Sandara's magic got Chopper and Ezikial back on their feet,
but Ezikial was left with a broad scar on his face. "I canna seem t' mend it wi' the magics
I 'ave," Sandara said. "Yer
face just gonna be ugly fer a while."
"Uglier than it already was?" Feruzi asked. Sandara grinned. "Well, shall we move on?" Feruzi
asked. Chopper nodded.
"Let's."
The stone doors opened into an octagonal room with another
pair of identical doors across from them.
Leila froze as they crossed the floor.
"Wait," she called.
"The whole floor is trapped."
The doors behind them slammed closed and locked with an audible clack.
"Why does this not surprise me?" Reiko asked. She ducked as crossbow bolts flew out of
concealed arrow slits. Whirling blades
sprang up around them. Ezikial sprang
over a saw that would do a lumber mill proud and raced toward the opposite
door, grunting a few times in pain.
Feruzi climbed up a wall and joined him by crossing the ceiling. The snipers continued to fire.
"It's almost like they were expecting us," Reiko
grunted, pulling a bolt out of her armor.
Chopper sprinted across the room, slamming into the doors and flattening
himself but not impressing the stone very much.
"Let me get that, Captain," Ezikial said, and
blasted the lock mechanism with his pistol.
Leila pulled a piece of junk metal out of her pack and threw it into the
whirling blades, where it wedged, eliciting a truly fantastic medley of
screeching and grinding noises, followed by a ground-shaking bang as the
machinery tore itself apart. Reiko
crossed the room in a more leisurely fashion and heaved the doors open,
revealing another room pretty much identical to the one they were standing
in. Feruzi cautiously stepped forward,
triggering a second trap that slammed the doors shut and doused everything
liberally with gouts of fire. There was
a lot of scurrying behind the walls and the helpful addition of yet more
crossbow bolts.
Chopper pushed past Feruzi and repeated his door-charging
trick, with equally unimpressive results.
Ezikial pulled grenades off his belt and tossed them into an arrow slit. He then sat down, bleeding profusely from a
pair of crossbow bolts in his chest. The
blast shook the room and produced a hail of earth and chips of stone, revealing
two shocked elven snipers. Reiko charged
them while Sandara once again rushed in to prevent Ezikial from dying. The space behind the walls resounded with
shrieks and groans as Reiko dealt out retribution to the snipers. Chopper finally managed to get the far doors
open, revealing side passages that led behind the arrow slits.
"That was my fookin' gunner!" he snarled, laying
into the retreating snipers with his axes.
Another explosion shook the room as Leila detonated the reservoir of
alchemical fire powering the jets. Soon
it was over, aside from the usual magical cleanup of injuries sustained.
"I am out of grenades, Captain," Ezikial reported
sadly. "Fortunately I found this
ring of keys."
"That might make it easier to get through the
doors," Reiko said.
Past the trap, they found another long, dank tunnel that
opened into a wider cave where a thin strip of beach bordered a wide expanse of
dark water. Sounds of surf echoed in the
distance. A wooden pier extended into
the water. Far across the cave a faint
light shone from the window of a building standing next to a similar pier. Sandara pulled her hat off and tossed it into
the water, where it became a jollyboat.
"Unless summon else has a boat," she said,
winking.
"Not on me, no," Chopper said.
"I don't suppose your pipe turns into an oar?"
Leila asked.
"Nope. Reckon
it'll be slow going, but it beats swimmin."
They jury-rigged some bits of wood together and set
out. The water was still and cold. Chopper peered overboard, discovering an
immense heap of bones at the bottom of the cove. "Hmm, whale bones?" he asked. Feruzi looked over and winced.
"Those are dragon bones." Predictably, they began to stir, assembling
into the shape of a dragon that reared up in front of their wobbly little boat.
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