The Vault of Craven
The portal was gone.
The dead city remained.
For a time, the heroes simply stood where the red light had vanished.
Fang breathed again because Grazim had forced life back into him. The creatures around the altar lay dead. The strange world beyond the portal had disappeared with the last flicker of crimson, leaving only broken stone, smoke, and the long silence of the ruined city.
They had survived.
Again.
Nethnarel looked across the wreckage.
“So.”
Hexen glanced at her.
“So?”
“We are still here.”
“That does appear to be the problem.”
Kaylor cleaned his weapon.
“The vault.”
No one needed to ask which one.
They had carried the Book of Craven through too much blood for its promise to be forgotten.
But the dead city had other things waiting first.
They had not gone far before they found the burning structure.
Calling it a house seemed generous.
Flames wrapped the building without consuming it. Shapes moved inside the fire—robed figures turning and swaying among the burning walls as though the inferno were a temple and they were worshippers.
Leonidas stopped.
Pete vanished from sight.
The familiar lifted into the air and moved toward the flames.
Leonidas closed his eyes.
For several moments, he saw through Pete instead of himself.
Burning robes.
Figures moving in circles.
Hellish shapes beneath the fire.
Servants of something none of them particularly wished to meet.
Leonidas opened his eyes.
“We could go in.”
“No,” said Kaylor.
Leonidas looked disappointed.
Hexen pointed farther across the ruined district.
“We could investigate that instead.”
Everyone followed his finger.
A wide patch of ground beyond the house seemed to be moving.
That was worse.
Naturally, they went toward it.
The earth gradually became wet beneath their boots.
Then wet became mud.
Mud became black slurry.
And the slurry became a broad pool of bubbling filth large enough that they could not immediately see where solid ground began again.
Heat rolled from it.
Bones turned slowly beneath the surface.
Some were charred.
Others were stripped perfectly clean.
Thin ribbons of flame moved through the muck without extinguishing.
Fendor crouched near the edge.
“That dissolves flesh.”
Hexen looked into the pool.
“How do you know?”
Fendor pointed toward a skeleton turning slowly beneath the surface.
“The bones remain.”
“Excellent observation.”
Hexen took another step.
Grazim caught his shoulder.
“Do not.”
Hexen looked at him.
“I am only looking.”
The surface erupted.
A thing rose from the sludge.
Its body had no proper shape. Mud and acid flowed together around a mouth large enough to swallow a man's head. Thick limbs reached from the mass, forming and dissolving as it dragged itself toward the bank.
Hexen jumped backward.
The creature lunged after him.
Another shape moved beneath the muck.
“Of course there are two,” Nethnarel said.
Hexen threw out one hand and called something from elsewhere.
The air twisted.
A sea hag appeared near the pool.
She was furious.
She was also entirely unclothed.
Everyone stared.
The hag shrieked and charged the sludge creature.
Leonidas looked at Hexen.
“You summoned that?”
“I summoned help.”
“That is one description.”
The hag struck the creature.
The creature barely noticed.
Then the second sludge thing pulled itself from the pool.
Nethnarel raised both hands.
Magic gathered around her fingers and divided.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Eight glowing missiles streaked from her hands and hammered into the first creature in rapid succession. The mass convulsed under the impacts and collapsed backward into the mud.
The sea hag went after the second.
Something thundered across the surface of the pool.
A wave of magic struck the remaining sludge creature and tore it apart.
Silence returned.
The hag remained.
She looked at them.
They looked at her.
Hexen cleared his throat.
“Thank you.”
The hag vanished.
Leonidas stared at the place where she had been.
“I am going to remember that spell.”
“I would prefer you did not.”
Hexen turned back toward the pool.
Then he began removing his clothes.
Kaylor stared.
“No.”
“I want to see what is in there.”
“No.”
Hexen stepped into the muck.
Nethnarel folded her arms.
“I believe Kaylor just said no.”
“I heard him.”
Something moved around Hexen's legs.
He froze.
The surface exploded.
A long, pale creature shot from the sludge and bit into his thigh.
Hexen shouted.
The thing looked vaguely like a shark if a shark had been designed by someone who had only heard sharks described by an unreliable drunk.
