Great titanium cylinders revolved somewhere deep behind the walls of stone. Grinding against a series of ancient cogs, they generated a low, reverberating roar that one could feel in his bones. The whole mountain appeared to shudder out of reluctance, or perhaps horror, as the long-forgotten machinery was forcibly restored to life.

“Very good!” Aquiescas Van Hortz called out, his agitated voice echoing between pillars of stone, down the dark, narrow gallery. “Next, next, you must be quick now!”

Gripping one of the stone handles embedded into the eastern wall, Marcus Orellus strained his arms and pulled. The switch, curving like a swan’s neck, previously unresponsive, now steadily gave in, and the man pulled it all the way down to the level of his hips. Without a pause, the invisible mechanism continued to spin in concealment, the ominous growling sustained.

No, perhaps it grew a little louder.

“That’s it! We’re on the right track!” Gronan Arkentahl exclaimed, a cautiously optimistic undertone to his basso. The air in the trembling chamber had become filled with palpable excitement, but also alarm. One mistake could still mean the ruination of it all. Everyone counted heartbeats, until the mechanism’s rumble had reached its peak.

“No time to celebrate yet, gentlemen!” Aquiescas said, turning around. “Next one! It’s your turn now, Faalan!”

Making no sound, Faalan of the Silver Saber obediently seized his handle on the western wall and pulled, steadily, with determination. He drew the switch down like Marcus before, and again, the mechanism’s revolving speed was accelerated a distinct notch. In response, the sense of triumph grew also denser.

The order of activation appeared to be correct.

“Excellent!” the old scholar followed their work from the center of the floor, like a conductor directing his orchestra. The air was cool, yet sweat had begun to gather on his brow out of barely contained thrill and anticipation. He didn’t dare to remove his attention even for a moment to wipe mist off his glasses. “We can do this! Tidaal, you’re up! Ready! Three, two...Pull!”

“Come to papa,” Tidaal Virnan remarked, wrestling down his switch with his tattooed arms.

Step by step, the resolution of the puzzle neared, but it was still too soon to think of rewards. A singular error in the order, or an accident in the execution, could mean the end of it all. After building up such a horrifying momentum, an abrupt cessation was liable to break essential components in the delicate, millennia-old mechanism, which no one alive today could hope to repair.

There would be no retries.

Only flawless success would do.

Fortunately, everything appeared to be going according to the plan. Even after five switches were activated, the machinery remained in fluid motion, as intended, the sealed gateway but one last lever away from becoming unsealed.

The noise had become something fearsome by now.

Sand dust danced on the vibrating floor, more of it raining down from the hair-fine seams between the great building blocks of the ceiling. By the effect alone, everyone could tell that the hidden gears were in a maddening spin. Just how much power was required to open one gate? Undoubtedly more than the explorers could have ever mustered without the tools the ancients had left them.

The last, the sixth switch.

“Steady now!” Aquiescas called for patience. “Be very, very careful!”

“We’re counting on you, adventurer!” Gronan told the person gripping the handle. Everyone’s eyes were on her now. She glanced at the bard Waramoti a few steps behind her, who answered with an encouraging grin and a nod. Turning her head the other way, the adventurer made a brief eye contact with Faalan, who nodded as well. Go for it.

Tightening her hold, sensing the right timing, Itaka Izumi began to pull.

“Leave it to me, guys!” she confidently exclaimed. “I can tell you, this was a lot easier than Bleakfall barrows—oops!”

——Crack.

Then, something went wrong. The slim stone handle fractured as Izumi pulled it and broke off the wall, a few inches before reaching its limit. There was not enough of it left visible to seize and finish the action.

The sequence was left incomplete.

In a couple of quick heartbeats more, the window of activation passed.

