[Bungleau]

Chapter 28: Sandy Beaches

As Missy Hissy flipped the familiar lever that closed one world and opened another, she thought about that fateful zenmaster lesson she’d had. Master Wu had meant to give her an idea of what the future could be like, and while she hadn’t been interested at the time, the experience with Oakenmir caused her to think more about it.

When the second door finally groaned open, Missy stepped forward gingerly in the dim light. The faint torches in the wall were flickering and sputtering, sure signs that they were on their last legs. “Of course, if Anephas died hundreds of years ago, who’s been changing the torches?”

With the walls barely illuminated, Missy stepped forward toward an illuminated room at the end of the corridor. As she approached it, she sensed that something wasn’t right, and discovered that the floor was missing in the room in front of the illuminated room. Searching, she found nothing that could help her out in crossing the floorless room, although she did spy a button of some sort on the opposite wall. She threw several knives at it, but it did no good. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the angle right to stick the button in place.

Tightening her pack, she stepped back several paces, got a running start, and leaped...

... across the gaping pit...
... to fall slightly short...
... and smash into the rough wall below like a ton of bricks...
... falling down into the pit...
... and landing with a bruising crash on a pile of bones, the force of her impact sending a skull skittling across the floor.

Sitting for a moment and catching her breath, she suddenly realized she’d forgotten one of the basics in the moon mage’s manual – creating a portal near the entrance. Had she remembered to do so, she could simply teleport her way back up. Now she was stuck until she could find a way out.

“Well, I don’t want to wait to be rescued,” she thought, as she looked at the bones around her. By a rough count, there were 13 skulls, from Felpurr to Oomphaz. She didn’t feel like adding a Rattkin skull to the mix, so she began looking around. As she thumped the walls, one sounded slightly different, and pushing it slid it open. She stepped forward to a fetid blast of air; no one had apparently come in here in centuries.

Missy moved forward through the hewn stone corridor, eyes adjusting to the fading torches. She thought about casting a torchlight spell of her own, but decided to hold off until she could find out what kinds of creatures inhabited this place. “No sense drawing too much attention to yourself,” she thought.

As she rounded another corner, she was suddenly attacked from behind by a pack of gold scorpions. Steel flying, she soon dispatched them and discovered they’d been lying in a dark corridor she’d missed. “Okay, time for the torch light,” she muttered. “I’d rather have things announce their presence than to hide.”

Turning, she investigated the corridor and at its end, found an iron chest. Opening it carefully, she discovered the Relic of Isis that Malakai had asked her to find. Secreting it in her cloak, she turned around and went onward.

Back in the room where she was attacked, there was one area where it felt like there should be a door, but there wasn’t. After carefully prodding and poking, she looked up into the darkness and spotted what seemed to be a ledge up there. She filed its location away for later. Perhaps it would be useful.

Stepping through the remaining doorway, she soon found herself approaching a room with gaping holes in the floor. It appeared to be the one she’d been trying to jump into, and as she approached, solid stone spikes suddenly drove down from the ceiling. “Glad I didn’t make the jump after all,” she thought. That would have been a rude awakening, for sure.

As she looked in, she spotted two doors. Unfortunately, both were closed, so she couldn’t just run into them. And the spikes seemed to come down in a regular pattern. Eying the ceiling carefully, she waited until the spikes between her and the closest door were starting their way up. Running quickly, she tried to squeeze between the door and the closest spike. If she had to spend time picking a lock, perhaps she’d be protected.

Fortunately, the door swung open at her approach, and she ducked in. As she moved forward, she slipped in a room covered in sand and fell into a pit. She saw buttons on all four walls, and gritting her teeth, pushed one. Suddenly a gold scorpion fell onto her head, and after slaying it, she looked up and saw a hole in the wall. “Perhaps a chute of some kind,” she thought. “I’ll try another one.”

She pressed another button and watched another scorpion scuttle out of the chute. Feeling irritated, she punched the button some two dozen times, each time summoning another scorpion. There were now so many she could almost climb on their backs to get out… except that she didn’t really want to get several dozen scorpion stings in her legs. No telling what that might do…

She slew the batch of scorpions (twenty-three by count), and for grins, punched the button some more. More scorpions came out, and she realized that she could probably spend as much time in here as she wanted, summoning and slaying, summoning and slaying. Still, it would probably get boring after a while, and in fact, she had to stifle a yawn. Pushing the other buttons released one last scorpion and then made a pillar in the center start to rise. Cursing, she jumped on, and rode the pillar up to the sandy room.