Tentacles writhed beneath its body.
Kaylor entered the muck immediately.
His Dancing Sword left his hand.
The blade swept around him under its own power and slashed into the creature. Kaylor followed, striking with his other weapon as the thing thrashed through the sludge.
The creature snapped at his head.
Kaylor threw himself backward.
Its teeth closed inches from his face.
Then the tentacles wrapped around him.
“Wonderful,” he growled.
Fendor's arrows began arriving.
One.
Then another.
Then another.
The creature jerked beneath each impact until its pale hide looked like a pin cushion.
Nethnarel sent more magic into it.
Hexen's body changed.
Arms became claws.
His torso widened and hardened.
A massive scorpion rose from the muck where the druid had stood.
Its claws seized the creature.
Its stinger came down.
The beast convulsed.
Grazim waded close enough to finish it.
His hammer crashed into the creature's skull.
The slime shark stopped moving.
Everyone stood breathing heavily.
Kaylor pulled himself free of the tentacles.
Hexen became human again.
Leonidas had spent most of the battle examining the pool.
That should have been warning enough.
He held the jade-inlaid mug they had found long ago.
He dipped it into the strange liquid.
Grazim saw him.
“Leonidas.”
Leonidas lifted the mug.
“No.”
He drank.
Everyone waited.
Leonidas swallowed.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then he looked down.
His boots began to stretch.
“What?”
Leather tore.
An enormous hairy toe pushed through the front of one boot.
Then another through the other.
Leonidas stared.
Hexen stared.
Nethnarel covered her mouth.
Leonidas slowly looked up.
“No one says anything.”
Fendor turned away.
His shoulders shook.
Leonidas pointed at him.
“Especially you.”
They left the pool behind.
The extra toes remained.
The dead city became stranger farther on.
Crystals rose between the ruined buildings.
At first they found fragments no larger than a hand.
Then came pillars.
Twenty feet.
Thirty.
Great translucent formations leaned across the streets at impossible angles, creating tunnels and narrow passages through what had once been an open district.
The crystals did not belong there.
They had grown through masonry.
Through streets.
Through ancient foundations.
Just as the salt mound and the creatures around the crevasse had not belonged.
The corruption from the other world had taken root here.
Nethnarel stopped.
“There.”
Shapes moved inside the crystalline maze.
Four of them.
Creatures with bodies that reflected the surrounding formations so well that they nearly disappeared whenever they stopped moving.
Nethnarel reacted first.
Fire erupted among the crystals.
The explosion filled the passages.
When the flames cleared, the creatures were gone.
Not dead.
Hidden.
Nethnarel frowned.
“That usually works.”
She looked at a large broken block of masonry nearby.
Then upward.
Magic wrapped around the stone.
The block rose.
Ten feet.
Twenty.
Thirty.
Kaylor looked at her.
“Neth.”
She released it.
The stone fell.
It struck the crystalline growth with a detonation that shook the street.
A quarter of the formation collapsed into glittering shards.
Everyone waited.
Nothing emerged.
Then the ground began to tremble.
Grazim looked down.
The street disappeared beneath him.
Stone collapsed in a circle and he dropped.
Nethnarel reacted instantly.
A translucent hand formed in the air and caught at him.
For one heartbeat, Grazim hung from the broken edge.
Then something below seized him.
He vanished into the earth.
“Grazim!”
Another section of street gave way.
Fendor moved.
Kaylor moved.
Hexen called his wolves back toward him.
Nethnarel felt the ground beneath her own feet begin to collapse.
She thrust both hands downward.
Stone erupted upward in the shape of an enormous earthen hand.
Instead of closing around an enemy, the hand flattened beneath her.
Nethnarel jumped from its palm toward the nearby ruins as the street fell away beneath it.
Kaylor was not as fortunate.
He tried to clear the collapsing ground.
The edge broke beneath one foot.
He fell.
Below the street lay a network of tunnels.
The crystal creatures had been burrowing beneath them.
Now the heroes were scattered through those tunnels.
Kaylor landed face-to-face with one of the creatures.
It slashed at him.
He answered with the Dancing Sword.
The blade struck first, cutting into the crystalline body.
