Chapter Three

Katalene felt the water dissipate from her lungs, and, at first, she didn’t even really comprehend what was happening as it happened. The commotion and contorts of her body, her eyelids felt too heavy to spread apart. It took her a moment to realize she was no longer in the water.

She regurgitated the black oily liquid, and like that, it came back down, gagging her again. She felt herself be adjusted, brought over to her side. She spat the water out from her mouth. The taste was foul, like nothing she ever tasted before. Strong and potent. And unrelenting. As it left her mouth, she could still feel its residual stains on her tongue.

When she was young, she had heard stories about cities and towns that had black ash-like sand. Maybe this was happened when it got watered down.

The shakiness inside of her soon started to exhaust, the moments where she’d never be the same again vanquished, as she gathered she’d in-fact be the same again. Her eyes once more able to open, she saw Roo on his knees, his body sprouted overhead like the branches of a tree.

His eyes were bloodshot. Kat knew not if it was on her behalf or from the water gouging at his eyes, but on his face, he wore a relieved smile.

She tried to lean forward, but found herself unable. The aching in her midsection was even worse than before, and not only that, but there was now an unrelenting pounding in her head. Roo’s smile dimmed but didn’t extinguish, “It’ll take more than a little water to kill us off,” Roo said, his hand pointed out like an arrow, “And look, our next obstacle.”

Katalene turned her head over to the side. Their journey would continue with whatever ill-minded task the tomb had in mind for them. From where Katalene rested, beneath stony, rock-hard flooring, she could see the hole of where they had once been. On the ground, filled with the black water she hated so dearly.

A little ways from that, on the other-side of the room, she saw stairs, embroidered in the same esteem as the ones they had encountered when they were first entering the tomb.

The stairs went up. Could it have led to another hole within the desert? A way out from the tomb entirely? But then, the whole experience would have been pointless. Kat wasn’t certain she cared at this time. Beside the stairs was a barrel of pine-sticks and a small vase with a wick at the top, lit like an enormous candle.

Her eyes went back up and over to her brother, “What’s up there?”

Roo’s smile still hadn’t waned, “I don’t know,” he said, sniffling some, “I waited for you to wake up. I knew you wouldn’t …, or I knew, … I didn’t want to do it without you,” he said at last, having trouble with his words.

Kat smiled at him, using her hands to push herself up. “Big softie,” she joked, and Roo began to help her up.

She wrapped her arms around him in an embrace, which he reciprocated. Kat could hear his soft, muffled whimpers, him trying to hide them, trying to be stronger, and Kat brushed her hand down the back of his head. This went on for several seconds, until, at last, both dispersed. Kat looked in his eyes, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Roo’s emotions worsened by that remark, tears down his eyes, reassurances never helped, but he nodded anyways.

Stumbling, but only momentarily, Katalene regained her footing. She dusted herself off, even though there was no dust on her to see. Instead, she simply still felt the presence of the black water.

Together, they walked to the stairs, and Kat moved, with every step, she wondered whether Roo went ahead and broke the rest of her ribs while trying to resuscitate her.

Once she neared the stairs, she noticed the distinct visual of a turn in them. A spiral. The light of the burning vase didn’t travel far up the staircase, and soon into it, a turn came, jarring left, and from then, the walls obscured everything else.

“You don’t suppose it leads to a secret Whispey Desert Inn, offering the finest foods and warmest beds free of charge, do you?” Roo asked.

“If only,” Katalene replied. She yearned both of those things, but mostly the latter of the two.

They went up the stairs, hearing the disparate sounds of their footsteps slopping down atop the granite floor. They traveled as fast as they could, but their clothing and bodies, still drenched with water, caused them to have caution. The steps were steep, and as the stairs turned, first, once to the right for a few feet, then once to the left, not much of a spiral after all, they could already see a light where they ended.

The light was faint, but distinctive. A whisper in a silent room. The stairs took only a few minutes to meet an end, much shorter than the ones they first encountered. Wherever the end was, it wasn’t back to the surface.

It was all well, if Katalene was honest with herself, suffering aside, she much preferred her troubles to be worth something. Certainly, she knew the tomb’s worst was over.

“It looks like we’re back where we started,” Katalene said, joking, at first, but, upon further inspection, it really looked as though that were the case.

