Prologue
Prologue
This was not going as smoothly as expected. No. This was, in fact, going rather badly.
The petite thief crouched on one knee, head bent low, arms outstretched, hands palm down, fingers loosely gripping the hilts of matching Elven daggers whose tips touched the flagstones aside her. She was surrounded by a grey haze.
Behind her, in the previous chamber, lay the bodies of her party, most likely dead. She had witnessed the surly Dwarf Fighter take a blow to his head that both knocked off his helmet and laid him out flat. As the electric blue of the magelight above them vanished, she knew that the bolts which had narrowly missed her own head had found a home in the Highland Mage behind her.
The darkness that followed was punctuated by three sets of sounds. First, the click, hiss and swish of another hidden trap. Second, a sort of splashing sound. Third, the scream, sigh and then silence of their Healer.
She had warned them to follow her footsteps. It never pays to ignore a thief’s advice.
The upside of setting off all the traps at once was that the final door cracked open, bleeding golden light into the chamber and illuminating the treasure room beyond.
Old thieves know that an unlocked door leads to either a longer richer life or a shorter poorer one. She was, unfortunately, a young thief. Nevertheless, she moved lightly forward to the side of the open doorway. With her back to the wall, she pulled a blade out and angled it into the doorway to see the mirrored reflections. It looked clear. It sounded clear. It smelt clear (well, a bit dusty and there was definitely spilt blood somewhere close). But… it didn’t feel right.
With a flick of the wrist and kick of her booted foot she tossed a coverbomb into the room, pushed the door open, rolled, drew her second blade and landed in the middle of the smoky cloud. If needed, she could strike either blade to the stone to spark the surrounding gas into a flash and a bang that would blind and disorientate any attackers, allowing her to escape.
Nothing attacked. No one emerged from the shadows. No traps swung open or down or across. The only sounds were her shallow breath and the spluttering of the two braziers on the raised dais in front of her. Between them, she spied a large chest. Scanning the room, corner to corner, she mentally worked out which of the lock picks in the wrap tucked into her jacket would fit the large padlock. She’d brought the right one. The treasure was in her grasp!
As laughter echoed around her, she realized that the blood smell wasn’t from her dead or dying party members, but from the iron used in the binding spell. She couldn’t rise, nor even move the fraction of an inch required to spark the escape cloud. She was caught.
“Oh yes!” a voice said, “You’ll do nicely.”