Kaylor followed with his heavier weapon.
Then light gathered around the next blow.
Divine power erupted through the creature.
The tunnel flashed white.
Cracks raced across the thing's body.
It remained standing.
Barely.
“Still alive?” Kaylor asked.
The creature attacked him again.
Elsewhere, another of the crystal beasts opened its mouth and expelled a storm of multicolored shards.
Fendor twisted away from the worst of it.
Leonidas answered with eldritch force, hammering one creature backward through the tunnel.
Hexen reached the fighting with his wolves.
The animals could not truly wound the crystalline bodies, but they harried them, snapped at their legs, and gave the others openings to strike.
Hexen drew the matched spears he had carried since before any of them could remember acquiring them.
The Spear of Death struck first.
Then the Spear of Life.
One point tore into the creature.
The other followed.
Nethnarel descended into the tunnels and joined the fighting.
She sent a Witch Bolt into one of the crystal creatures.
Magic twisted.
Wild power answered.
Light exploded from Nethnarel's body.
For the next several heartbeats she glowed so brightly that everyone near her had to turn away.
Leonidas raised one arm across his eyes.
“Could you warn us?”
“I did not know I was going to do it.”
“That excuse is becoming less comforting.”
Fendor's arrows struck through the light.
Grazim appeared from another tunnel, bloodied but alive, and brought his hammer down on one of the remaining creatures.
The crystalline body shattered.
The wolves drove another backward.
Kaylor broke the creature in front of him.
Fendor's arrows finished another.
At last, the tunnels fell silent.
Hexen leaned on one spear.
Kaylor was bleeding heavily.
“So,” Leonidas said, “we have established that walking through the city is dangerous.”
Nethnarel looked at the shattered creatures.
“We had already established that.”
“Yes, but now we have more evidence.”
They found the source of the crystal growth near the center of the underground network.
A massive crystalline structure pierced the ceiling.
The pillars above the street were merely branches.
This was the root.
Nearby lay a chest carved from obsidian.
Unlike almost everything else in the tunnels, it had survived intact.
Inside were three potions.
Two carried the unmistakable deep-red glow of superior healing.
The third promised the strength of a stone giant.
Kaylor took the giant-strength potion.
The healing draughts were divided among those most likely to need them.
The obsidian chest itself was valuable enough that no one seriously considered leaving it behind.
Then they looked at the crystal root.
Hexen tilted his head.
“That should probably not remain.”
“What are you proposing?” Grazim asked.
“Destroy it.”
“And then?”
Hexen looked up at the ceiling.
“Leave quickly.”
Leonidas rolled the strange demon-marked dice across his fingers.
“I have another possibility.”
Every head turned toward him.
“No,” said Kaylor.
Leonidas returned the Demon Dice to his pouch.
Beside them hung the small Chimes of Opening he carried.
“One day you will appreciate experimentation.”
“One day,” said Nethnarel, “your experimentation will kill all of us.”
Leonidas considered that.
“Also possible.”
Hexen stepped toward the crystal.
Thunder rolled from his hands.
The Thunderwave struck the base.
A crack appeared.
Then another.
They raced upward.
The ground began shaking.
Everyone stared.
Hexen pointed toward the tunnels.
“Run.”
They ran.
The crystal structure split behind them.
The ceiling collapsed.
Great translucent pillars shattered on the surface as the source beneath them failed. Whole sections of the underground network folded inward.
The heroes climbed, scrambled, flew, and hauled themselves from the holes through which the creatures had dragged them.
The last of them reached the street as the center of the crystalline field collapsed.
Dust rolled through the ruins.
Fragments of crystal bounced across the stones.
Then the strange light inside them faded.
The corruption was dead.
For the moment.
Kaylor looked back toward the magical house.
“The vault.”
No one argued.
They returned to the building where they had found the invisible chest.
The house waited exactly as they had left it.
That was somehow worse than if something had changed.
Inside, they secured the doors.
A small clockwork mouse was set to watch while they rested.
No monsters came.
No walls tried to eat anyone.
No hidden floor opened beneath them.
For the first time in what felt like days, the heroes slept.
When they awakened, they gathered in the room where the invisible chest had once been.
