Chapter Fifteen: Flammable
In which I don't want to set the world
on fire.
She backed slowly out of the room.
The spider advanced slowly on her.
She tripped on a root, landing flat on
her ass. The torch rolled off to the side. She grabbed the scroll in
both hands, reading it aloud. The words were foreign even to her
ears, the meaning incomprehensible.
There was a twisting
to the air around her. Fire engulfed the scroll, then shot forward,
exploding on the spider's face. It screeched, a high, awful, terrible
noise. It lunged at the doorway, its forelegs clawing the air where
she'd just been as she scrambled just outside of its reach. The thing
hissed at her, spittle flying from its mandibles and sizzling where
it hit the ground.
If she
managed to kill it? Totally bottling that venom. She was sure she'd
find a use for something that seemed to be melting stone.
She held her hands
out in front of her, eyes closed. She felt the heat build in her
palms. Giving the magic just a tiny push, she felt it roar to life
like a dragon in her hands. Flame spewed forth from her hands, a
continuous stream of it engulfing the spider. It screamed its agony,
an inhuman sound that chilled her to the bone.
She peeked at it.
It was wobbling from side to side, its legs not quite moving
together. She shot another quick blast of flame at it, the fizzy
reservoir of power she recognized as magic almost running dry.
Another shot of flame, and another.
The spider fell,
crisped, to land on its belly.
She thought it was
dead. She was pretty sure it was dead. She shifted her backpack
around, fishing in it until she found a vial of blue liquid. She
popped the cork on it, downing it in one gulp. It felt fizzy against
her tongue, and she knew she had a winner. Magic, in liquid form.
Delicious. Or at least, she assumed it was delicious; she didn't
really taste it so much as feel it buzzing down her throat.
That done, she
hesitantly inched forward on hands and knees, towards the spider. She
put the vial to one of its massive teeth, and black venom dripped
down into it.
Fun. Definitely not
a potion she'd be drinking.
That done, she
cautiously stood up. Walking back out of the room, she collected the
torch, which had burnt out. She lit it again with a small burst of
flame.
All right, so …
She kept her
distance from the probably-dead, still-burning spider, edging into
the room. Several unidentifiable, web-wrapped corpses lay around the
spider's lair, culminating in a webbed-up exit on the far side of the
room. A man's mummified corpse hung from the sticky webbing,
something shiny glinting at his feet. She approached him, hesitantly,
and there it was: the golden claw.
Well, that was
easy. She picked it up, looking it over. It bore markings not unlike
the carvings she'd seen earlier. A bear, a dragonfly, and an owl.
Hnh.
She shrugged, then
stuffed it into her backpack. One objective completed, one to go.
Hopefully the Dragonstone wasn't too big. Between the books, the
potions, and the claw, her backpack was already getting heavy.
She cut the man's
corpse down with her sword, then proceeded quickly on into the next
room. More golden urns lined some kind of a circular stone table. The
only thing of any interest to her was another purplish-blue soul gem
lying between two of the urns. She collected it, and pressed on.
She entered a
mausoleum of some kind. It was eerie, the light of her torch barely
illuminating desiccated corpses.
Much to her
surprise, one of the corpses started to get up and move.
Okay. Zombies she
could handle. In their idle moments, she and her mom would discuss
how they'd totally survive the upcoming zombie apocalypse. Obviously,
killing zombies was a huge part of that.
The zombie
approached her. It was a lot faster than she had imagined zombies
being.
She blasted it with
fire magic.
The zombie was then
on fire.
It continued to
advance towards her.
This was not
turning out as she'd anticipated.
She continued to
blast it with short bursts of fire, backing up all the while, and it
eventually fell to the ground in a pool of molten flesh and charred
bone.
That was easy.
A line of pain
rolled down her right arm as another zombie caught her with an axe.
She bashed it in the face with a torch, recoiling in pain. She could
still use the arm, but it hurt, clouding her mind. She beat the
zombie with the torch until it fell to the ground.
She focused on
healing magic, conjuring the minty green light and picturing her
flesh knitting up.
Zombie number two
continued to burn for a few moments.
A third zombie
courteously waited for her to finish killing its compatriots before
it tried its luck with her. She pointed, and lightning engulfed it.
The lightning was not super-effective. In fact, the zombie seemed
largely unphased.
“Fire it is,”
she announced to zombie number three. She proceeded to roast his
undead ass. By this time she was halfway up the ramp that led down
into the mausoleum proper, and the corpse rolled downhill.
Whew. That had been
closer than she wanted to think about. Also, her nice fur armor and
the robe were both sporting a new blood-soaked cut. Damn zombies.
At least she knew
healing magic.
She continued on,
further into the tomb. She bypassed an utterly obvious – but no
doubt quite deadly – spiked wall and its ornamented stone pressure
plate trigger.
Well, if that was
all the more devious the traps in this place were going to be, she
was going to have a grand time of it.
She made a point of
incinerating every corpse she came across, many of which decided that
they should get up and move again. She didn't have much trouble with
the zombies, especially since they seemed fairly vulnerable to being
set on fire, and they had to crawl out of their little shelves before
they could attack.
