One of the many strange, ornate and quite simple entrances along the walls of a cavernous, octagonal chamber creaked open, scattering the dust of ages. Enormous iron gates, glyph-sealed portals and seemingly flimsy wooden hatches ringed the room on various levels that could be reached by the jagged steps of a number of stairways that cut into the natural rock and wound around huge stalagmites and stalactites. Footsteps echoed into the room, bouncing off the natural and sculpted walls.
Though a vast chamber with angles and nooks, all was lit by a single, central pedestal upon a short dais. A thick plate rested on top of the pedestal, making the whole appear like a kind of stone lectern. Crystals, spheres, orbs, dials and levers worked into the top of the plate glowed with varying intensity and color.
Into the chamber from the creaking gate strode a warrior clad in pieces of silvery plate armor that bounced off her substantial shoulders and thighs. Feathered strips of metal decorating her helm reflected the pedestal’s glow. A broad sword swung at her hip and she gripped the oaken shaft of a barbed spear to her breast plate.
A gray-bearded man with fingers groping the gate for its locomotive secrets until his mind followed his body into the room and groped it for its wonders, entered just behind the warrior. He wore a wizard’s cloak with shortened sleeves revealing steel armbands with radiant red lettering revolving around them like flaming comets about a metallic, cylindrical planet.
After him came a man of deep serenity. The aba cloak loosely draped over his wiry frame ended just below his knees, revealing sinewy calves and naked feet hovering an inch above the ground with each step. The golden, translucent swirling disk around this holy man’s forehead singing out a calming whir, cast to the group about him an intensifying aura of repose.
At some point a fourth member slipped into the room, not because stealth was needed, but rather it came as natural to him as breathing. Masked and dressed in a form-fitting body suit of layered protective materials camouflaged in blacks, browns and deep grays with an almost hilt-less rapier strapped to his body, this thief by profession padded upon soft-soled shoes along a sort of balustrade created by the irregular rock on the lip of the ledge before it dipped down to the stairs leading to the floor below.
All four adventurers locked upon the dazzling central pedestal with a single-minded determination and only spoke when standing about it in a circle.
“First the lever, there.” The wizard pointed and the other three agreed in unison. “Then a full twist to the crimson crystal and a half turn of the cyan sphere.”
“The cyan crystal, I believe you mean,” said the holy man.
“No. I am certain of the crystals and spheres. I noted the potential for confusion and so I committed them to memory immediately.”
“Yes, and you forgot about pressing the opal orb.”
“Damn, so I have.”
“Which is cyan?” This from the thief, a man more clever with his hands than his head.
“The blue one,” answered the wizard.
“Which is the blue one?”
“This one with the aquamarine tint.”
“Not this one?”
“That one’s closer to emerald.”
“Olive in every way, I should say,” put in the holy man.
“It’s clearly a deeper green.”
“I think you will find it’s dependent upon the angle from which it’s observed.”
All four crowded to one side and leaned back, tilting their lowered heads to one side.
“Yes,” the wizard grumbled. “I see what you mean. Still, the aquamarine is a truer blue to my eye.”
“If you believe it to be so, I will not argue.”
When all was said and done, only one of them remained unconvinced, but with the majority against him and the door they entered slamming closed, it was decided to go ahead with the twisting, turning and pressing. Instantly a loud cranking of gears clanked and the grinding of stone rolling rumbled through out the chamber.
They all turned to watch a massive iron-bound door on the ground level slide slowly open. At first they approached it in the confident way they’d entered the chamber, but caution halted their steps as each came to the same conclusion.
“I expected a portal. Something more, I don’t know, magical,” said the warrior standing before the gaping mouth of a newly revealed tunnel, “not a normal old door.”
“Yes, that’s what…what is that sound?” the holy man wondered at a boom like distant thunder from deep down the tunnel. The boom repeated and again, but closer, then louder and faster until it was almost upon them. The warrior whipped back her spear, hurled it into the tunnel and drew her sword. A green gleam from the blade encompassed her body as she arched for a vicious thrust and then was gone.
