Booth clung to his weapon’s hilt, preventing it from falling entirely from his grasp, but it dangled uselessly for the moment.

[You have gained the Crippled condition.]

The enemy ticked to a standstill. Booth’s turn indicators lit across the bottom of his vision, but he couldn’t lift his weapon.

Then use your head, instead. Control the field.

Booth strafed around the man, whose facing ticked around to remain locked with Booth. His body, clad only in leathers, moved into the open doorway.

“Dorri?” Booth called out. “You’ve got this?”

Instead, Booth glimpsed red hair and freckles on the enemy’s other side. The man shifted suddenly, turning so that Booth was exposed as well. The slender, pointed blade of a rapier drove toward Booth, Nildeyr’s wide-eyed and pale face beyond it.

Shifting his shield just enough to blunt the rapier strike, Booth bellowed, “Not me!”

Pain shooting through his fingers, Booth grappled with his flail. His shield felt off balance now, too.

The Scourge’s gaze ticked toward its shoulder. The great-axe tilted like it might swing toward Nildeyr next. Hard as he’d just hit Booth, that seemed like it would be a very bad thing to happen.

What the hell is he doing in melee range, anyhow?

“Nildeyr, don’t move.” Dorri’s voice, perfectly calm. Certainly not shouting.

With a patter like rain, blood splattered across Booth’s shield. An arrow shivered from his enemy’s throat. The man fell, revealing Nildeyr still in the open doorway, rapier at the ready. He also gasped and sputtered and blinked through the considerable amount of blood he now wore.

Behind Nildeyr, Dorri lowered her bow. Her gaze swept the room.

The huntress, always alert. What taught you to be that way?

“It’s clear now.” Dorri unstrung her bow, and the others spilled past her and into the room.

This room was square, with a square platform at its center, a few inches higher than the rest of the floor. Walls enclosed the platform to north and south, but it was open to east and west. The floor was stone tile inlaid with marble, in the same configuration as the doors.

Stone benches lined the room. Booth heaved himself onto one and leaned his flail and shield aside Straightening his injured arm, he slowly curled the fingers inward and out, working through the pain as sensation returned to them. He was prepared to send Lora away if she approached, but she didn’t. She went instead to Arra’s side, with bandages and silver light that Arra merely bore as stoically as she did everything else.

Guilt pinched at Booth’s gut. He hadn’t even realized Arra had been injured.

Dorri stood watch at the doorway they’d come through, while Nildeyr tossed the Scourge bodies. Karon paced the room’s perimeter.

“Perhaps you shouldn’t wander.” Arra watched Karon’s every step over the top of Lora’s head.

“There’s only one other door, and it’s jammed shut from this side.”

Booth sat up straighter, still clenching and unclenching his hand. The pain had settled from debilitating into a dull throb.

Above the benches, alcoves in the wall stood mostly empty. A pile of broken shards in one suggested there had once been statuary. Small pots in varying sizes contained crumbling remains of plants. Through the open sides of what looked like an elevator platform in the room’s center, Booth glimpsed the door Karon had mentioned. It wasn’t decorated like the others they’d seen but merely a smooth stone slab that blended with the walls.

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

Two lengths of metal protruded from the side of the door where it would slide into the wall, one top and one bottom. Given the angle, Booth guessed the door would be impossible to open without first removing the rods.

“That looks like a makeshift arrangement,” Booth ventured.

“Possibly. Although these bars seem perfectly suited to perform exactly this task.” Karon tipped his head, peering more closely at the rods but keeping his hands clasped behind his back. “They’ve been here quite some time. I don’t recognize any particular cultural influence. They’re simply iron bars.”

“But why?”

“A prisoner or prisoners, perhaps. Or something dangerous that they don’t want to get out.”

Karon drifted away from the jammed door and looked more closely at the platform at the room’s center. Karon glanced at the floor and then at an apparatus which sat on the platform, so close against one of the enclosing walls that Booth hadn’t noticed it. There seemed a crank and a series of chains.

