Chapter 8

The Brass Door was a massive wall of dull metal embedded in the side of a circular cavern. Its ornate construction was at odds with the rough stone around it, and it appeared otherworldly in the light of the blue-burning moss. Like some ancient treasure espied at the bottom of the sea.

Sal was busy with his mechanism, his movements verging on frantic, as Havert and Hestia sat to one side, clubs laid over their laps, packs against the wall.

“You’re alive,” said Hestia with a hesitant smile. “Glad you survived the cure.”

“Was there any doubt?” barked Sal, tugging on a rope. “I am an herbalist without equal. Scorio lives because of me. He literally owes me his life.”

“A debt of gratitude, to be sure,” said Scorio, unshouldering his pack and moving to where Sal worked. “Thank you, Sal.”

“Bah. You’re welcome, I suppose. There. We’re about ready. You time your recovery with admirable precision. Behold! The wonders of a brilliant mind.” And Sal stepped back, arms thrown out wide, to present a series of ropes and wooden and bone blocks that hung in a column from the ceiling before the door.

“Impressive,” said Scorio, not understanding what he was looking at. “How does it work?”

“Ah! You take in with but a glance what it has taken me years to devise! Observe. There, affixed to the ceiling—with great effort, might I add—is an iron hook, fashioned from a blade Radert gifted me, and screwed in to a depth of some dozen inches. From this simple hook hangs a thick rope, twined from our original robes, belts, and all manner of tough fibers that we have harvested over the years. Sinew, Lasher tentacles, everything we can think of. This rope descends to these pulleys, winding up and down, around and around.”

Scorio pursed his lips. “And, ah, how does this open the Brass Door?”

“Force multiplication! No magic here, no impossible talents.” He drew a second hook from within his sash. “We mere Chars will slide this metal hook under the door, then turn it so that it catches on the other side. We then attach it to the lowermost pulley, and pull upon this length of rope here to haul the door open.”

Scorio considered the massive brass door. “It looks pretty heavy.”

Sal threw up his arms. “And it is! But this system of mine will multiply our strength by four times. We shall become twenty, a host hauling upon its edge. Though, if it doesn’t work, I’ll have to find a way to add more circles to the system, make longer rope, and wait another year for someone else to assist us… but it will work! I know it will.”

Scorio again considered the Brass Door. “And if there are fiends on the far side?”

“Hestia will rush forward and place this stone under the door once we’ve lifted it a foot,” said Sal, rushing over to where a dark block was placed but a few feet from the door. “If anything wishes to crawl through at that point, we’ll club in their heads. Then, once the way is clear, we’ll squeeze through ourselves, and venture forth into the great unknown!”

Scorio nodded pensively, looking back and forth, then finally back to Sal. “I’m no engineer, but I’m happy to give it a try.”

“Then let us begin! After five years of patience, I find myself unable to wait a moment more.” He clapped his hands energetically. “Everyone, look lively now! Hestia, at the front. Now to squeeze the hook under the door and make sure it holds…”

Sal grabbed his hook, which looked to be a sword blade hammered into the base of a rectangle, and slid it under an exceedingly thin groove that had been chiseled out under the Brass Door. This he then righted, and eyes narrowed, tongue jutting out of the corner of his mouth, he fiddled and adjusted till it caught.

“Took me four months to get that hook made just right.” He leaped to his feet, his energy manic. “Four months! But the dimensions are precise. Now it simply needs to hold the door’s weight without flattening out. Havert, bring the lowest pulley over to me.”

Havert stood and hurried over, took hold of the large, bottom-most circle, and carefully swung it over. Sal elongated the ropes connecting everything so that it connected to the hook, and then raced over to where the long rope was tied to the pack.

“There! Now, Hestia, Hestia, come on, my dear, look alive. Grab the rope here at the front. Then Scorio, then Havert, just so. Nissa? Thank you. I’ll hold the rear. Do we have enough rope? Squeeze forward, I’ve nothing to hold onto. Very well. Everybody got a good grip? When I give the count of three, begin pulling gently, oh so gently. And if we are fortunate, if we are owed anything by this wretched world, the components shall hold. Are we ready?”

Scorio flexed his fingers then gripped the oily rope. If only Leonis were here. He’d be worth almost the rest of the entire team alone.

“One!” Sal’s voice cracked with excitement. “Steady now! Two! Deep breath! Three!”

Everybody leaned back, digging their heels in, and hauled on the rope. Scorio watched anxiously as everything went taut, the pulleys vibrating in their places, the rope creaking and growing leaner.

He pulled harder, bending his knees, leaning back. No movement, but he thought he heard a low grinding come from the top of the door.

“She’s holding!” shouted Sal. “Now, everything you’ve got! This is it! Pull, you fools, pull for your lives!”

Scorio grit his teeth and hauled back with everything he had, hearing Havert grunt behind him.

