I look around on the ground, and ah-ha! Stones!
There are a couple that are about the size of my fist. I grab them and toss them in the air a couple times, get a feel for them. I’m not a baseball champion, but climbing up buildings and opening safe locks does give you good hand-eye coordination.
A bat comes toward me, and I shift slightly, waiting until it’s right in my best line of sight—and I throw the rock hard as I can.
It smacks right into the bat’s face and it goes down, landing on its back on the ground, twitching. Now that’s what we call a concussion.
Another bat comes, and I throw the second rock—it hits the bat a little sideways but sends the animal into the wall, where it hits hard and slides down to land unconscious—or dead—on the floor.
North slices through a few more bats, and then pauses.
We all pause.
There are no more bats. No more squeaking or the fluttering of wings. It’s perfectly silent except for our own heavy breathing.
“I think we got all of them,” North says, putting his knives away.
I look around at all the dead animals on the floor and wince. They were just doing what their instincts told them to do, and I know we had no choice but to protect ourselves but… it still makes me feel a bit sick. Poor creatures. Whoever did this to them, enchanted them to make them huge and aggressive, is definitely on my shit list now.
Not that my shit list is particularly long.
Cain holds his remaining fireball up so that we can continue to see. “Shall we?” he asks, looking at North.
North nods, and Raven leads the way again as we head down this hallway.
It doesn’t take us long to reach our destination—I think the bats were the final big defense. The hallway ends with a large, open doorway, with an octagonal chamber beyond.
I hold up a hand and crouch down, feeling the floor of the doorway. Ah-ha, pressure plate. I jam it so that it won’t activate.
“You’ll want to step over this,” I warn, feeling the air up above me to see if there’s a… well I call them a ‘curtain alarm’. Basically it’s like if you hung a curtain down in a doorway, and every time someone stepped through that curtain, making it move, it would trigger an alarm or defense mechanism.
Only in this case the curtain is invisible, kind of incorporeal, and is made of magic.
I’ve gotten really good at having a light touch to feel the air, sense where it shifts and becomes something… more, and then I can reach up to the top of the doorway to the source and deactivate it. But it seems this person was just counting on the pressure plate, since I don’t feel any more magic in the air.
I stand up. “Okay, we’re good.”
Just to be on the safe side, I step over the pressure plate, demonstrating for the men. They follow, stepping where I stepped. I never teamed up with anyone before on burglary jobs. There were a few reasons for that, number one being that I didn’t trust them not to double cross me, but also because I didn’t think they would respect my authority, my expertise on the subject.
More than I would like to admit, it’s nice to see these men—these expert, trained fighters who can certainly handle themselves—doing as I say without question or complaint. Trusting that I know what’s best.
We all look around the chamber. It’s a very simple one, nothing on the walls or anything. No crazy decorations or announcements about some god or other.
“Looks like this wasn’t a religious place,” Cain remarks.
North grunts in agreement.
“I don’t see a gem,” I point out, looking at the walls. Is there a panel?
Cain and Raven walk toward the left-hand side of the room. “It was in an alcove,” Cain says.
Raven puts his hand on the wall to indicate where.
I walk over, feeling around the area. If it’s a sliding panel, not a safe, then the button to activate it should be to the side and a little lower.
My fingers feel something, a depression, then a little hook, and I tug it up. My heart is racing. Finally, after all of this time, I’m going to get an Aurora Gem. I can give it to Donovan, and I’ll have my debt wiped clean. I’ll be free. No more running, no more hiding, no more fear, no…
The wall under Raven’s hand slides upward, revealing a small alcove.