The Tunnel And The Tomb

You leap forward, landing on the altar, just in time for an iron cage to drop down around you with an ear-rattling thud.

Well. The good news is, you've got easy access to the statue! The bad news is, you're not sure how you're going to get out.

Thumbing through your adventure novel, you flip a page too far and find yourself on the dreaded PAGE THIRTEEN.

Page thirteen does not exist. It never has, and never will.

The cage bars are sturdy and unyielding, and the bars are too close together to admit anything wider than your arm.

You're not getting out without moving the cage itself, which you find is far too heavy to overturn.

Might as well.

You pick up the statue, and something clicks the moment it's lifted. Behind you, a stone slab slams shut over the exit, and a moment later, it begins to rain.

You look up, just in time to catch the deluge from above, straight to your face. The weight of the water shoves you down off the altar, onto the floor, where you gurgle and thrash, fighting to stand amid the rapid-rising flood.

Iron bars bruise your sides as the water fills your lungs, and you realize there's no escape.

You freeze in place, and duck.

This proves to be a horrible, horrible mistake.

Something large, heavy, and probably solid metal bashes into the back of your downturned head like a lead pipe, and your face meets the floor with a stomach-flipping crunch. This is, in all likelihood, the last thing you ever hear.

You decide to investigate the room a bit, first. You're an experienced treasure-hunter, and caution, not time, is of the essence.

Scrutinizing the floor and walls, you find what might be a hidden switch in the tiles around the altar. You'd better take care not to step on them, then.

There also looks to be something in the niche under the statue itself, but the base of the statue makes it difficult to see what. It could just be a natural part of the altar, or it could be a deadly trap. Like most booby-traps, there's no way to be sure.

Carefully stepping over the tiles around the altar, you lean onto the altar itself, up close and personal with the statue.

At this distance, you can see a depressed bit of stone under the statue, cut separate from the surface. Looks like another trap.

Throwing caution to the wind, you grab the statue, and instantly, something clicks.

More specifically, the niche under the statue clicks, and a faint clunk above you is your only warning before a rush of ice-cold water comes crashing down on your head, like the world's worst bucket-over-the-door prank.

It nearly knocks you to the ground, and as you splutter through the soaking stream, you see (and feel) a stone slab come slamming down in front of the only exit.

Well. Crap.

You've got this.

Fishing around in your pockets, you find a few things that could cover the niche (not counting your trusty whip, which you don't plan on parting with any time soon.)

Do you try...

With impeccable precision and care, you set the carabiner onto the niche at the exact second you yank the statue off of it, and pray the carabiner's weight will be enough to hold.

The statue is heavier than you estimated, though, and you realize you only have a split second to move before whatever trap it triggers is released.

You bolt for the exit, but too late -- a stone slab nearly skins your nose off as it drops down in front of you, boxing you in.

A second later, a deluge of icy water comes pouring down from the center of the room, flooding the floor in an instant. You can't see the source, but you have no doubt it's meant to fill up the whole room, with you in it.

Luckily, you're not incapacitated, and your wits are still about you.

Luckily, you've got a headlamp, so your flashlight was only ever for backup.

With impeccable precision and care, you slide the flashlight onto the niche exactly as you whisk the statue off of it, leaving the weight of the flashlight to hold down the switch. You hold your breath.

Nothing changes

You lift the statue in the air, and take a cautious step back, avoiding the trapped tiles, until you're at the exit, and you duck out of the room with statue in hand.

With as much care as you can muster, you place the hunk of lead onto the niche at exact moment you pull the statue away.

The difference in weight is palpable, though -- you've clearly overestimated the statue's heft. Maybe that won't matter, though, so long as the switch stays pressed?

You take a cautious step toward the door, ready to bolt or crouch at a moment's notice.

With your trusty ADVENTURER'S WHIP, you snap out and snag the statue, yanking it back toward your hand. It sails through the air, and you catch it with ease, only to hear a faint click from the altar.

You've triggered another trap, it seems, and now your survival is up to reflex once again.

With lightning-quick reflexes, you bolt for the door.

In a dash and skid across the floor that would make a major league baseball batter jealous, you slip out through the antechamber's sole exit just as a great stone slab comes slamming down onto the threshold, narrowly missing your basically everything.

The impact of untold tons of stone rattles your bones and shakes you to your core, but as you catch your breath, you realize you are, in fact, outside the room. So clearly you've done something right.

You stand, brushing archeological debris from your probably skinned knees, and weigh the silvery statue in your hand. It's the genuine article, alright.

With lightning-quick reflexes, you take a step back into the doorway, out of range of any surprise traps. Or so you assume, until something scrapes above you...

... and about ten tons of solid stone slab come down on your head.

Your only consolation (though you lack to cognizance to appreciate it) is that your death is very quick.

