But as she set to the task, the fishmen returned—the elf weaver only knew because one cried out in a frothing scream. Helesys whirled around just in time to see the second fishmen round the corner and be cut in two by the massive battleaxe.
Outside, the faint chattering of fishmen stopped.
“We are out of time,” Taunauk said. He stowed his axe on his backsling and crouched behind one of the large statues by the door. He roared in exertion and the statue toppled over, crashing horridly on the floor but blocking the lower half of the entrance. Taunauk ran and did the same with the second statue. This time it crashed on top of the first and though it leaned, it blocked the majority of the entryway.
The faeries whirled around Taunauk in impotent anger and he battered them away.
Helesys felt a pang of guilt, but turned back to the puzzle of the water pipes. There would be time later to beg forgiveness. If they survived. If she could even remember a god to atone to.
The elf’s hands set upon the stone plates, looking for curves in the piping. The more curves she could piece together, the longer the piping, the more water would fill the piping and the more it would counterbalance the door. If her theory was correct. But it was not as simple a matter as she hoped, for the curves of one plate did not match the curves of another and so she could not simply turn the plates to the most curved positions.
“Stercus,” she mumbled in frustration. The slip was Elvish though the exact meaning escaped her.
Footsteps on the stone. Chattering in the entryway. The grunt of a barbarian. A dull chop and the scrape of axeblade on stone. Metal on metal. Helesys didn’t dare look back, but she knew they were upon them, teeth gnashing in a frenzy of revenge.
The elf’s mind raced, looking over the stone circles and the dozens—hundreds—of combinations. Only needing to be close enough that the barbarian’s animal strength could take care of the rest.
She turned the stone circles one last time, satisfied with the positioning. She could no longer hear the dull clank of gears behind the wall over the ferocity swelling behind her, but she knew that this was one of the longest combinations of piping. It would have to do.
“Arrows!” Taunauk cried out.
Helesys dove to the right, half sprawling and half splashing across the floor. She heard the clinking of arrowheads hit the door where she had been standing.
She rose and hugged the wall to get to Taunauk. The toppled stone statues had not blocked the entryway perfectly and so fishmen were trying to clamber over and through an opening on the upper left. The little that Helesys could see beyond was filled with gnashing teeth and spears. The barbarian was chopping at anything that peered through, be it arm or head. Bodies were piling up in front of the opening as those in the back pushed their fellow fishmen through without patience or remorse. Taunauk alternated his assault on the opening with splitting injured fishmen that were pushed through and had fallen on the ground. Faeries clung to the upper corners of the room.
“Try the door, Taunauk,” Helesys shouted over the fray. “I will cover you.”
Her gauntlet whirred to life, the arcane mechanisms leeching power from the wand, burning with potential. The elf stepped out into the middle of the stone room and raised her wand-arm. Electricity crackled between her fingers and the purple arcane violence erupted.
The fishman crawling over the statue flashed with purple and exploded in chunks of scale and red. The blast passed through the entire hallway, and flashed purple and then red. The squelch of flesh being torn apart echoed through the stone hall and for a moment there was deathly silence. Helesys saw nothing but blood soaked stone through the opening.
A long scraping of stone behind her. She turned and saw the barbarian lifting the carved stone door. Taunauk strained, crouched and shouldered the stone door, finally standing all the way up with it.
Helesys needed no invitation.
As she ran to the door, she heard the gnashing of teeth and footsteps of dozens more fishmen pouring into the hallway.
Beyond that she heard the echoes of thunder and felt the stone beneath her feet shake—not thunder—something massive. Something the fishmen kept locked in the cage that stretched from the floor to ceiling of the rusted prison.
Helesys stopped just under the stone door. Taunauk breathed steadily, but clearly strained with the stone upon his shoulder.
“Be ready to drop the door,” she told him. He nodded.
Helesys reached around the door to the stone discs and spun the closest plate with her metal hand, resetting the progress she had made. She heard the faint clank of gears inside the wall of the hallway. She spun a second.
“No more!” Taunauk grunted in protest. “I cannot—”
—Helesys commanded her gauntlet one last time to fire and a blast of magic shattered the plates and scorched the wall. With any luck it would stop their inhuman pursuers.
“Drop it,” Helesys said as she retreated back into the hallway. The last thing she saw was the crazed teeth of the fishmen as they poured into the room.
Taunauk dropped the door and it crashed shut, leaving them in the dark.
~ ~ ~
The Drowned Temple
They had made it to the salvation of a short, dark hallway. The gnashing of the fishmen and the rumbling steps of whatever creature they commanded were muted behind tons of stone. The door had come down on the fringe of Helesys’s robe, which she