“The cage isn’t here though,” Roo pointed out.

That, it wasn’t. But most of it seemed familiar. The simple quality of it all made for a feeling of repetition. If nothing else, it might have been a little warmer, however, Katalene couldn’t say for sure.

They traveled further into the new, unexplored area. Roo stopped for a second and grabbed a pine-stick off to the side of the entrance-way, sitting in a barrel the same way as the ones downstairs.

The Tomb People were accommodating lads.

Though, they didn’t really need them. In-front of them, the flame from the column she had lit from the room below took a lot of the blackness away. From the positioning of the pillar, it looked as though they were in a room directly above the one they’d started at.

Still, the visibility and lack there-of made Kat feel irascible, the fear of sudden nothingness gave her a maddening panic that alleviated itself in small breaths, prolonging itself like a burning candle.

She hid some pine-sticks in a pouch on her leggings and trudged forward. Something else she noticed about the room different from the one before was the flooring. Before too long, they became different. The floor went from a grayish black to a much lighter shade.

The abrupt change was obvious. It was meant to be seen. A clue to what was coming. Katalene halted her brother, putting her arm in-front of him. She was looking for an explanation, her eyes went up to the ceiling, expecting to see a heavy boulder that would drop the very second they walked onto the lighter-colored section of the floor.

“What are you doing?” Roo asked, his face looking scrunched up, burnt by the sun.

“They haven’t done anything by accident, everything done in a particular way, where only the ones in the know understand how to precede. It’s like a sick, twisted challenge to see if you’re worthy for whatever is at the end of it.”

“You think the lighter spots mean something then? Foreshadowing something bad’s about to happen? A pressure pad, maybe?”

“Maybe,” Katalene said, looking over to Roo.

Roo smiled, then threw a pine-stick over to the floor. It hit with a quiet thud, rolling until it hit the flaming pillar at the center of the room. Nothing happened.

“I don’t think a twig weighs enough to trigger it, Roo,” Kat said.

Roo nodded back at once, Kat could see from the expression on his face he was mentally and physically depleted of almost all his energy. She took the reins out of sympathy and walked forward with one foot safely on a dark-tile. She readied herself to stomp on one of the light tiles, ready to squirm away fast.

Half of her was expecting it to be nothing, a mind-game captivating only the paranoid, but the other half of her was expecting swords to come out from the floor and leave her nothing more than a bloody heap.

At last, she did it, driving her foot against the lightly-colored flooring, and immediately, the fact revealed itself, and she felt herself sinking down.

The floor fell in from beneath her, or more accurately, a light-colored block went down, and she almost went down with it.

Her leg drove down, and as momentum would have it, she found herself tumbling, only holding on by a ledge. Roo’s hand soon clutched hers, bringing her a sense of relief. The sound of the block falling to the floor never came.

She looked down and could see the brick levitating ten feet below her. A peculiar sight she watched while it hovered, making small movements like it was floating on water.

Roo pulled her back up to the other side of the room, where floor acted as floor should and remained intact. She let out a loud breath of air for theatrical effect. She was almost amused, really. The amount of effort that had to go into making such an elaborate contraption. Though, she was beginning to find the line between reality and enchantment becoming blurred. The idea that a floor tile could simply levitate in mid-air without any explanation.

There had been stories; stories about creatures and men with mystical powers of all different sorts and arrangements. Wizards, such a wise-tale word, one couldn’t even utter the phrase without drawing roaring laughter from just about any crowd, but they had been spoken of. Most of them supposedly existing in the Whispey Deserts. People looked at them like Gods, praying to them and asking for guidance. But not anymore.

They were mythical and fictitious, or at least, that was the gathered consensus. But some still believed. And, after all, the tombs weren’t just built for the sake of it. The sand people must have found people worth worshiping.

Uncle Morgis smiled big at the children, a smile that showed his large, yellow teeth, and really emphasized his crinkles and aging skin. He seemed too excited, and even the naivest of children knew his fables to be just that, it was contagious. The way his excitement rubbed off on those around him.

