“No way. It has to be dwarven,” Ozzy insisted.
“And how would you know, eh?” Angela raised an eyebrow. “I thought you’ve never been to Weisslicht?”
“That’s not the only place you’ll find dwarves, is it?”
“No, but it’s the only place you’ll find dwarven stonework.”
“You’ve been there, then?”
“Once or twice, on business.”
“And what was it like?”
“Horrible,” the redhead winced. “It was cold, dark, and they only ever spoke in Dwarvish. That said, their spiced mushroom wine was fantastic.”
“That’s nice, but I was asking about the stonework, Angela.”
“Oh. Uh… I wasn’t exactly… paying attention to it.”
Ozzy pinched his nose in frustration.
“Then why are you so adamant that this place can’t be dwarven-made?”
“Because, dwarves have never held any land in the Ostorian Expanse.”
It was common knowledge among experienced explorers that there was no such thing as ‘dwarven ruins’ on this continent. Any ancient structures that survived the test of time were almost exclusively human-made temples and castles.
“Then where did all this come from?” the druid pressed.
“How should I know?” she waved her hands around. “Do I look like an archeologist?”
Both of them glanced at the unconscious librarian in Ozzy’s arms and sighed in tandem. The cause of this little argument was the stone structure they had stumbled into after following that tunnel. It gave off the feeling of a residential building, with long corridors and numerous locked iron doors. It was only a theory, but the uniformity of the layout, the countless torch stands on the walls, and the ample ventilation hinted at people having lived here in ages past. Wade had absentmindedly asked the obvious question of who could have built all this, which then led to this rather pointless argument. The technician himself was far more concerned with the throbbing pain from his broken arm than any actual answer, but he nevertheless spotted a flaw in this ‘apartment complex’ theory.
“Do you think the people that lived here had plumbing?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Angela raised an eyebrow.
“I was thinking that people need water to live, right? Not just to drink, but also for hygiene and such. So, if people lived here, they must have had a water source, but how did it work? Surely they didn’t have plumbing the way we do now, right?”
The redhead suddenly slapped her forehead and exclaimed, “Sono deficiente!”
“… What?”
Wade was thoroughly confused as he watched Angela bring out her canteen. Seeing that, Ozzy caught on and gently lowered Eva onto the floor with her back against a wall. The gunslinger then splashed her friend in the face with what little water she had left. It did the trick, and the librarian woke up with a small yelp and a fair amount of flailing. It was honestly rather embarrassing that neither of these two so-called veterans thought of doing something so obvious until Wade incidentally reminded them. Though, in their defense, the last half hour or so had been quite eventful indeed.
“Ugh… How long was I out?” Eva asked.
“Five minutes or so,” Angela said while helping her up. “Didn’t miss much, other than this weird ruin we found.”
“Oh?” the librarian looked around, her eyes widening. “Fascinating! How have these doors not rusted after all this time?! And these walls! I didn’t get a close look earlier, but this is definitely gnomish stonework!”
“Gnomish?” Ozzy asked, clearly intrigued. “How can you tell?”
“See this criss-cross pattern in the floor tiles, and how every third wall brick is a quarter longer than the others?!” she pointed around her. “Those are hallmarks of traditional gnomish architecture! They believed it imbued their dwellings with divine protection, you see.”
“Gnomes,” Angela said, clearly skeptical. “Here. In Ostor.”
“Exactly! I don’t know when they got here, but it would explain so much!” Eva continued. “You remember the weird cave we went through first, right? The oddly square one you said looked like a maintenance tunnel? That’s exactly the sort of thing the ancient gnomes would make!”
“Gnomes, though,” Wade pointed at the tall ceiling.
“I know, I know,” she immediately caught on, “but you need to understand that ancient gnomish culture was obsessed with mathematics. It still is to some extent, but it was way worse back then. They’d build all these impractically huge structures just because they satisfied some… aesthetic formula or… geometric belief.”
“Did their geometric beliefs involve back doors?”
Angela’s attempt to steer the conversation in a more productive direction momentarily stumped Eva, having reminded the librarian that the group’s situation was far from peachy.
