Stairways to Nowhere

Sari quickly wove a dome over herself and Trick, getting the ward into place just before another blast of cobalt lumi crashed into them. The ward dispersed the frigid light but it faded away in the process. She hissed in annoyance. The dome was the strongest shape for a ward there was and it had been destroyed almost instantly. Not good.

When the ward burst it also shattered the ice that had built up around it, clearing most of the crystals off of the stairway. The steps were still slick and coated in frozen debris but at least they were clear. Trick picked his way down them, sliding dangerously, letting the tip of his sword dig into the wall to help him keep his balance. Once he got past the ice he motioned to her.

Sari took this as an invitation and she dashed down the steps as best she could, cutting the cobalt out of her staff and using the crimson end to stabilize herself and melt some of the ice as she went. The cobalt eye overhead blasted additional frigid rays down but it wasn’t looking at them. The bolts chased Chestin around the bottom of the chamber, missing him but creating jagged ice crystals the size of a zelpnir wherever they struck the ground. At the rate things were going he was going to run out of places to go very soon.

“That thing’s all eye,” Trick said to Sari. “Can you put topaz lumi in your staff and use it to stun that creature for us?”

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “My staff isn’t able to use lumi that way and I don’t have any topaz on hand anyway.”

Trick grunted, shoving a topaz reservoir back into his belt with his free hand. Then he pressed himself against the wall and used his free hand to pull Sari past him. As he did he yelled, “Get off the ground, Chestin!”

Sari flinched away from his bellowing, her ears ringing. “Was that necessary?”

If he heard her question he didn’t answer, instead hefting his sword and waving it in an erratic pattern. Sari pulled her hand free of his, shrinking back even more. She knew she wasn’t Trick’s target, or even anywhere near it, but when he swung that blade around and things just fell apart for no reason she got very, very nervous.

It didn’t help that half the time, when he did it, wildly unpredictable stuff happened. This time around that wildly unpredictable thing was the stairs overhead breaking apart and tumbling through the center of the room and dragging the cobalt eye down with it. The creature flailed wildly with its four arms, briefly grabbing ahold of one of the nearby struts with one hand.

Sari jabbed that strut with her staff, freezing it solid. As the creature’s full weight came to rest on that beam it snapped off in the brittle cold and it continued falling. It landed with a noise that mixed crashing metal and meaty impact in an uncomfortable fashion.

As they continued down the stairs Sari spotted Chestin, using his pick to force open another door at the base of the stairway. He met eyes with them and snapped, “Hurry up!”

The door rolled open to reveal the first room they’d discovered that had working lights. Working might be a bit of a generous way to put it. There was at least one light source somewhere in the long hallway that still struggled to hold back the dark. Behind them the cobalt eye was already twitching its limbs as it came around.

So the three of them piled up and leaned into the pick handle to force the doorway closed again. The creature was ripping debris off of itself and flinging it around the room and a piece clanged off the wall by the door just before it closed. Then the heavy panel slammed into place leaving them in the murky light of the decaying hallway.

Chestin ripped his pick out of the door and dragged them away from it, saying, “Keep moving, there’s no guarantee that door keeps it out. I’ve seen the great eyes before and they’re incredibly destructive when they want to be.”

“Will it try and chase us into such a narrow place?” Trick asked as they hustled down the corridor. His eyes kept drifting over to the dim alcoves on either side, gleaming with curiosity.

“Yes.” Chestin had lost his walking staff during the chaos on the stairs and now he took Sari’s flicked its light to full torch and held it aloft. It revealed that what looked like alcoves were actually some kind of chutes that led who knows where. “Though maybe not here. It can reach through those with its arms and there’s some kind of chasm it can cross down there. Keep moving.”

“Where do those lead?” Sari asked.

“No idea. It’s not a safe place for us, wherever it is.” Chestin pointed to the end of the corridor, which ended in another round doorway. “Try and open that.”

“Is that one of the locked doors you mentioned?” Trick asked, moving past the other man.

“Yes.”

“Why did we come this way if it dead-ends at a door you’re not even sure we can open?” Sari asked. “We have a long way to go back if his guide ring doesn’t work here.”

“I didn’t intend to come this way,” Chestin said. “I planned to use the door on the other side of the main chamber but I wouldn’t recommend trying to get to it now. If Franz put the map together right we discovered both sides of this door on our last expedition. If we can get through here we’ll be a little of course but otherwise fine.”

Trick rested his hand on the door and a circle flickered to life in its center although it never achieved a steady state of illumination. The door jerked halfway open when Trick tried to wave it aside. He shrugged and stuck his head part way through the door then yelped when Chestin pulled him back inside. “Me first,” the lensman hissed. “I have a warding glove.”

To illustrate why that was important Chestin pushed that glove through the opening first, creating a small shield with it, then leaned the rest of his body out behind it. Thankfully nothing bad happened to the shield, the hand or the body. Satisfied, Chestin waved the rest of them onward and went out into the next room.

They found themselves on a strange plateau overlooking a dizzying, nonsensical array of stairways that led everywhere and nowhere all at once. They joined together, split apart, dead ended at walls or vanished below the floor. There was no pattern to them that Sari could spot but from the eager way Trick knelt down to study them, practically drooling in anticipation, she could tell he was already halfway to figuring their purposes out.

Sari let him worry about that. She turned to Chestin and said, “How do we even get down there?”

“There’s a ladder to the left.” Chestin pulled out his map and unfolded it. “Now, I need a moment to study this and figure out what route we should take next. We can’t afford to get lost. There’s little naturally occurring food down here and, thanks to that stunt Trick pulled, we can’t get back out using those stairs. We’ll have to make good use of time if we don’t want to starve to death or die of thirst.”

“Preferable to freezing to death,” Trick muttered.

Sari gave him a skeptical look. “Is it really?”

He thought about it, then sighed. “No, probably not.”

“We also should decide what to do about sleep.”

Trick looked back to Chestin. “What about sleep?”

“The safe area where I’d planned to sleep was also along the route the cobalt eye blocked off,” Chestin said. “There isn’t another one within a watch’s travel from here. We’ll have to sleep in peril.”

“Lovely.” Trick sat down and stared at Chestin’s map. “This is not going as well as I’d hoped.”

Sari pulled a blanket out of her bag, wrapped herself in it and sat down next to him. “We’ll make it. One way or another, you can figure it out.”

“Let’s hope so.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders, surrounding her with warmth that made her very comfortable. Before she realized she was drifting off she was fast asleep.