He swallowed a lump in his throat and continued: “I wiped the blood from off my face. Oh, yes, I was bleeding, from the forehead, or the back of the skull, that’s more like it. From the way I was positioned, with my chin down, the blood ran down my face. I left away from the tomb; afraid. I would go back, of course, with help, a real excavation. But when I turned around for a final look at the tomb, to implant the illustration of it in my head. It was gone.”

Uncle Morgis stopped again, looking around at each one of the children, one-by-one, a sly smile on his face. He knew everybody was listening to him now. “No, I do not mean it misplaced or unfounded. The Tomb had disappeared in thin-air!”

“I knew you were eating more than your fair share of supplies!” hollered Roo, as they looked down at the hole in the room Katalene made.

Kat didn’t dignify him with a response. The pillar’s light caught her eye, how did it work? How was it possible? She took the pine stick out from her pocket, feeling it in her hands with all its wooden splendor. By one of the walls, she scraped it against the granite, it ignited fast.

From there, she tossed the flaming pine stick down into the hole and watched it delve down to meet its end. But before it even landed, she angled herself the right way to see the flame off where the pillar continued beneath them.

The pine stick was caught, and the flame spread some and extinguished. But, in that commotion, the formation broke, and Katalene saw what was making the floor-block levitate.

Locusts.

The ones they’d been hearing all the time they’d been down in the Tomb. A mess of them. An infestation. Thousands. A whole floor’s worth of locusts. The light shaded flooring tile was being carried by them.

They were stationery, flying lifelessly below Katalene and Roo.

“The fuck is that?” Roo hollered out. His voice sounded disturbed.

“Afraid of a few bugs, are we?” Kat teased. She was afraid of them too.

“Downright terrified,” Roo admitted. “Can never tell what they’re thinking, at least with a Dragon, you can see the pissed-off face and know what to expect.”

“Oh, so, would you like to go back then?”

“Hmm… We’ve come all this way, might as well continue.”

“Right,” Kat snickered, then, her face turned serious, “Besides, they don’t appear to be really thinking anything at all right now.”

“The way it should be,” Roo said. “What do we do here?”

“I don’t know, … I don’t even know exactly what’s happening, do they all fall in, everyone we step on?”

“Probably,” Roo said, though, obviously not really knowing the answer for certain.

“Only one way to find out,” Kat said, and in that moment, she walked forward, closer to the pillar, turned, and began to walk back.

A neanderthal smile on her face the whole time, perhaps because the fact she was the one doing something stupid for a change. Then, all at once, her face turned to fear as she felt the bricks falling at a much faster pace than she was able to run. Her feet scampered on, making an aimless leap forward that only barely kept her from falling to her own demise. She let out a breath, realizing how easy she’d almost come to her own death in a matter of moments by her own reckless decision.

“Well played,” Roo commended, albeit sarcastically.

“See no reason why you should be the only one making ill-minded decisions.”

“Yeah, but when I fell from that rope, least I knew I would most likely live.”

“And you don’t think the locusts would catch me and keep me safe?”

“No, but if you’re lucky, they might eat you alive before the fall to the ground kills you.”

“Do you ever get the feeling we’re not the best adventurers?” Kat asked.

“Maybe YOU’RE not,” Roo replied.

“Maybe not.”

“But look over here,” Roo countered, stepping over to the opposite side of where Katalene had brought down the floor.

Kat obliged, and soon saw what he meant, in the same areas she knocked over the floor tiles on one side, they fell on the other. It was as if the left and right side mirrored one another, reflecting the movements and aftermath of whatever occurred on each respective side.

“Interesting,” Kat said. “The whole thing’s very peculiar, unless you’re lucky, you only get one shot of it. You either make it or you die. How lovely.”

“I can see the stairs though, leading up, right at the end of it all, assuming they don’t fall as well, I think if we make it there we’ll be okay.”

The distance was a great deal, about forty feet from one side of the room to the next. That, and how quick the floor tiles caved in meant it’d take some very light footwork and a lot of speed.

Katalene couldn’t help but at least be raddled by Roo’s pessimism, if only because it carried weight. If the floor did continue to cave in, then they’d be dead. On the other-hand, if they had wanted to kill them, they’d have drowned only seconds earlier from a dead-end. That fact catered little to Katalene’s fear. She took in a breath of air, and for that moment, it felt alright. But, as it vacated her body, the ache in her stomach was imminent.