And the base of the door began to lift. Slowly, impossibly slowly, the door began to open, upward and out, swiveling from hinges hidden at the top.

Hands burning, shoulders on fire, Scorio bent his legs further and heaved.

“The hook’s straightening!” gasped Havert.

He was right. The iron was slowly emerging from under the door frame. Dust was filtering down from around the ceiling hook. Threads were splitting along the length of the rope, popping and peeling back as the pressure became too much.

“Almost there!” shouted Scorio. “One last pull!”

Somehow, impossibly, the great metal door rose. It wasn’t nearly as thick as he’d imagined, but still, the act seemed magical. Up it came, an inch at a time.

“Hestia!” barked Sal. “Go!”

She let go of the rope and dove for the stone block. Scorio fought to compensate for the loss of her strength, felt his heels slide forward over the rock.

The door began to drop.

“Pull!” shouted Scorio, reaching deep for more strength, ignoring the pain in his hands, the weakness growing in his arms. “One—last—”

Hestia dropped to her knees before the block and shoved it forward. It was a little over a foot tall, just enough to crawl through, but its upper edge hit the bottom of the door, which was slowly slipping back down.

“Pull!” shrieked Sal. “Pull, you blasted—”

And then the hook tore free from the ceiling in a shower of dust, the rope went slack in Scorio’s hands so that he crashed back into Havert, and the door swung closed, the pulleys clattering to the ground.

“No!” screamed Sal, wrestling his way out from under Nissa. “No!” He seemed a man possessed, tugging at his hair, running forward to glare up at the ceiling where a large hole now showed, the iron screw torn completely free.

“Get back!” Hestia’s cried, the panic and urgency of it splitting the air. “Something’s got the bottom of the door!”

Scorio climbed to his feet, heart pounding, and stared. The door had swung nearly all the way closed. Only an inch now remained, but curled around the bottom were five massive fingers, each ending in a glowing blue talon. Then a second hand crept under, grasped the Brass Door’s lower edge, and began to push.

Havert cursed, took up his club, and raised it high, ready to bring it down upon the knuckles, only for Nissa to seize his wrist and stop him cold.

“Wait,” she shouted. “Let it open the door! Hestia! Get ready!”

“Get ready?” The other woman looked up at Nissa from where she’d collapsed on her side. “Are you mad?”

“There’s but one way out of here!” Nissa released Havert and raked her hair back from her face. Her smile was wide, unhinged. “Why not let this fiend do the work for us?”

“Look at the size of its hands!” shouted Havert. “You want to let that in here?”

“She’s right,” said Sal, moving up alongside Nissa, stone-headed club in hand. “It might be large, but it’s just the one! This is our time, our hour, Havert! Before long, there’ll be a mass of them out there, but I know, I can feel it, right now there’s just this one! We club it when it comes through, and then—”

“You’re mad!” Havert glared at them both in disgust.

“The door’s rising,” wailed Hestia, scrabbling away from it.

And indeed it was. Whatever was on the other side was pushing it up, inch by inch, fingers flattened against the metal. Scorio stared, frozen. Hands that big. If it had human proportions, it’d be—what? Ten feet tall? How strong would it be? A blow from such a fist would end a life.

“We have to stop this,” shouted Havert. “We can try again, Scorio’s with us now, we can fix the pulley, we know it works—”

“No!” Sal brought up the twisted screw, the flanges flattened. “It’ll take me a year to make this anew! I can’t wait! I won’t wait!”

“Not your decision,” growled Havert, moving back to the door. “Better to wait than to die.”

“Havert, don’t do it,” cried out Nissa as the man raised his club. The door was now a foot off the ground. Scorio, moving as if in a dream, took a wide step and pushed the stone block under its edge.

“Havert!” shouted Nissa again. “Stop!”

The stocky man brought his club crashing down upon one of the hands, crunching the digits and glowing talons. A strangely garbled roar of pain sounded from the far side.

The hand withdrew, the door shuddered, began to drop, and then the mangled hand appeared once more, clutching ruinously at the door, two of the fingers twisted awry.

The door began to rise again.

Havert raised his club, face scrunched into a knot of determination and fear.

Then he sagged, dropped bonelessly to the ground, and Scorio saw Nissa standing behind him, clutching her own club, its head gleaming wetly in the mosslight.

“Havert!” Hestia scrambled over to his fallen form. “Nissa—what did you do? Nissa? What did you do?”

“I… he couldn’t… I couldn’t let him…” Nissa stared wide-eyed down at where the man lay, the back of his head wet in the blue light.

The door continued to rise.

Sal circled out wide, mouth working, eyes glittering, transfixed by the fallen Great Soul.

“It’s coming in!” shouted Scorio, snatching up his club. “Get ready!’

As the door rumbled all the way open, Scorio felt himself reach for something reflexively once more, a fumbling grab for what had to be his Igneous Heart. But there was nothing to take hold of, just a cold, throbbing void that enervated him so suddenly that he cried out in pain and stumbled.

