There are only a few halls left that we haven't explored. We pick one and scan it for traps, finding a few pressure plates and avoiding them. However, a giant block of stone falls down from above. Luckily it falls behind us. Well, it's trapping us in the hallway, so it's not THAT lucky, but still.

Sine is tired of sneaking around and scanning for traps, so she just runs down the hallway. This triggers darts, pendulums, bees, fire, spikes, a pit, and more darts. BEHIND Sine, but in front of everyone else. Agace is mostly unaffected, but Revi is hurt by darts, and Ritha gets stung by a bee. I bet you're thinking, ooh, a bee. Unfortunately, it's some kind of super-bee, and its venom blinds her.

At the end of the hall, Sine reaches a door and a couple of statues. Two creatures jump out from behind the statues and attack. Apparently they have bad teeth. Sine goes to town as the rest of the team arrives. Agace armours himself, Revi casts a fiery spell, and Ritha yells, "What's going on?" The others tell her and she tries to join in the battle but misses, to no one's surprise. Revi gets chomped, and Agace ends up taking out both of the beasts.

Then the statues come to life. Also, the swarm of bees that was released down the hall? They join the action too. As if that wasn't enough, Ritha drops her sword.

Revi decides to take out the bees, to prevent any more outbreaks of blindness. Some dexterous flame spells take out the swarm surrounding Agace, luckily without burning Agace in the process. The swarm around Ritha, however... Revi tries to cast an air spell to push them away, but epic fails, and sucks them all inside Ritha's clothing. The beleaguered elf stops, drops, and rolls, hoping to squish as many of the bugs as possible. Then she rolls onto her sword. ("There's a silver lining to every self-inflicted stab wound!") Then she gets up, wielding her recovered weapon, and flails in the direction of the attacking statues. She manages to not only hit one but also take a massive chunk out of it. Sine and Agace do less spectacular but more steady damage, but Revi gets blinded by another bee. And Ritha finds out the hard way that she didn't squish all of her bees... there's one left, and it stings her hard enough to knock her unconscious.

Agace cleaves one of the statues in two. Its top half falls to the ground, while its bottom half walks down the hall towards the pit. Revi still has astral sight, so uses it to target the remaining statue, and fireblasts its arm off, then blasts it in half.

Ritha is wakened, and finally squishes that last bee. She takes her clothes off (since everyone else is either female or asexual) and shakes them free of bug bodies. The others tell her she should keep one as a trophy. Yeah right... "See these horror teeth? Sure, that battle was hard... but it was NOTHING compared to THIS TINY INSECT!"

Now that the guardians are dead, or at least defunct, our attention turns to the door at the end of the hall. Even blinded, Revi can pick locks. Unfortunately, her picks snap. It's okay, though. She looted another set from a corpse.

Behind the door is treasure. Ridiculous amounts of shiny golden treasure. Sine tries to disbelieve the loot, just in case, but it's pretty damn convincing, so she starts shovelling it into her pack. Revi notices a web of magic throughout the room, and cautions everyone not to touch it. Among the gold and jewels are a few locked chests. There's nothing too special about them, except one: it is a chilled container, and contains six bottles of a liquid that looks and smells an awful lot like beer. Sine and Revi split one, and it has a curious effect. First, they are healed. Second, they go berserk, and attack Agace. Injured, outnumbered, Agace realizes that the two berserkers aren't attacking each other, so he opens another beer, drinks half, and hands the rest to Ritha, saying "Drink this." So she does.

When we come to our senses, we find ourselves down at the end of the hallway, attacking the stone block. Our weapons are in pretty bad shape, so it seems we've been doing this for a while. Somehow we avoided all the traps, and Revi and Ritha can see again.

Then it's back to the treasure chamber. Sine takes as much as she can carry, a few dozen pounds. Revi and Ritha are limited by their lower strength, but still fill their pockets. Agace takes as much as HE can carry... about 240 pounds worth, with as many gems as possible. If we get back to civilization with this, we'll be set for a long, long time.

IF.

Next: Finders Keepers
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© Megan Jones 2008. This story wouldn't be possible if not for my endlessly entertaining friends, and the Earthdawn RPG originally by FASA.