She was almost used to it by now. She walked off to the middle, in-front of the trap floor and assumed a running stance, her eyes looking to the other-side of the room with a keenness and precision. She thought back to the steps falling behind her, almost trying to orchestrate some sort of rhythm or pattern in her head.

“I don’t really think you should be the one to do this first,” Roo said, his hands on his hips in a self-righteous and almost nagging fashion. “Maybe you should let me handle it?”

“Like you handled getting to the lever?”

“I was the one that brought it down, wasn’t I?”

“Yes, but only after you brought yourself down first!”

“You have broken ribs, you almost drowned, and from your last display with the floor, I think you might be outmatched.”

“We will both end up having to cross it, what difference does it make?”

“I don’t know, but maybe I’ll be able to find something on the other-side to make it easier. I don’t know, and I don’t want you running into any additional traps they might throw in there that your injuries might keep you from handling.”

Kat bit her bottom lip. Her brother was right. Somewhere in that rambling was a reasonable and vaguely coherent thought. She enjoyed nothing in the world less than that, but she couldn’t very much deny it. She adjusted herself, backing off to the side and away.

Roo smiled, but showed enough decency not to the rub it in. He readied himself, although, didn’t run, not immediately. The whole thing was terrifying and easily faulted against. He had to go a straight-line, to never waiver or deter from his designated path, because if he did, he’d make it much more difficult for Katalene. Maybe even impossible.

It seemed so simple in concept. It was the act of doing it. That was difficult. The chance of death. Even the merest of chances.

Kat looked down through one of brought-down spaces on the floor, the locusts there, still unchanged, making their sound and hovering around in their space. Had she not dropped her pine stick earlier, she’d likely have accepted them as part of the floor, even with the light lent from the pillar in the middle of the room. They looked like a peculiarly patterned carpet, almost, and an ugly one, at that.

She could see her brother’s hands shaking. The large bruise on his back was starting to form. He motioned as if he was about to start, but stopped.

He started, then stopped. An audible groan spilled out from him. Rooven was clearly rattled by the obstacle before him, unable to find the courage to take the beginning steps forward.

Kat stared sternly at the other-side of the room. It wouldn’t be too hard to make it there, and at that realization, inspired, perhaps by guilt, and ignorance, she bolted across the floor with all the speed she could muster for herself.

She stepped as lightly as she could, as gracefully as she could, given the circumstances, hoping it’d somehow keep the floor from falling in as fast. Behind her, she heard her brother’s voice and his bewildered inflection. A “What the fuck are you doing!?” phrase, or something around that, coming from his mouth.

The floor was falling behind her. Descending into the locusts. She tried to keep those observations from entering her head. But as the floor continued to fall, a fact became clear – she wouldn’t make it.

Kat’s pace quickened. She felt the pounding anxiety in her chest. About halfway across the room at this point, there was no longer a floor beneath her.

She fell, and her mind could no longer forget about the locusts. She panicked. Until, off dumb luck, her hand grabbed onto one of the many crevices of the pillar at the center of the room. Her body jerked some, and its momentum kept her from falling slammed her hard against the granite pillar. She kept hold.

She dug her foot into one of the holes and found some stability. Heavy breathing was imminent; hyperventilation. The room might as well have been spinning, because everything was reduced to nothing more than a blur.

Her head rested against the granite pillar, the heat pulsating off of it only emphasized the white-hot fear she felt in her chest. The only sanctity or solace she found for herself was the fact she remained alive for the time being. She hugged the pillar the best she could, holding on for her life.

“What the fuck was that!?” Roo screamed out, his voice radiating a mixture of panic and inaudibility, but the latter might have been the imagination of Katalene.

She smiled, though, he couldn’t see it. Her face was still pressed down and hidden. She pried herself away from the pillar and looked at him, “See? Nothing to be afraid of, it’s easy!”

“You’re a fucking idiot!” Roo hollered back, pissed off.

“Mistakes were made,” Kat admitted.

“And what are we going to do now?” He asked. “Huh? I can’t exactly come and get you, considering you destroyed damn-near the whole thing in your stumble!”

