2  Like Dominoes

“Ready?” Shield raised, gloved fingers tight on the pommel of his long sword, Erramir called back.

“Ready.” Val and Car affirmed.

With a booted foot, he pushed the door open. Silently, it swung to the right and Err followed tight behind, scanning for threats, and finding the room vacant.

A wall bounded the room an armlength to his right. The door thumped into it and rebounded a foot. Craning his head right, he glanced behind, found nothing, then stepped forward, leaving space for his teammates to file in. They did, forming up in a wedge.

“Car, check to see if the inside latch mechanism works,” Erramir instructed.

“Right,” Carson stepped behind the door and crouched. “We don’t want any of those elementals sneaking up behind us.”

“Exactly,” Erramir replied.

Carson stood and moved back to Erramir’s left. “It’s in good shape, slick as a greased monkey.”

“Good. Let’s close it, but leave it cracked. There’s just one other door over there in the corner. If we find anything worth exploring, we’ll come back and push it closed.”

Carson and Val agreed. Carson swung the stone door just short of latching, leaving nothing but a sliver of natural light slicing across the darkness. Erramir’s True Vision pierced the dark regardless. Stepping lightly, he led the way across the room.

Bits of detritus and long-rotted-away wood crunched underfoot. The far wall had three tall, narrow slots that snow piled through in ramps of white of powder.

Approaching the door, he could see the thick wood, although still intact, was weaken by time. Dry rot greyed its fuzzy splintering grain. Weather worn though it was, thick cross bracing and a multitude of rusted nail head spoke of it clearly having been a formidable barrier.

Erramir sheathed his sword and turned his head aside, nodding. Val and Carson returned affirming nods.

His grasped and tried the lever. The surrounding wood dissolved, and the entire mechanical box, lever, latch, and reinforcing pins twisted free in a crumble of wood. Erramir held the whole thing up in befuddled amusement.

“Hey, look,” Carson said, reaching past his shoulder and deftly pulling a key free from the backside of the lock. “First key for my keychain.” It was big, with square-cut teeth and a tarnished, dark brown, almost black coloring.

“Don’t lose that, could open a treasure room,” said Val.

Carson stuck a hand inside his jacket and stored the key in a hidden pocket. “Safe and sound.” He patted his breast with a smile.

The hole left little doubt about the door’s integrity and Erramir took a step back. In such poor condition he worried the whole thing might collapse on his head if he pushed it open. “Gonna kick it open.”

“Sounds good,” Val agreed.

He aimed for a thick cross brace, lifted his knee, and landed the sole of his big boot with measured force, trying to move the door instead of demolishing it.

The ancient lumber crumbled like tissue paper.

Having expected at least some small bit of resistance, he pitched forward behind his foot. Mid-stumble, Erramir decided all-the-way through was his best option and angled his shield to deflect the rotted wood.

His foot came down on the edge of something, rolling his ankle painfully and sending him sprawling to the right.

Sight obscured by shield and debris his next step also landed awkwardly, half-on some debris, twisting his body and accelerating his fall.

Erramir crashed into a wall and the ground simultaneously, his landing punctuated by a discordant eruption of hollow, organic plinking that sounded odd and out of place.

Val watched Erramir gracelessly crash through the door and stumble before disappearing to the right in a cacophony of chaotic sounds. She scrambled mentally to understand the odd noises that were both vaguely familiar and disturbing. A system notice flashed in the corner of her vision, probably a location discovery notice, but she ignored it for the moment.

In the tumult, Erramir’s metal armor and gear clanged; however, the preponderance of sounds were all peculiar plinking and rattling noises. It sounded roughly like a tub of dominoes being dumped out, only hollower. A thought struck Val, and goosebumps rose over her neck and arms as she gripped Virg tightly.

The remains of the door continued to crumble. There wasn’t much of it left since Erramir was both wide and tall. But he’d left behind a cloud of pulverized wood that was slow to settle.

