Lucius gestured. “This is what I referred to earlier.”
Fallenz stood shoulder to shoulder with Lucius, examining the Nemesis machinery while keeping part of his attention on the sounds of Grog and Flog’s rampage. The baroque construction of brass and steel didn’t make it easy to pick out any details, but Fallenz was no stranger to the lairs of Lord Nemesis and, to his experienced eye, the storage lockers stood out like a sore thumb. One in particular, the one that first attracted the group’s attention, had a massive combination tumbler that looked more at home on a bank vault door than its current location. “Not very subtle.”
“No,” Lucuis agreed, “and that has me concerned.”
Fallenz sighed. He was too tired to bother with Nemesis’ fetish with misdirection, or the second-guessing that his scheming caused within the hero community. At times he thought the only reason Nemesis hadn’t yet been brought to justice was that law enforcement was too busy chasing its own tail to see the evidence for what it was. “Not everything is a Nemesis plot. We’ve found a lot of evidence already, so I don’t think this blatant sign he’s got something in here is a false clue.” He reached out and tugged on the handle. It was no good; the door was locked, and the handle didn’t even budge.
Warbow howled, “Whoa! Warn me before you do that! I don’t have superpowers, remember? Give me a moment to find some cover before you set off a Nemesis trap!”
Fallenz turned around and snapped, “Not everything is a Nemesis plot! This is just a storage locker!” More calmly, he continued, “And I didn’t know you were there.”
Warbow jabbed a thumb over towards the entrance to the cavern. “I didn’t feel safe getting involved.”
“I know the feeling. Can you crack this thing open? I doubt I’ll be able to make a dent in it.”
Warbow looked through his stash of arrows, then at the locker. “If I had five times the number of acid arrows I have left, I could probably get it open.”
Fallenz grunted. “How about you, Molly?”
MonochromeMolly stepped up to the tumbler and put her hands on it. A few seconds later, she stood back. “I’m afraid not. It’s purely mechanical. There isn’t a computer system to charm, and my hands are too delicate to rip it open.”
Captain Glacier volunteered, “I doubt I can help, eithah.”
Fallenz raised an eyebrow. “With all that advanced technology, you don’t have anything that could apply to the situation?”
Shrugging, Captain Glacier replied, “I know the theory behind a tumblah, but that won’t help heah since I can’t get at the insides. My nanites would only make the safe strongah and moah durable, and the cryogenic systems can’t make it brittle enough befoah I run out of juice.”
Disappointed, Fallenz looked expectantly at the Phoenix. After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “There are magics that may be able to open this vault…”
“Great!”
“…but I don’t know those spells. Mine can only protect and push. My apologies, hero.”
Fallenz turned back to the seemingly impenetrable safe and scowled. “Looks like we’ll have to do this the hard way.” He reached for his sword.
“I don’t recommend that,” Lucius interjected. “The safe may not be trapped to harm us, but I would be surprised indeed if there weren’t some safeguard built in to destroy the contents. Should someone be the slightest bit careless, the safe may be opened only to reveal a pile of ashes lying where the incriminating Nemesis documents once sat.”
Fallenz’ scowl deepened. “Perfect. We can’t finesse our way in, brute force may wreck what we came for, and this thing’s way too heavy to drag out of here even if that wouldn’t set off the safeguards.”
“Are you going to raid that vault or stare it down?” Grog challenged. Everyone started in surprise. The incredible bulk of Grog loomed large and near; for such a big man clad in plate mail, he was surprisingly stealthy when he wanted to be.
Warbow recovered quickly from his surprise. With a wry grin, he suggested, “Maybe our archmage can get us inside.”
“What’s this?”
Fallenz explained, “We can’t get this thing open-”
Grog immediately summoned his gigantic broadsword from thin air.
Everyone jumped in between Grog and the safe. MonochromeMolly cried, “No, Grog! That might wreck what we’re after!”
The mighty warrior checked his swing, banished the sword, and sulked.
Fallenz explained, “We need to open the vault without smashing or chopping or sawing at it; Nemesis may have put something inside to destroy the contents if we’re not careful. Can you do it?”
Grog huffed, “You should have brought a thief with you. Everyone knows that when you raid an evildoer’s lair, you need to bring a thief along!”
“I don’t hang out with thieves, man, I arrest them. That’s what heroes are supposed to do.”
