Arms and Legs

There was a small pile of red grit at the bottom of the shaft but most of the room beyond it was clean compared to the ruins above. The space was not the hexagonal chamber Trick had expected. It was a more complicated shape but he didn’t have the time to work it out at the moment, he was far more concerned with Chestin. The other man hadn’t gotten far into the chamber before he’d run into trouble.

He’d squared up behind a ward from his gauntlet, striking at strange, flailing limbs that battered the amethyst barrier. Trick scrambled into the chamber, angling to see what was attacking his friend. The thing far exceeded his expectations.

The Isle of Man flag featured a bizarre emblem that consisted of three armored legs joined together at the hip in a trefoil arrangement. The thing flailing at Chestin looked like that, except more skeletal and less armored. It also had four legs instead of three.

The central point where the four legs met pivoted on a hub suspended from the ceiling by some kind of wire and hydraulic assembly. The legs would spin on it and batter themselves against the ward. Each time they made contact Chestin would back a step or two up.

As Trick hurried forward Chestin brandished his pick and swung it at one of the legs as they spun. The straightforward path they took made the swing easy to line up. However the sheer momentum behind the leg was more than he could deal with and the flailing limb wound up ripping the pick out of his hand. Trick saw it wedged into the leg as it circled around to strike again.

“On your right,” he called as he came even with Chestin. “Ever seen one of these?”

“No. See if you can hit that.” Using his newly free hand Chestin pointed at the arm that connected the legs to the ceiling.

“Sure thing. Let me know when you’re ready.”

There was an art to using the warding glove and Chestin proceeded to give a master class on how it worked. He would step forward and shift his ward’s angle so a blow glanced off it. Then he stepped back and let another blow overcommit and hit empty air. He repeated that cycle twice, gauging the timing, then charged up til he was nearly under the leg wheel and shoved the bizarre creature as hard as he could. As he fell back he said, “Dropping wards.”

Trick had his sword in hand, primed and ready to go and as soon as the amethyst energy vanished he struck, slashing invisible waves of power at the mechanical arm twice in an X pattern. The first cut opened a thin grove on one side of the arm. The second sliced through several of the hoses inside the hydraulics spilling an offputting orangish goop all over the ground. The legs thrashed, shaking the floor as they pounded it.

A bolt of fire seared the hoses, charring them and turning the goop into foul smelling smoke. As Sari ran up to the line of battle she flipped her staff around and cracked the cobalt reservoir in the base onto the ground, creating a nest of frozen ice around the legs, locking them in place. Trick saw a chance and he seized it.

Leaping forward he grabbed hold of the handle of Chestin’s pick, used it to hold the leg in place and viciously hacked through it with his sword. The blade flashed with internal light each time it struck the metal leg. It took three strikes to sever the limb and Trick made the mistake of stomping on the leg to yank the pick free of it before he ducked back behind Chestin’s ward. That nearly got him kicked by one of the other legs.

Thankfully Chestin was watching out for him and managed to get in the way of the creature’s attack. Trick scrambled to stay behind the ward as Chestin moved them back towards Sari. She was beating back the creature’s legs with the frozen end of her staff, doing her best to keep them anchored to the ground. The swing arm that connected them to the ceiling strained to move them away. However all that did was cause the metal there to bend and groan.

Trick scowled, aimed at the arm and sent a thrusting energy blast at it, melting metal and hoses that dripped down the hydraulics until something inside burst. More orange gunk sprayed over the floor. The arm itself dropped to the ground and the legs went limp, leaving a macabre heap steaming on the frozen floor.

There was similar gunk on the end of Chestin’s pick. Trick held it up and looked at it, trying to figure out if it was really some kind of liquid lumi or if that was his imagination. After a few seconds of study he decided he couldn’t tell. What was certain was that the goop smelled just as bad when it wasn’t burnt as when it was.

Trick wiped the weapon off on his pants and offered it to Chestin, who took it and said, “Thanks.”

“How do these things even move?” Sari asked, poking through the remains with the end of her staff. “Do they have to stay connected to the ceiling?”

“Yes to the second question,” Chestin said, dropping his pick into a loop on his belt. “If you see a creature attached by one of those arms to anything - a wall, floor, ceiling or even another creature - that’s important. You can usually kill them by breaking the arm.”

“How often are they anchored like that?” Trick asked.

“Not often enough. Anchored creatures are easier to deal with than free roaming creatures.” After scooping up his walking staff again Chestin motioned them onwards with the light on the end. “Come on. Still a few more hours before we can rest.”

The second layer of the descent was a cramped warren of tunnels that looped back and forth in such convoluted fashion that Trick quickly lost track of where they were. However, Chestin had a map and he checked it frequently. From the glances Trick got over his shoulder it looked like they were in a maze running around the edges of a large central chamber. The center was, of course, hexagon shaped.

After at least an hour picking through that maze, backtracking twice, they got to a small, halfmoon shaped room with a round doorway. It was the first such entrance they’d seen so far. There were a number of punctures through the door from where it had been forced at some point in the past. Chestin knelt down and peeked through one of the holes then shook his head and got to his feet. “This is the trickiest leg of the trip. This central chamber goes down two layers into the first set of tumbling chambers I know of in this area. Not only is it a route up and down, which you already know is dangerous, there’s no way of telling what chamber we’ll find at the bottom.”

“Do you know how long it takes chambers to tumble there?” Sari asked.

“Four watches, more or less. However we never saw all the rooms that tumble through that area, we only saw three sets of them. Usually there are six or twelve sets total. Of those we know of, one is some kind of craftsman workshop, one is some kind of trench with water flowing through it and the third is a room lined with blank windows and full of chairs and tables which we think was a dining room.”

Trick tried peeking through one of the holes in the wall himself but the chamber beyond was dark. “How often do you see creatures in the large chamber?”

“Each one of the six trips we made through it last time we saw something. Franz went through it in the past and he said it was less busy then so conditions may have changed again but we can’t be sure.” Chestin turned the light on his staff off. “There’s light out there but it’s very dim. If we let our eyes adjust to it there’s a chance we can sneak down without attracting attention.”

“Got it.” Trick doused his light and Sari followed suit a minute later.

As they stood there in the darkness Chestin said, “I almost forgot. Be sure to look up and down, not just around you. Many of the creatures climb the walls or the central area.”

After another minute or so Chestin stuck his pick through one of the holes in the door and used it to lever the doorway open a crack. The three of them slipped through, Chestin coming last after freeing his pick. Then they started down the narrow spiral staircase down the outside of the chamber.