I Want to Live, Part Nine

One of the Gol-Gathe stepped forward, “you’re not armed or armored. You and your friends come closer, so that we don’t have to yell to one another. We don’t want that wyrm following your shouting.” He spat the word wyrm. I, of course, had to resist every voice in my head that screamed to not let him defile the sacred word of your masters.

Still, I did as he asked, and I motioned for the other two to follow me. As we approached, I realized a few things. First, we were supposed to have just been attacked by a wyrm. Second, I was covered in snow and dust and scorch marks from our journey here, and our subsequent journey through the tunnels. So, I decided to crank it up a notch. As we got closer, I began to tremble, forcing my lip to quiver and making my shoulders slouch. Then, I started running towards him in a crisscross fashion, wailing and screaming as I went.

“We are under attack! What is wrong with you? Why are you just standing there? Help us!” Falling to my knees, looking up at the dome and letting out a scream of absolute terror. “Get your hairy assess out there and help protect us!” I hated giving them such a great nickname, but I had to pretend to be their friends for now. Needless to say, that was all the convincing it took.

With that display, the skeptical Gol-Gathe shouted for the soldiers to follow him, and they all rushed past us down the tunnel we had come from. I stood up and motioned for the Sckaens to take the passage leading to the west, knowing that this would lead to their vault. Zoltuce had said “once you reach the four-way road, take the one that goes west, and become legends.” As we ran, I just kept muttering his words to myself, “become legend, become legend.” I came to the last turn before the vault, behind me the three red Sckaens were limping along, trying to catch up. The unconscious one had woken up a little ways back, but was still having trouble keeping up with my amazing pace. The other two stayed with him to make sure that he didn’t pass out again. We needed all four of us to do this.

I peeked around the corner. There was a constantly narrowing tunnel that soon turned into a small tight tiny opening that would be hard for even a Hal-Gathe to fit through. Beyond that opening was the vault. As I looked around, I didn’t notice any guards which was odd, but since they were under attack against the Titans, they probably needed all their troops. The other Sckaens finally caught up to me. I told them what we were going to do, proud that I had come up with a plan before they got to me. We were going to run straight for the opening, and then at the last second, we would make ourselves a needle and go right through. I, of course, said I was going to go first; I wanted the first look at all the goodies inside. One of the red Sckaens must have thought this was their chance to steal the glory, and took off fast down the hallway, leaving the wounded one and the other one just watching. He followed my plan and made himself a needle, as I had said too, and he slipped right through the hole with a horrifying scream that still makes my spine shiver.

The three of us slowly approached, really worried that we had just lost one of our four necessary people for this mission. As we peered through the hole, we couldn’t see anything. It was just black inside. Since it was trapped it explained why there were no guards at least. I looked around, slightly happier as we could still hear groaning on the other side, which was a relief. I found what looked to be the actual door just a little ways after the hole, and started trying to open it using combinations of knocks. The Gathe love their puzzles, so it would make sense to have one. It took a while, but the door finally opened. I was on the tenth knock combination, but the other Sckaens insisted that it was the Red inside that had opened it. He had lost his right leg at the knee, as well as half his tail. Apparently as he went through the hole he had triggered a small switch, and that black slab opened and he thought he was home free. Except that when the black slab had opened, a sharpened metal blade came down behind him. He had managed to pull one leg under him before it had finished closing but he was very woozy, and had lost a lot of blood trying to get to the door. It was true too, there was a trail of thick dark red gore for about twelve feet to the left side from the center where the Sckaen had landed.