Soul Merger

The priestess took the lead again, stepping respectfully past the corpses and contemplating the coffin and the door within. "I imagine the traps have been reset. Do you know what they were, Fili?"

"Poison needle in the lock, and some other trap on the floor past it. No idea what's on the chest," Fili said, holding her staff close. "I don't know how any of them work of course."

Alissa considered the info. "That makes it easier at least. Let's handle them one at a time." She approached the door and peered into the lock. The poison needle was obvious if you knew to look. A simple device that would press a needle forwards as tension was put on the lock. There might be more to it, but Alissa decided to skip any surprises by putting some clay over the keyhole.

With that done she began picking the lock. It was a simple four tumbler affair, without even false sets. Within half a minute she'd popped it open, the clay keeping the needle safely contained. The perfect trap for an amateur, but what kind of amateur would get this far in?

"First step done," she reported. She opened the door. The small room here was set up almost like a shrine, yet instead of an altar on the dias there was a treasure box. Skulls lined the walls, and offertory jars covered the steps up.

Alissa crouched down and took a close look at the floor. The bones here hadn't been smoothed down, but the raised rib cage was obviously suspicious. She looked around for the trigger and saw a thin cord that controlled the trap. Tracing the thin line she saw a number of places that might conceal the deadly part of the trap, but several drops of glue meant that trap wasn't going off for a while. "Should be disabled, but avoid stepping here," she said as moved on.

There didn't seem to be anything dangerous along the way to the steps, so she instead looked over the jars. "I bet the tomb cobra's in there. Want to just break them all from here?"

Fili nodded vigorously. "Let's get rid of that thing." Given how badly the last encounter had gone, that made sense to Alissa.

"Ha! I approve in general, but how can we do that without damaging any treasure?" Rosalina asked. "Just throw rocks and hope?"

"Oh! I have something," Fili said. "I can blow steam through the jars. That should force it out?"

Alissa looked over at the mage. "Steam? Not a common attack." While it was dangerous it didn't seem like something that would kill quickly.

Fili looked down at the ground. "I need to do a lot of laundry."

That got Rosalina to burst out laughing again. "Oh that's great. I love it. Let's steam clean this stupid trap!"

"Seems better than playing 'find the deadly snake' by hand," Alissa agreed.

"Okay!" Fili looked up and concentrated. "Flowing Steam..." A cloud of vapor formed in front of her. Alissa could hear the hiss as it seared the bone, soon followed by a strange smell. Fili pushed forwards and the steam flowed down the room and slowly up the stairs.

As it reached the second row of pots an angry hiss shot through the room. A seven foot long serpent shot out of one of the jars. The bone white snake with a black skull on its hood defied basic sense and pushed itself through the steam towards Fili. Almost as if it knew where the true threat was.

Alissa wasn't going to let it claim anyone though. She stepped up, her knife ready. The cobra, its eyes burnt by the steam, lashed out blindly towards her, and her blade swung in return. As usually happens, knife beat flesh. The serpent fell in two parts.

Fili relaxed and the steam slowly dissipated. "I cleared out the final row so now it's just the chest."

"Which means it's the lovely Alissa's turn again," Rosalina said with a bow. "Need anything better than a protection spell?"

"I don't think so. But let's inspect it." Alissa walked up and gave the chest a kick. Very solid, so not a mimic. She put away her knife and looked over the hinges and top. Nothing that should trigger when opened. Finally she inspected the lock. This one had a needle as well, but it was spring loaded. Unlocking the chest would cause it to stab anyone not using a key. "A little more complicated. Still there's a lot of poison here."

"I suppose it's different from the rest of the labyrinth, but it's very repetitive," Rosalina agreed with faux disdain.

Alissa took a couple of looks to make sure the device wasn't integral to the lock, then slammed a screwdriver into it a few times. The needle broke off and she carefully plucked it out of the lock and dropped it into a nearby empty jar. "Okay. Now the easy part." The lock was a five tumbler affair, and it had one false set. But it was still kind of a joke. Soon it clicked open.

"And now to find what's inside." She stood and carefully opened the lid.

A flash of bone white scales and a pain in her wrist sent her stumbling back. Pain jolted up her tailbone as she landed ass first onto the floor. She stared up to see a second tomb cobra looming inside the chest.

Silver and gold shifted from her left while bright blue arced in from the right. When her eyes cleared she saw that Rosalina was holding the cobra in a tight grip right below where the snake's head used to be.