Out of the tunnel shot an all-mouth monster. That’s how it seemed from the vantage point of the other three left in slack-jawed astonishment. Like a rotund fish with legs, this gargantuan shook the chamber floor as it slammed to a stop on its stunted-though-powerful appendages, the spiny dorsal crest running down the entire length of its back contracting while it reared and gulped down its meal, a prelude to the main course, so they assumed by the size of the thing.
“A giant spinolacerta,” cried the wizard in an awed gasp that rose higher at the sight of a human-sized bulge along the monster’s ivory throat and the warrior’s glowing sword ripping through the canvas-like skin. For a moment the spinolacerta appeared just as awestruck as the onlookers. Then the massive muscles of its throat contracted with a resounding crunch of metal and bone being crushed as simply as eating a shrimp shell and all. A final jugular choke cleared the meal.
The black skin along its flank glistened an oily rainbow when it turned on the most noticeable of the remaining three adventurers. The hovering holy man stood before them, tall and brave as the warrior had done. The spinolacerta spread its mouth wide, folding it out like lipped bat’s wings decorated with clusters of jagged teeth in each corner and mashing rows along the ridges of the jaws. The mouth descended and was knocked back by a torrent of water sprayed from the holy man’s raised palms. The monster coughed and retched and the adventurers looked hopeful, even while backing away in search of better defensive positions.
As the monster recovered, the holy man called to his god to bless him with the power to repeat the water miracle, but a belch of such intense heat from the monster evaporated the water in mid-air and melted the skin off the man’s arms, torso and face. A dying shriek escaped him and he collapsed in a heap.
The thief ran to the nearest exit and pried at the edges of a handle-less door. Behind him, the monster’s webbed claws slapped and scratched across the chamber floor. Too slow to escape, the wizard smacked together his armbands just as the spinolacerta rushed him and bit down with its massive mouth. The old man fell to one knee, cringed under the expected impact, and watched the monster’s jaws snapping at the air about him. Again and again it bit at him, but to no effect. Frustrated, it gouged and gnawed at the space between them, unable to breach the invisible dome around the wizard. Its claws ripped and its tail whacked at the untouchable man. Only the fleeing footsteps of the thief stopped the onslaught and drew the monster away from its prey. With one eye on the deadly chase, the old man dug out crystals from a hidden pocket within his cloak and blew across them as he held them aloft. From the crystals a hail of ice and freezing wind spouted out in a furious cyclone that struck the monster from behind, coating its tail. At the shock of the rear attack, the monster spun around and inadvertently snapped off its own tail, leaving the end stuck to the floor.
In the midst of the spinolacerta’s pained twitching and angry hissing, the thief took off for the pedestal, hoping to manipulate the knobs and levers and open one of the doors, he didn’t care which or where it led. Anywhere would be better than this.
The wizard threw off his metal armbands to prepare another spell, drawing from his sleeve an amber rod. He raised it in his hands and muttered an incantation as the monster
regained its senses and came crashing across the room. With a final word and a whip of the wrist, a bolt of lightning shot from the rod, flew at the beast, but arched away for a copper plated door, electrifying it in a dazzling web of electricity. The spinolacerta lumbered towards him, but veered away and snatched at the thief, who sensed the danger and leapt straight up to elude the deadly jaws. The extraordinarily wide mouth clamped down on a foot and whipped the thief’s body around like a ragdoll, dashing him against the wizard where he crouched hurriedly putting on his armbands. The blow knocked him down and another thrashing swing brought the two adventurers together with a sickening head to head crack and splash. The fight gone from his prey, the monster snatched up all three lifeless bodies and disappeared back into the tunnel from which it came. Crunching echoed out into the chamber until the door eventually closed and silence descended once again.