A thick board, that had formed door’s reinforced top edge, tilted slowly, then fell. It clattered to the ground with the solidity of good timber. Val scowled and nudged it with a toe, reaffirming its integrity. Why would that one board not be rotten?

She moved cautiously forward, staff at the ready even though the only sounds to be heard were the settling of debris and Erramir’s groaning. Carson came up behind her and moved around her left shoulder for a better look.

The view cleared, and Val saw the source of the ruckus. Apparently, bones made a plinking noise–just like dominos.

The room was maybe twenty feet wide and nearly three times as long. Every inch of wall space was taken up by slumped over skeletal remains, and most of the floor was also covered by others.

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There were certainly at least fifty dead; more after accounting for the disorganized mess of bones Erramir had trampled and scattered.

He was slouched in a posture similar to the long-dead occupants. One hand was frozen on the crown of his helm, and a look of horror was on his face.

It occurred to Val that he was oblivious to the fact he was sharing his space against the wall with a prior occupant.

“Hey, Err,” Carson said from behind her. “Not sure if you realized, but I think you’re in someone’s lap.”

Val snorted a laugh.

Erramir hit the wall with his right shoulder a bare moment before his knee and hip hit the ground. His sword once again smacked him in the back of his head and shoved his helmet forward.

He was beginning to hate both the clunky brain bucket and the method of carrying his weapon. The kite shield looped around his left forearm rang noisily off the stone wall and floor both.

The riotous noise of his inglorious landing faded, and he groaned. His hip hurt, so he directed the boosted healing he’d gained from level two Presence toward the area. Then he lifted a hand, pushed his helm up, and stiffened in shock.

Skeletons littered the room, covering the space in a gruesome blanket of off-white. It was startling, disturbing like nothing he’d ever imagined seeing, let alone imagined crashing into by accident. He wanted to move, but the sight seemed to be freezing some vital part between thought and action.

Erramir’s trance was interrupted by a familiar voice. “Hey, Err. Not sure if you realized, but I think you’re in someone’s lap.”

The words didn’t assemble themselves correctly in his head. Confused, he turned to regard their source and spied the faces of Val and Carson framed in the shattered remnants of the door he’d just barreled through.

He blinked at them, his thoughts tumbled into place, and he realized what Carson was trying to tell him: he was sitting on top of at least one of the dead guys. “Unghh...” Bones clattered away as his hands and feet scrabbled and rolled off them, causing his attempt at standing to be completely ineffectual.

He collapsed back onto elbow and ass three times before finding clear floor. Rising swiftly, his shoulder caught under the chin of the skeleton he’d landed on. The skull popped off and struck his rising forearm, knocking it high into the air.

“Ohh…” Val breathed, eyes tracking the skull.

Erramir gained his feet just in time to see the off-white orb hit the ground. It landed and bounced forward once, twice, and then disappeared.

Plink, plink… plink, plink…plink… plink… the sound of the bouncing skull faded as it descended deeper and deeper. Eventually, it stopped, and silence returned.

The room was quiet for a long moment, then Erramir shuffled a foot, triggering more hollow clattering. The spell of silence collapsed, and he looked at his friends, “I don’t want to shirk my responsibility or anything… but I’m off of door-opening duty for a while.” His comment immediately cleared the air of unease.

Valerie laughed. “Why? You’re so good at it.”

He picked his way through the field of bones toward the spot where the skull had disappeared, trying to disturb them as little as possible.

“I’m a gaud-damn menace,” he said morosely, “Heaven forbid we ever need to get into an ancient ruin quietly.”

“You definitely screwed this one up royally,” Carson chimed in. “That said, you’re still my favorite defiler of ancient tombs. And I’d be loath to steal such an important role from you, wouldn’t want to hurt your ego.”

“That so?” Erramir’s tone was not playful. “Tell you what man, next time I’ll show you how it’s done. Your body should work well enough. No consent needed.”

“Yeah...” Carson laughed nervously as he began to step gingerly through the bone field behind Val. “I think we should just cross that bridge when we get to it.”

