Fatima looked up and gave a sinister grin, and I felt a sense of dread settle over the table before she uttered the three words I knew she would.
“Roll for initiative.”
Chapter16
Captain Morgana Silversword
“Holy shit,” Calamity said. “Yorick, you did it!”
“Of course I did,” he said, “and I’m offended that you ever doubted me.”
Morgana stepped closer to the orb, her eyes flicking between it and her own feet, making sure she wasn’t triggering any pressure plates or crossing any barriers. They’d encountered enough booby traps in the maze of passages and chambers, even having to fight off a small stone golem at the entrance to this very room, and she didn’t relish the idea of triggering another. She stopped a couple of feet away, and she watched from the corners of her eyes as her companions did the same, forming a respectful circle around the artifact.
“What do we do now?” Yorick asked, looking up at the rest of them.
“Here, let me,” Thrormir said. “I’ve been saving my magic for this.” He spread his hands in front of him and contorted his fingers into different positions, muttering the spell under his breath. A frown appeared on his face.
“What is it?” Morgana asked, her voice low. Almost reverent.
“That’s funny,” he said, “I can’t detect any magic. Not anywhere around it, anyway. Just the orb itself. Which is enchantment magic, by the way.”
Gorlag reached their hand out. “Then let’s just take it.”
“Not so fast,” Calamity said, swatting their hand away. “It could be a physical trigger.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like in Indiana Jo— I mean, in a parchment I read one time? About having to replace the item with something of the same weight or the cave gets destroyed?”
They all eyed the cavern around them as she said that last part.
“Since when are you a reader?” Thrormir teased, and Calamity glared at him.
“Since it could save our lives, dumbass.”
The group argued about how they should take the orb, or attempt to calculate its weight, whilst Morgana looked around her. She was certain there must be a clue somewhere, right? Otherwise they’d never be able to guess what to do.
Her eyes settled on the Sphere as she considered the options. The orb itself was translucent; it seemed to be the glow that was giving it any kind of colour at all. She held up her hand to cover the centre of it, which seemed to be the source of the light. And as soon as she did, she was able to see straight through the bottom of the Sphere to the top of the plinth that held it. There was a small symbol carved there: a twelve-pointed star. It looked familiar, but she couldn’t place it.
Morgana looked around to give her eyes a rest as she wracked her brain for anything to do with a twelve-pointed star. She would have to point it out to the rest of the group if they ever stopped arguing about what to do. But as her vision cleared, her eyes fixed on the floor, she realised that some of the stones that made up the floor had twelve-pointed stars carved into them, too. There were other symbols, but only one per stone.
“It’s a path,” Thrormir said under his breath when Morgana pointed this out, and Morgana followed his gaze to the door they’d come through; the only door in the room. Sure enough, she could draw a path from the door to the plinth using just stones with stars on them. The final one was the one on which she was currently standing.
Once the others agreed to the plan and were safely out of the room, Morgana took a deep breath – okay, lots of deep breaths – before reaching out and palming the orb. It weighed so little that she could barely even feel it in her hand. She tried to make her way through the room with it as quickly as possible, but she also took care to put weight on each subsequent starred tile before removing her foot from the previous one. She made it to the door, and as she came to the last tile, she could see the party watching her, surprised smiles on their faces. She tried not to take their surprise personally.
Just as she thought they’d got away with it, she took her foot off the last starred stone, and a screeching wail filled the air.
Chapter17
Morgan
“This feels like a bit of an escalation from swimming,” I said to Jack as he unloaded the kayaks. I was looking at the murky water and trying to imagine myself getting anywhere near it. At least my cheap sunglasses gave it a bit of a blue tint, making it look less horrible than normal.
Jack dragged the kayaks down to the water, beached them on the pebbly bottom, and walked back over to me. “What are you afraid of, exactly?” he asked. I leaned back against the side of the Defender.
“Well, let’s see,” I said, holding up my hand and counting off my perfectly reasonable fears on my fingers. “There could be large debris in there, like a rusty old bicycle, and I could get scratched and contract tetanus. I could fall out and hit my head on said debris lurking under the surface. I could fall out and get dragged under by the river’s current and drown. I could get swept out to sea because I can’t make it to the side. I could knock myself out with an oar and drown. And look at that”—I wiggled my now-five raised fingers at him—“I’m all out of fingers.”
He wasn’t laughing at me, but there was definitely a hint of mockery in his mirthful smirk. “Why are you the only one meeting an untimely end in all of these scenarios?”
