“Do you know where you’re going?” Nylvani asked.
“Yeah, forward,” Calista replied.
“From there, I mean,” Nylvani said.
“Uhm … no, but that’s kinda the point of the dungeon, right?” Calista asked.
“I wasn’t challenging you,” Nylvani said. “I was just asking if you knew where you were going.”
“And I didn’t feel challenged. All I meant was that we’re in a dungeon and so there’s not any way for us to know where to go.”
“Right, but can I make a suggestion?”
Calista stopped and looked at the shorter woman in the black and white dress. The gothic girl’s eyes looked up at her expectantly. “Go ahead,” she said.
“I don’t know where you’re trying to get to, but if you’re interested in raiding the treasure room, it’s back that way.” Nylvani then pointed behind them.
Calista stared for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell me that sooner?”
Nylvani’s expression was blank. “Because I thought you knew where you were going.”
This woman is weird. Calista bit her lip in a frown and turned around. “Okay, how far is it, and how do you know your way around?”
“I’ve escaped once or twice, but I’ve yet to figure out how to get out on my own.”
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“Well, we’ll just have to make sure we get it right this time,” Calista said.
However, before she took another step, something tingled in the back of her brain, so she held her hand out to stop Nylvani. Something felt wrong. Taking a knee, she studied the floor and the walls. Pressure plates. The hallway is trapped. She pointed to the closest of the rigged stones and Nylvani nodded. Stepping left and then right, they wove their way through the rigged floor stones and then reached an intersection where they stopped again and listened. No voices. Good. Calista leaned around the corner to look left and then right.
“All clear,” she said. “Now which way?”
“Left,” Nylvani said.
They turned left down the hallway and took a winding route through rough-hewn rock. It looked like a tunnel that had been burrowed by a giant worm boring its way through the guts of the world. When the tunnel ended at a round metal door, Calista stopped and put her hands on her hips to inspect it. I don’t know if I can pick a door that’s this complicated, but then again, I don’t know that I can’t. I seem to be able to do most of the same things Calista could. So why not give it a shot? She thought about that for a second. I suppose it could be trapped in a way that leads to a painful and gruesome death. Then again … this Nylvani claims this is an actual treasure room and it is the first full-steel door I’ve come across.
She looked back at the small Gothic girl standing behind her. “I’m going to guess that you aren’t an expert at disarming traps or picking locks.”
Nylvani looked at her quizzically. “I thought you were?”
Calista nodded. “I am, I just … wanted to check, I guess.”
She sighed and pulled out her tools. “So, they’ve been torturing you here for some time, I take it.”
Nylvani gave her a wounded look. “Yeah … something like that.”
Calista started fitting her picks for the keyhole. “What do you mean by ‘something like that.?’”
Nylvani gave her a sideways glance. “Uhm … nothing.”
“Suit yourself.”
Calista turned her focus to the door. The lock was a Granitule 7000 key lock with dual deadbolts. She was intimately familiar with the Granitule company as they furnished most dungeon locks in Sable Unlimited. Formed in the year 2633, Granitule was the brainchild of Gnomish artificer Banit Granite and his half-sister Trinish Clanitule. Together they had teamed up to build Sable Unlimited’s first dungeon Research and Development program at their lab located in Yan’Brin, one of the Three Gleaming Cities of the Great White Waste. It was there that they developed not only the finest locks in all of Wraath but also many of its dungeon traps. Their best selling lock was the Titan 800, which was notable for both its sturdy design as well as its ability to be linked directly with up to two different traps. Calista could not only unlock but also disarm a Titan 800 in under five seconds. This lock, the Granitule 7000, would be a slightly stiffer challenge.
She knew that the real Calista would have no problem with a Granitule 7000. Depending on her luck and skill checks, the process usually took somewhere between ninety seconds and three minutes. However, she was no longer sitting in a V.R bed and selecting a command. She had to feel the picks in her hand and press them against the tumblers inside the lock. Those tumblers had pressure behind them, pressure supplied by tiny little springs, springs that were probably connected to some sort of trap mechanism, trap mechanisms that were probably aimed at her vital organs right at that moment.
There’s the first tumbler. Was that a click? I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know … by the Lady, what am I doing? There’s another tumbler. That one isn’t moving anymore, just like the first one. That’s good, right? How many do I need to set to open this thing? Now this one doesn’t want to move. Does that mean it’s trapped? No, wait. It moved now. Okay, I just had my pick at the wrong angle. She kept her eyes closed for the most part, just as she had seen the real Calista do whenever she had zoomed out to watch her avatar pick locks. She set the third tumbler and then a fourth. A minute later and she finally set the fifth. One more? I always remember there being six clicks before the latch moved. Indeed, there it was. After the sixth tumbler slid into place, the latch then clicked as the door swung open just a crack. Leaning over, Calista could see the gleam and glitter of precious things.