They walked along a brick passage until they reached a heavy iron door set into the wall. Previous wooden doors had lead to an assortment of storage rooms. Lighting equipment, signage, extra chairs—no monstrously large aurora gems. Timbrelle was practically gagging at the aura stench pouring from the room. Her partner inspected the door in her stead.

Ping!

Congratulations! A party member has discovered the location of ‘The Aurora God’s Medium’.

Then another, much more terrifying.

Ping!

This progress has been recorded and reported to the proper authority.

Her instinctual exclamation of joy died in her throat at the second notification.

“Adna, Nerrus’s medium is behind that door. We need to get it and get out as quick as possible.” She said. “Someone knows we’re here.”

Once again, she did not need to convince Adna. The woman trusted her immediately.

Adna touched the door. Then tried shoving. “There’s no handle and it won’t budge. I think it opens from the inside.” She looked to Timbrelle. “What should we do? If it’s anything like the temple door, can’t you open it with your seal?”

She stepped forward, one hand held out, the other holding her nose. The door was warm to the touch and felt, oddly, alive. No streams of light steeped from her hand, there was no flash or reaction of any discernible kind. Something recognized her presence, she could feel it too. Patient. Curious. …Hopeful. The closer she listened to the feeling, the more she grew convinced it knew she was there.

“Can…” she paused, realizing how dumb she must sound. “Can you open the door? I can’t do it from here.”

Adna asked, surprised. “Is someone in there with it?”

Timbrelle looked back. “I’m not sure. But something is definitely—“ she was cut off by a grinding noise coming from the door. The turning of a lock. A brief pause. Another lock and a longer pause.

“Adna, I’ll keep the light going. You try to push this open.”

Adna grumbled. “You’re just trying to get me eaten first.”

“It’s because you’re so strong and pretty and kind.” Timbrelle assured her.

“I think we should start on your physical training. Then I won’t be forced to work for such lousy compliments.”

Timbrelle lit another match. “Unionize. Until then, get to flexing. Chop, chop.”

After two full matchbooks, Timbrelle abandoned the matches and helped push. By the time it was opened enough for Timbrelle to squeeze through alone, they were both sweating buckets into their club clothes.

“You can wait here, just hand me the matches.” She instructed.

“You sure—you won’t—need help?” Adna panted. “I hate doing this—drunk.”

“I don’t think it’s hostile. But if it is, it probably can’t get out this little crack. So you’ll be safe out there.”

“Pfft. Yeah, ok. Make sure to protect me.” She laughed and took a seat on the dirty floor. They were both covered in the sediment that was blocking the door after who knew how many centuries of disuse. The grime stuck to her sweaty body and destroyed the dress. Whatever ballerina princess she had felt like earlier was now a moleman prostitute.

“Are you in here?” She asked the room. It was made of bare stone with two feet of silt that had accumulated on the floor. There was no sign of whoever had opened the door. The only item in the room appeared to be a fist sized sapphire peeking from the dirt.

Ping!

You have discovered ‘The Aurora God’s Medium’. Will you place it in your storage?

Yes/No

Timbrelle chose ‘no’. She could just as easily fit the sapphire in her pocket. If she couldn’t access her storage later she would have, essentially, deleted a holy item from the world. She was not about to enrage the Miasma, at least… not intentionally. That was best left to accident.

Timbrelle had to crouch to avoid the already low ceiling now that the floor had risen. The sapphire was stuck in the packed dirt. She abandoned the matches and dug at the ground with her hands. Working at the dried mud was only getting her so far because for every bit of silt she cleaned away, there was only more and more sapphire. The exposed area reached the size of a grapefruit before she started dry heaving at the smell.

“Do you have anything? I have to dig it out and all I’m really doing is ripping up my nail beds.” She hork-horrrked inside the room while Adna searched the area. “I can only see when I light a match. It’s going to take a long time at this rate.”

Timbrelle removed her heel and started hacking at the packed earth. The headway with a shoe was exponentially faster but ended suddenly when her second heel snapped.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Adna’s frantic voice whispered through the gap. “Someone is coming. Hide against this wall if they check the room.”

“Adna—wait!” She yelled softly.

But the woman was gone, replaced by the intensifying light of an approaching lamp.

“How can they know? Tell me how they know!” A man’s voice bellowed in fury. “It’s been eight-hundred years and not a single Nerrus shithead has come looking for it! Why now? Why must it be under mymanagement? ”

Another voice, more nasal and less rage said, “There is no viable entrance to the room. Were they to search the building, it should remain hidden.”

Timbrelle scrambled to a place on the wall, a starfish on a rock. Two sets of footprints stopped just outside the door.

“I don’t believe it!” The man roared at the open door. “They’ve stolen it!”

“No, your grace. It appears they got scared off before they could extract it.” A long arm reached their lantern inside, fully illuminating the room for the first time.

She hadn’t noticed the remnants of a mural or the rusted out sconce in the pitiable light the matches provided. From the slope of the sediment and general dampness, the loose brick of the back wall had been letting in the clay. A dried water line on the walls made her wonder if the room smelled much worse than the two slices of blueberry pie lodged in her sinuses. Mummy tomb spores were bad news but if she could stop snorting pastry long enough to smell it, perhaps she would be more worried.

That was when she saw it.

Directly across the room, mimicking Timbrelle’s own posture, a large, disembodied, dirt hand hugged the wall beside the door. It could have been a trick of the light—a lie she found palatable until the hand moved. It turned to her—looked at her. It’s eyeless form taking her in.

“Find them!” The man hollered. Footsteps making a heavy retreat.

She was about to resume her task when the lamp slid through the opening once again, taking one last look around. She silently slid a hand over her mouth to hide her labored breath. The only sound was a faint scraping of the lamp against the door and Timbrelle’s thunderous heartbeat.

