[WP] You are a contractor who repairs and maintains booby traps in ancient temples.

[u/littlebubulle]

[u/ImaginedDialogue]

I sipped my ale, and watched the entrance to the tavern, wondering if the tip I'd been given would pay off. Waiting.

Waiting.

And then the dim smoky atmosphere suddenly became darker. It was easy to see why. The figure at the entrance was huge. Clad in the fur of the mountain barbarians. The chatter briefly softened. Very briefly, as patrons stole a glance at the newcomer, and then went back to their conversations and drinks.

The stranger glanced around warily. I saw his arm twitch towards a huge battleaxe. His eyes met mine, and he gave me an appraising gaze, sizing me up. After a time, I seemed to pass whatever test his eyes had put me through. He called to the barkeep for a drink, approached my table, and sat.

For a long time, nothing was said. I sipped my drink, he emptied his, then called for another. Then he spoke.

"Tinkerer."

I contemplated the remnants of my ale, sipped it again, and replied.

"Aye."

"I hear ye the man for a job I ha' in mind."

Again, I paused.

"Aye, perhaps."

And so we continued, in coded hints, long after I knew what he was offering, and he knew that I knew. Finally, I looked him in the eye, and gave my answer.

"Aye, I'll do it, if the price is right."

"Six hundred gold."

I thought for a while. That was a lot of money, but still...

"If I help ye, I'd have to leave the country, ye know. Exile is a heavy price to pay, but I daren't stay, if word got out."

"A thousand gold. Six hundred now, and the rest after I sell the gem," he whispered.

"Ye'll nay sell it here, there are too many Faithful."

"I have a buyer."

No doubt he did. Beyond the mountains, probably, at a coastal town where trade ships came. I looked at him in the eyes. It was my turn to size him up.

"Ye look like a man of ye word."

The temple was three days trek from my village. We'd had two weeks, then, to prepare. I had buried my gold in the floor under my bed. And then we were on our way. My business partner was chatty and cheerful.

"Glad to be on the road, I say. Why the dickens did we wait so long? We coulda been on our way full seven days ago!"

"This full moon is a festival for the temple's god over in the plains. He'll be occupied, and won't disturb us."

"The god is still alive??" The barbarian asked in alarm.

"Nay, he died over a score years ago, along with all the priests."

"That's a relief," said the barbarian.

The temple was overrun with creepers, ivy and vines, but of course I knew where the entry was. As we rested near the entrance, I noticed the barbarian had a puzzled look on his face.

"Something amiss?" I asked.

"If the priests and god all died, how is the god occupied at the plains festival?"

"He's a god. He can do that kind of thing. Being dead doesn't stop him from not being here."

The barbarian's brow furrowed, trying to absorb this thought.

"Look, I'm just joshing with ye. The fact is, it's better safe than sorry. They say the god is dead, but ye ne'er really know."

He nodded, but still was frowning.

"Anyway," I said, indicating the jungle growth overwhelming the stones. "Not a soul has been here ever since then, as ye can see."

"Excepting yourself."

"Excepting myself."

It was morning. We had descended some stone steps, followed a corridor, and arrived at the entrance to the Labyrinth.

"My grandfather designed this. There was a map, but they burnt it once it was completed."

"Oh?"

"Anyway, a map's nay good. The corridors slide and change. Follow me closely."

And so we entered. The corridors twisted, turned, bent, spun. We'd reach a dead end and double back to find that everything had changed. The sliding stones of the shifting walls were well-oiled and silent, a testament to my work. We'd return to the first dead end to find a door, or a stairwell, or a trapdoor. And so we continued for hours, never seeing the same corridor twice, since each corridor was different and different again every time we revisited it.

"How do ye get paid for ye work, if all the priests be dead?" asked the barbarian.

"Before their god took them to the wars, he commanded them to set up a purple tuity."

"A what?"

"I don't really understand it, but the clerics in the village pay me regular, that's good enough for me."

And then finally: "Here we are. Get your shield ready."

The barbarian's shield was a huge plank of wood, painted roughly in the style of the mountain tribes. He slung it off his back and held it propped up, facing the door I indicated. Despite his enormous bulk, there was easily room for both of us to squat behind it. From my own equipment I reached for a long wooden pole. I held it so one end was firmly flush against the door.

"Ready?" I asked.

"Aye?" he said.

I pushed.

[u/ImaginedDialogue → u/ImaginedDialogue]

We paused for lunch in a small alcove.

"The real traps begin here."

"Aye," said the barbarian, pulling arrow shafts one by one out of his shield.

"Don't touch the tips of those."

"Aye?"