The Book of Craven had revealed what no one searching the ruins had understood.
The house was not the vault.
It was the entrance.
Kaylor opened the book.
The command had been difficult to translate. The language was ancient, related to words he understood but distorted by centuries of change.
He read it aloud.
Nothing happened.
Leonidas looked around.
“Excellent.”
Then lines appeared on the floor.
Pale light traced a circle behind them.
More symbols formed.
The glow rose.
It passed over their boots first.
Then their legs.
Wherever the light touched them, their bodies vanished.
There was no pain.
No heat.
No feeling of falling.
Grazim saw Kaylor disappear from the feet upward.
Then Hexen.
Then Fendor.
The light reached Grazim's chest.
The world vanished.
He appeared in another room.
The sensation was not quite teleportation.
It felt instead as if he had stepped through a mirror.
Which was appropriate.
A mirror stood behind them.
Stone columns rose through a broad chamber untouched by dust.
The floor looked ancient but undisturbed.
No footprints.
No broken furniture.
No evidence that anyone had entered in centuries.
At the center of the chamber stood a stone well.
Fendor approached carefully.
Writing had been worked into the stone around its base.
Kaylor knelt beside it.
“Draconic.”
“Can you read it?” Grazim asked.
“Some of it.”
The characters were older than the form he knew.
Words had shifted.
Meanings had changed.
They passed around the well, each trying to find something recognizable.
Hexen stared at the writing longer than anyone expected.
Then he frowned.
“I think I have it.”
Everyone looked at him.
Hexen pointed toward the inscription.
“The exit is the reflection of the mirror.”
Leonidas looked behind them.
There was only one mirror.
Nethnarel walked to the far wall.
Nothing.
Grazim returned to the mirror and studied its reflection.
Then he noticed it.
A second mirror appeared in the glass.
Far behind them.
On the opposite wall.
Grazim turned.
There was nothing there.
He faced the real mirror again.
The second reflection remained.
Fendor moved beside him.
“That is unpleasant.”
Leonidas crossed the chamber.
He stood where the invisible mirror should have been.
“Leonidas,” Grazim warned.
Leonidas turned his back to the wall.
He faced the real mirror across the chamber.
Then he walked backward.
He vanished.
Hexen stared.
“That worked?”
Leonidas's voice did not answer.
Hexen shrugged and followed him backward through the wall.
He disappeared too.
Kaylor sighed.
“Of course.”
One by one, they followed.
The invisible wall offered no resistance when approached correctly.
Nethnarel was last.
She put one hand backward through the stone.
Her fingers vanished.
She pulled them back.
They were intact.
“Well.”
She stepped through.
The next chamber was far larger.
A circular stone platform filled most of it.
The entire floor was rotating.
Around and around.
The outer edge moved dangerously fast, though the motion slowed nearer the center.
Stone statues stood along the perimeter, somehow remaining fixed while the floor spun beneath them.
On the far side stood another alcove.
And somewhere beyond that, another door.
Leonidas looked at Pete.
“Take a look.”
The familiar disappeared.
Pete flew out over the spinning floor.
The chamber answered instantly.
A storm of tiny projectiles erupted from the walls.
Hundreds.
Pete had been invisible.
It did not matter.
The volley crossed the chamber.
Leonidas felt the familiar vanish through their bond.
He recoiled.
“Pete.”
Nothing remained in the air.
Nethnarel stared at the walls.
“It saw him.”
“Apparently.”
“While invisible.”
“Yes.”
Hexen looked across the rotating floor.
“Do we still want to cross?”
Fendor was already studying the opposite wall.
“Yes.”
They searched their alcove.
No switch.
No hidden plate.
No lever.
Nothing.
With magically sharpened sight, they eventually found what they had missed.
Tiny holes covered much of the chamber.
Thousands of them.
The weapon that destroyed Pete had not come from one place.
It could have come from almost anywhere.
They also saw a mechanism on the opposite side.
A lever.
Fendor drew the Oathbow.
The ancient weapon settled into his hand as naturally as breath.
“How far?”
“Far,” said Nethnarel.
Fendor drew.
The arrow flew across the rotating chamber.