“So, now we know what not to do,” said a short, pudgy man buried in a billowy robe as he and three others peered over the edge of the balustrade to the bloody floor below. He led the others down to the pedestal with an irrepressible shuffle and an eager grin at the glowing crystals. Ever since magic had been outlawed in the city where he once studied, Daniel Goldsmith took a particular delight in getting his hands on the stuff in any form it took.
Next came a wall of muscle they called Nate. He wore a chainmail shirt, a piece of armor new to him and on loan. Other than that, his most prized possession was a rather plain but sturdy sword with a deep notch down by the loose hilt. By his side slithered Elle, a lithe, angular woman with an eye for danger and a dangerous eye. Their priest friend Will, who’d saved all of their lives at some point in their wide and wild travels, took up the rear due to a slower and more deliberate pace than the others, but also because of a giving nature that would not permit him to put himself before anyone else, quite literally at times.
They all stood at the pedestal just as their predecessors had done, but when they were done manipulating the knobs and levers, quite carefully, a different door opened than the one that let in the giant lizard. This one opened from the center and spiraled out like a tornado uncoiling. Passing through it and beyond felt to the adventurers much like traveling through any dark, downward sloping tunnel, except that when it turned steeper their steps sped up faster than they could control, the floor dissolved beneath their feet and they free-fell through a darkness that morphed into a white-blue blaze of light.
Before they had a chance to adapt, they found themselves by a steel-gray obelisk with crimson marbling sitting in a cloud-engulfed and overgrown meadow high in green mountains. Regardless of the pleasantly sunny day and protection from strong winds provided by a shallow dale, a dazed Will swayed like a tree in a gale while he tried to get his bearings. Bug-eyed and pale, Elle crouched with her arms spread wide for balance. On his hands and knees away from the rest, Nate puked like a bear after a heavy binge on bad garbage. When his inner turmoil finally passed, he sat back, turned to one side and spat out the last of the chunky bile.
“I’d rather mate the wrong way around with an angry beaver, than go through that again.”
“Listen to you. So much drama for such a little thing,” said Daniel from a reclined position upon the most comfortable rock in the area.
“A little thing? If you call getting thrown across the world in the blink of an eye ‘a little thing,’ I don’t want to know what a big thing feels like.”
On a muggy, late afternoon a week later the four adventurers returned along a white sand beach to the foot of the mountains with a few more bumps and bruises than they arrived with, but also more treasure. Nate hauled an awkward gold statue over a shoulder as well as a pack of coins and jewelry strapped to his back. Elle had the lightest, but most valuable item, a pouch of gems. The other two carried their share of the load, yet despite his burden, Daniel managed to keep an eye on Elle’s pouch.
“As much as I want to get back and stow this stuff in a safe place,” said Daniel wiping away the sweat rolling over his flushed cheeks, “there is no way we will reach the portal tonight.”
“You’re tired?” Nate liked to prod Daniel now and then. They were cousins and he meant no harm, only fun. Daniel did not understand Nate’s notion of fun.
“No, merely practical. We should make camp here for the night.”
“I won’t sleep on sand with the crawling and biting things,” said Elle. Her people lived amongst the trees, but she preferred the more comfortable city life she’d become accustomed to after being separated from her family at an early age.
“No need. Do none of you remember the shelter we passed on the way down the mountain?”
“Of course, everyone remembers it,” said Nate, who’d forgotten all about it, but hoped to nip Daniel’s self-satisfaction in the bud before it had a chance to blossom, “so go on, lead the way.”
Behind the beach and beyond a stretch of dunes into a land of sandy soil and clumped weeds where palms sprouted from the low scrub, Daniel guided them to a simple and quite small hut of branches and palm leaves.
“I’ll be quite content sleeping under the stars,” said Will upon realizing they wouldn’t all fit inside.
“If it rains,” said Nate, “you’ll get wet.”
Will smiled to see his gruff and bulky friend turn motherly.
