RAVEN'S GAMBIT | Episode 76: False Glory
The heavy doors groaned open with an echo that seemed to swallow time itself.
They stepped into a room that glimmered with deceptive grandeur—ivory and gold tiles gilded the walls, and polished agate paved the floor like a mosaic of secrets. The silvered ceiling reflected their wary faces, distorted by the curved metal like warped memories of who they used to be.
Each corner of the chamber held a black iron demon—massive, monstrous statues, forged in fury and frozen in poses of destruction. In the center, a massive granite sarcophagus bore the name:
ACERERAK.
Between them, like offerings to a terrible god, sat two iron chests—scarred, ancient, and defiant. And from a filigreed bronze urn issued a thin, curling tendril of smoke, its stopper sealed in place with hardened gold.
“I don’t like this,” muttered Elric, running a hand along the smooth wall. “The magic’s...gone. I feel nothing.”
“It’s an antimagic field,” Elowyn confirmed. “Clever. Very clever.”
“No magic means no healing,” Thalia added softly. “And no backup if anything... changes.”
“Then let’s be careful,” Lira said, stepping forward with a rogue’s grace. Her eyes scanned the room. “Tessa, you take the chests. I’ll deal with the sarcophagus. Let’s see what Acererak buried.”
Thog gave a grunt of approval, gripping Whelm in his thick fists. “If somethin’ moves, I smash it.”
Sir Cedric, polished armor gleaming under the distorted reflections above, nodded. “As you do, friend. I’ll guard your flank.”
Lira’s fingers danced across the stone sarcophagus, then paused. “There was treasure here once,” she muttered, “precious inlay, pried out—someone beat us here.”
She motioned Thog forward. “Give me a lift.”
Thog grunted and shoved the lid. It scraped back with a groan of dust and old secrets.
Inside lay a broken man’s memory—tattered robes, rotten wood fragments, the twisted remains of a once-powerful staff now snapped like dry kindling. A skull, shattered and pitiful, lay in the remnants.
Lira peered in, eyes sharp. “Jewelry stripped. Staff broken. Bones looted.” She carefully lifted the fractured shaft. “This was a Staff of the Magi… the backlash is dormant. But it’ll kill whoever carries it out of here.”
Sir Cedric crossed himself instinctively. “Acererak’s last joke.”
“No,” Thalia whispered. “Just one of many.”
Meanwhile, Tessa knelt before the eastern iron chest, eyes narrowed. “Triple lock. Triple trap. Typical.”
She pulled her tools from her satchel and began with surgical precision. Click. Click. A hissing puff of air shot a poisoned needle harmlessly into the stone behind her.
“One down,” she murmured. “Two more to go.”
Elowyn approached the bronze urn, the curling smoke reaching toward her like a whisper.
“Don't touch it,” Elric warned.
“It’s sealed,” she said. “But enchanted. And not with anything passive.”
Tessa’s third lock clicked just as the second needle trap was disarmed.
“Done!” she announced.
She opened the chest with a flourish—and gasped. “Gems. Gods, look at them—”
Elowyn was already shaking her head. “Illusion. Take one out. I bet it fades.”
Sir Cedric picked up a gleaming sapphire, stepped toward the door, and watched as it crumbled into cheap quartz.
“Damn lich,” he growled.
Thog stepped toward the urn and rapped it gently with Whelm. The filigree chimed. The smoke thickened.
The gold seal popped.
“Thog—!” Lira shouted.
The stopper blew off like a cork, and fire flared in a spiral.
The efreeti stepped from the urn in a blaze of crimson and smoke. Towering, musclebound, with eyes of molten gold and a sword wreathed in embers.
“You. Disturb. My. Rest.”
Thog raised Whelm. “Yer welcome.”
“Do not antagonize it!” Elowyn hissed.
The efreeti looked them over, smoke curling around its horns.
“You opened my vessel gently. Perhaps... you are wiser than the last grave-robbers.” It looked toward the broken skull in the sarcophagus.
“You may ask one wish. Speak.”
Sir Cedric hesitated. “We don’t need a wish,” he said. “We need knowledge. Where is Acererak’s true treasury?”
“Acererak’s gold is his soul,” the efreeti intoned. “But there is a path. One of you must dare disturb the demon with the mace.”
The party turned as one toward the northwest statue—the hulking black iron demon with a spiked mace.
Thog stepped forward. “I got this.”
Sir Cedric nodded. “We’re with you.”
Thog wrapped his calloused hands around the statue’s foot and heaved.
The iron shifted.
With a resounding clunk, something moved beneath—the grinding of stone and the faint glint of a pull ring.
“There,” Elric pointed. “A hidden door.”
The efreeti bowed mockingly. “You’ve found the breath between his teeth. May your death be interesting.”
And with that, it stepped through the antimagic field, vanished in a shimmer of heat, and was gone.
Thog looked at the others, brow furrowed. “So… we go deeper.”
Sir Cedric lifted his blade. “We follow the truth. No matter the shape of it.”
Tessa flashed a grin. “And loot, if we find any.”
Lira chuckled. “Always.”
Together, they pulled open the concealed hatch and descended into the darkness below—into the final secret of Acererak.