“Oh. Right. Uh, hmm…”
Having reined in her enthusiasm, the brainy brunette gave that question some serious thought. Her knowledge on the subject of ancient gnomes was limited to a bunch of interesting or strange facts, so she was far from an expert. Nevertheless, what trivia she was aware of was enough for her to deduce an answer.
“They’re big on symmetry, so… there should be another exit on the opposite side of this… What is this place, anyway?”
“We were hoping you could tell us,” Ozzy spoke up. “Best we can figure, it was a residential building. Like an apartment complex.”
“Have you checked any of the rooms?”
“No. They’re locked so we can’t get them open.”
Busting the doors down with brute strength wasn’t an option, either. They were made out of iron and built into dense stone walls, all of which were very well preserved. Granted, it wasn’t impossible to break through, but that would require hours of back-breaking labor.
“What about picking the locks?” Eva inquired about the obvious solution.
The druid and the gunslinger pointed at the technician, who in turn gestured at his broken arm. Indeed, if anyone here knew how to do that, it would be Wade, but he couldn’t even make the attempt with only one hand.
“Well… have you tried all of them?” the librarian was grasping at straws. “So many doors, surely one or two were left open.”
It was hopeful thinking, but well within the realm of possibility. So, the team ventured onward, making sure to check every entrance as they went. They had no luck on that front, at least for the moment. Soon enough, the hallway came to an end as it split into two perpendicular corridors. Ozzy marked the passage they came from with chalk, after which the group headed left. About a hundred paces and ten locked doors later, the team finally came across something of interest. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a miraculously open doorway. Nor an unlocked one. In fact, it wasn’t even wall related. It was a pressure plate on the floor that the group wouldn’t have noticed it at all if not for Ozzy.
Unfortunately for the druid, he discovered it by stepping on it.
*Click*
Hearing that barely audible sound and feeling his foot sink just a bit lower than expected, the druid reacted entirely on instinct. He jumped backwards while turning around, shoving his teammates back in an attempt to protect them from whatever this trap had in store. Moments later, a series of iron spears fell from what looked like ventilation ducts in the ceiling, crashing into the stone floor with heavy thuds. Thankfully, the druid’s quick reflexes had spared anyone from an impromptu skewering.
“Everyone alright?” he asked as he looked back.
“Rnnnnn!” Wade groaned in pain. “Arm! My arm!”
It would appear his broken bones did not agree with the rough evasive maneuver.
“Hold still, let me look at it,” Eva immediately attended to him.
“We’re fine, somehow,” Angela looked rattled. “Those were some impressive reflexes there, Ozzy. You sure this is your first time delving?”
“I got lucky,” he brushed her off.
The gunslinger wasn’t buying it, but this wasn’t the time or place to be casting doubt on others.
“How’s Wade-boy?” she asked instead.
“He’s fine,” the librarian reported. “Well, he’s not worse.”
“Sorry, ngh! For being a bother, Miss,” he squeaked out.
“Shush, you! Steady your breathing. And keep your distance. Another shove like that and… well… best not to think about it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Might be best for all of you to stand back while I walk first,” Ozzy insisted.
“What do you mean?” Eva raised an eyebrow.
“If anyone’s going to get hurt here, it might as well be me.”
He had a similar role when he was exploring dungeons with the Quartet, so he was used to it. Admittedly he didn’t have access to readily available healing via magic or potions, but he’d manage. As for the rest of the team, they were clearly uncomfortable with the idea. However, nobody had any other suggestions at the moment, so they silently agreed.
“But where do we go?” Angela asked. “The stupid things are in the way.”
Indeed, the way forward was blocked by the shafts of seven iron spears that effectively became prison bars. They were far apart for Eva and maybe Angela to squeeze through, but that would separate them from the guys. This was not an advisable course of action, to say the least.
“We could double-back to that other hallway we went past,” the brunette suggested.
“Just a second. I have an idea.”