Katalene looked around. He wasn’t wrong. She had done even more damage to their playing field than she expected. She chuckled. It wasn’t a chuckle with much behind it. After all, nothing was funny about the situation. It was more like a faint, we’re fucked, kind-of chuckle. Her eyes looked about her surroundings, her arm still dangerously close to the burning rope inside the pillar, but, in-front of her, the floor was still in-tact. Beyond the pillar, it was an obvious way toward the stairs. Not tampered with at all.

The only issue was the whole Roo all the way over there dilemma. She could think of no obvious way to fix that.

Roo, on the other-hand, was spouting off about something or another, but she couldn’t listen to it for the life of her. She had messed up big this time around, and not like when Roo messed up back at the cage either. When Roo messed up, at least he brought a rope down with him that helped them out of their situation. The rope.

“Roo, see if you can throw that rope over to me. It might be able to make it over.” Katalen instructed. She had a small amount of pride with herself about thinking it up on such short-notice. “I can tie it to the pillar and you’ll be able to climb to where I am.”

“That’s what I just said!” Roo hollered back.

Kat smirked. “See if you can tie it to that one barrel over there of pine sticks, maybe it can support your weight so my plan can work!”

Roo nodded, not dignifying his sister with a response. He tugged at the barrel of pine sticks, having a great deal of struggle in the process. Eventually, it budged, and from there, it was much easier to bring toward the fallen floor. He tied it around the barrel, making certain to tie it well, and from there, like before, he tied the other end of the rope to his shoe, giving it a little bit of extra weight for the difference.

Katalene adjusted herself some, improving her footing by digging her toes deeper into the hole and shoving one foot into a hole on the other side of it; the side facing Roo. She was cautious of the flame, not wanting to burn herself by mistake. That wouldn’t pose well for them.

She puffed her back out and leaned, hanging onto the ledge with one-hand, twisting her body around and reaching out with her other-hand.

Roo readied himself, motioning like he was at first intending to underhand throw his shoe, before adjusting to overhand, realizing he had a fair distance to cover.

“Don’t miss it,” Roo instructed. “Just in case, I’d really like my shoe not to be food for the locusts.”

Kat nodded, exasperated in her current contorts, she didn’t have the will to come up with something witty or clever.

He readied himself some more, and then, threw it over, it didn’t clear the distance, but rather ricocheted off one of the floor-pieces still intact. Katalene leaned herself enough to have the means to snatch it before its descend.

She felt the grip of her hand on the pillar begin to loosen, she tended to it fast. A loud sigh came next, a sigh of relief. At once, she repositioned herself, his shoe in her right-hand, she wedged it in-between one of the crevices on the pillar. From there, she pried his shoe out from the little knot he had done and shoved the shoe into one of her pockets, leaning her stomach against the rope in the mean-time.

“Make sure you tie it well, better than what you usually do, there’s a lot more at stake than a jug of water falling out from a bag,” he yelled out.

“Okay,” she replied, albeit much too quietly for him to hear. Then, at once, with realization of an odor, she hollered back, “Those locusts wouldn’t eat a pair of your shoes even if they’d been starved for centuries!”

She shoved the rope through one of the pillar’s holes until it poked out another. Once more, cautious of the flame inside. After, she looped the end of the rope under itself and adjusted it to her heart’s content. Once completed, she did a thumbs-up gesture to her older brother, who seemed less than assured.

Crawling down on his hands and knees, until returning to a seated position and dangling his feet off the ledge, he grabbed the rope above him and crept off, keeping one hand on the ledge. He was making for certain the barrel could support his weight, she could gather that much from watching him. As he put weight on it, the barrel budged some, startling him.

Roo leaped back to an upright stance on solid surface like his life depended on it, and stared at the barrel. His eyes looking around for something to weigh it down further. Before Katalene could suggest he head downstairs and see about retrieving the other barrel, Roo came up with a better idea.

He walked over a corner floor-piece, one that was left by itself after Katalene’s indiscretion. Roo grabbed it with both hands and pried it off. As it broke off, the weight clearly surprised Roo by his motions, but he was able to lift it. He brought it over and dropped it on top of the barrel. Rinse and repeat, he did it a second-time for good measure and was, at last, at ease about the barrel being able to carry him.

He began to propel himself fast, his feet hanging down as both his hands gripped onto the rope. His movements were swift and vigorous, not wanting to spend any longer than he needed to dangle from the rope as he was. About halfway across, his arm went dead. Exhausted from all the fatigue he had been forced to endure.

