Thrice Promted

Thrice Prompted

Prompt Two

‘The secret room’

Word count 1,649

I was right about the bloody master mage. He walked just in front of me with one of his apprentice’s.

To other races it must seem strange that their mages only carried small daggers or a staff as a weapon. Our mages were only distinguishable from normal dwarven warriors by the arcane symbols etched into their armour. Their weapons were magically charged, but then so was mine. They trained as hard with their weaponry as they did their spells. This master mage was particularly fierce when wielding the twin axes hanging at his sides. They were a very close design to mine, only to be expected I suppose after all he was my father and he had forged both sets of weapons and charged them both with the spells bound deep inside them.

“Lon get up here,” he said over his shoulder.

“I am here,” I replied

“This room we need to look at tell me about it.”

“What’s to tell it’s round with one bunk in it, a fireplace, it did have two chests in it until we fetched those back last week. Why? We will be in it in a few minutes. You will see for yourself.” I drew one of my axes and rolled it around my fist, I loved the weight of these weapons.

“stop playing and think like you were trained. Ya simple minded bumpkin.” He smiled as he said it.

“You know as well as me you do not go to the trouble of guarding a room with a spell like that, with that much force unless you have something to hide.” He then rolled his axe around his fist, noticed me watching him and said, “I thought I may have sharpened it a bit funny, just checking the balance.”

“Cock off!” I flicked back at him.

The master mage laughed and said something to his apprentice, who looked over his shoulder at me and smiled.

We were walking down those corridors into the deeper parts of the ruins. The dust had been swept out and there were now no dust genies as we walked. Since the raid of previous weeks we had established a garrison there and guess who had got command of the garrison?

Yes, that’s right I had. I had a force of seventy-five dwarven elite guards patrolling the depths of these ruins and the surrounding area. Despite what people thought and the weight of our armour the dwarven elite guard were light on their feet and could move around with little sound. Fair enough we couldn’t match an elf in the woods but let’s be fair they were wierdo’s with pointy ears.

I had sent Fin ahead to ensure no-one had entered the room after it had been sealed when the mages had removed the chests with the weapons and magical artefacts.

We rounded the last corner and there was Gus with Fin. I should have known he would have found an excuse to be here today. The mages had worked out how the two medallions worked that we had found.

When activated whichever one had the button pressed it would cause its mate to vibrate then when that medallion was pressed it opened a portal about 25 yards in front of the second medallion.

“Whoo numb nuts what are you doing here?” I said to Gus as we came up to them both.

“Come on Lon, I did find the medallion in the first place.”

“No, you stole the medallion which was the twin to the one the mages had.” I shot back.

“You are both wrong.” The voice of the master mage cut in. He knew when the three of us got together we usually resorted into a ten-minute name calling session until we ran out of insults. We had been friends a long time.

“What do you mean.” I turned to look at him.

“We actually think that the two combined are a key, and the portal thing is so that they can be connected with each other when needed.” He gave me a smug look smiling.

“A key for what?” I asked.

“I’m good but I’m not a know it all.”

“Are you sure?” It had been a long time since I’d got one over on him.

He laughed. “Let’s get to it and search this room.”

“For what? We have already been through this room.” I said without thinking.

The master mage looked into the air spread his hands wide and said to the heavens, “Why, oh why was I blessed with a simpleton for a son?”
Gus shouted from behind “we ask the same thing!”

“You can knob off, keep it up and you will be on patrol for the next five days!” I took great pleasure in telling him.

By that point we were all looking through what was left of the door frame into the cylindrical room. The dimensions did not add up. It was perhaps 30 feet across but about 70 feet in height cut out of the rock. Perfectly round with no tooling marks. As all people know not only are dwarves master smiths but master miners. Mining is in our blood we had mastered mining before we mastered smithing. This had got us all bothered there should have been tooling marks even if other races couldn’t see them we would.

The seal was still in place, more a symbol than anything we had put a chain across the door as a physical barrier but the real deterrent had been the four elite guards with massive battle axes stood to either side of the door. I had told Fin to send these away for when we had gotten there. I removed the chain and dropped it to the floor by the side of the ruined door frame. As I had dropped the chain to the floor I noticed a glow coming out of the pouch on the master mages belt.

“What’s that glowing in your pouch?” I asked him.

“What glow?” he looked down and saw what I was seeing, he removed the glowing object from the pouch it was the first medallion.
He glanced over at his apprentice, “What is that one doing?”

The apprentice opened his pouch and withdrew a small wrapped bundle he opened the leather wrapping and the second medallion was glowing in response to the first one. “It’s glowing.”

“Ya don’t say.” The master mages sarcasm losing its edge whist he was looking at the medallions.
There was a single dark spot in the centre of each medallion. The master mage was looking at that spot tracing the rune like symbols engraved around it. The black spot was above the portal activation button.

He started muttering to himself, I could not quite hear him. I moved closer, as I watched he positioned his thumb above the black spot.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? That explosion that protected these doors was quite something.”

“Probably not.” he said, and as he said it he pressed down on the black spot.

Nothing.

“What didn’t happen then?” he said as he looked at me.

“You only pressed one of the medallions. There are two of them oh great and wonderful wizard.” I smiled as I said it.

“Cock off Butt Monkey” was his short retort.

“That explains a lot.” Gus said to Fin smiling.

“push that black bit there Frum.” He said to his apprentice.

I watched unconsciously holding my breath. Frum pressed the button.

Nothing happened.

“what a waste of time, I have got some nice ale in my pack I could have been drinking.” Gus said to no-one.
A thin smoky haze seemed to appear in the centre of the room just below the ceiling. The hazy cloud started to rotate slowly gathering momentum, as it started rotating faster a thin finger reached down from the middle of the cloud and touched down in the centre of the room.

I could not feel any wind, yet it looked like a small maelstrom was enclosed inside the round room. The cloud expanded filling the room entirely to the door.

There was a small bell like sound and the cloud just dissolved in a matter of seconds. We gathered round the door. Where there had been an empty cylinder before now there was a staircase on the opposite side of the room from the fire and bunk.

The staircase was made of a dark timber that I did not recognise. I stepped through the door into the room drawing both of my axes. I was conscious that the master mage, my father was by my side.

The steps continued up passed an obvious second floor, we moved cautiously upwards, as we reached the first landing we both stepped into the room at this level I motioned for Fin and Gus to continue up to the third landing where we could see the stairs ceased their climb upwards.

“Make sure we are alone.” I said to Fin

Two minutes later he shouted down “We are alone!”

“The secret room I was certain was here!” The master mage said to me.

“Why were you certain?” I asked.

“There were just too many magical items in one place. With all those weapons. What is puzzling me though, is why those two chests were there in that room for you to find? Why were they not hidden within this other room? Something is not right here.” He looked away from me scanning the room, looking for clues that would offer him an answer.

“What do you mean, something is not right?” I said turning to follow his gaze.

Just then I heard a click and a section of wall swung in towards us, a shadow was cast forward from the reddish glow that was behind the door.
A secret room within a secret room, and this time it had an occupant.