Following that declaration, Ozzy stepped closer and grabbed the closest metal shaft. He jerked it up and down while pushing it back and forth. As he suspected, the ancient gnomish mechanism was far more complex than it needed to be. This, in turn, meant it wasn’t as sturdy as it could have been. It was likely intended to pull the spears back up after they’d been dropped, but that part of the trap hadn’t withstood the test of time. What it did allow for was enough slack for the druid to wriggle the spear free of the machine it was attached to in the ceiling and pull it out. He set it down on the ground and repeated the motion a few others, opening a path through the blockage in about three minutes. This also gave Wade the time he needed for the pain in his broken limb to lessen to a dull throb, although a sneaky swig of Angela’s discretely offered hip flask also helped.
However, the team couldn’t proceed forward as quickly as they had until now. It was ludicrous to think this trap was a one-time thing. There were likely others, which meant they had to watch their every step. The technician had the idea of taking one of the dislodged spears with them and using it to test the floor tiles for any more pressure plates. That idea was quickly discarded as it was doubtful the object in question would be heavy enough to set off floor-based traps. So, for the moment, the druid walked several paces ahead of everyone else at his own insistence. His feral instincts gave him a sixth sense of danger that would afford him valuable fractions of a second should he trigger another trap.
“Okay, I guess this definitely isn’t a residential building,” Angela murmured while the group pressed forward. “Not even gnomes are crazy enough to booby trap their houses.”
“Of course it’s not residential,” Eva murmured. “Even without the traps, who in their right mind would want to open those huge iron doors on a daily basis? This is probably a… prison, or a vault, or something.”
“A vault?! Now we’re talking!”
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“Should we still be checking the doors?” Wade reminded them.
“Damn right!”
They had momentarily forgotten about that with the heightened sense of peril, but the gunslinger didn’t hesitate to resume the process. She immediately turned to one of the doors she was passing by and put a hand on it.
“Wait!” Ozzy called out from ahead.
The words ‘it might be trapped’ failed to leave his lips before the gunslinger put her weight on the door, which made it budge with a loud groan. Hearing that and realizing her mistake, the overeager redhead pulled away and pressed her back against the wall on the opposite side of the hallway. Thankfully there were no spears, blades, darts, guillotines, or any other trap-like things coming at her. A few silent seconds later, once it was clear there was no immediate danger, the gunslinger immediately resumed pushing the door open with an excited glint in her eyes.
“Angela! What are you doing?!” Eva called out.
“I can smell it, Libby! Treasure! Ozzy, give me a hand!”
The druid hesitated for a moment before agreeing with a shrug. Everything else aside, the more they knew about this place, the better their chances at making it through. With that in mind, he walked up to the redhead, pressed his shoulder against the door, and really put his back into it. The hinges that hadn’t been oiled in millenia screeched loudly in protest as the slab of iron was slowly pushed open. Once it was ajar enough for her to get a peek inside, Angela flashed her electric torch through the gap. Her face then went from excited to confused to mortified in a split second.
“Okay. Not a vault,” she declared. “Definitely not a vault.”
On the other side of that door was a tiny, tiny room that could not have possibly been anything other than a prison cell. The shackles anchored to the back wall made that abundantly clear. Furthermore, the floor had several large and dark stains that Angela could not imagine were anything other than blood. No bones or other remains, though. There were also some odd and deep scratches here and there. They almost looked like someone was swinging a pickaxe around. That made no sense, though. Who’d allow a prisoner such a thing? Unless, of course, it couldn’t be taken away from them. Like, if it was part of their body, perhaps?
Like… a certain species of nasty buggers that Angela had run into no more than half an hour ago?
“Call-a me crazy,” she muttered, “but I think someone was… training mine-munchers.”
“What?!” Eva shrieked. “You’re crazy! Mine-munchers aren’t even native to Ostor!”
“You’re probably right. Still, just to be safe, we shouldn’t be opening these things,” the redhead realized. “Very heavy. Very loud. Might draw more munchers to us.”