“Oh, very well.” Grog summoned the Blackwand again and pointed it at the center of the tumbler. His hooded brow furrowed as he concentrated. A tiny spark of inky lightning soundlessly arced from the tip of the wand to the tumbler. Nothing happened. Grog frowned.
“Some archmage…” Warbow quipped.
“I guess that’s it,” MonochromeMolly sighed.
Grog held up a meaty hand. “Fear not, Molly. In my travels on this world I learned an incantation that should guarantee success.”
“Should?” the Phoenix quietly inquired, her voice heavy with concern. She shied away from the safe.
Heedless of the Phoenix’s reservations, Grog raised the Blackwand aloft. A cloud of impenetrable darkness spilled forth from the tip and gathered into a silent thunderhead that spread and loomed over the heads of the heroes. They all shied away from the vault and the questionably-skilled archmage. In a voice full of authority, Grog commanded, “Open, says me!” He pointed the Blackwand at the vault. The black cloud followed the motion of the wand and crashed down onto the armored safe in a soundless explosion of darkness that completely obscured the target. The rest of the heroes dove for cover as the blackness enveloped the target and spilled outward.
The blackness faded and withdrew back onto the safe, like a wave that washed onto the shore and now slowly drained back into the sea. The cloud cleared to reveal the face of the vault. Or, more accurately, the lack of one; the door that had thwarted all earlier attempts to access the contents wasn’t there anymore. Tendrils of midnight licked along the edges of the vault and periodically danced over the face of the adjacent storage lockers. Where they touched, the metal ceased to exist, silently vanishing without so much as a dust trail to mark their passing. Soon, even these last holdouts of the magic spell succumbed to the light and disappeared. The contents of the safe were in view and mostly free of damage from the blast of the stuff of nightmares from the netherworld.
The burly sorcerer returned the Blackwand to the void from whence it came and leaned over to examine his handiwork. “Hmph,” Grog grunted. “No gems, no precious metals, not even a single bottle of wine. Why can’t the evildoers of this world be more like the ones I used to slay?”
Fallenz picked himself up off the floor and quickly surveyed the damage. “Looks like you didn’t destroy everything. That’s good.”
“I don’t destroy everything I see,” Grog huffed. “That would reduce the amount of booty I can pillage. Speaking of which, since there’s nothing valuable in there, I’m going back to my looting.” And with that, Grog turned his massive form back to the hors d’ combat strewn about the cavern and resumed scavenging for copper tubes.
Stone faced and blinking, Fallenz watched him retreat, then smiled and shook his head. He turned back to the safe and to the assembled heroes who had already clustered there to examine the contents. “‘Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger.’”
“I can’t believe that ‘open sesame’ is actually a magic phrase!” MonochromeMolly exclaimed.
“I can’t believe that he didn’t destroy the whole thing,” groused Captain Glacier.
“Grog is full of surprises,” Fallenz mused. “So,” he non-sequitured, “what do we have?”
Lucius pulled a scroll free and unrolled it. “Shall we have a look?”
The heroes joined him in rummaging through the papers. It quickly became apparent that the contents of the safe would not easily yield their secrets. While the writing was distinct and free of damage, it was in some incomprehensible script. The scrolls were large diagrams; some contained maps, and others resembled blueprints, but all were as impossible to decipher as the smaller papers.
After several minutes of puzzling through some sheets of cryptic writings, Fallenz threw them down in disgust. “I can’t read any of this! This is a waste of time.”
“On the contrary,” Lucius demurred. “These maps here are definitely campaign maps for the Nemesis Army. If I have correctly interpreted the landmarks, this is a global campaign depicting attacks on numerous fronts. If I could find something here that indicated the time these maneuvers were supposed to have taken place, these might be damning proof that Nemesis orchestrated the Rikti War.”
Captain Glacier held up some technical schematics. “I think these ah blueprints for Nemesis automatons. Theah might be a set foah the duplicate Freedom Phalanx members. I think I could find and identify them with enough time. Maybe they could give some useful clues.”
MonochromeMolly volunteered, “I may be able to crack the code so we can read the writing.”
Lucius smiled faintly. “That would be helpful, assuming, of course, that this writing is in code. He may have used a cipher instead, in which case, we’re out of luck.”
Fallenz grunted. “How long will it take to figure out which it is?”
“Days, if not weeks.”
Fallenz checked the watch display inside his gauntlet. “You have an hour. After that, we take what we have and get out of here. The rest of us will keep you from being interrupted.” He motioned to Warbow and the Phoenix to follow him, then strode to the doorway to block it.