TOMB RAIDING 101
as *&$* retreated (fire bad, fire bad) as fast as her mycelium could carry her from the entrance, Mibbet turned to look at Sir Leeroy questioningly.
“Before I became a guard, I was an adventurer”, he explained as he jabbed at the shadows with some sort of long telescopic stick he’d produced from somewhere. (All good adventurers carried a pokey stick, they used it wherever the floor mismatched to check for traps, to vault over poison pools, and poke the occasional corpse to make sure it would maintain a recumbent position. In most adventurers, experiences, even the most stoic of undead didn’t lie around when being prodded. There were, of course, exceptions, like the unfortunate incident of one-armed Mcgint who let his guard down when a bone horror didn’t respond to a poking. What he failed to factor in is that even the undead like a nap, and it may take them a while to wake up, but when they eventually do, they wake up CRANKY, and if they see you holding the pokey thing that woke them up doubly so.) “One thing I learned is that the more dramatic the tomb, crypt, haunted fortress, demon lair, or necromancers den, the worse the thing inside. So far, we’re two minutes in, and we’ve got obsidian pillars, writhing writing, deadly looking doors, and self-lighting torches inviting us in. This place is a total drama queen.”
“Why would more dangerous places seem more dramatic? That makes no sense.” Mibbet asked, further proving she would never quite get humans.
“If you have a choice between a plain old fashioned grave robbing, with no traps, minimal risk of the undead, and minimal curses (only a fool leaves their grave completely uncursed, well... a fool or a prankster who owns a possessed amulet and doesn’t want it going to waste, but that’s a story for another time.) Or this, definitely cursed, almost certainly eerily eldritch, infested with the undead, and probably trapped up to the eyeballs; which one are you going to rob? Here’s a hint, this is the kind of place that has bloody snake pits, at least unless they were smart enough to realise that the undead would just eat the snakes, in which case we have zombie snakes to deal with too.”
“Alright, you do make a good point,” Mibbet conceded.
Errol, meanwhile, was looking decidedly green around the gills. He liked snakes, only partially because his brothers hated them; his snake, Mr Noodles, had been his best friend growing up (again, probably because his brothers hated them,) so he really didn’t like the idea of his beloved danger noodles becoming zombie fodder. On the plus side, it did mean he was less likely to wuss out when facing the undead, as most people probably know nothing holds a terrible grudge like a little brother. His expression was grim, and his sword ready.
After a few minutes of Sir Leeroy prodding at the scenery, there was a twang, the sound of a ceiling axe (there is always a ceiling axe, usually about 6 in a row in a passage, them and the timeless pointy sticks were pretty much go to options for a tomb,) and Sir Leeroy found himself holding about half a pokey stick. Luckily he always carried spares and a dramatic flick later (hey, if you’ve got the fancy equipment, you are practically obligated to show it off, and Sir Leeroy carried with him an honest to gods UTILITY BELT,) he was all set to resume the searching.
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Elvira, meanwhile, with an eye-roll, pulled out a bag of pebbles and started throwing one or two at every ominous shadow (and there were a lot of those, she was willing to swear the tomb architects had done it on purpose. Usually, there’s a limit to the amount of shadowy corners a place had, if for no other reason than architectural practicality. In this place, they had gone way over that limit, then added a few more just to be sure. Hell, it looked like they had deliberately shaped some of the edges to throw up scarier shadows, like grasping claws and screaming faces. The effect was, however, somewhat ruined by Errol using the dramatic light to make shadow bunnies. It was hard to take a tomb seriously when somebody was putting on a rabbit show and humming the lyrics to little bunny foo foo, but given that he was older than any of his sisters, he was practically contractually obligated, on entering a scary room, even if he was scared witless himself, to act as silly as humanly possible, and completely destroy the atmosphere. The only exception to this rule was when pranking was involved, and even then, there was the middle child’s commandment. “Thou shalt not prank thy little sisters, lest thou invoke the wrath of the mother, for there will be wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and I’m not mad, just disappointed.”)
The end result of the pebbles was pretty much the same as the fancy equipment, but given how much rubble was lying around down here (the better to hide the pressure plates with my dear,) she had pretty much an unlimited supply. Though Sir Leeroy could not resist grumbling about it, he hated it when common sense upstaged the cool, especially when the cool was expensive and small rocks were free and practically unlimited.
Thus they eventually made their way into the first passage, where to nobodies surprise (except Mibbet, frogs didn’t get to read a lot of adventure stories, probably because nobody waterproofs the pages, that and there isn’t really a frog edition of these books, because really who the hell would read it?) There was a clunk, and ceiling axes started swinging back and forth.
Ten minutes later, they were still swinging.
“How the hell are they doing that?” Elvira asked, “momentum should have stopped them ages ago.”
“The working theory in the guilds is strategically placed magnetic lodestones and bearings.”
Elvira started to time the swings, figuring out they had two seconds between swings and was just about to step into the passage when Sir Leeroy stopped her.
“Never step into a trap when you can do this,” he explained, stepping in close to the trap, then shoving his stick into the mechanism that came to a grinding stop. Then grinned, all smug as the first swinging axe came to a stop. He knew the stick would come in handy.
He became somewhat less smug when, straight after they all got through the passage, a tortured wail echoed through the entire place. “For an undead, they sure have a good set of lungs on ‘em”, he grumbled.