SC Book One: Life's Bazaar, Chapter Six: Jzadirune, Part Two
Briefly they discussed where they should go from here. Zip noticed that Dip made a special point in making sure to contribute to the discussion, glancing down at the weathered leather map in Shiore’s hands and gesturing to the two known passageways as they tried to match the area up with someplace on Keygan’s map. He even attempted to use intelligent sounding words, although Zip noticed Shiore making great pains not to giggle each time he misused them. His twin glowed under the elf’s girl’s attentions and barely even noticed when she gently suggested a plan opposite of Dip’s own. He didn’t seem to mind, the fact that she’d even entertained his idea, treating his suggestions just as valid as anyone else’s seemed to be all he needed. Suddenly Zip felt extremely guilty. All his brother wanted was to feel like he was apart of the discussion.
In the end, they decided to take the passage to the left of where they entered. The next room was huge - so huge the light from the torches couldn’t reach the end of the room from the entrance. The far wall reminded in shadows. Once upon a time, this chamber had been a dining hall and Zip saw the remnant of the once fine furniture. Wreckages of long tables and chairs with plush cushions were now nothing more than kindling and rags. Two giant iron chandeliers dangled from the ceiling, while a third - its rope severed - laid amid the debris on the floor.
Slowly they made their way into the dining hall, Wrast taking the lead with his fists clenched and eyes alert. The silence in the hall brought into focus each scrape of their feet on the ruined rock and debris ground. The sound of it echoed off the walls and down the hall. Nothing else stirred in the darkness, but still they were careful.
After a few minutes when nothing attacked them, they felt safe enough to lower their guard, although Wrast’s guard remained only slightly under full force. Shiore took a moment to study the map again while Zip studied the room from its center, their lights revealing more now. The great hall had four other doors like the ones they first encountered in the welcome room - the great doors with teeth. Two faced the other two. Zip read off the letters that appeared on each. “‘E’. ‘U’. ‘Z’. And - ”
“‘J’,” Shiore supplied, standing next to him. “I recognize that one from the first room. ‘J’, right?”
Zip smiled, impressed at her memory. “Right. Very good.”
Shiore beamed at the praise. Then her lips turned down and her eyes fell upon the map in her hands. “I don’t understand it. If it weren’t for the wall there,” she pointed to the wall where they’d entered from the forest room; Zip could still faintly hear the birds chirping in the quiet of the hall, “this room would look like this section of the map.” She pointed down at the bottom left corner of the map. Indeed there was a square-ish room connected to a long rectangular one. As Shiore had said, there was no wall separating the square and rectangle rooms, but there was a passage leading opposite, just as they’d seen in the forest room, as well as four doors in the rectangular room. Just as they were seeing now. Two of those doors seemed to lead into twin rectangular rooms sitting next to each other, while the other two lead to a strangely shaped room and a passageway. At the bottom of the rectangular room was an area that lead to two smaller square room and a strange square room with a little protrusion coming from the end. All Zip could think of on seeing it was phallic thoughts. He simultaneously blushed and chocked on a burst of laughter at the same time.
What he didn’t see on the map were the tunnels they’d recently exited, although that wasn’t overly surprising if the dark creatures they’d fought had built them after the gnomes had vacated the city. Probably why Shiore was having such a hard time navigating with the map. What he did see was a second passage out of the forest room. He wracked his memory, but he couldn’t recall seeing a doorway in the forest. It must have been hidden. Should they go back and look?
Zip was about to mention this, suddenly curious where a secret door might lead to, when Shiore burst out in frustration, whining and practically shaking the map like she might shake a person for answers. “This map is useless! That gnome game us a useless map!” She whined again and Dip rushed over to place a comforting hand on her arm. Zip wondered if his brother wished to have done more than just that simple touch. “Do you think they could have added a wall?” she asked Dip hopefully. Apparently she couldn’t get passed the idea that there was a wall when there shouldn’t have been.
Ignoring the doors for now, they continued on Shiore’s suggestion down the hall to another entryway. Prudently, Zip did not mention that this hadn’t been on the map, either, and thankfully Shiore was too preoccupied with examining the map to notice the lack of definition. The hall beyond wrapped around in both directions, a door located at the end of each direction before turning down into the darkness again. Shiore recognized the ‘A’ on the one door. Zip said the other door held the letter ‘R’. Going around each bend, more doors on either end lead to what was probably the square room with the protrusion. Both doors held the letter ‘D’.
“What do these letters stand for?” Ayame asked.