Katalene felt her jaw clench tightly. It just seemed so very possible that one of them would die here.

He was fast to recover, using what strength he had left in his arms to build momentum and hug both his legs around the rope. He hung there for a moment, and several more moments after that. Katalene noticed him taking the pressure off his hands by using his forearms to hold that side of his body. He started moving again, slowly, using the new adjustments to inch his way closer. His progression took awhile, but he made it, taking one of Katalene’s hands to stand him up on one side of the pillar. He leaned against the rope for stability.

Resting his head against the pillar, not unlike how Katalene had done only a few minutes earlier, he laughed to himself, almost in hysterics. “I can’t believe I survived, … off your bad excuse for a knot,” he exclaimed, before heading back into nervous laughter.

A small lapse in time came and went, the time needed for the both of them to resuscitate their will to proceed. The final steps were there; intact. They both had a clear perspective of the steps ahead of them. That made things easier, but after one close-encounter with death after another, it became difficult to begin the next one.

Rooven adjusted himself on the pillar until he was at the side opposite his sister, with some maneuvering, he ended up at the side of the pillar facing the in-tact floor and stairs. He elevated himself up, making for certain not to accidentally knock against the floor-tiles and dislodge them. Behind his sister, “This way,” Roo began, stopping again to find his words, “This way we won’t have to worry about messing each-other up and can go at the same time.”

Their bodies were exhausted and battered and bruised. Prior to all their most recent heart-ache, the walk through the Deserts that led them there had been nothing less than excruciating.

“I thought you said you didn’t want to do that?” Katalene asked, for which Roo replied with a weakened stare.

His eyes were puffy and bloodshot, and it seemed like he only wanted to leave the tomb and have it all over with.

Kat smiled at him. This really was her adventure, and she was nothing but grateful he accompanied her on it. They readied themselves, such a bizarre and interesting contraption. The whole tomb. It’d make for an interesting tale back home. It might not have been as exciting as some of Morgis’ stories, but most of those weren’t true.

“1……… 2 ……,” Roo began, “And Kat, ….. don’t trip! … 3!”

Their feet ran across the floor, trying their best to be light-footed, to never doddle at all. This time was much easier than the first.

Kat didn’t feel the floor beneath her collapse. She managed to stay ahead of it. In those seconds though, it seemed her mind wanted a lot of thoughts acknowledged. Most of them about wanting to trip her brother for planting a seed of anxiety in her with his comment, it had since sprouted into a tree. Her nerves lightened, however, when they made it to the other-side, near the steps.

She half-expected the floor to continue falling in, for a race to start up the steps. But it didn’t. That was it.

She felt relief. Droplets of sweat driveled down her and she was heaving, but her mind felt freer than it had in the longest of times.

She no longer feared The Tomb, still feared The Dragon, but The Tomb, she could handle.

Roo laughed aloud. Which told her, more or less, he was thinking the same. Either that, or he had finally cracked. But that didn’t seem to be the case.

He looked at her. His laugh was infectious, and Kat couldn’t help but submit with a chuckle of her own. A little victory. In the grand scheme of things. But it was the satisfaction of it all that did it.

They walked their way up the stairs. The further they went up, the warmer it became. It was clear the sandy desert was nearing them. And then what? Katalene hadn’t the faintest of ideas, but at least they’d be out.

In time, they reached the end of the steps.

A large coffin stood as the focal-point of the room. The imagery around the whole area was immaculate. A gold-tint that seemed obscured some by either age or dust. There was a suddenness about the room as well. A switch in the feeling in their bodies that told Kat they were above the surface.

The smell in the room was of the desert. Which, incidentally, carried little smell at all. Rather, it mostly just carried an unrelenting heat that distracted from scents. That, and the smell of sand.

The coffin itself looked to be made of solid-gold, with large-blue sapphires. Kat could see piles and piles of gold coin on one side, as well as embroidered chalices and cups and swords. A knight’s armor, chain-mail, in-fact, it looked a lot like the illustration they had seen at the beginning of The Tomb.