The machinery continued to spin, spin, spin, its purpose unfulfilled, subjected to forces it had long since grown too frail to endure. Bang. A flat, metallic sound rang out all of a sudden, indicating that some individual part of the system was no longer in its rightful place. It continued clanking here and there behind the wall, and was then followed by a low boom, as if it had knocked another, much heavier piece, off its position. That was it. There was no stopping the chain reaction anymore. All those unseen cylinders and the gears were abruptly stilled by a mechanical failure. Boom. Boom. One by one, the components were propelled from their places, and sent crashing and colliding. Dreadful quaking and clouting locked everyone’s ears, accompanied by a lot of lighter clinking and clanking, in place of the previous harmonious rumble.

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The thick walls endured the terrible mayhem with only slight tremors carrying through. The people inside the chamber were safe, even if greatly disturbed by all the noise and shaking, which carried on everywhere about them for a considerable while. They looked around, stupefied and cowering, unable to get a word out amid the racket.

What could they even say?

This bombastic symphony signified the failure of their dream.

Finally, the noise died down, things stopped falling apart, and silence returned to the underground gallery. And there was surely no silence like it. The complete absence of sound after such a pandemonium made one want to check his ears.

Then, the band of mercenaries slowly turned their eyes to the woman by the western wall.

“My, my!” Izumi remarked with a sigh, holding up the broken stone handle, and tossed it away. “They just don’t make ‘em like they used to!”

“You...Do you have any idea what you have done?” Acquiescas inquired Izumi, creeping across the floor towards her. He was shorter than she was, a balding, frail man of age, a scholar not a soldier, but his hands trembled with the force of wrath. “You, my lady, have just spoiled the single most significant historical discovery of our time. Everything, everything we toiled and suffered for—Did I not tell you to be cautious!”

His voice grew shrill out of agitation and he stopped.

“But, I thought you said you already got what you came for?” Izumi replied with a shrug, not appearing terribly apologetic. “This was just a bonus, right?”

“That is—!” Acquiescas looked like his eyes were about to pop out of his head.

“Let it go, professor,” Faalan told him in his usual, stoic fashion. “What’s done is done. It could have happened to anyone. We were simply a millennium too late.”

Gronan said nothing. He merely stood further back and stared at the floor, bitter, like a child told he’s too old to play with toys anymore. The other mercenaries more or less shared his reaction.

“This is—this is simply too much!” Meanwhile, the bespectacled professor looked around, unable to cope with their bitter failure. “This could have been the find of our age! Imagine all the things we could’ve learned from the Precursors, all the opportunities—”

“—And all the gold,” Tidaal interjected.

“Why, excuse me!” the older man snapped at him. “This was hardly about gold!”

“It was only ever about gold,” the red-bearded mercenary replied.

“If you truly believe so, then you hardly understood what was at stake!” Acquiescas continued his fervent rant. “We had the chance to peer across eons, into a completely different time! An age forgotten, which no soul has seen in thousands of years! What life was like, what the people were like, all this wealth of knowledge is now lost to us! Oh, it’s still there, mind you! Only a small step away. Information, technology, art, culture, precious beyond compare, unimaginable! And all of it just behind—that—one—little—door!”

As he spoke, Acquiescas kept pointing at the heavy dimeritium gate, decorated with the engraved image of the sun and its dazzling rays.

Cree—!

All of a sudden, the sun disappeared.

Quickly, accompanied by a sharp, scraping sound, the metal square was torn up and disappeared.

Perhaps it was only an innocent coincidence.

The mechanism holding the door had been broken in a way that also disabled the lock, allowing the barrier to open on its own. Or perhaps they had been successful, after all, the last switch had activated as it was supposed to, and Izumi’s accident had ultimately played no role in the procedure.

Or, perhaps it was destiny?

A whim of the powers that be, which control all life and everything that should happen on this little planet, and which had ordained that the gate to the depths should be opened today, no matter what.

Fast forgetting their disappointment, everyone sneaked now closer and peered into the unbarred tunnel that carried off into unknown distance, melting into impenetrable darkness.

“Hey. Lucky us, right?” Izumi said, irony clear in her tone. In reality, she didn’t feel too blessed. The chilling breeze that drifted up from the depths wasn’t one bit inviting.

Nevertheless, it was too late for regrets.

What was done could not be undone.

The way was open.

The nightmare was ready to begin.