Zip shrugged. Up until now, he’d just been reading them off as a matter of course. Partially, he liked showing off his knowledge, and partially Shiore seemed interested in knowing. He had no clue what could be the meaning behind the runes. “Well, we were attacked in the first room. ‘A’ for attack. And… in the other one we found junk. ‘J’ for junk.” He knew he was reaching, but for the life of him he couldn’t come up with a more plausible answer.
“Do either of those start with those letters in gnomish?”
Zip pondered, conceding her point. “No.” It had been a stupid thought anyway, he had just felt that at that time a stupid wrong answer was better than an intelligent non-answer. Well, maybe more entertaining, anyway.
“Well, let’s see about opening one of the ‘D’ doors,” Shiore suggested.
Dip snickered. “D doors. Open d’ doors!”
Zip rolled his eyes at his twin. “Seriously Dip, that was terrible.” Still, his brother grinned triumphantly as Shiore gave the blond a patronizing giggle. Apparently pity laughter was enough for him.
Meanwhile, Wrast had ignored Dip’s joke, not understanding the language, and had gone ahead to work on the trap for the door. Like the door back in the welcome room, the ‘D’ door had one heck of a serious trap and lock placed on it. Also as before, Wrast was able to find and disarm the trap with Zip’s help, this one having something to do with electricity, but could not get the lock mechanism to trip. Finally conceding, he frustratingly gestured for Zip to give it a go.
Just as it had been with the ‘J’ door, ‘D’ door proved to be just as much a challenge to Zip’s dexterous lock picking kender fingers. He strained his skill, trying to remember what he’d done to open the last one, hoping that knowledge would prove useful in opening this door. Although he had the general idea of what he might need to do, he hadn’t become deft enough in his skill to perform the operation flawlessly. To his disappointment, trying a lock of his caliber once had not been enough to master the lock. Once this mission was all over, he had every intention of coming back down here and testing his skills with these doors until he could pick it in heartbeats instead of long minutes.
Finally the mechanism sprang and the lock moved to the unlock position. It was the kind of victory that only came after experiencing difficulty and hardship, and Zip felt pleased with his efforts as he at last opened the door.
And immediately wished he hadn’t.
The most foul stench slapped him in the face, then punched him in the gut. It was like getting caught after flirting shamelessly to rile up one of the big warrior men. Those guys could not take a joke well.
Gagging sounded behind him as Ayame rushed away from the door, dry heaving around the bend in the hallway. His other companions coughed and wheezed, covering their mouth and nose with their sleeves. Inside the room, think wooden walls separated six curtained stalls that stretched across the wall to Zip’s left. Sadly, those dividers did nothing to prevent the stench from filling the air like a solid wall that could now seep into the hallway behind him. A fish shaped fresco cared into the back wall once must have served as a waterspout to the rectangular pool of now brackish water, although water no longer poured from its gaping mouth.
“Ugh.” Shiore grimaced as she peered into the room. “We found the potty.” She made an urk noise and hurried away from the door after Ayame.
“Anyone have to go?” Zip joked, trying to hold his breath and pretend the smell wasn’t getting to him. Only, the smell had a taste to it. It slithered onto his tongue as soon as he opened his mouth. He swallowed the gag reflex, which inadvertently swallowed the smell. It was like he had eaten the stench. His stomach recoiled, threatening to revisit his breakfast, but he quickly clamped down, forcing his stomach to keep it down.
“I can hold it,” Ayame called from down the hall.
“You sure?”
“Positive.”
“I’ve got to go!” Dip announced, raising his hand. Zip stared at his brother - and he wasn’t the only one. Everyone turned to look at the blond twin in horror and disgust. Out of all of them, Dip seemed to be handling the smelly room the best. Did his brother even have a sense of smell? Meanwhile, Zip wondered if he’d ever be able to smell anything else ever again.
Dip looked around at his companions and lowered his hand. “Just kidding.”
They closed the room before leaving the area, which cut off most of the stench form reaching their nose, but a trail of it followed them back into the dining hall. Zip wondered if his sense of smell had been completely destroyed and thought about heading back into the forest room. If only he could smell the scent of green, living things again, everything would be okay…
“I want to try this door,” Shiore said, indicating the ‘J’ door back in the main dining hall, where the smell of mold and close air had never seemed so sweet. “It should be this oddly shaped room,” she added, pointing to the oval octagonally shaped room. Zip thought Shiore had a thing for oddly shaped rooms.