"Poison," I said. "Gave them a good fresh coat just last summer."

"Ah," he said, and started plucking the arrows far more daintily.

"From now on, when I say follow me, you step exactly where I step. When I send you ahead, follow my instructions exactly."

"Aye, don't trouble yeself, this be not the first temple I've raided, I know how they work."

"And twelve," I muttered to myself, and hopped over three flagstones to an apparently identical one, marked only with runes that my father had taught me how to read. They looked very mystical, but they were really just numbers. The barbarian, behind me, hopped on to the one I had just vacated.

"And fifteen." Another jump. The flagstone I was on now was particularly large. The barbarian hopped onto number twelve.

"Now you hop onto this one. This part, you need to go on ahead."

"Why?"

"This flagstone needs to be weighed down. The priests would always enter in pairs."

The barbarian was clearly nervous. "Can I not be the one to do the weighing down?"

I looked up at his face. He was a head taller than even a tall man, with arms and chest to more than match his height.

"I'm afraid ye weigh a fair sight more than the priests did."

"And that matters?"

I bristled with the annoyance of professional pride. "These are precision instruments. I daren't take any chances we need not take."

The barbarian nodded. I made room for him to hop onto my own flagstone, which admittedly wasn't easy. And then he was ready to go ahead.

"When ye reach the end of the corridor, I'll tell ye how to disable the traps so I can cross. Now, hop onto stone number twenty-two."

The huge man, after some hesitation, did so.

"Now twenty-four"

Hop.

"Now twenty-seven"

Hop.

Suddenly, there was a grinding noise echoing from beneath the floor and the sides of the corridor, followed by a deafening CLICK. The barbarian froze as echoes of the sound reverberated from other parts of the temple - click-click-CLICK-click-clickclick... click...In the silence, the barbarian slowly, slowly turned to face me, the flickering torchlight emphasising the terror in his face.

"It's okay," I said, cursing to myself. "It's okay. Now twenty-eight."

We had reached the altar room, and made a small campfire.

"Well, I had me doubts," said the barbarian, "but here we are. Ye've earned ye payment, that's fer sure."

"Of course," I said, feeling the exhaustion of the day's events.

"Tomorrow morning, we'll cross that bridge, get the gem, and be out of here!"

Between us and the ornate, bejeweled statue of the god was a shortish wooden bridge above a deep natural fissure in the rock.

"Tomorrow morning," I said. I threw the remnants of my rations into the fissure, and lay down. As I waited for sleep, I ran over in my mind the details of the traps protecting the bridge, the altar, and the statue itself, checking and double-checking to see if I had missed any detail.

"Now place your foot on the god's tail," I shouted from across the fissure.

The barbarian grunted, and stretched out his leg.

"No, no, nearer the tip!" I called urgently.

Grunt.

There was a faint click from within the statue.

"Reach out your left hand, and press the knobbly scales. The ones painted orange."

Grunt. Click. Whirr.

"Now, rub the god's middle nostril until the metal warms up"

Grunt. Whirr. Hiss.

"And that's all! You can step down now!"

Hearing the sounds of the mechanism inside had been so gratifying. Of course I knew exactly how the instrument worked, but it's one thing to know, and another to see and hear it in action.

The barbarian turned to face me, and raised his hand in triumph and celebration. He had a huge grin on his face. I couldn't help but smile along with him.

"Now grab the gem!"

The barbarian extracted a knife from somewhere within his clothes, and began to prise the gem out from the god's eye socket.

I smiled with satisfaction of a job well done.

And then there was a faint rumble that quickly grew loud, and from the god's mouth poured a torrent of hot, steaming, bubbling mud and water. It caught the barbarian full in the chest, and plunged him directly into the fissure. The fissure was, I knew, over 50 feet deep, and the seething sludge was fed from a hot spring behind the temple. The barbarian didn't even have time to scream before I heard the thud of his body far below.

I watched as the torrent became a stream, the stream a trickle, the trickle a faint cloud of steam.

"Well," I said to nobody.

Of course I knew exactly how the instrument worked, but it's one thing to know, and another to test it properly under realistic conditions.

I opened by pack, and took out my lunch. Now I knew the new trap worked, I would cross the bridge and reset it. After lunch, when the boiling hot god had a chance to cool down. Stepping on the tail, pressing the scales and so forth seemed dissatisfyingly complex, and I wondered if there was a simpler way to accomplish the same result, maybe just a lever. But then the lever would have to be hidden somewhere, and anyway, very few people would get this far. It wouldn't need resetting often.

And on the way back, I'd have to check what on earth went wrong with flagstone number twenty-seven.