She did, however,
run into a slight problem in the next hallway.
The traps had
become more devious.
Swinging blade
traps, the kind she recognized from all sorts of video games. Eternal
Darkness had them, at least. These swinging blades were set as a
particularly deadly pendulum.
Oh, hello. It was
actually pretty simple. Long wooden shafts swung from the ceiling.
The blade was suspended with rope. So, she set fire to the ropes. The
blade hung at an angle, and it ground to a halt, the careful
calibrations that let it swing back and forth completely ruined when
its balance failed. She grabbed the pole leading down to the blade.
It was still valiantly trying to swing back and forth. Grabbing the
blade with her other hand, she spun it sideways. The whole thing
screwed together, so she unscrewed it. The blade fell to the floor
with a loud clang, the flat side of it landing on her foot. Ow.
She repeated the
process with the next two blades, painstakingly dismantling the trap.
That was actually
rather fun!
She continued down
the winding hallway, incinerating every corpse she came across.
Finally, she came
to a room with a small stream and a bridge. A large black coffin
stood on the other side, the front of which fell off as its occupant
pushed against the inside. This corpse, too, got roasted. That done,
she looked around. At first, there were no obvious exits. A chest sat
next to the coffin, and she looted it as was becoming her custom.
The stream started
from the left side of the room – since she was facing the other
way, now it was the right – on the ceiling, and continued down
towards a grate with a pull chain beside it.
Well, there was her
answer. She pulled the chain, and the grate lifted into the ceiling.
Onward, now with
slightly wetter boots.
The nice, orderly
tomb gave way to a more natural cave. It was lit by glowing mushrooms
which, she was pretty sure, were poisonous. Bright colors meant
poison, after all, right?
Right.
She spotted
something unusual in the river, and she knelt to pick it up. It
turned out to be a skull, though not of any beast she could identify.
For one thing, it had three eyes.
Whatever. If she
had a home to decorate, she'd definitely take it there. Since she
didn't, there was no point in taking the skull with her; she dropped
it and it fractured.
Another chest –
why were there boxes just lying everywhere? – and then an
open-aired section with a waterfall. Pretty, but cold. She pressed on
after a moment of admiration for the scenery and to push a zombie off
the cliff into the water below.
Fun.
The
cave eventually intersected with a tomb again, complete with a big
set of double-doors, and another zombie flambé.
She pushed the
doors open. The tomb continued on until she reached another swinging
axe trap. She carefully picked her way past the first two axes,
dismantling them just for the fun of it. With the right timing, the
things were utterly trivial; she just didn't have a great sense of
timing. Destroying the traps forever was safer.
Then, a zombie
climbed out of the nearby coffin.
It took a swinging
axe to the face. The axe embedded itself into the zombie's belly, so
now, not only was the axe swinging from left to right, but it also
had a zombie flopping from one end.
She edged past the
zombie, and into the room proper.
It was lit by two
jugs filled with some kind of substance that happened to be on fire.
Two zombies – Draugr! That was what Hadvar had called them! –
made their way down a wooden staircase towards her. The ground seemed
to be covered in some kind of oil. She considered her options, then
set fire to the rope holding up one of the jugs of flaming goop.
The Draugr-zombie
immediately under it burst into flames and died instantly.
Its friend was
somewhat smarter; not only was it using a bow, but it waited to
approach until the flaming oil had evaporated. In the meantime, she
had to narrowly dodge an arrow to the face. When Draugr-zombie the
second was right under the other jug, she burned the second rope. The
second jug fell on his head, and he, too, burned to death.
Somehow, killing
zombies didn't pack the same punch as killing people did. Possibly
because they really didn't look human anymore. That was probably a
big part of it – dehumanization.
She climbed the
staircase, then felt her way along to the next big set of
double-doors. Pushing them open, she entered a room that felt …
eerie. It was a long stretch of hallway with an arching ceiling,
leading up to a massive door. She thought she saw carvings on the
walls, but she couldn't really make them out in the dim light offered
by her guttering torch.
At least, she
thought it was a door. It looked like it was supposed to open, but it
didn't have a door handle or any kind of keyhole – no, wait, there
was a series of three indents in the center of the door. Around the
middle circle of stone, three stone rings formed a bull's-eye. In
each ring, she saw a carving. She was unsurprised to discover the
carving matched those on the golden claw. In fact, she'd been kind of
expecting it.
She inspected the
claw, then inspected the door. Then back to the claw. Okay, she knew
what she had to do. Bear, butterfly, bird. Setting the torch on the
ground, she reached up with both hands to pull the first stone circle
into position. It was old, and not particularly cooperative, but it
eventually turned so that the bear was on the top. Next, the
dragonfly, then the owl.
She frowned
slightly.
Okay, everything
was in place. Now what?
She considered the
claw, then the three holes in the center circle. Pushing the claw
against the 'keyhole,' she found that its talons fit perfectly.
There was a loud
grinding as the wall sank into the floor.
Puzzle solved. Now
for the main chamber.
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