Chapter 1 Part 4

In the dark, Calista pulled her light crystal out and to her surprise it glowed faintly with sufficient light to reveal the tunnel’s structure. Ultrecht commented that it appeared to be an old lava tube. The interior of the cavern supported his observation. There were no structures like those of the traditional water formed caverns. There were no columns, stalactites or stalagmites. The floor had been worn smooth by an unknown process. But the rocks around the edge and the roof still contained sharp and rough rock where long cooled magma had stopped moving.

The passage led deep into the core of the volcano. After an hour and a half of hiking, however, the trail abruptly opened into a perfectly circular room. There were no windows or the like, and the light crystals, that had guided them since the beginning of the lava tube revealed only a spiral staircase as the only feature in the room. Avery led them to the staircase and stood at its base. Ganatar joined him.

"For obvious reasons," the unicorn admitted. "This is as far as I have ever explored." His meaning was clear as the stairs were not intended for a quadruped. The unicorn gazed up the stairs as he stood at the base. "I suppose I could wait for you here," he said.

"I’d rather you wait with our packs," Ultrecht said. "I doubt there’s any good you could do here, and at least with someone watching our packs I’d feel better. The unicorn walked away from the stairs.

"If that is your wish," he said. "But I have no desire for you to risk your lives to help me escape, while I stay safely out of harm's way. I want to help."

"I think you just did," Avery said frowning.

"What is it, Avery?" Armegon asked. He suspected the ranger had just sensed something wrong.

"It’s not my specialty," Avery admitted, "but the floor sounded different when Ganatar walked in front of the stairs than it does everywhere else he steps."

Ruk walked over and stomped on the floor at the stair's base. The hollow ring was much clearer with the emphasized step. The minotaan grumbled something. He reached for his belt and pulled a long thin dirk from it. He took one end of a rope and passed it to Avery who wrapped it about his own waist twice and braced himself. Then Ruk cautiously climbed the steps.

About twenty feet up, the steps shook slightly and Ruk threw himself forward and jammed the dirk into the side of the wall. Beneath him the stairs all flattened forming a steep ramp. The minotaan's weight drug him downwards, but the point of the dirk digging into the rough stonework slowed his slide sufficiently for him to roll off the stairs as he approached the bottom. When he hit the floor at Avery's feet, he climbed to his knees and cautiously reached out with one hand and pounded a fist on the floor at the stairs base.

Instantly the floor fell away revealing a dark pit about twenty feet deep and an assortment of long thin iron barbed spikes. Bones littered the floor around where uncounted visitors had fallen prey to the trap. There was also one complete skeleton mounted on the spikes, impaled from the rear.

Ultrecht summed up everyone's thoughts. "Oooooh. That smarts. Now that would be a major pain in the rear."

"Hey," Armegon chastised. "Watch the language."

"Forget the language," Avery chuckled. "Just try to come up with some better jokes. That last one was worse than any profanity."

"Good catch," Ultrecht said to Avery. "And you too," he added to Ruk. "I'm glad you have some skill in trap detection."

Ruk retrieved his ax and nodded at the stairs. "Now that the trap is triggered, how do you suggest we climb the stairs?"

"Well we could use spikes and rope," Armegon suggested. "That would take a long time, and make us very vulnerable to attack," Ruk pointed out.

"How about resetting the trap and avoiding the trigger?" Ultrecht offered.

"These kinds of traps usually have several triggers," the minotaan informed them. "The builders have to consider that a lone individual may not trip a single trigger, but can hardly avoid a half dozen triggers."

"How do the triggers work?" Calista asked.

"Well I can’t tell without actually seeing the mechanism, but I suspect that the steps are in their natural position now," he gestured at the steep ramp. "There’s probably a long bar under the ramp that holds the steps up when the trap is set, and when you step on the trigger, it moves the bar letting the steps fall like this."

"Then just jam the bar so that it won't move," the girl offered.