It struck the lever.
The mechanism jerked.
The floor slowed.
Not enough to stop.
Enough to make crossing possible.
Fendor lowered the bow.
Leonidas looked at him.
“Convenient.”
“I aimed.”
“Yes. I have heard rumors about that technique.”
Hexen studied the turning floor.
Then he transformed.
His body widened.
Armor became shell.
Hands became claws.
A giant scorpion stood in the alcove.
They tied a rope around him.
Nethnarel looked at the rope.
Then at the scorpion.
“This is one of our better plans.”
Scorpion-Hexen stepped onto the rotating stone.
Nothing fired.
He took another step.
Still nothing.
The platform carried him sideways.
Hexen dug his claws into the stone and tried to move toward the opposite side.
He made progress.
Then lost his footing.
The rotating floor swept him sideways.
One of the statues opened.
It was not merely a statue.
A hidden chamber waited inside.
Hexen slid directly through the opening.
The door slammed behind him.
A mechanical creature activated in the darkness.
It resembled an enormous ant built from steel, brass, gears, and sharpened plates.
Hexen attacked.
His claws struck metal.
The construct bit him.
Then its entire body slammed forward.
Spikes tore into the scorpion.
Outside, the others heard the impact.
Then another.
Grazim reached for the rope.
“Pull him back.”
Before they could, the statue opened again.
Hexen came scrambling out.
The mechanical thing remained inside.
The door closed.
Hexen changed again.
The scorpion became a giant eagle.
The eagle spread its wings.
He lifted slightly from the platform.
The walls fired.
Projectiles hammered into him.
Hexen dropped his feet back to the stone.
The volley stopped.
Nethnarel's eyes widened.
“Touch the floor.”
Kaylor understood.
“They are not attacking anything on the floor.”
“Then we cheat.”
Nethnarel cast Fly.
Magic settled over herself, Kaylor, and Fendor.
Kaylor stepped onto the rotating platform.
He rose just enough to let the spell carry his weight but kept one hand dragging across the stone.
No darts.
He flew forward.
His fingers scraped across the spinning floor.
The chamber remained silent.
Fendor followed.
Nethnarel came behind him.
Hexen used his claws and wings together, never entirely leaving contact with the surface.
The others crossed however they could.
The far alcove came closer.
Kaylor reached it.
The lever stood beside him.
He pulled.
The great platform slowed.
The mechanism groaned.
The floor stopped.
The sarcophagus-like compartments around the chamber began to open.
Kaylor stared.
“Of course.”
The first clockwork abomination crawled out.
Then another.
Then another.
Six in all.
Great mechanical bodies unfolded onto the floor.
Gears clicked beneath armored plates.
Steel jaws opened.
Heat glowed deep inside their throats.
The exit door was open.
They could have run.
For several seconds, the possibility actually existed.
Then Fendor raised the Oathbow.
Leonidas lifted both hands.
Nethnarel sighed.
“We are fighting them, aren't we?”
Kaylor drew his weapon.
“Yes.”
The constructs attacked.
One charged toward Nethnarel and Grazim.
Another skittered across the rotating floor.
A third opened its mouth.
Fire erupted.
The cone swept through the heroes.
Armor heated.
Clothing burned.
Grazim staggered.
Kaylor endured the flames better than most, his protections turning killing heat into something merely painful.
Fendor drew the Oathbow and declared one of the constructs his enemy.
His first arrows struck deep between moving plates.
Leonidas fired twin bolts of eldritch force.
One construct skidded backward.
Then another.
Nethnarel stretched out one hand.
Invisible force wrapped around one of the machines.
She lifted it.
The construct's legs kicked helplessly.
Nethnarel smiled.
“Oh.”
She swung it sideways.
The mechanical abomination crashed through two of its companions.
They toppled into one another in a tangle of limbs and gears.
Leonidas stared.
“That was excellent.”
“I know.”
Hexen returned to human form.
Faerie Fire spread over several constructs, outlining them in light.
Fendor's next arrows found the exposed weaknesses.
Kaylor's Dancing Sword flashed independently through the battle while he attacked with his heavier weapon.
One construct lunged.
Kaylor met it.