The rest of the team nodded silently. The thought that those things might already be in here had crossed all their minds, they just hesitated to speak it aloud. After all, the hallways they passed through were easily tall and wide enough for those beasts to pass through comfortably. Actually, could that have been by design? Ozzy didn’t say anything, but the more he thought about it, the more Angela’s crazy idea made sense. He hadn’t met any gnomes in this world, nor was he all that familiar with those in Einhan, but judging from what the others said, it was safe to assume they weren’t all that different. If the ones that built this place were even half as curious, calculating, and morally flexible as those back home, then this being a monster breeding and/or training facility was not out of the question. Nor was the notion that they might have used alchemy to alter the beasts in an attempt to make them easier to control.
As the group quietly pushed onward, Ozzy made another strange discovery. One of the floor tiles was marked with a circular carving that was about half as wide as the stone square. The marking was weathered with time, but clearly visible now that the druid was actively looking at his feet. A bit of close scrutiny and very careful prodding revealed this was another pressure plate. Rather than setting it off, he marked its location via chalk on the wall and then instructed the others to carefully step over or around it. That was painfully easy, given how the tiles were only about twenty-by-forty centimeter rectangles. A short while later, they found another, completely identical mechanism. This was clearly no coincidence, but a trend.
“Maybe all the traps are marked like this?” Wade asked hopefully.
“That would be convenient, but also pointless. What’s the point of a trap if an intruder can see it clearly?” Ozzy pointed out.
“Unless, you know…” Angela hesitated for a moment.
“Unless what?” the man pressed.
“Unless those traps were intended to trap things that aren’t smart enough to figure it out.”
“Angela! Stop it,” Eva smacked her shoulder. “Enough of that loopy talk.”
“I’m just saying…”
And then, as if to prove her point, the team came across the withered remains of what was clearly a long-dead mine-muncher impaled by one of the traps in question.
“See?!” the redhead fervently pointed at it. “We walked into a muncher farm!”
An uncomfortable silence was the only response she got from Eva and Wade. Slowly but surely, both of them were starting to buy into her illogical monster-taming theory. From where they were standing, it seemed impossible that all these signs were merely coincidence. Ozzy was already convinced that this was indeed the case. An ancient, potentially alchemically altered colony of deep hulks was a very good match for the ‘leech’ that had been bothering the mountain spirit. Sure, it sounded rather ridiculous when he spelled it out like that, but such things happened all the time on Einhan.
The druid then remembered that this wasn’t Einhan, and took a mental step back to reassess the situation.
“You’re only seeing what you want to see,” he told Angela. “Look at the body, this thing is not thousands of years old. It would be dust by now if that were the case. It probably has been here for… a few years at most. Probably a stray that found its way in here and got skewered.”
Hearing those words helped keep the rest of the team from getting sucked into the redhead’s ad-hoc ideas.
“Okay, yeah. That’s a good point,” the woman herself admitted. “It must have been lucky to make it all the way here, though.”
The team had passed by three spear traps, and those were only the ones they knew about. They could have easily stepped over a few more without realizing it.
“That, or it came in from the other side,” the druid pointed out.
“… Bollocks,” Wade mumbled.
“What he said,” Eva agreed.
“Should I clear the path or do we go back?” Ozzy asked. “There was another passage we hadn’t explored yet.”
“Hm…” Angela pondered for a bit. “Let’s not backtrack unless we have to. There’s no telling what that hallway might have, no?”
She looked to the non-combatants for objections, though neither of them had any.
“Alright,” Ozzy said. “Give me a minute.”
He got busy removing the iron spikes barring the way much as he had before, the old corpse falling to nasty pieces as he worked around it. A few minutes later, the path was clear enough for the group to proceed. They found and hopped over two more pressure plates within the next few minutes of slow but steady progress. It was also worth noting that this section of the passage had a lot more turns, each of them a neat ninety degrees and most of them right ones. It was impossible to shake the feeling they were walking around in circles. The team finally came to a stop when they encountered another T-junction, with one path going straight ahead and another veering off to the right. Normally they would have stuck with the usual ‘keep left’ trick for navigating mazes, but that side passage had something that the way forward didn’t.
It had a glimmer.
Indeed, as odd as it was, shining all flashlights down that corridor revealed something reflective about thirty or forty meters ahead. It was impossible to tell what it was at this distance, but something was definitely catching the front end of the light beams. Wary that this might lure them into yet more traps, the group peered long and hard at the darkness ahead. In doing so, one of them made a rather thrilling discovery.
