You Can’t Take it With You

    He didn’t fall far, in fact it was more of a slide than a drop as the floor gave way beneath him. His boots scrabbled against the tile for just a moment, before he was launched into a few feet of open air. He landed hard against a floor of bare black stone, knocking the wind out of him. Groaning, he flipped over on his back and stared up at the dimly lit silhouette of his female companion, who was looking down at him with concern.

    “Are you alright, lad?” Flick called down to him.

    “I think so,” he responded, his voice thin. “I’ll tell you in a minute.”

    “I am coming down, Successor.” Corvane said, hopping to the edge of the hole.

    “No!” Sean cried back, “We’re still in the same situation. You and Flick try to figure out what to do about the kids and get them out if you can. You can always come back for me.”

    He half expected the raven to ignore him, but instead his eyes were drawn to a white feather as it floated down to him from above. It emitted the same light blue glow that covered Corvane.

    “You may use this in my absence, then. Do not place yourself in further harm, Successor, we will return for you posthaste.”

    His companions, and their light, receded quickly from the edge of the hole, leaving only the pinion behind.

    As it fell, lazily turning in the still air, the feather illuminated the underside of the remaining tiles above. Beneath each of the last row was an intricate mechanism tied to wicked looking spikes. He realized he didn’t see one that lacked the barbs.

    “None of them were safe,” he muttered to himself, a bitter laugh escaping from his lips. “Great.”

    As the feather settled to the floor, Sean picked it up and looked around. He was in what seemed to be a small service chamber for the trap. Unlike the rest of the crypt, this area wasn’t the least bit damp. In fact, he realized, he was starting to feel a little dry in the mouth in the few minutes he’d been here.

    Looking closely at the walls, there were symbols worked into the stone here and there. He started to run a finger across one of them, but jerked back as it burned his flesh. The symbol pulsed with a soft orange light before dimming to cold stone once more.

    More magic, just like Flick said. He thought to himself. It’s working better here, though, I wonder what it’s keeping dry?

    Sean clung to the edge of the chamber, holding his light close to his chest. The basalt wall gave way to a narrow passageway leading beneath the sarcophagi above. Lines of bronze workings led from the floor plates and into the passage, ending in a wall. In the center of the wall, there was a slightly raised brick inscribed with a symbol he didn’t recognize.

    Puzzled, he reached forward and pressed against the block. It sank into the wall with a click that made Sean flinch back, but instead of triggering a new trap the wall itself swung away from him. Beyond the stone door, the passage extended deeper into the crypt.

    “A service hatch,” he whispered. “I guess even tombs need to have their plumbing looked at from time to time.”

    Ducking his head to avoid the low lip of the door, Sean made his way into the darkness beyond. Before long, his feather-light caught on something in the gloom. It glinted slightly, followed by several other reflections as he moved closer. The passage opened up into a larger chamber, and Sean’s heart skipped a beat.

    Symbols flared to life behind torches spaced evenly along the walls setting them alight; not with the ghostly flames the wisps had exhibited, but warm, natural fire. The light revealed another hatch stone like the one that had led into the room. They also illuminated what Sean could only describe as a treasure vault.

    He swallowed, feeling a rush of childlike glee that eclipsed inherent discomfort of his isolation. This was what he’d always dreamed about as a kid when he would go out to ‘fight dragons’ with his friends. They would crawl through the woods together, imagining each hollow tree and rocky crevasse as some kingdom’s lost hoard. This though, was real.

    Sean swept his gaze over the chamber, trying to take it all in at once. Piles of green-patinaed bronze glinted in the torchlight: torcs and brooches and a myriad of rings, each set with roughly hewn precious stones. There were spearheads, their shafts long crumbled to dust, lined up on the floor against the back wall where they’d fallen over the years. He saw what he assumed used to be stacks of clothes, now heaps of moth-eaten rags that held none of their previous charm.

    The majority of the items in the room had followed suit. However long the crypt had been here at the center of the bog, it had been long enough to reduce most of the valuables in it to scrap. The items that remained in good condition were, like the spearheads, the ones made of metal and that category included a sight that split Sean’s face with a grin.

    Laying where the bags or chests that held them had rotted away, Sean saw small hills of various ingots. The baser metals were dull in the torchlight, but the silver and gold bars glittered in a way that almost made Sean forget to breathe.

    After a few moments of wonder, though, the practical part of Sean’s mind caught up. There was no way they could carry even a fraction of it out through the bog, even with Flick’s help. Especially if they were going to carry the two children home between them. It would have to stay here for a rainy day, a sort of nest egg for the kingdom he would soon have to build. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t take anything with him.

    A piece stood out from among the assorted relics. A short bronze sword, its hilt long decayed away, seemed to call to him. Sean grabbed the blade by its tang, surprised at how light it was to lift. While the rest of the bronze in the hoard had greened with age, this sword still shone a warm gold. He ran his thumb along the runes carved into the neck of the leaf shaped blade, and wondered if perhaps they had something to do with its condition.

    Resolving to bring it back to Greenbough, he carefully wrapped the blade in some of the room’s moldering rags and tucked it in his belt. He then placed Corvane’s feather into his coin pouch with a quiet word of thanks before grabbing a torch from the wall. Its fellows dimmed and sputtered out as he pushed through the next hatch.

    Instead of a passage, Sean found himself in a spiraling stairway as the sounds of battle echoed down from above.