Chapter Eleven - A Room With a Chest

Still standing atop the stairwell, she leaned out the doorway to look outside. She was standing in a doorway that stood right inside the broken gazebo. In that moment, it was almost as if she were looking at a portal to another world, a world that stood parallel to the dungeon below. However, as she looked out at the vines hanging over the broken stones of the gazebo and the stars that hung above them, she thought of the mysterious man she had met at the Hanging Dragon and the secrets he had promised she would find below. With one last look at the moon, she turned and descended the stairs.

Once she had reached the bottom, she went straight for the banded iron door with the locks. Taking a knee, she examined the locks. This looks like the exact same door. She looked around the circular room. It looks like he only had time to rearrange things. I would bet anything he just used the same door and was hoping I would take the stairs and leave.

She returned to the door. It had opened easily enough before, but she was wary of any changes that may have been made this time around. She had never had to redo a room before where the dungeon had shifted around her and literally reset itself. Once more, she searched its hinges, its edges, and its lock just to make certain she wasn't seeing things. Then she pulled out her tools.

It opened on the first try. The sequence and spacing had all been the same. Now, her hand hovered over the door's handle for just a moment before she turned it open. It creaked but no trap. Inside was the same treasure chest and this too she examined closely.

Oh great, it's trapped this time. Two metal rods ran through the back of the chest and down into the stone floor. Then there was the stone around the chest that was cut in a circular pattern and divided down the center. Looks like some kind of trap door. She examined it a moment and then pulled the cutter off her back and snipped the rods. That should keep that from triggering.

Then there was the gem. Emerald with a bit of magical light, it was set in the back center of the chest's hinge. She had to sit and wonder at it for a bit. She had never seen a trap like that before. Opening her H.U.D, she selected her skill 'Analyze Device' and let it do its work. A minute went by, then two, then three. What is this silly thing? Is it just a gem? Sure enough, when her [Analyze Device] skill wound down, it came back with a text box:

Gem of Great Destruction: If broken, this gem will cast 'Greater Ruin' on the area in which it resides. Handle with care.

She raised her eyebrows in surprise. A Greater Ruin spell would level the entire level of the dungeon and then some. She let out a torrid breath. If she had not disabled the rods and just opened the thing, the trap door would have flipped, sending her and the gem down into whatever pit lay below. Please and no thank you. Looking at it now, she decided it would be best to just take the entire lid off. So, she set her cutters down on the stone tiles and took out her tool kit.

A few minutes later, she lifted the top of the chest off and carefully set it down on the stone outside of the trap door. Then she took a moment to look at the emerald. She could just take it. She should. She did.

It can't break if it's in my inventory.

Looking inside, she saw a surprise. The sword was there, just as it had been before, but this time there was something else. Something small and gleaming. Is that a key? Why is there a key in a chest? She reached in and picked it up. It was small, about the length of her pinkie finger, and made of solid silver. Five secrets, five keys, and now I have two of them, but what are the secrets? She pondered this. Could it be the blade? Back during the Beta, back on Earth, no one knew what the Emberblades were or what they did. As far as she knew, only one of them had been found. It had taken an entire guild to raid the lair of a Frost Giant Mage and the player who had claimed the sword had disappeared shortly thereafter.

She looked carefully at the blade at the bottom of the chest. It was a long sword with a steel hilt and a blade that faintly glowed with an orange flame. The other had been green. She remembered how it had been all over the forums.

This sword was trapped with a pressure plate. There was no disarming it. She knew that as soon as she picked it up, it would be time to run. She hopped up and down a few times to ready herself. She shook out her hands and then her legs. Then, with a last glance upward, she reached down, grabbed the sword, and ran.

Two running steps and then she leapt away as the trap door sprung, revealing a hole into nothingness. Her jump carried her over the black pit and she landed with the balls of her feet. One step, two steps, three. She could hear something rattling in the walls, so she took a running leap at the door, hit the ground, and tumbled through the doorway just as a set of spiked bars fell.

Stone was grinding against stone as she drew herself up. The circular room was turning on itself. Well that's new. The stone floor had turned into a moving walkway and she was running with it as it turned around the room's central pillar. Where is it? Where is the stairwell? She spotted the stairway door just as a slab of stone began to fall over it. Oh no, that wasn't there before. She broke out into a sprint, hoping to grab the doorknob before it was covered, and slid to a stop next to the doorway. However, as she grabbed the doorway's edge and pulled herself to a stop, the stone fell over the door knob before she could reach it. She held herself in place, her legs scraping against the moving walkway, and grasped at the wood paneling until the stone slab was inches from the floor where, at the last second, she pulled her hands away.

Great, so much for escaping this place. She let go of the doorway and sat on the moving floor as she watched the walls rotate above her. That's when she noticed the space between the walls was beginning to get narrower. Even better, the room's collapsing. She pulled herself to her feet. Well, there's only one way out now and that's to go further in. Dusting off her pants, she waited until the moving floor took her past the vines. There, she grabbed a bundle of the stiff plants, braced her feet against the wall, and began to climb. When she reached the ledge, she sat down against the door and pulled out her lock picks. The door lock was just as easy to open as before. Well, at least that didn't change. The wall where she was was still several feet from the central column when she opened the door.