Ultrecht smiled, and Avery looked at Armegon, who in turn looked at Ruk. The minotaan shrugged. "That might work," he said.

With a great sweep of the huge ax, the bottom step shattered. Ruk knelt down and examined the mechanism. "Well," he said. "It’s not exactly what I thought it was, but it’s close enough that Cal's idea may still work. The huge minotaan reached into the hollow space beneath the second step and jerked hard. The steps all snapped back in the upright position. Ruk then took an iron spike from his pack and jammed it into the mechanism. Just to be safe, he bent the spike so that it would not be easy to remove.

"There," Ruk said as he stood again. "That should do it."

"How about the trap door?" Calista asked.

"Well, the door falls inward, so we can hardly spike it closed," Avery said. "But if we can't think of anything else, we can always string a rope across the bottom of the stairs to catch anyone who’s falling."

"You mean to drive spikes into the rock wall and run a rope across the stair bottom," Armegon asked.

"Unless we can come up with something better," Avery replied. "It is just a safety precaution anyway. Ruk has disarmed the trap."

"I guess we have no choice since I can't think of anything else to do," Armegon said looking about. "Can anyone think of an alternative?"

When no answer came, Avery and Ruk drove a pair of spikes across the shattered lower step. They stretched a rope between the spikes and tied it securely. "That should hold if any one of us fall down the stars," Avery said, "except maybe for Ruk. Even then it will buy us some time before letting us plunge into that pit."

"Then let's be off," Ultrecht said impatiently. They bade farewell to the unicorn and mounted the stairs to see what secrets the tower held that might show them how to escape. Ganatar departed the way they had come. Ruk led the way. As they ascended, he managed to locate two more triggers, but assured them that he was almost certain that he missed a few. At any rate, they were glad to be done with the stairs when they came to a landing.

Two passages departed from the landing--a hallway to the right, and the stairs which continued upwards. "Two directions," Ruk said to Armegon who carried the torch. "Make a choice."

Armegon pointed to their right and nodded. "After you my good man."

Ruk gripped his ax tightly and led the way. Armegon walked to the minotaan's left and slightly behind. They were followed by Calista and Ultrecht walking side by side. Calista carried her bow braced and an arrow was in her free hand. Bringing up the rear was Avery.

The passage they had chosen was barely wide enough for two humans to walk abreast comfortably. Dust, undisturbed for untold ages, caked the floor and rose in miniature clouds with every step until breathing became uncomfortable and the light was obscured to the point that Ruk called a halt to the march. They stood around moving as little as possible so as not to stir up more dust. Armegon suggested everyone tie a cloth across his face to keep the dust out.

When the air cleared enough for them to see ahead, they continued onward. Again they were glad when the passage opened into a chamber of some kind. The architecture appeared to have been altered from its original type. The geometrical symmetry they had observed until now throughout the entire realm, was still suggested in some places, but it had been covered by intricate and complex curves and spherical nodules on the walls and ceiling. The material, Ultrecht observed, appeared to be some kind of residue or secreted material.

The new architecture seemed to follow no specific pattern, but it was obvious that the room had been very large. The new additions made what had been a chamber of considerable size into a maze-like structure. "Well, at least the dust is gone," Calista mumbled through the rags covering her face. She swatted at her clothes lightly and new clouds of sediment puffed into existence about her. She coughed and pulled the rag from her mouth.

"Let's move on," Armegon suggested and he urged Ruk to lead the way. They rounded several bends in the strange maze and crawled over and under a number of obstacle formations for the next ten minutes.

It came as a complete surprise to those in the rear when a flash of light was seen as Armegon and Ruk rounded a corner. The flash was followed by darkness and a sound of clattering metal and the grunt of someone taking a painful blow. Armegon was heard to shout for light, before the noise level increased.