“Cousin,” Daniel began, his exhaustion feeding his annoyance with the both of them, “you have a grating way of stating the superfluous.” Nate swelled within at the perceived compliments ‘great’ and ‘super’. Daniel turned to Will. “It is going to rain. It has rained every night we have been on these wretched islands so far and I see no reason for the weather to change its ways.”
“A little rain never hurt anyone.” Will’s pleasant tone trailed after him to a manchineel tree not more than a hundred feet away where he made his bed upon the sandy ground under the branches.
After Daniel and Elle crawled into the hut and got as comfortable as they could, Nate climbed in and lay down with his feet out the door, the only position in which he was able to get most of his body inside.
In the morning, Nate moaned and stretched himself awake and found Elle crawling over his body.
“It’d be nice if every day started like this.”
“Shut up. Listen,” she hissed. An agonized groaning not far off drifted to them above the crashing surf over the dunes.
“Wake up!” Nate shook Daniel. “Something’s out there.”
“Yes, yes,” grumbled the wizard, “Will is out there. Or had you forgotten?”
“Will!”
All three pushed, shoved and fell over one another until they were all out of the tiny hut. They ran with squishing steps across ground still damp from the night before to where their friend lay under the tree. Daniel’s cry caught in his throat, Elle clapped a hand over her mouth, but Nate found words.
“Are you all right?”
If Will’s blistered skin and red swollen eyes weren’t answer enough, volumes were spoken in his writhing legs and the desperate way his fingers dug at the sand in search of relief or anything comforting to hold on to.
“What happened?” Nate asked hovering over Will and looking him up and down with undisguised horror.
“It seems the evening air about these parts is somewhat disagreeable.” Will’s jest mixed with a tremble of pain as he tried to smile. A sickly pallor cast over the little of his skin that wasn’t yellow with puss around red, bursting sores. He moved slowly, if at all. How he’d sustained the injuries, he couldn’t explain and none of them had the foggiest idea.
“Take my hand,” said Nate and felt his eyes cloud when his friend waved about blindly for the proffered hand, only to clutch it to his chest once he’d found it.
“I can’t see.”
“At all?”
“I don’t know. It hurts to open my eyes, but I think I’m going blind.”
While Nate and Elle attended to Will, Daniel examined the manchineel tree, prodding the branches and poking at t
he leaves with the tip of his dagger.
“If this is the tree I think it may be,” and his resigned voice said his was fairly certain, “it is highly toxic. Its fruit makes a fine diuretic. I have heard tell of one potion so potent as to force all water from the body. A devilishly clever form of murder! The name is beyond pronouncing, even if I could recall it, but it translates to ‘the little apple of death.’ This, of course, is a misnomer as the tree, including all of its part, do not cause death so much as blindness,” he waved a hand at Will to underscore his point, “or like injuries.” He plunged the tip his dagger into a drip of watery white sap and squinted as he leaned in for a closer look. “The excretions must disperse more readily in the rain.” Nate dragged Will out from under the tree and carried him to the hut. Daniel didn’t notice the grunting. He just went on with his close study of the tree.
“Danny,” called Nate after emerging from the shelter where he’d installed Will as comfortably as could be, “come with me. I need your help.”
“Why? Whatever could you need my help for?”
“Just come.” He took Daniel by the arm as they came together and drew him away in the direction of the distant crashing surf, calling over his shoulder to Elle, “Watch after him. We’ll be real quick.”
Though she found affection mostly foreign and cared for few more than herself, Elle knelt by Will and caressed him where she could without hurting him. It amounted to a gentle pat upon a shin, but it took the edge from Will’s groans.
“That’s great you know so much about this poison tree and all,” Nate said facing up with Daniel upon the dunes, “but how’s that help Will? What are we going to do for him? There’s got to be something, anything we can do!”
“There is nothing I can do for him.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.” As smart as Daniel was, it was Will who performed the miracles of healing for the group. Nate folded his arms and ruminated while kicking at the sand. “Think as long and hard as you like, the matter remains the same.”
