The Keepers of Chaos: A Vault of Hell

Andraste Naïlo: CXXI

Three Paths: CXXI

Andraste stared at the new room before her, or perhaps the new cavern? It couldn't be easily defined. It was a gracious space of hard granite, the staircase they had excited led onto a sixty foot long yet only ten foot wide platform at its center held three long and narrow bridges, bridges she had spotted from the floor below. Below the bridges was that previous floor only around eighty feet under her. Yeah that would be a nasty drop. The three bridges led to three distinct doorways. The left had no door way, the center and right a large iron door way. "Any ideas?" she asked, the bridge on her left was mostly intact however after twenty five feet it became fractured and slightly broken the polished granite was cracked apart. Directly in front of her the middle bridge was smashed to pieces it extended ten feet out before an enormous hole dotted its narrow line the bridge continued after fifteen feet of this drop. The final one to her right was similar to the first yet it was broken apart after only ten feet that one seemed to have dust and rocks falling from it.

"Well.." Herod crooked his neck. "There are a lot of options.. Jumping.. Flying.. The question is which bridge is the right one." All eyes turned to Renaer. Now it probably wasn't the most polite thing to do Andraste admitted that, however she and everyone else were also aware that the 'vault of dragons' was created by his father embezzling hundreds of thousands from the government.

"Hey!" He protested. "Don't look at me I don't even talk to the man."

"Worth a shot." Markos shrugged. Andraste wished she knew what was on the other side perhaps if she used shape earth and created a pulley system for them to swing across. No she thought the engineering alone required to perform such an attempt would be troublesome to figure out.

"How about Markos and I send our familiars across to see what's going on?" Riu suggested. A small portal opened above her as the small black and blue pseudodragon flew through.

"I mean I have the spell jump." Andraste waved a finger trying to be helpful.

"Nah I've got; fly so if anything we can do that." Herod added. Two familiars flew past Andraste the small squid and the dragon dancing around in the air. Cerdest flew down the left path while Kuro the dragon hovered down the middle one. Vestus took a step forward testing his weight on the right bridge. The room shook with the sound of crumbling rocks.

"Hey!" Herod snapped. Vestus oved back but his face was more curious than apologetic.

"Huh.." Riu's eyes had begun to change shade from their icy blue to the dark deep blue of Kuro as she inhabited the familiars mind in an attempt to see. Markos had a similar effect changing to turquoise. "This center door is adamntine." Riu gasped. Andraste peered over the dragon was scratching the door peeling iron colored paint from its covers. Well that was telling, she wondered if they all held a similar trick.

"We should probably sell that door if we could take it." Alekzandr suggested.

"Fuck yeah!" Adleth snapped. "Lets steal the fucking door. One second I got some tools." the elf started rummaging around through her bag. Andraste moved to the left to inspect the left hand side doorway. Inside she spotted something.. It was hard to make out but soon the image was beamed into her head by Cerdest. She saw a large dwarven statue twenty feet high dressed in heavy armor. The familiar danced around the room spotting a rather large trap door on the floor.

"Huh.. I'm not really sure what this is.." Markos.

"What do you mean?" Andraste quizzed. The stream of image stopped with Markos waving the party over.

"That statue is a god called; Ol' Fire Eyes.. a dwarven god.. Cerdest doesn't have the strength to pull the adamantine trap door.. So I'm gonna go check it out." Markos replied. Literally everyone just stared at him.. He wanted to cross the bridge? That sounded like the dumbest of ideas.