The door slammed against the roof of the cavern, and a massive beast stepped forward, propping it open with one upraised palm, nearly filling the entirety of the space.

Scorio felt his knees go weak at the sight of the monster. It was nearly as wide as it was tall, its shoulders and arms muscled to the point of deformity, its head reptilian, snub-nosed like a tortoise, its maw open to reveal massive, saurian teeth. But more than the plated shielding across its chest and stomach, more than the talons that dug into the stone ground, it was the energy burning off the beast that caught him flatfooted and made his heart constrict.

For in the light of the blue moss, the beast’s hide was a deep, featureless black, while ragged lines of burning purple flame patterned its face, contoured around its body, and gathered in riotous intensity at its claws. Flames that surged and burned as if venting some inner furnace within the beast, leaving afterimages of light in its wake as it moved.

Hestia lunged forward to grab hold of Havert’s shoe and begin hauling him away, trying to remove him from the monster’s path. Nissa stood, transfixed, staring up into its burning, purple eyes.

Scorio let out a wordless cry of defiance and raced in, knowing it was madness to do so, and swung his club as hard as he could at the monster’s knee.

The second his blow connected, he threw himself forward into a rough dive, narrowly evading a clawed hand nearly two feet across as it came slicing through the air at where he’d stood.

Hestia screamed.

Scorio came up to his feet and saw the monster bend low to snatch Havert up in its maw, crunching the man in half between its saurian jaws. Whirring movement off to one side, then Sal unleashed a stone from his slingshot that pinged off the monster’s snout.

The beast paused in its ruminative crunching to turn and stare at him, purple eyes narrowing, and Sal let out a wail, sprinting through the open Brass Door into the darkness beyond.

“Hestia!” shouted Scorio, backing away from the huge, hunched-over back, the upraised arm that still held the door open. “Get out of there!”

Nissa was a shadow, pressing herself along the far wall to slip out through the doorway, dragging a pack along after her, face a panicked blur, eyes wide, shocked into a daze.

“Hestia!” Scorio ran out wide as the monster oriented on the last remaining Great Soul in the room. He caught a glimpse of the other woman pushing herself back with her heels, staring up, mouth agape in horror.

The monster released the door and stepped fully into the cave, closing the distance between them.

Scorio had no time to react. No time make a conscious decision. The huge door began to close with utter finality.

Ignoring it, he lunged back into the cave and leaped, swinging the club with all his strength to bring it whistling over and around the boulder-like shoulder to crack into the monster’s temple.

The beast felt the blow, its head jerking aside, and it opened its mouth to roar, pieces of Havert tumbling out to fall wetly to the ground.

The door smashed down onto the stone block, made a warping, metallic sound of protest, then stayed open, a foot of darkness between it and the ground.

“Get through!” shouted Scorio, backing away, arms wide, the club feeling loose and weak in his grip. “Hestia, go!”

He couldn’t tell if she obeyed. The monster oriented on him, gave its blunt head a shake, then hunched and spread its arms open wide to let loose an ear-splitting roar, head turning from side to side as it gave vent to its hunger and fury, the purple flames that patterned its body flaring out everywhere a foot in height.

Scorio hurled the club with all his strength, a wild and desperate gamble.

The club spun as it flew at the monster’s face, only to be batted aside by a violent flick of its claws.

But Scorio wasn’t waiting. He took three long strides and dove under the door, slid most of the way across, then scrabbled the rest of the way and through.

Only to realize that Hestia was trapped, her eyes wide, fingers clawing at the naked stone floor as she tried to disentangle herself from her pack. She’d tried to dive through sideways while wearing it, but it had gotten stuck.

“Scorio!” Her eyes were panicked in the light of the moss-lamp she’d shoved in ahead of her. “I can’t—I’m stuck—”

He lurched toward her, grabbing hold of her wrist. There were tears in her eyes, and he saw that the strap was nearly torn clean off. Digging his heels in, he yanked as hard as he could, and heard the strap tear further.

“One more time,” he shouted. “One more—”

Then her eyes opened wide as her whole body jerked, and Scorio barely had time to let go before she was ripped out screaming from under the door and disappeared.

Scorio crashed down onto his rear and simply gaped. He blinked, stunned into immobility, then heard Hestia’s scream cut short.

He had to get moving. Had to back away, do something, anything, but he just stared at where she’d been a second ago, her freckled face still vivid in his mind’s eye.

Then a burning purple claw reached under the rim of the door, took hold, and began to lift it open.

Scorio snapped back to life. Snatching up the moss lamp, he wheeled around to take in the small cavern in which he stood. A half-dozen ragged tunnels led into absolute darkness. Sal and Nissa had fled ahead without him.

With no pack, no weapon, and no idea as to where he was running, he raised the moss lantern high, picked a tunnel, and bolted.