“Well, what about this. Maybe he could fix himself?”
“I know that he can, but this? Have you ever known him to cure blindness?”
Hours passed during which Will grew listless. Whether tired from being up half the night or whether from some effect of the poison, they didn’t know, nor did they dare wake him to find out.
Nate was on his way back from hunting up whatever edible crustaceans could be found under the seaweed beds and Daniel sat by a meager nest of partially charred sticks, his fumbling attempts at lighting a fire with magic, when Elle called excitedly to them.
“Come! Come fast! Now!” She leapt about by the doorway of the hut, beckoning to them until they were by her side, and ushered them to the doorway. “Hush now! Listen.” She crawled in and squatted by Will’s head. His scarred lips parted and a few mumbled words tumbled out
“Tears of the ancient. Tears of the ancient.”
“What does it mean?” Elle asked plucking at Daniel’s sleeve and drawing him stumbling into the hut.
“Wait now, hold on, give me a moment and let me think. I’m not some stone-skulled barbarian who rushes into action. So very annoying!” He found their pestering counterproductive and little else irritated him more than feeling his time was being wasted. Distractions made one liable to make mistakes, so a former master of his used to say. Flustered wouldn’t be the word he used, but flustered he was by their demands upon his intellect. “The burden of genius,” he muttered, brushing Elle’s hand away and pushing by Nate on his way out of the hut.
“Why won’t he do nothing?” Elle begged of Nate.
“Give him time. See?” He pointed to where Daniel was pacing about in front of the manchineel tree. “He’s thinking.”
Nate had faith in his cousin. “Finest brain on the market!” he’d declared of him more than once when Daniel wasn’t within earshot. Indeed Daniel did come back to the hut quite soon, but his long face foretold bad news.
“He has given us the answer, but there is little too no hope. To enact the healing prayer to cure blindness, he needs fluid from the tear duct of a dragon.”
“A dragon?” Nate’s mountainous shoulders collapsed.
“Yes or, I suppose, any similarly ancient reptile.”
“Prefect!” Nate grabbed Daniel by the shoulders and beamed into his face as he throttled him.
“Perfect? I see nothing perfect about it.”
“We can get it from that big old lizard thing back at the portal room!”
“Simple as that? You are simply mad.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t think of it!”
“I did, but I disregarded the thought, because it is frankly absurd. You saw what the creature did to those people!”
Nate didn’t stick around to discuss it further. His strength did not lie in discussion. Compared to his cousin, he was the hasty barbarian.
“Keep him calm and comfortable,” said Nate to Daniel as he and Elle got ready to hike up the mountain.
“Fast as you can!” Daniel shouted at their backs as they disappeared into the vines and sail-like leaves of the overgrown lowlands. “Temporary blindness could become permanent!”
“I said keep him calm! Calm!”
Sweaty and muscle-worn from the climb, as well as wobbly from being teleported, Nate and Elle stood at the pedestal in the chamber of portals doing their best to suppress their nerves and remember the sequence Daniel had them memorize. The problem was that Nate and Elle had the worst memories out of the four of them. If Daniel was in better shape and fleeter of foot, he would’ve come himself, but speed was vital and it would’ve taken him twice as long to ascend the mountain. The heat of the day being as oppressive as it was, there was every chance he might not have made it at all.
“Hurry!”
“Don’t rush me,” Nate snapped, running through the progression Daniel had drilling into his mind.
“If you don’t hurry, his eyes will die!” When she got nervous, Elle lost her mastery of the language’s turns of phrase and sometimes lapsed into her old, mother tongue. She fretted now more than she ever did. She’d known Will longer than them all, had a kind of kinship with him, and hated the thought of anything bad happening to him.
“I’m trying to remember!”
“Move the things!” She reached for a crystal knob and Nate slapped her hand aside.