Once again, Wrast and Zip worked together, Zip assisting, to disarm the trap. Then without a word, the elf moved aside for Zip to work his magic. Obviously Wrast had become resigned to the fact that his skill was not up to the challenge of the Jzadirune doors. It saddened Zip a little, as he hated Wrast to think badly of himself, but he hoped that the elf warrior would at least appreciate Zip’s skill, even if he couldn’t be impressed. Zip would have to think of another way to impress in beautiful blond elf man.
Eventually Zip managed to unlock the door. Thankfully, this one did not roll out a stinky surprise for them. Besides smelling prettier, it looked prettier as well. Turquoise ceramic tiles adorned the walls and floor of the room, in the middle of which rested a large octagonal bathing pool with a two foot tall raised lip. This, then, followed the shape of the room on Shiore’s map. Pristine water poured into the pool from a smiling stone face carved into an overhanging wall.
Sadly, that was where the beauty of the room stopped. A narrow stone ledge encircling the ceiling was hidden behind a tangled mass of thick webs. Suspended from the webs by ropy filaments was a cocooned humanoid corpse that dangled five feet above the pool’s glassy surface.
A collective gasp emanated from the group as they all realized at the same time this poor dangling victim. Wrast and Ayame were the first to leap into the room, each reaching for their daggers, intent on cutting the person down. Only a few feet in, however, they halted dead in their tracks.
“Not one of those kidnapped,” Ayame said, eyes wide as she took a few steps back. “It’s one of those dark skinned creatures.”
Wrast retreated as well. “Dead,” he confirmed in Elven.
“What did he say?” Dip asked Zip, coming to stand next to him, his hands tightening around his sithak.
“The creature, it’s dead.”
“Look.” Wrast pointed into the pool. As Zip and the others crowded around Wrast and Ayame, they saw a dark blob at the bottom of the water, sitting in wait. For them? Zip thought. Certainly for its next meal.
The monstrous spider probably had its many faceted eyes upon them, waiting for the most opportune moment to spring on them. Zip uncapped the metal spike of his yothik and concentrated on a spell should the creature decide it was done waiting for them to get closer.
“More,” Wrast added, pointing up. That was when Zip heard the skittering of more creatures up in the webbing of the ceiling. Whether they were the same size as the one in the pool or only slightly giant sized, he couldn’t say. They remained hidden in the dark recesses within the webbing.
“I really don’t want to mess with those things,” Shiore said. She nodded towards the passage leaving the room set in the left wall behind the pool. “I think if we can stick to the walls, we can get through to the passageway.”
“If you say so.” Zip heard the clipped tones of his brother and gave him a confused look, studying the intense gaze Dip wore as he stared at the beast in the water. Rarely had he heard such vehemence from his twin, as if this creature had personally wronged him.
“You okay?” he asked his brother in Kenderspeak.
“Yeah, fine,” Dip replied back in the same tongue. He gestured with his chin to the others making their way to the wall. “We should go.”
Uncertain, Zip followed the others as they hugged the wall in an effort to stay as far away from the swimming menace.
“So it’s an aquatic spider?” Ayame was asking in a low voice, as if afraid the spider might respond to auditory cues as well as proximity. “It’s been down there this entire time and hasn’t come up for air once.”
The girl made a good point. Zip trained his magical sense towards the pool. Much like before, he saw behind what was seen to what really existed. The spider certainly still waited for it’s next meal, its current meal tangled up above it in the webs, but the water didn’t exist except as a magical enchantment.
“The water’s illusory. It’s not really there.”
Ayame pondered this for a moment, staring at the seemingly real pool with flowing fountain. “But it looks so much like a bathhouse - well, bathhouse plus extra multilimbed guests. I would have thought this would have been where the gnomes bathed. Must be hard to get clean with illusory water.”
“Ugh, smelly gnomes,” Shiore added, pinching her nose. “Now the potty makes sense. They obviously have no sense of smell.”
“They must do something, then,” Dip said, his earlier angry mood seemingly having dissipated. Zip couldn’t fathom where the anger came from. “Zip, I don’t remember any of your boyfriends being particularly smelly. Can’t see you being with a smelly guy.”
With Wrast only feet away, Zip felt his cheeks redden. He was actually glad the elf wouldn’t be able to understand this conversation, as he really didn’t want to discuss previous romantic entanglements within earshot of the man. “No,” he admitted, “none of them were. Gnomes are actually pretty fastidious about keeping clean and grooming.” He almost mentioned about their “manscaping”, keeping even hair below the waist trim and tidy. At the last moment he managed to hold his tongue. Dip wouldn’t have understood the concept, kender having no need for manscaping. They were as hairless in body as were the elves. And mentioning it would have only elicited teasing remarks from Ayame and Shiore. Wrast and Nona would blessedly not understand a single word, but Nardakk… Zip didn’t want to think about the embarrassment of how he would react.