“Wait… The tunnel, she opens up ahead,” Angeala spoke quietly.
“You sure?” Eva whispered back.
“Yes. See there?” the redhead shone her light at the left wall. “It just kind of stops, right there.”
“She’s right,” Ozzy said in a hushed tone. “That might be a way out.”
“Why are we whispering?” Wade asked.
“Might be munchers,” Angela replied.
“Ah.”
Ultimately the team made a silent yet unanimous decision to head that way. They were wary of what nasty surprise might wait for them, of course, but at least it wasn’t more of the same damnable tunnel. A few steps in that direction showed that Angela was right, and the path did indeed open up into some kind of chamber. The glimmering thing they spotted in the distance gradually came into view as well. And what a view it was. Standing in the middle of a spacious dome-shaped chamber, atop an enormous pedestal surrounded by a deep chasm, was a gemstone unlike any other. It was an off-white diamond in a multi-faceted, mostly triangular cut. It brilliantly refracted the shine of the flashlights that fell upon it, bathing the entire space in dancing lights. It was a sight that was as breathtaking as it was unexpected, though the most shocking thing about the gem was not its exceptional clarity.
It was so impossibly huge, so mind-bogglingly enormous, and so fantastically gigantic, that calling it a mere gemstone felt woefully inadequate. Gemboulder was a far, far better fit for the man-sized jewel. The sight of it was so surreal that Wade could do little but babble quietly and incoherently as he tried to process it. Eva was similarly stupefied as she stared at it slack-jawed, her brown eyes blinking rapidly in disbelief. Angela was equally bewildered and, for once, utterly speechless as she clutched her chest with her right hand for fear that her heart might just explode. Ozzy, however, was holding back the sudden urge to vomit. Entering this room and glancing at that thing in its center hit him with a wave of disgust, almost as if he had been struck by a concentrated stream of raw sewage. It was so bad that he couldn’t even breathe, as if his lungs refused to cooperate with what his brain was saying. It wasn’t until he stumbled several steps back into the tunnel they all came from that he was finally able to take in air again.
“Wait, Ozzy? Ozzy?! Are you alright?!”
Eva was the first to notice the mountain of a man had nearly become an avalanche. It wasn’t just his breathing, but he was also pale as a sheet and barely standing. He would have surely toppled over if he wasn’t leaning hard against the wall.
“I’m- Hack! Koff! I’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Think I almost swallowed my tongue in surprise. I just need a moment.”
“You sure?! Wait, Wade? Wade!”
The young man didn’t seem to notice her so she grabbed him by the shoulder and slapped him. Hard.
“Oww!” he cried out. “Wuh- What? Where? What?”
“Wade! Kleiner counter! Now!”
“Uh. Uh!”
Wade’s face went as pale as Ozzy’s as he heard that.
“I think you got it, didn’t you?”
Since the man was in no condition to carry all that gear he came in with, the team had to lighten his load considerably. The collected samples for the survey were left behind in that small room the group had taken refuge in after the muncher attack, which took care of the bulk of the weight. The rest of the gear was divvied up between the team members. Eva was the least likely to move around too much, so she was entrusted with the more fragile equipment. Having been reminded of that, the librarian quickly retrieved the device in question. It was a wooden box the size of a thick notepad, with two buttons and a dial on the front and a small antenna poking out of the top. She flicked the ‘on’ switch and pointed the thing at the diamond. Eva was then relieved to see that it measured no more than zero-point-two on the Kleiner particle saturation scale.
“Okay! Okay…” she calmed down with a few deep breaths. “It’s not irradiated. That’s good.”
Visible relief washed over Wade as well, but Ozzy didn’t let his guard down. He had heard the two of them mention this Kleiner saturation stuff during the survey, but he hadn’t the foggiest what it actually was. As far as he was aware, it was some scientific variable intended for people much smarter than him, like barometric pressure. It was now clear this wasn’t the case if it was somehow relevant to the situation at hand. Thankfully it wasn’t anything to actively worry about according to Eva, so the druid instead focused on another, more pressing concern.
