They carried on through a long, narrow tunnel that twisted to the right and climbed upward again. Moving warily, and being very careful of traps, they all felt the presence of the spirit of the place watching them closely.

The corridor climbed and climbed until they felt they must have gotten to a point higher up than the hallway where they’d first entered. Suddenly, they came to a heavy wooden door. Putting his finger to his lips for silence, Saul leaned against the door and listened. There was no sound. He pushed, and the door shifted remarkably smoothly considering the age and condition of the tomb complex.

Beyond the door, they saw a roughly hewed chamber, not large, but lit by two deep, narrow shafts cut into the roof that let in the daylight from above.

“It’s some kind of mining operation,” Brand said, stepping in and gazing around, “or at least it was. Look at the veins of ore in the walls!”

Ore. That reminded Saul of something. Quickly, he accessed his School of Metal spells and, sure enough, there it was, the recently unlocked Tier 1 spell.

Smelter (Crafting)

He stepped into the room. There was no sign of any enemy in here and, on the opposite side of the room, there was another stout wooden door. Everybody came inside, and they shut the first door behind them while Saul checked the second one. This second door also swung open easily, and beyond it was another corridor, empty and swinging ‘round to the right again.

“Zorea,” Saul said in a low voice. She came over, leaning through the door. “Do you feel anything?”

She shook her head, and Saul closed the door, rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

“I think we’ll stop here for a bit,” he said.

“What are you so excited about?” Zorea asked, eyeing him with a smile.

“Oh, you’ll see in a moment.”

The others watched with interest as he set to work. Elman and the Metal armored golem took up a spot at the entrance to the chamber, while Brand and the Air-enhanced golem watched the other. Zorea stuck with Saul, speaking to him in a low voice as he examined the gleaming ore veins in the wall.

“I can feel the absence of the blue chamber spirit,” she said. “It stopped in the corridor we’ve just come from. There’s magic in the next corridor but of a different kind.”

Saul nodded thoughtfully, running his hands over the gleaming vein of metal in the wall. “What do you think of this stuff, Zorea?” he asked.

“Seems odd,” she said. “It’s a blueish ore, metallic from the gleam to it, but I don’t know what kind of ore it might be, and I know something about smelting ores.”

Saul grinned. “And you don’t feel anything in this chamber, do you?”

Sha shook her head. “What are you getting at?” she asked.

“I’ll tell you,” he said, and brought up the Smelter spell, casting it at the vein of ore. The spell manifested as a small globe of white magic that jumped to the ore vein, spread across it, and then soaked into the gleaming ore.

Ore Harvesting Active…

Harvesting Successful

Material Gathered: Zyndrine Ore (4 ingots)

Select: Smelt Ore

Saul selected the option. He felt the System doing its work, but he was happy to find there was no physical labor involved at all. He held his hands out, palms upward, and smoke rose in a cloud from them. Within the cloud, he saw flashes of light, like flames deep within a dark pit, but nothing could be heard, and there was no heat generated.

A moment later, the System presented him with the results of his spell.

Success: Ore Smelted

Results: Zyndrine Metal (4 ingots)

Quality: Level 2

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Class: Crafting Item

Extra Items gathered: None

Select: Deliver to World

Select: Absorb to Inventory

The others, all able to see what was going on in the System through their own Squad Magic view, watched with interest as this process went on. He selected Absorb to Inventory, and before anyone could ask him any more questions, he went ahead and did the spell another three times.

Cooldown Timer: Active

Spellcasting available in: 5 minutes

The little hourglass appeared, and Saul turned to his friends.

“Have any of you ever heard of Zyndrine?” he asked. They all shook their heads. “It’s a metal that’s sometimes known as Mage’s Bane, or Magefoil,” he went on.

They all still looked blank.

He grinned. “It’s a binder, a material that causes magic to be stopped in its tracks, if there’s enough of it. There’re not many materials in the world that can do that, but Zyndrine is one of them. Even a small amount can cause serious problems for a mage trying to cast spells. A Zyndrine-equipped force of elite soldiers caused Baraz and I serious problems during the landing at Darthorn…”

He shook his head, remembering an old battle from his previous timeline, and returned to his explanation.

“That’s why this room is free of any magic, either from the hungry spirit from the room downstairs, or from whatever evil magic we’re going to face next. We can’t feel either of their magics because the Zyndrine blocks them.”

“Then, why is your magic not blocked?” Zorea wondered thoughtfully. “And the golems appear none the worse for the presence of this binder metal.”

