it nearly bled to stop herself from crying out in pain, and Madame Olwen clamped a helping hand over her mouth. The two men either did not hear the clatter or simply didn't care what state they left the storeroom in. In either case, they exited the room with their burden and trudged back up the stairs, still leaving the door wide open.
Chester emerged from his hiding place and helped his wife and Madame Olwen out of theirs. Tasha now had a pronounced limp from the falling plank.
"Will you be alright, my dear?" he asked, worriedly.
Tasha nodded bravely. "It was more a shock than anything else. I should still be able to swim."
"Right." Chester crept out of the storeroom and returned a moment later with a candle and what looked like a ceremonial dagger from one of the empty rooms. He set the candle on the floor before delicately wiggling the dagger blade in a crack in the powder keg until a fine trickle of gunpowder appeared. Cupping some of the spilled powder in his hands, Chester sprinkled a thin trail from the keg all the way to the doorframe. He picked up the candle and turned to the two women. "I'm going to light the trail. Both of you get down to the next floor and take shelter in a room on the opposite side of the hall. I'll be right behind you." Tasha and Madame Olwen hurried down the stairs.
Once they were gone, Chester plucked the candle from its sconce and dropped it on the trail of gunpowder. The powder lit instantly with a light blue flame which began rapidly snaking into the storeroom. Chester bolted for the stairs and jumped every third step until he reached the floor below. A door on the left side of the hall opened, and Tasha leaned out to beckon him. Chester dove inside, and all three hunched down against the far wall and braced themselves for the coming impact.
KABOOM! The percussion of the blast slammed the three of them against the wall with tremendous force, and every door on their floor and the one above was ripped violently off its hinges. Great clouds of dust descended from the ceiling, coating everything inside. The rock around them trembled and shivered violently, and someone even began to show noticeable cracks.
Just as Chester, Tasha, and Madame Olwen struggled to their feet, the seawater came rushing in. The explosion had caused thirty feet of the passage floor above to collapse, and now the water was pouring in through the back wall of the decimated storeroom. The deluge had picked up all the rubble and attempted to wash it down the staircase. One large boulder, however, got jammed in the stairwell, and all the other bits of stone were piled up against it, creating a terribly effective dam. The water level was rising fast, and the floor below the storeroom was already waist deep in water.
"As soon as the water fills the chamber, grab one last breath of air and start swimming for the surface!" Chester ordered. As they had expected, members of the Crimson crypt were rushing toward them from both directions to investigate the commotion. The ones attempting to approach from below were blocked by the makeshift dam. The ones from above simply stopped in their tracks unsure of what to do as they realized how fast the water was rising up the stairs. Someone bellowed a call for evacuation, and all the occultists fled the scene.
In about five minutes, the entire space was underwater, forcing the three escapees to swim like fury for the hole in the storeroom wall. Trying to ignore the panicky feeling of their breath being stretched to the limit, all three just managed to break the surface, leaving them gasping and choking for the familiar, salty sea air.
"It looks like we'll have to borrow one of their boats," Tasha panted.
"Aye," Madame Olwen agreed. "And we must work quickly while this explosion has everyone distracted."
If Chester, Tasha, and Madame Olwen had been able to predict the aftermath of the explosion, they would have been much more hesitant to detonate the keg. Although the rooms had been furnished as bedrooms, no members of the Crimson Crypt lived on those deepest levels. Those rooms were almost strictly used for containing mysterious, and usually hostile, entities. With the doors gone, there were now no glowing runes and symbols to keep them contained, and they began swarming invisibly out of the underwater chamber and into the sea.
The occultists had been trained for just such scenarios, however, and within a matter of minutes, rituals were being performed throughout the hideout. Everything from ghosts to demons to spirits to phantoms were captured once more and secured in new rooms before they were able to unleash havoc. All were captured, that is, except one.
This entity had been trapped in the room next to the one in which the escapees had taken cover from the blast. As soon as the door had been broken, it left the chamber and attached itself to Chester Ambrose as he swam to the surface of the sea. No one had any idea it had joined their party, and since it now had a living attachment, none of the Crypt's summoning rituals were able to effectively bring it back.
Once the three humans were on board one of the Crimson Crypt's sloops and began sailing towards the east, the entity left Chester and immediately traveled from this world into the next: the Sea of the Doomed. This entity was angry, resentful, and bitter, and it had been imprisoned for many, many years: years that it spent weaving an elaborate and twisted plan of revenge. Now all it needed to do was wait until it could grow stronger and find others willing to join its cause.