“Um hmm.” Erramir grunted, stepping to where the skull had disappeared. It was a stairwell, four feet across and several times that long in the middle of the room without any railings or protections.

They’d missed it initially, distracted by the platoon of skeletons, but up close, it was impossible to miss. Carson squatted down in front of the opening, inspecting the stone.

He ran fingers along the front lip. About six inches down, there was a narrow ledge a couple inches wide cut into the stone all the way around the opening. The lip felt like it was designed to support a trap door or some kind of cover. “Look. Over there,” Carson said and pointed to the far side of the stairwell opening.

Where he pointed, hanging into the opening from a mangled hinge, was the shattered remains of a colossal stone slab. Three thick brass bands poked beyond the crumbled edge, like fingers reaching into the darkness, stretching to touch the step below.

The sight was eerie and confusing, as the hinge was clearly designed to swing up out of the hole, not down.

The lowest five or six feet of the cover were gone and the remaining edges that would have rested on the lip were all shattered. The meager bit left was only held together by the brass straps that connected to the hinge.

Erramir noticed something else hanging precariously from the right edge of the crumbling slab remains. It was a couple feet below floor level.

He walked around the opening toward the oddity, grateful that there weren’t many bones right up next to the stairwell. Taking a knee at the back edge, he saw the thing was vaguely U-shaped and heavily caked with orange-black oxidation. One end was still anchored in the stone, if only barely, while the other stuck out into the air.

He moved to the spot on the floor where it would have lined up when the stone lid was lowered. A wrist-thick black line extended from the edge into the room. A pinch and a sniff told Erramir the line was rusted iron. He found two quarter-sized black spots on the floor–one on either side of the line. They could have been anchor points for a U-bolt. That’s what’s hanging from the slab—a bracket.

Now that he knew what to look for, Erramir quickly located an identical line and dot pair on the opposite side of the slab, directly across from him. Further inspection revealed four other locations on the floor with the same black markings.

Two were opposite each other in the dead center, and the final set was close to the top step, near where Carson and Val were standing.

His friends followed his gaze, and Erramir could see that they were beginning to understand what he had already concluded. “You guys both see these, right?” he said. Val nodded slowly.

Carson looked unsettled as he shifted on his knees and ran his fingers over the closest black marks. “Yeah,” he said. “This was a security door, reinforced by those huge brass bands and held down at all six of these points.”

He pointed to them. “There were thick bars that went all the way across that cover and through U-bolts that were anchored in these spots.” He sniffed the dust on his finger as Erramir had. “Smells metallic.”

Carson moved his hand to the lip that was half-a-foot down inside the stairwell. He ran his fingers over a long section of it and found it rounded over and rough.

He sat back on his heels. “The lip is rounded over. Almost like it was pulverized and forced down.” His expression became terse, then concerned. “Jesus,” he whispered, then looked to Erramir. “I don’t want to meet whatever did this. Not for another fifty levels at least.”

Erramir nodded his head. “Yeah, agreed. I just hope we get a choice.” He looked back at the disintegrated entry door. “Still, this doesn’t make any sense.” He motioned to the door. “What about the wooden door? Anything strong enough to destroy this stone slab would have just walked through that like it was paper.”

He looked about with consternation writ clear on his face. “I don’t get it. This happened more than a thousand years ago from the quest data, and the bracing and hinge on the trapdoor are wrecked, but they’re not corroded. Same thing with the whole handle and lock mechanism for the door; it was old but not corroded.”

He pointed to the black lines and rust spots. “But these security bars and the brackets that held them are just gone, corroded away to nothing.”

Erramir shook his head, lips pursed. “Something odd happened here. I don’t know how, but whatever did this destroyed only certain things, maybe even corroded these braces selectively.” He paused, considering the tattered remains of the entry door.

“That door was locked with the key on the inside. So, it didn’t leave.” His eyes traveled down into the dark opening. “It went back down.”