Beside that though, was a huge set of armor. Bright-silver, sparkling. This armor was not for a human, the armor was meant for a Dragon. A head-piece. A helm. For a Dragon! And, by that, a large saddle, for the same reason.

Kat noticed her jaw was open. She closed it. Not taking it for granted that there wasn’t drool covering her clothes.

“Here we are,” Roo said, throwing his arms in an exclamatory fashion, almost like he thought he had conquered the inanimate Tomb.

But Kat understood. Their survival meant something, after everything, after it all, they stood before the reward for their troubles.

In one corner, light was exposed, an escape at the roof of their hell-hole.

“We’ll have the riches to show for our troubles, that’s for sure,” Roo announced, a large smile on his face.

Katalene was happy to see him looking more lively and tentative. Roo took a step forward into the room.

Roo continued forward, toward the coffin on the other side, while Kat was more taken by the meant-for-a-dragon armor.

The loud sound of cogs turning became apparent. It was the same sound they had heard throughout the whole expedition.

But it was happening below them, not in-front of them. Kat wondered why, then, turned to her brother.

She turned, just in time to see an arrow spit from the wall and into his chest.

Roo let out a cry of either shock or agony, and dropped off from his feet and down to his knees. His face shared the face of someone who was stunned, eyes bulging, mouth ajar.

Katalene let out a squeal of her own as she made her way over to him.

He had triggered a pressure-pad beneath him. The arrow penetrated his flesh. Into his stomach, between one of his ribs. Blood was spilling out of him.

But it wasn’t immense. It wasn’t fatal. He wouldn’t bleed out. Katalene assumed.

Katalene hoped.

She touched at the wound. She could see a blackness starting to form on his stomach. As if his veins were corrupted or contaminated, and it began heading further up his chest, then on his neck.

Katalene whimpered.

Roo, on the other-hand, kept an exasperated expression. His face. Empty, disintegrated. She saw no emotion in him.

Her hands both clutched at the base of the arrow and yanked, ripping out from his stomach. The blood came out faster. She tied to conceal the wound with her hands with little results. She lowered him onto his back. He offered no support or wherewithal.

“Please, don’t do this,” she said, and for a second, she didn’t even recognize her own voice. It sounded terrified and afraid, and so unlike her, “You don’t get to die. If anything, it should be me! It was my adventure, I should be the one to die!”

Roo smiled.

It was the first sign of life at all from him, but Kat took it not as a sign of hope and of attempted assurance. The oddity of seeing how someone could be so readily attentive in one instant and on his last breath the next.

He looked pale and his cheekbones were sunken in, as if he had somehow ages years and years in seconds.

Katalene felt tears stream down her face. Then, she heard swarming locusts. The sound was loud and nearing, but she couldn’t bring herself to move.

The blitheness of the locusts, uncaring of the situation, uncaring about what she would lose.

The swarm was closing in, in motion up the stairs, on the move, and soon, they’d engulf them.

Both of them. If Rooven had to die, Katalene would die as well. That’s the way it had to be. They would die. Together.

She held her brother’s head in an embrace, one he could not share with her. They would both die. In the chambers of The Tomb.

Her eyes went over to the coffin, and in a moment of sudden and striking realization, she threw her brother’s shoulder over her head and lifted him. The ache of her rib-cage felt masked by the shock of the situation, though, a slight limp was inevitable. She was able to lift him up to his feet. He offered her no support.

He was dead.

She knew he was dead, at least on some conscious level, but was unwilling to accept it.

Her eyes opted against checking for more pressure-pads or traps ahead of her. Didn’t even look to see how close the locusts were. She met with the casket and pushed the lid to the corpse’s concealment halfway. A skeleton, bare, no clothing or wardrobe to speak-of, except for a gauntlet on his arm. His bones haven’t shriveled into dust, but Katalene would attest to them breaking with very little effort.

She leaned Roo against the coffin. His arms and head drooped over the inside confines. Katalene was fast at climbing in there with him, though, it took more time bringing Roo’s body in with her. The idea of his body being desecrated and reduced to nothing by the locusts was an idea she could not stomach.

Beneath her, she felt the corpse crackling under their combined weight, but paid it little mind. She maneuvered Roo’s body and pulled the coffin door shut.

The locusts, then, piled into the room. The room where a life ended, a life was memorialized, and a life began.