Without thinking, she dove forward, grabbed the arm with both hands and heaved. The nasally man let out a startled cry when the side of his head bashed against the doorframe. There was a moment of dazed hesitation that she used to yank him again, this time wedging his torso into the opening. No time to lose, she planted both feet on the wall and used her body weight to leverage him further into the opening, a third and final time.

“I’ll take that lamp, thank you.” She accepted it with a grateful smile and no small amount of clawing at his unwilling hand. “Now, you’re going to shut up and watch as I steal this sapphire.”

“Why should I do that? Who are you?” He spat. The man was wiggling frantically and causing a commotion.

“I’m one of those Nerrus shitbags your boss mentioned. And you’ll shut up because that’s the only way you can avoid this glass lantern to the face.” She had an idea— great or terrible, she couldn’t tell. Timbrelle pasted on the most unstable smile she could muster, praying to the Miasma that he’d be intimidated. “Can you beat an Unmade auror?”

His sneer turned to horror in an instant. “…Nerrus has an Unmade?”

“It seems like you understand your situation. So what will it be? Hm? Will you be a good boy while mommy finishes this errand or do I need to use the lamp?” Her smile was sugary-sweet.

His wide eyes studied her for a short while before inhaling for what promised to be a glass shattering scream. Well… if he wanted broken glass, she could oblige.

The ceiling was too low to wind up and slam the lamp down on his head. Timbrelle swung it in a horizontal arc, an old woman beating a robber with her purse. It shattered against his head, instantly snuffing the light. The man powered down like a laptop, his groan fading into unconscious silence.

“I warned you, bitch.” She muttered while patting the floor for her scattered matchbooks. The act was slow out of necessity—the floor was now dusted with bits of crystalline shards.

After a minute she was able to reclaim her matches, shoes and bearings. Feeling mildly guilty, she ripped a strip from her dress to tie around the man’s blood-sodden head. He wouldn’t die… probably. That, however, was not her problem and there was no time to muster up more empathy.

Timbrelle felt a tapping at her ankle. Instinct responded. The ensuing rain of sediment came from her foot as she punted the temporarily forgotten dirt-hand.

“Oh! I’m so sorry!” She hurried to apologize. “It’s dark and you scared me.”

The meager light showed the scattered remnants of the first hand and a new one growing from the dirt in the corner. This new one skittered over, three fingers and a thumb. It stuck its wrist in the dirt and opened a palm to her. It wanted something. She handed it a shoe but it batted it away and gestured, grabby-handed at the matches. Timbrelle passed a lit one over. The thing moved to the sapphire and motioned her closer.

“You’ll… hold the light for me?” She asked.

Once again, footsteps echoed from the hall, sprinting.

“Timbrelle! Is it almost done? There’s a huge commotion upstairs—I think Capri is getting raided.” Adna skidded into place before the door. A large, silver serving spoon clanged to the dirt on her side. “I brought you this! And this!”

A lit candle flipped end over and into the room, the dirt hand catching it in it’s deft palm.

“I Pooh-Beared him. Look! Well… I guess it’s not official since he’s still wearing pants.” She said, proudly showing off her handy work with the unconscious man.

“Less talking, more digging but I do want to hear this story later.” Adna rushed.

“Did you get our robes?” Timbrelle remembered with a gasp.

“Damn the robes!” Adna growled, but they both knew she’d need to retrieve them. It was the only way they could leave like a normal person after caking Timbrelle in sweat-soaked mud. More importantly, Dorsus advised it. “Fine! I’ll get the robes. Be done when I get back.”

Timbrelle struck at the impacted dirt. The further down she dug, the more difficult it became. She was gasping for air, swinging gooey arms at the now solid rock when the gem came loose. The top was as wide as a cantaloupe. She could palm the gem and pull it up, finding that it had not been generally spherical as she expected. A sapphire the size and shape of a loaf of bread slid free.

As soon as the gem left the clay it had been cemented into, the pastry stench dissipated and the hand crumbled to dust.

Adna returned. “I’m here! Is it done?” She grabbed the newborn sized aurora jewel from Timbrelle through the gap. “Holy hell. Is this really…”

“Yup.” Timbrelle squeezed through the door, climbing ungracefully over her hostage and dusted herself off. “I have no viable shoes now.”

“I’ll buy you solid gold shoes! Scratch that— you’ll never need to walk again. I will be your sugar mother.”

“Sugar mama.” She corrected. “Turn around.”

Adna obeyed on instinct not realizing what Timbrelle had in mind. The woman grabbed the skirtpants and tore away the billowy fabric.

“Sorry, I needed your butt-cape.” Timbrelle apologized. If she tied the two ends together she could make a loop and nestle the medium close to her body like an infant strapped to their mother. It worked well enough that they could start jogging toward the pin-prick of light at the end of the hallway. With the floor length robes, no one could tell she’d been schlepping herself through clay.

“I think I am going to start wearing bandeaus more often. They’re so mobile. Under a robe is nice too, very breezy.” Adna chatted happily. “You know, I’ve done this a few times, but it’s more fun with a partner.”

“…Do I want to know what you get up to?”

“That’s a definite ‘no’.” She laughed merrily. “You’ll sleep better that way.”

From the opposite end of the hallway people called out. “Stop! Thieves!”

The women were already hurtling themselves up the stairs. Timbrelle, shoeless and lugging twenty-five pounds of dead weight, jogged the stairs slower. That gave Adna time to shove a small lady into a closet and kick a gargantuan man in the kneecap. He yelped and fell into the room behind him. Adna dove forward to click the door shut behind him.

The Kiton woman snorted. “Get wrecked.”