Saul scratched his head and thought for a moment. “It’s a good question,” Saul said. “I’d hazard that it’s another instance of the System acting in a different way from other kinds of magic. The System is a closed loop, with power passing through it, to me, and out to my summoned creatures. That’s my guess, but without knowing more about both the System and the functioning of the Zyndrine, it’s hard to say for certain.”

He looked around at the different style of the doors, the carvings by the entrances and exits, and the straight, angled shafts in the roof.

“I guess that these tombs were excavated as a mine at first. Zyndrine was a very valuable product and the old-world people who lived here and tunneled out this complex likely found other valuable things here, too. They dug out the mine, and when they had run out of useful products they could pull from here, they turned it into a tomb for their dead.”

“That explains why the style of this chamber is older, different from how the rest of the place looks,” Brand said.

“And it’s just fate, I guess, that caused this little room to be the midpoint of the corridors,” Elman said.

“I’d not be so sure,” Saul said thoughtfully. “I wonder if they didn’t leave this as it was for some other reason. Perhaps, even then, there was some curse in this place, some reason that the people who buried their dead here had for wanting a magic buffer in between these two sections of the tombs?”

“Perhaps,” Zorea said. She reached out and touched one of the blueish ore lodes thoughtfully. “Zyndrine sounds like useful stuff, and it’s good for you to have some of it, but I suggest you don’t harvest the rest of it. I feel like it’s a good thing for this buffer to be here still.”

“I agree,” Saul said with feeling. “There’s something very strange going on in this place, and until we find out more, I won’t try to upset the balance any more than I have to.”

The others agreed with this. The cooldown timer finished. Brand and Elman had supplies they’d packed back at the Holdfast, and the team ate a quick meal and took a drink of water before pressing on.

Beyond the next door, there was a narrow stone corridor that bent sharply to the right. Saul guessed they must be facing in just about the opposite direction to where they had been when they first came in.

The passage bent downward now, and then bent right again.

“If we continue in their direction,” Brand muttered, “we’ll end up hitting the central corridor, the one that led straight off from the entrance hall.”

“I think you’re right,” Saul said to him. “Look ahead.”

They all looked and saw up ahead a gleam of light on the stones. It wasn’t the healthy red light of a fire, nor the eerie blue light of the hungry spirit of the burial chamber. Neither was it the bright, clean light of the day outside.

It was a green light, sickly, the color of purifying death. The same light that had shone around the standing stones and animated eyes of the zombies they had fought on their way in from the outside.

“That doesn’t look like a pleasant welcome,” Saul said. The others agreed.

“Makes me wish for the hungry spirit with the blue light,” Elman said in a choked voice. It was getting deathly cold ahead, and a presence loomed in the corridor, pressing on them with a malevolent weight that made it almost hard to breathe.

They were in no doubt that what they were facing was nothing like the blue light spirit in the other chamber. That one had seemed almost friendly and companionable in comparison to the way this light made them feel.

“Come on,” Saul said. “Let’s get in there and see what the worst it has to offer.”

The worst it had to offer was, in the end, pretty bad. They got to the entrance to the chamber and looked in to see a bubbling mass of green slime filling the chamber from wall to wall. It looked like a giant soup pot full of the foulest brew imaginable. There was only one way through—a long, curved span of arching stone over the bubbling horror.

Below the entrance, a short drop led onto a small ledge of stone, then straight onto the bridge.

“The smell!” Brand said, choking and holding a hand to his mouth. “Can’t we go back?”

Saul turned his head, and that was when the corridor behind them closed up.

It was the strangest sight of all the odd things they’d seen in their adventures. Solid stone, rough-hewn from the very body of the mountain, closing behind them as if they’d been inside a flexible tube with someone squeezing it from the outside.

“By all the gods!” Elman said, forgetting Sauls’ distaste for the invocation of the deities. “What’s happening in this place?”

“Jump!” Saul cried and suited his action to his words. He leaped off the low ridge, landing feet first on the span of stone and conjuring a stone troll with a Fire combination as he did so.

His friends followed, landing one by one on the stone surface. Brand came last, and as he did, there was a whump, and the last of the corridor closed behind them, leaving a blank wall as if there had never been anything there at all.

Then, the most disturbing sound reverberated around the chamber; a deep, gloating, satisfied, evil laugh.

“So you are in my power,” a voice boomed. “Welcome to my humble abode. You shall never leave.”