Then, I lifted. That wasn’t hard in terms of strength — she was athletic, but skinny, and I was in pretty good shape. With her arms around me, it wasn’t like lifting dead weight, either.
I felt a tingling sensation that didn’t come from my own paranoia. “Shroud’s good. Ready when you are.”
Oh, the shroud. Right.
Breathe.
I took a breath, then I jumped.
We fell.
The fall was at full speed at first. I focused, estimating our time to hit the ground, and then activated the ring. That set off an explosion of force beneath my feet that launched us back up about ten feet.
Mara let out an excited “Wee!” and a giggle at the jolt.
Then we were falling again, but slower. We touched down without incident. We landed atop a metallic cage, which I realized was probably part of the elevator system. I set Marissa down, then we clambered over the cage and down the rest of the way to the floor.
“That was great!” Marissa briefly pulled me into a hug, and I was too stunned to do anything about it. “Okay, let’s go find that scary thing.”
She was off and walking, leaving me to stare blankly into the void for a few moments before I turned to follow her.
Mara’s light seemed…muted, here. Dampened by something in the air, maybe. I couldn’t tell if it was just my perception or if there really was some sort of shadow magic at work.
Probably the latter, knowing my luck. Or maybe both.
The tunnel here was rougher, and we had to watch our step to avoid stumbling over protruding rocks. It led downward for what seemed like miles, but that part probably was just my perception.
The path forked again. I could hear the sound of running water nearby, much louder to the left than the right.
“We going toward the water?” I asked.
“Let’s try the other way first.”
Marissa led the way.
We paused when we found the next group of bodies.
Or, more accurately, skeletons. They’d been dead a while.
Upon inspection, the bodies were human - or at least humanoid. Probably some of the miners we’d heard about.
Almost all of them were facing toward the way we’d come from. Only the furthest body from us was facing toward the direction we were going.
Unlike the others, he held a rusted sword in his hand. The tip of the sword had been broken off and was lying nearby.
A part of me wanted to compliment whoever had set this place up for their attention to detail. The implication was clearly that these people had been running from something. Most of them had died running. The one who had tried to fight had died first.
It really added to the ambiance of the place.
Another part of me was, however, actually somewhat scared.
I knew intellectually this was a test, but it was like those stories about the Blackstone Assassin. Everyone knew that he wasn’t real, but when someone left a black gemstone on your pillow as a prank, there was always a moment of panic before you calmed down and looked for a friend snickering in the corner.
“You know,” I offered, “It’s possible this is a clue that we’re not supposed to go this way.”
“Nah. Just means there’s danger close by. Gotta keep our fists up.”
I kept my sword raised instead. Punching was all well and good, but I preferred having an extra yard of reach. “Can you glean anything from the bodies?”
Marissa looked them over briefly. “Nah. It’s monster huntin’ class, not forensics.”
That was fair, but also somewhat disappointing. I was more interested in the mystery solving portion of this than just hitting things.
I didn’t mind hitting things, per se. As long as they weren’t intelligent and chatty. Or particularly adorable.
Given what we’d seen from these bodies, I expected we might finally have an unambiguously monstrous opponent to deal with. That was actually kind of exciting.
We pushed on, eventually reaching another wide open chamber.
There was seemingly nothing inside — except for the obvious black-bladed sword in the center, thrust into an altar of stone.
“I have literally never seen a more obvious trap.” I waved at the center of the room. “And I’m including those fire-breathing statues from the spire.”
Marissa nodded. She shined her lantern into the room, but we couldn’t see anything else of note. “Think something’s going to drop down from the ceiling? More spiders?”
I shrugged. “Don’t know. Let’s walk in carefully, do a circle, and check the floors and ceilings before we touch the thing.”
We did just that, checking the area slowly. We didn’t find any sign of monsters. The ceiling was pretty high up, so it was hard to tell if there were holes that spiders could be hiding inside, but I didn’t see any.
I turned on my Enchanter attunement and glanced around. I didn’t see any magical auras, aside from Mara.
…None at all. Not even on the sword.
“That’s odd.” I stepped a little closer. The sword did have runes on the blade, but they didn’t glow in the slightest.
Mara walked over. “What’s odd?”
“Not sensing any magic on it at all. I mean, maybe that’s just because it’s a theatrical prop…”
Marissa shook her head. “Doubt it. You know they could afford to put an enchanted weapon down here, even if it’s just a basic one. If you’re not seeing magic on it, there’s a reason for that.”
I scanned the runes, but it was hard to see them clearly in the light.
Still, I was reasonably confident about one thing—
I didn’t recognize any of them.
Now, maybe that meant this was a sword of ancient and terrible power, that I couldn’t detect at all because it was made with a different type of magic. The kind of legendary magic weapon that Keras probably keeps stashed under his pillow.
There was a much more obvious explanation, though. “I think it’s a decoy.”
Marissa frowned. “A decoy?”
“Just a fake sword that we’re expected to take. Probably triggers a mechanical trap that’s in the base of that altar. Maybe even a magical trap that’s inside the stone itself. I can’t see through solid rock.”
“But we’re supposed to be ‘ere to get a magic weapon, yeah?”
“Exactly. This is so obvious that I’m betting it’s just here as a distraction.” I considered. “We could try to break open the altar and see if there’s anything else inside, or we can just leave it here and go check the other path.”
“I’m not sure I’d feel right just leavin’ without checkin’ this more.”
I agreed with her assessment. “Okay, then we need to clear the rock without triggering whatever mechanism is connected to the sword itself. Think you can do that?”
Marissa nodded. She extended her hand to her right side. “Been practicin’ just the thing for that.”
Her shroud extended beyond her right hand, taking the shape of a blade. The technique she’d been practicing with Keras.
I took a step back and let her work.
I expected chopping through the solid rock to be a slow process.
Fortunately, it wasn’t solid rock at all.
The stone altar was a façade — it was completely hollowed out inside. The stone on the surface was only a couple inches thick. She chopped it away with ease, then moved it to the side.
The sword was stuck inside a metallic base. That had runes etched into the side that were glowing.
“Let’s see… First rune is motion activation, that makes sense. That’s a shadow rune…a power rune for increasing effect…and some kind of teleportation rune…” I sighed. “Yeah, this thing summons some kind of shadow monsters if you take the sword out.”