Wraithblood, The Elixir: Episode 20a
You take a deep breath, and before anyone can stop you, you slip past the library doors and into the corridor.
“Strake!” hisses Nasser. “Are you…”
Then he falls silent as you step into the Immortals’ field of vision.
You take one step, heels clicking against the ornate marble floor, and then another. The Immortals are looking right at you. You can see the harsh blue glow of their alchemically altered eyes through the black skull masks of their helmets. They cannot possibly miss seeing you.
Yet they do not seem to notice you.
Samnirdamnus was right. For whatever reason, the wraithblood has rendered you invisible to the Immortals’ eyes.
You stride forward, until you are between them, lift your hands to gaps in their armor, and trigger the spring-loaded blades in your bracers.
The reaction is instantaneous, and violent. Both Immortals collapse to the floor. But rather than lying motionless, they go into violent seizures, and you only just avoid having your foot crushed by a black-armored fist. The library doors fly open, and Nasser, Riordan, Azaces, and Khaenset race out, trailed by a terrified-looking Tarquin. In short order, both Azaces and Riordan kill the Immortals, staining their swords with blue-glowing blood.
“Why did you kill them?” you say. Mathematically, you know, it makes sense. But the priests who weaned you off wraithblood would not approve, and their ridiculous morality apparently has worn off on you.
Azaces gives you a strange look. “Whatever that drug you had on your knives…it wouldn’t have lasted long. Even the most powerful poison won’t kill an Immortal. But why the devil didn’t they see you? I just about pissed myself when you stepped into the hallway.”
“I don’t know,” you murmur.
Nasser laughs. “Your concern is touching, Azaces.”
“Bugger that. She just needs to stay alive long enough to open the strong room door.”
“Who cares?” said Tarquin, fidgeting with fear. “We just killed two Immortals! We must take the Elixir Rejuvenata and be gone before other Immortals arrive.”
“He speaks sense, for a eunuch,” says Riordan.
“Come,” says Nasser, and pushes open the doors to Callatas’s laboratory.
The Master Alchemist’s laboratory is enormous, large enough to contain your entire home twice over. Long stone counters run the length of the chamber, laden with strange machines built of brass and bronze. Multicolored liquids run through intricate mazes of glass pipes. The air reeks of ozone and chemicals. And there are darker things, like the row of human heads in jars of brine, our the half-dissected corpses lying upon metal tables.
All of that, however, is only peripheral.
The strong room door fills your mind.
“Well, Strake?” says Nasser. “Can you open it?
It is a masterpiece of Strigosti metalwork, carved with the strange, geometric reliefs favored by the Strigosti. You walk to the door, rapt with fascination, equations beginning to flash through your mind.
It has three locks, and three separate traps. The first trap, you believe, will make Hellfire, a flammable elixir brewed by the Alchemists, shoot from narrow grooves in the door. The second will spray flesh-eating acid as a mist. The third will spew poison gas from hidden vents in the massive metal door. But from a mathematical perspective, the door is a thing of beauty and harmony, each gear and spring working as part of a larger, cohesive whole.
You are so excited by this challenge that your hands begin to shake, until you force them still. Having your hands shake as you try to open the locks would be a incredibly poor idea.
Azaces snorts. “Look at her face. I think she likes the thing.”
But the basic principles of the strong room door are the same as the Strigosti trapbox that held Samnirdamnus’s totem. If you successfully pick the locks, you can bypass the traps entirely. However, a single mistake on the three locks, and all the traps will go off at once. Alternatively, you could disarm the traps, and then pick the locks in relative safety. However, you must disarm the traps in sequence – if you don’t, that will set off all the traps at once.
It’s time to get to work.
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