A flick of Rosalina's hand sent the cobra's corpse to the ground. "Well that was quite rude." The golden haired woman walked over, leaning down to take hold of Alissa's arm. "Are you okay?"

Alissa looked down. There were two light wounds in her skin, blood barely trickling out. She had no idea if it was poisoned, but given how hard her heart was beating in her chest she wouldn't be able to tell for a while. "Fine now, but it broke the skin. I probably need a cure."

"Sure." Rosalina tapped her rod against the wound. "Dispel Poison."

Alissa hissed as the cold touch of the metal woke up her nerves enough so they could start whining about the pain. But the cool feeling that spread from the injury calmed her a little. "Well. I learned something new about traps and lived, so we'll call that a win."

Fili walked over, looking askance. "Sorry for burning you Rosalina." Alissa looked over and saw that the dragon woman's hand had been singed. She winced in sympathetic pain. Burns on the hand were the worst.

"It's fine," Rosalina replied. "I should have trusted you'd be able to handle it. You reacted quite quickly to redirect your spell. I was afraid for a moment I'd have gotten serious burns. This is nothing. See?"

Another spell and a wash of sweet smelling air rolled over them. Alissa watched as the burn on Rosalina's hand faded away and the wound on her arm closed over. After a few moments the nerves in her arm realized nothing was wrong and stopped complaining.

Alissa stood up and gave Fili a pat on the shoulder ignoring the light sliming she got. "You did good. I really didn't want to feel my body shutting down while Rosalina got her poison cure spell going."

The small mage perked up. "Thank you."

"And now!" Rosalina whirled and pointed dramatically to the open chest. "This time the reward!"

Alissa joined her companions in walking up to the chest. Her heartbeat rose a bit as she peered in. It was a massive box, with light wood interior, but inside were simply silvery metal ingots, each barely bigger than her hand. For a second she felt disappointed, but then the rest of her brain caught up and started doing math. "Silver ingots? Those are... what? One thousand crowns each?!"

"Not bad for a day's work!" Rosalina gave her a back slap. "We'll need to get them checked for purity but I think this makes the trip worth it."

"Um," Fili leaned forwards. "I'm not sure if that's silver. It feels weird." She reached down and picked up one of the ingots. "Oh. Wow. This is-"

Rosalina and Alissa both realized what the mage was insinuating and reached down to grab an ingot themselves. The metal felt warm to the touch, and it was much lighter than silver should have been. Alissa stared down at the chunk in her hand. She honestly had no idea how much this was worth. She never imagined she'd have an actual ingot of mithril before.

"We're gonna need to talk to an enchanter," she finally managed to say. "And, uh, I'll probably want to use a bit of mine for a weapon or something."

"Not a chainmail bikini?" Rosalina asked with a laugh. "It's traditional. I could get one too! It'd match my scales."

Alissa shuddered at the thought of the chafing that would come along with that, not to mention how bad it would work as armor. Instead she turned to where Fili was tapping the metal with wide eyes. "Planning on making some spell chips?"

"Of course! A chunk like this could make hundreds of high level spell chips. I'm going to need to sell some to make a staff that can handle them. It's a motherload for a mage! Depending on the purity I might be able to set up electrical spells or tri element spells!" She realized she'd been monologuing and coughed in embarrassment. "Um, anyway I'm glad you were willing to share with me. Thanks."

Rosalina swept up behind them both and threw an arm over their shoulders. "Come now! None of that shrinking violet stuff! We've hit it big, so let's grab the spoils, get out of this dungeon, and let the sexy rich genius main character treat you to a proper celebration party!"

The bubbling joy inside Alissa subsided. "I don't really do big parties."

"It's fine, it's fine." Rosalina stood up with a smug grin. "We'll get a private booth and you two can hide in the corners when the fun gets too much."

"I'd like that," Fili said.

Alissa sighed. It did sound like fun at least. "Sure. But if you actually have main character syndrome and we get in a fight again I'm gonna demand a raise."

"I haven't hired you," Rosalina pointed out.

"I'll find a way to get money," Alissa replied. "Anyway, let's clean up. No reason to be sloppy on the way out. Especially since we need to talk to the guild about Fili's other party."

"Yeah..." the mage sighed. It was gonna be a lot of paperwork. Alissa gave her another comforting pat on the shoulder. At least the woman wouldn't be alone.