“Stop!” He gripped the sides of the pedestal and stared hard at the board of levers and switches. While praying for guidance, he steadily began the progression, hoped for the best and unleashed the worst.
Loud cranking gears and grinding stone clanked and rumbled through out the chamber. The massive iron door from which the giant spinolacerta had emerged to destroy the valiant adventures slid open and Nate had to fight back the shakes from racking his body. The door stopped and the noise died away. Nothing could be heard or seen and no monster came barreling out of the long, dark tunnel. Nate put a finger to his lips, though he didn’t look around to see that Elle had already disappeared. He concentrated on the enormous black void in the wall before him, tip-toeing up to it and laying a supporting hand against one side of the opening, while tilting his head and putting his other hand to his ear. There was always the possibility the creature was gone or dead, he considered inclining his head the other way, as if his left ear might hear something the right did not. It was anyone’s guess what was down in that impenetrable darkness. Eventually he gave up and breathed a relieved and yet defeated sigh.
“I don’t hear nothing,” he said turning his back to the tunnel and scanning about the chamber for Elle. “Where’d you go?” He froze and then stumbled back around to face the tunnel as earth-quaking shudders shook the ground. “Run!” He dove out of the way just as the rock from the side of the tunnel smashed into the chamber and the huge lizard exploded into the room.
Nate leapt over the shattered boulders strewn about the floor, making for the nearest stairs. The monster lunged for him
and smashed the steps at his feet right as he jumped to the second level. Only the narrow width of the stairs prevented the thing from climbing after him. Rearing back on its hind legs and clawing at the walls, the spinolacerta ripped apart stalagmites, tearing down rock chunks that smashed on the chamber floor. Nate backed against one of the doors, but the flying debris sent him ducking and dodging along the balustrade calling out, “Hurry up!”
Elle dashed out from behind the pedestal, running up the monster’s stunted tail and along its back, gripping on to its spiny crest even as it chased after Nate and trapped him in a corner of the chamber. One of its flippered feet tripped on a rolling boulder. It steadied itself for a lunge at its prey, but one of its domed eyes caught sight of Elle and swiveled backwards in time to see her hop on to its head and jab a wadded up sack into its eye socket. It flailed its head about. Elle clapped on to its stubby horns and held on with the tips of her fingers. The monster’s short arms couldn’t reach, so it licked at the eye with its long tongue, dousing Elle as well and then slapping her off its head. She fell to the floor at the monster’s feet and somersaulted away as it wheeled around and snatched at her. Its huge mouth opened wide for an all-consuming gulp, but Nate leapt from the destroyed ledge bellowing like a man possessed and drove his sword into its flank. While the monster reeled away toward Elle, she scurried under its belly to the far side of the room and blended chameleon-like amongst the rocks.
Nate regained his footing and took off into the monster’s tunnel. The spinolacerta went after him. Distant, undistinguishable noises echoed out of the mouth of the tunnel. A howl distinctly from Nate and the silence that followed compelled Elle to leave her hiding place and inch closer to the tunnel.
“Nate,” barely broke from her lips. The footsteps of the monster thundered up from the tunnel again and Elle backed away. “Nate?” The great door grinded into action, closing before her. “Nate!” she shouted down the tunnel. Either the door would shut or the monster would come barreling through it. The ground shook. Halfway closed, it became obvious that the monster couldn’t fit through such a narrow gap, but it might bash through, Elle feared and turned to run for the pedestal. It might be too late for Nate, but she had to get the other portal open or she’d be the monster’s next meal and Will would be doomed to a life of blindness. She froze in front of the panel of levers and knobs, unable to remember the progression that opened the portal to her friends. The door slammed shut behind her. A resounding crash that could only have been the monster hitting the other side shook the room and then Nate slid by her across the floor. Sweating and chest heaving, he sprawled out on his back.
“You’re alive!”
“You got it?” Nate gasped out.
“I got it!” Elle held aloft the sack soaked with Will’s salvation, the tears of the ancient.
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