“Well, these gnomes seem to have less of an issue on bathing,” Shiore continued.
“Maybe gnomes are different here,” Dip suggested. Zip nearly had a panic attack, ready to throttle Dip if he mentioned anything about another world. Thankfully his twin remembered not to mention anything about coming from another world and phrased his sentence appropriately. Still, Zip wondered what the others would think about what Dip said. “No, wait, I don’t remember Keygan being smelly, but then I guess he didn’t live down here. Still nothing is as stinky as a minotaur, so I doubt they could have been that bad.”
Shiore nodded sagely. “Never say ‘mooo’ to them, though.”
Zip nearly snorted, but Dip just responded with, “Or tell them they smell. But they do. Evil non-bathers.”
The spiders remained where they were. Whether they watched them as they left the room and into the next hallway, Dip didn’t know, but part of him wished they’d attack. He couldn’t see the ones up in the webs, but the one in the pool seemed to be as big as the one he’d fought six years ago shortly after leaving on his Wanderlust. Whether this one also was poisonous, he’d never know, but he had a score to settle with that spider, and taking it out on one of its spider kin seemed like the best way to do it. A little disappointed that they wouldn’t stay and fight, Dip did see the wisdom in live and let live. Apparently the spider felt the same way.
Staying close to Shiore, determined not to get left behind again, he studied the map with her as she compared it to the next intersection. Didn’t matter that he’d already forgotten where on the map they were supposed to be. Mostly he just liked being near her. She smelled really nice - and she was fun to bounce jokes off of, thinking of their minotaur banter.
“I think this path should take us back into the dining hall.” She looked up and peered down the passage passed the left turn. “There should be a set of stairs…”
Sure enough, as they turned the next corner, there was a staircase going up. “Good job!” Dip praised, patting her on the back. Oh, if only he felt he could actually hug her. Shiore practically cheered at finding the stairs. Dip recognized she definitely needed a win after having the map confuse her for so long.
As they reached the top of the stairs, flickering lights spilled into the hallway and Dip thought he heard the sounds of trickling water within. Arriving at the top step, the gigantic room revealed itself. Dip’s mouth opened in awe at the cavernous size. Eight black marble pillars supported the thirty foot high ceiling of the hall. From what he could tell, the pillars were carved with what resembled gnomes dressed as warriors and artists standing on each other’s shoulders. The walls were adorned with faded murals depicting gnomes in reverie - playing pipes, dancing, performing acrobatic stunts, drinking wine, and other activities.
Four bright lights illuminated the hall from end to end, corner to corner, which explained the light they could see from the stairs. The lights flickered and danced like torchlight and drifted aimlessly about the hall, changing altitude and direction on a whim. Dip wanted to follow one of the globes of lights, wanted to touch them. I wonder what they’d feel like… Would they burn his hand? Would they feel warm like a sunspot or would they be cold with his hands going right through them like a ghost?
The hall was wider at this end. Set in the center of this back wall was a large circular pool enclosed by a semicircular, one foot high veined marble wall. Dip couldn’t help but wonder if this pool was like so much in this place and also illusory. He couldn’t tell, he hadn’t noticed the other illusions either, that was something his brother would know, not him. Carved into the wall above the pool was yet another gnome visage with water spilling from its wide grin. Wow, Dip thought, gnomes really like to carve gnome statues, don’t they? Then again, what would they carve, human statues?
In the light of the glowing orbs, Dip could see three doors like the ones Wrast and Zip had opened before, two open passages farther down the hall and a third across from the passage they stood in. Plus, he could see two piles of rubble on either side of the room, meaning more tunnels that had been recently dug.
But despite the light throughout the room from the orbs, Dip started to realize how much shadow they threw around as they wandered the hall, zipping and dipping, and diving and twisting about in the air. The shadows of the columns danced along with the light. For all the illumination in the hall, there was plenty of darkness. He thought he caught the sound of something scraping the ground and he tightened his grip on his sithak. Suddenly he realized how easy it would be for something dark and shadowy to hide within the twisting shadows.
Straining his eyes, he trained his gaze on each shadow, starting with the closest, scanning the darkness for hidden movement. Something darker seemed to move within one of the shadows. Just as he was about to step forward to investigate, four dark creatures leaped out and attacked!