“What do you make of it?”

Karon glanced at the solid ceiling above the platform. “It goes down, I believe.”

Arra had escaped Lora’s ministrations and took up her place at Karon’s right heel. Karon shifted his attention to her. “You’re capable of continuing?”

An offended frown flashed briefly across Arra’s stern face. “Of course.”

Booth glanced toward Lora and found her watching him, a small smile playing across her mouth that should have been nothing but, as always, shifted Booth’s center of balance.

What is she up to?

Nildeyr had, along with whatever was in their pockets, also taken a cloak from a body and now finished scrubbing blood spatter from his face.

“That was a very dramatic shot.” Nildeyr grinned at Dorri.

Dorri, still very much a huntress on alert beside the open doorway, frowned in a prettily perplexed way which Booth was learning meant she didn’t quite know how to reply.

“I can shoot at you anytime you like.” Dorri’s delivery was flat. Whether her intention was innocently blunt or intended to be funny, Booth couldn’t tell.

Nildeyr blinked, but his grin faltered for only a moment.

An amused snort escaped Booth. No one noticed, maybe, because no one looked at him.

But the comfortable warmth of the moment lasted only moments. An immediate internal whip of discipline and training cracked. They might have won these fights against the Scourge, but they hadn’t won easily.

Our own blood got spilled, too.

Obviously, Booth had needed a full party to come down here. It was why they were here and what they were supposed to be doing, after all. But as the paladin and person whose quest this seemed to be, he was closest to a team captain they had. That meant he needed to speak up.

Booth shoved himself to his feet and snatched up his flail and shield. When Nildeyr turned his grin in Booth’s direction, Booth aimed his most earnest and stern expression in the other young man’s direction.

“The next time you feel like stepping up against an enemy with an axe bigger than you are, with only a rapier and no shield or armor—don’t.”

Nildeyr blinked again. This time his grin faltered and stayed gone. Booth held his gaze.

“That’s what ranged weapons are for. Don’t come charging into situations you’re not prepared to handle.”

Beneath his freckles, Nildeyr’s face turned pink. Booth didn’t wait to find out if it was embarrassment or anger—either response would motivate just fine, in his own experience.

Shifting his shoulders as he tested his ability to hold his weapon, Booth strode across the room, passing Karon and Arra as he approached the blocked door.

#

Dorri inhaled sharply, and her entire being tried to shrink down into nonexistence, even though Booth had aimed his harsh words at Nildeyr and not her. She knew what Booth had obviously not witnessed, that the arrow which had felled the axe-wielding attacker hadn’t been the first Dorri had fired.

Her first shot had missed.

It’s my fault. You were calling for help, and I failed, and that’s why Nildeyr did what he did.

But the words wouldn’t rise from Dorri’s throat, and Booth was already walking away, and then it was just too late.

Beside Dorri, Nildeyr stood very still and very silent. His fists clenched. The air in the underground room felt too warm and heavy for breathing.

I’m sorry, Dorri tried to whisper to Nildeyr, but still her voice refused to cooperate.

Lora glanced between Nildeyr and Booth, but what she was thinking, Dorri couldn’t read from her expression. Then she, too, turned away and drifted toward the far side of the room, where Karon and Arra were inspecting the jammed-shut door.

“Do we intend to poke our noses into a locked room and see what’s there?” Lora spoke lightly, and it wasn’t clear what answer she preferred.

“Maybe we should leave it locked.” Nildeyr started across the room as well, leaving Dorri to stand alone. “We wouldn’t want to take any unnecessary risks.”

Sullen sarcasm dripped like poison from Nildeyr’s bladed words.

Without answering, Booth grabbed hold of one of the rods jamming the door and pulled at it. With a faint scrape, it shifted. But it did not come free.

“It’s jammed in there good.”

“Let me.” Without waiting for Booth’s agreement, Arra stepped into his space and nudged him aside.