“Wouldn’t mind a few new toys to play with myself,” Marissa chuckled, “But I don’t think we’ve got time for that.
Patrick looked sincerely dejected.
I cautiously stepped inside to take a closer look. The sections of flowing lava were a danger, but easily avoidable. I didn’t see any monsters or any signs of other traps.
There was another doorway on the left side of the room, but it was completely blocked by a waterfall of lava flowing from an open hole in the ceiling. The door itself beyond was open.
The next thing I noticed was a series of large cracks on the back wall of the room. That was a bit suspicious.
“Marissa?”
“Hm?”
I pointed at the cracks. “Want to punch this?”
She frowned. “As much as I do love punchin’ — well, everythin’, really — are you sure there isn’t gonna be a flood of lava behind that?”
I paused. “No. No, I am not. Good point, let’s not do that right now.”
“See that up there?” Marissa pointed at the central platform.
I turned my head toward it. “Sure. What about it?”
“I think that raised stone area next to the anvil has a mold.”
I raised an eyebrow. “For making a sword?”
She shook her head. “No. For making a key.”
I nodded in understanding. “That’s probably how the other team opened the door to the next room.” I pointed at the door beyond the flowing lava. “But I suppose it could be for a later room, too. Do you know how to use a forge like this?”
Marissa shook her head. “Never did any smithin’ with lava. Wager we could figure something out, though.”
I turned to Patrick. “Take a minute to rest outside. You’ve been doing most of the real work.”
“Thanks,” Patrick replied, clear gratitude in his tone. “Heat is killing me in here.”
Marissa and I hopped across the lava to the middle section, grabbed some metal bars, and then made our way to the raised area in the center. I had to use my ring of jumping to get there, but it still had plenty of mana left, so I wasn’t too worried.
There were, in fact, multiple molds on the top.
Including both a key mold and a sword mold.
“We making both?” I asked Marissa.
“We’re definitely making both.”
As it turns out, I am a terrible blacksmith.
I initially assumed we were just supposed to heat the metal in the lava, then pour it into the molds.
It turns out that if you heat metal in lava, the metal just melts right there, rather than cooperating and staying in a solid state until you have it in exactly the right position.
It was only at that point that we realized that there were levers on the platform.
And when we moved the levers, a mechanical arm moved the entire platform.
The next thing we discovered was that one of the directions moved the platform directly into the path of one of the lava falls.
After frantically pushing the lever back in the opposite direction, Marissa and I made running jumps back to the center of the room.
The platform was briefly bathed in molten fire, then moved back to its original position, seemingly unharmed. A few moments later, there was a brief flash of light and the remaining lava on the central platform vanished.
“That went well,” I offered.
Marissa giggled hysterically. “That is my least favorite lever now.”
After a bit more tinkering, we figured out that we could rotate the section with the molds, put a bar of metal into a slot above the mold, then move the platform to a section where the lava would pour from the chimney into a pipe that led to the metal…melting the metal and sending it into the mold.
This probably wasn’t the best solution available. Some of the lava escaped the pipe and nearly got into the key mold, but I managed to freeze it with Selys-Lyann while we moved the platform again.
Then we had a new key.
The second time, we rotated it to make a sword, too. Neither of us knew what the silver or gold metal were, so we made the key out of gold and the sword out of silver.
I froze them both with ice from Selys-Lyann. There was probably a better way to cool them properly, but I didn’t know how. This made them retrievable, at least.
After that, we returned to Patrick and took a break.
“How much time do you think we have left?” Marissa asked.
“At least an hour,” I replied.
Patrick looked contemplative. “You think? I figured we were almost out of time.”
I groaned. “I hope not. I need a break.”
I retrieved my flask of endless water from my bag. We drank deeply.
In retrospect, an infinite amount of water might have helped with some of the other problems we’d been running into.
After a brief rest, we made our way back into the room. Patrick held onto the new silvery sword, even though it was an awful weapon. Whatever metal it was made out of was heavy, and it didn’t have a proper grip on it.
Still, he wasn’t allowed to use his Dawnbringer Replica in the tests, so it meant he had a weapon if he needed one. Maybe I should have asked for him to have permission to use that here, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
I could have just given him the transference sword if I’d thought about it, but he seemed happier with this new and shiny one.
We made our way to the lava fall blocking the doorway, then Marissa hopped to the central platform. “Ready?”
We acknowledged, and she hit the levers on the central platform to move it. The platform moved to right below the lava fall, blocking the lava’s flow.
We still had to be cautious, but it made a path to get into the doorway.
We followed the hallway to the next room.
In the center was a fountain with clear blue liquid.
We knew exactly what that was. A mana fountain. We were almost at the end.
There were a few possibilities about what that meant. Maybe we’d missed the people were meant to rescue in a previous room, like the one with the giant statue. Or maybe we were supposed to bust down that cracked wall after all, and they would have been beyond it.
Maybe there never were people to rescue.
Or maybe they were those skeletons. That would have been really awkward.
Most likely, though? They were in the final chamber alongside some sort of horrible monster.
We took another break.
We needed it. It was really hot.
Then we made our way to the single door on the opposite side of the room and opened it.
Inside, we saw three fallen human bodies.
One was right near the door, unmoving, with three huge claw marks across his back. He was facing the door.
That told me that the door was probably going to close as soon as we entered, or that whatever had hit him had been fast enough to prevent him from leaving. Either was a concern.
Another was near a different door, this one on the right side of the room. That was a woman, and she was trembling, a bleeding wound across her forehead. She had a golden key in her right hand.
Unfortunately, that right hand was no longer connected to rest of her body.
The final body was near the center of the room. A sword and shield were lying next to him. I couldn’t see any obvious injuries at a distance.
More importantly?
I couldn’t see a monster, either.
I turned to the woman that appeared to still be conscious. “We’re here to rescue you. Can you talk?”
She didn’t even turn to acknowledge me. She just stared at her severed hand.
“She’s in a bad way. Don’t think we’re gettin’ much out of ‘er.” Marissa frowned. “Think the monster is going to show up the moment we go in?”