“Angela!” he called out to the redhead. “What are you doing?!”
While he was trying to catch his breath and the brainy duo were doing science stuff, the gunslinger had started slowly approaching the gem in question. She seemed transfixed by it and failed to notice Ozzy call out to her.
“Angela!”
The other two also caught on that she was acting strangely, though they had even less of an idea what was going on.
“Aw, hell.”
The druid steeled his resolve, held his breath, and charged into the chamber. Thankfully the redhead responded to his heavy footfalls and turned her head to look at him. Her face went from a wide grin to utter bewilderment to outright panic in less than a second.
“Woah!” she yelled, hands out. “Woah, woah, woah!”
Ozzy rapidly slowed his pace to a full stop, but remained on alert.
“Easy there, big guy. I was just looking, okay? Calm down. Mama mia, these rookies,” she shook her head.
“R-right. Hrm,” he struggled to breathe. “Look, come back here a second. We need to talk.”
“Uh, yeah we do. There’s no way I’m going to take this thing back to town on my own!”
“You… Ahem! You what?”
“Just look at it!” she thrust her finger towards the gem. “This is the find of the century! The millennium! We can’t just leave it here!”
“Are you mental?!” Eva raised her voice. “Diamonds are over three times heavier than water! Not even Ozzy can carry that stupidly huge thing!”
“Actually, with some pulleys here and there…” Wade mumbled.
“We also have much bigger problems!” she continued. “Big, mean, mine-muncher problems!”
“I don’t care!” Angela was insistent. “This is the discovery of a lifetime! This puts your name in the history books!”
“And?! It’s not going anywhere!”
“But what if someone else claims it?!”
“They won’t! We’ll come back with a whole team of excavators once we make it out!”
“Fuck that! I’m not giving those monkeys the credit!”
“Are- You- But-” Eva struggled to speak for a moment. “It’s still our find even if we’re not the ones to actually bring it out, you absolute dumbass!”
“I… Wait, it works like that?” the redhead was stumped.
“Yes! Of course! How did you think it works?!”
“But… What about all those photos of explorers carrying loot out of tombs and stuff? Like Rocky Gillmore when he-”
“Those are staged! He had entire teams of people do all the hard work, but he’s the only one that got the glory!”
“I… uh… s-see…”
Angela felt unbelievably stupid for the first time in a long, long while. Truthfully, she had no idea how that part of the media circuit worked. How could she? Though she’d seen her fair share of ancient ruins and had contributed to a few noteworthy discoveries, none of them were sensational enough to make mainstream news. At most she was lucky to have a short interview in a tabloid, or an article in the League’s own publication, the Explorer’s Digest. Indeed, what Eva explained made a lot of sense now that Angela stopped to think about the practicality of their situation. She was so hung up on the idea of emerging from these depths while triumphantly hoisting a massive diamond over her shoulder that she nearly got tackled by Ozzy.
“I’m sorry,” Angela bowed her head. “I got ahead of myself. Let’s-a find that way out, no?”
“Yes,” Eva was exhausted. “Let’s.”
“No, wait, a winch would work too,” Wade kept mumbling, which the librarian ignored.
“Ozzy?” she turned to the inexplicably suffering man. “Are you still not feeling well?”
“It’ll- Hurk! It’ll pass.”
Physically he was unharmed. However, mentally and spiritually, he was reeling from being in the same room as that diamond. He was both puzzled and relieved that none of the others noticed anything was off. Then again, maybe it was because they simply weren’t trained or well-versed in such things. Probably another way in which this world and Einhan differed so wildly. Ah, perhaps it was because Ozzy was technically an alien that he reacted so badly? That wasn’t impossible, but his symptoms might’ve been caused by any number of factors. It was difficult to know how these kinds of things worked when first encountered, and discovering those details was usually a painful and costly process. Thankfully Angela saw reason and did not insist on dragging that strange gem along, nor had she fallen under its influence. And yes, her becoming enthralled was a very real possibility, as were a number of other nasty outcomes.
Cursed items did weird things to people, and that boulder-sized diamond was the most heavily hexed object he’d ever laid eyes on.