You freeze in place and duck low to the ground, in case anything tries coming out of the walls to take a swing at your head. (Arrow-traps, man.)

Nothing of the sort happens, but something huge and heavy slams into the ground behind you. When you uncurl enough to look around, you find the exit now blocked by solid stone.

And then, because your day needed to get worse, a gush of ice-cold water comes down from the vaulted ceiling, filling the center of the room. You have a nasty suspicion it's going to flood the place, with you still in it.

Time to consider your options.

You circle the room, searching for exits, but find none. The walls are seamless; no secret passages unveil themselves. The water reaches your knees, and then your waist, and soon you can barely do anything but stand on your tiptoes and try to keep your head above the surface.

You begin to tread water. The central shaft might have an exit -- the water must come from somewhere -- but there's no guarantee it'll be one you can traverse.

With limited options, you begin to swim toward the center of the room. The current fights you, but you fight back with your weakening, chilled, but utterly desperate strength. Ah, adrenaline.

Soon, you manage to position yourself under the waterfall, using the water level and the stone edges of the shaft to keep yourself bobbing in place. There's room enough to breathe, but it's a narrow fit, and your vision grows dim as you rise.

Right. If you wait for the room to fill up, you can tread water and rise up to that hole in the ceiling. If you're right (and goodness, you hope you are), if there's a way for the water to get in, then wherever the water comes from must also be a way out.

It actually takes a few minutes for the room to fill high enough that you can't stand on the ground anymore, and by then you're thoroughly chilled. If you don't drown, hypothermia might do you in anyway -- not exactly how you planned that to go.

Soon enough, though, you're floating, and the water carries you bobbing up toward the ceiling as you push against the current, shoving yourself toward the center. It's dark, and still freezing, but the stream of water through the shaft is narrow enough you've got room to breathe. Your hands find some paltry friction on the slick stone walls, and you try to pull yourself up. It's getting difficult to see.

Reaching above your head, the flow of water pushes back, until you find purchase on something solid and metal.

The good news: you've reached the top of the shaft.

The bad news: there's no open exit for you. The water flows in through a grating, holes so small they'll hardly admit your fist, let alone the rest of you, even if the water wasn't shoving you down like a grade-school bully over the toilet. (Now that you think about it, you're not sure where this water comes from-- ugh, let's not think of that.)

It's a dire choice, and you must choose quickly.

Dismantle isn't the right word, exactly.

Dismantle, you see, would imply taking the grate apart with in an orderly fashion, perhaps with a screwdriver or something.

This grate is several hundred years old, very rusty, and the most useful thing you have to hand right now is a flashlight. (Your not-actually-all-that-trusty hunk of lead is somewhere at the bottom of the room right now, and bouyancy is currently your top priority, so you're not diving for it.)

But it seems fortune smiles upon you, in a sarcastic sort of way, because after a few solid thwacks, a brittle corner gives way, and suddenly the whole grate comes swinging down, showering you in bits of rust, grime, and probably the remains of an ancient broken lock.

It's a struggle to ascend, but you brace yourself against the walls, pull with all your failing arm-strength, and heave yourself into the deluge.

The current takes you in an instant.

This is a terrible choice, you think to yourself, almost before you make it.

You dive under the surface, squinting into the murk and shadows. The water has doused any remaining light, and you can't see for beans. You follow along the walls by touch, but all your find is torch alcoves and the dead-end seams of what must be the door.

You try to swim back to the central shaft, but you're swimming blindly, and at some point you lose the walls and there is nothing but water, endless water in every direction.

The last thing you find before losing consciousness is the altar. The force of the water shoves you down, down, down, into the darkness...

At first you can't even tell which way is up. Most people mean this metaphorically; you mean it quite literally. Water is everywhere. It is up and down and north and south and east and west, and you tumble and turn in the current, struggling to hold your breath until a sudden, solid rock bashes all the air out of you like a balloon run over by a truck.

You scrabble for purchase, and heave yourself onto solid, slippery stone with a drowning, hypothermic gasp.

Would you look at that! You're alive! And, as you frantically pat yourself down, you find the statue is, by some miracle of fluid dynamics, still in your pockets, unharmed.

Not too far away, barely half a mile by your reckoning, the smoke of the archeologist's campsite you've been calling home base all week rises in the sky -- to the north, you realize, because this must be a tributary of the river just south of where you've been.

SUCCESS

You have escaped the antechamber alive with the statue in hand, which will be sold over to the local GYTHRFTHSTZ museum for a handsome sum.

(And you didn't even almost drown!)

SUCCESS

You have escaped the antechamber alive with the statue in hand, which will be sold over to the local GYTHRFTHSTZ museum for a handsome sum.

(You do come back to camp half-drowned and with the start of hypothermia, though, and worry your employer and all your colleagues sick. But hey, all's well that ends well, right?)