The situation was terrible. They were in close quarters with their primary light source neutralized. Avery's elven vision was capable of detecting heat sources, but it showed him nothing when the view was obstructed by what ever stuff filled the chamber. Armegon could be heard yelling unintelligibly ahead and Avery could see a faint glow from around the corner. Silhouetted Avery could make out the forms of Calista and Ultrecht as they stumbled in the dark. Their human eyes were not so quick to adapt to the sudden darkness as his woodsman's vision.

Avery pushed his way past the two humans urging Ultrecht to produce a new light source as quickly as possible in the process. He then sprinted around the bend to see Armegon and Ruk locked in combat. From the waning glow of Armegon's torch which lay on the ground, Avery saw a number of giant insects with shiny, black exoskeletons holding tightly to the other two travelers.

One creature was hanging suspended from the ceiling holding Armegon upside down by an arm and a leg, while the other had dropped on top of Ruk and was using four of its six limbs to try to break open his armor. The minotaan was in turn hammering blow upon blow with his gauntleted fists into the thoracic region of the creature without much success.

A third creature had spotted Avery and was crawling upside down across the roof, apparently to get in a position to pounce on him from above. Avery vocalized a warning to those behind him, notifying them of the situation as he waited for the insect creature to get closer. When he felt the thing was about to attack, Avery dove forward and rolled to come up with Armegon's discarded saber in his hand.

He spun and thrust lightly at the creature before it had a chance to react to its missed attack. The tip of the saber rendered one of the six forearms inoperative and the creature backed up warily.

Avery did not wait. While he had the advantage, he side stepped underneath Armegon and hacked at one of the insect legs holding Armegon off the floor. With an irritating chittering and clicking noise, the monster released the mage and launched itself at the ranger.

Avery had expected the monster to retreat, not attack. So, he was taken by surprise when the thing leaped from its hold on the ceiling to land on him. The weight of the thing drove him to the ground, and Armegon's sword skittered from his hand across the floor as it pinned his sword arm with a claw.

Avery got a good whiff of the cave insect's breath as the head lowered presumably to take a bite at him. The breath smelled like sour milk causing Avery to reflexively turn his head to try to get fresh air. The insect's mandibles worked excitedly as the reached for its prey's exposed neck. The ranger responded by planting his fist in one of the huge multi-faceted compound eyes. The head jerked back quickly and Avery wrenched his other hand loose.

He tried to get away from the thing, but it recovered quickly enough to pounce on him again before he could make good his escape. This time it pinned both of Avery's hands and was making a second attempt to bite him when an arrow sliced into the already bruised eye cluster. The insect screamed and this time it tried to make good its own escape.

Avery rolled over to see Calista notching another arrow. Ultrecht held up a torch which illuminated the room much more brightly than Armegon's fallen one. Avery also could see that Armegon had recovered his saber and decapitated the other insect and Ruk was hacking the third one to bits. Where Avery's assailant had rushed off to was anyone's guess. Armegon and Ruk were breathing heavy, but were calming down. Ultrecht was worried about their condition, and Calista was replacing the arrow she had drawn into her quiver.

Avery still lay on his back, and with the benefit of Ultrecht's torch, he had a revelation none of the others were in a position to see. The room was very large indeed with a ceiling. Their attackers had not really been hanging from the ceiling, they had been hanging from archways. Laying on his back, Avery got a very good long look at hundreds of sets of eyes softly reflecting the torch light above them. At the moment none of then were moving, but the ranger was not about to wait for that to happen.

He virtually levitated to his feet and grabbed the torch from Ultrecht. In answer to the protests, he glanced upward and motioned that they do likewise. Then he recklessly led them through the structure as fast as he could until they reached the far side. Again there was a tunnel. This time there was a light at the far end, and he passed the torch to Ruk and urged him to move as quickly as possible ahead.

"That was close," Ultrecht said as he tried to catch his breath. "I wonder why they didn't attack?"

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," Armegon said.

"Well, they certainly could’ve gotten the drop on us," Calista said innocently.

"'Got the drop?' Young lady, do you want a spanking?" Armegon scolded.