His blows tore through the clockwork body until gears and plates burst across the floor.
Another climbed onto the walls.
Leonidas blasted it.
The force knocked it loose.
It fell onto the platform.
Nethnarel threw a Fireball into the cluster.
Flame rolled across the chamber.
The constructs survived.
Barely.
“They breathe fire,” Leonidas observed.
“Yes.”
“And we responded with fire.”
“They are not immune.”
“That was not criticism.”
The platform began turning again.
Now the constructs moved with it.
Several skittered toward the walls and began climbing the dome above the heroes.
Hexen sent Frostbite after one.
Ice formed around its joints.
It slowed.
Grazim raised one hand toward another.
A bell tolled where no bell existed.
The sound passed through the construct.
Metal buckled.
Gears cracked.
The abomination fell from the wall and smashed onto the moving platform.
Another construct reached the ceiling.
Its mouth opened.
Fire poured down.
Grazim took the blast full in the chest.
He fell.
For one terrible moment, he did not move.
“Grazim!”
Hexen turned from the construct in front of him.
Healing magic crossed the chamber.
Grazim dragged in a breath.
His eyes opened.
He was still on the floor.
Still burning.
Still alive.
Fendor planted his feet.
The Oathbow thrummed in his hands.
A pulse of restorative power passed outward from him.
Strength returned to battered limbs.
Burns eased.
Wounds closed enough to keep fighting.
Nethnarel raised both hands again.
This time fire did not explode.
It rose.
A Wall of Fire appeared across the chamber.
One of the clockwork creatures found itself trapped inside the burning barrier.
Leonidas hit it with eldritch force, driving it deeper through the flames.
Kaylor's Dancing Sword struck another.
Hexen's magic marked targets.
Fendor's arrows found joints.
The battle became noise.
Metal.
Fire.
Magic.
The constant grinding of the rotating chamber beneath them.
One construct crawled across the ceiling.
Leonidas blasted it loose.
It dropped.
Another breathed flame.
Fendor endured it and answered with arrows.
Nethnarel sent another barrage of magic into the nearest machine.
It collapsed.
Kaylor tore open another.
The last abomination struggled upright.
Its body was broken in half a dozen places.
Grazim forced himself to his feet.
His armor was blackened.
Blood ran from beneath it.
He raised one hand.
The unseen bell sounded again.
Toll the Dead.
The construct shuddered.
Every moving piece inside it seemed to seize at once.
Then the entire thing collapsed into a heap of metal.
Silence.
The platform continued turning.
For several moments, no one moved.
Leonidas looked around.
“Were we supposed to run?”
Nethnarel stared at the six destroyed constructs.
“I suspect so.”
Hexen nudged a broken mechanical leg with his boot.
“Running would have been faster.”
Kaylor looked at him.
“You stayed.”
“So did you.”
“That is different.”
“It is exactly the same.”
They searched the remains.
The constructs had been made with valuable metals woven through their bodies.
By the time the useful pieces had been separated from the worthless mechanisms, they had recovered the equivalent of three hundred thirty platinum pieces.
Leonidas examined one ruined abomination.
“Can we rebuild it?”
“No,” said Kaylor.
“You answered too quickly.”
“No.”
Nethnarel cast her gaze around the chamber.
Magic touched almost everything.
Not one object.
The room itself.
The floor.
The statues.
The mechanism.
The trap was part of the architecture.
Craven had not simply hidden his vault.
He had built the path to it to kill people.
Fendor looked toward the lever.
They had learned its trick during the battle.
When the rotating floor stopped, the door closed.
When the floor turned, the way forward opened.
Hexen looked at the spinning stone.
“So we have to turn the trap back on.”
“Yes,” said Fendor.
Leonidas smiled.
“Now that sounds like us.”
They pulled the lever.
The great floor began to rotate again.
Stone ground beneath stone.
Behind them, the room full of shattered clockwork abominations started to turn.
Ahead of them, a section of wall slid open.
Darkness waited beyond.
Grazim stared through the doorway.
The Book of Craven had not lied.
They had found the vault.
They had merely entered its first trap.
And somewhere deeper inside, the dead wizard's secrets were waiting.