These Doors Are Made Of Stone

Previously on Saga of the Jewels…

The life of seventeen-year-old RYN, bookish son of a wealthy landowner, changes forever when his hometown is destroyed by the EMPIRE and everyone he has ever known is killed. Ryn discovers that the Empire are seeking TWELVE PRIMEVAL JEWELS which grant the power to manipulate different elements, and that his father had been hiding the FIRE RUBY. He sets out to take revenge on the Imperial General who killed his family and retrieve the Fire Ruby, and along the way meets NUTHEA the lightning-slinging princess, SAGAR the swaggering skypirate, ELRANN the tomboy engineer, CID the wizened old healer, VISH the poppy-seed-addicted bounty hunter, and HULD the fighting monk. Together the companions decide to find all of the Jewels in order to stop the evil EMPEROR from finding them first and taking over the world. They have thus far succeeded in retrieving the Fire Ruby, borne by Ryn, and the Lightning Crystal, borne by Nuthea. They have now come to the land of FARR where under the guidance of the Farrian fighting monk HULD they have entered the Earth Temple in order to attempt to find the EARTH EMERALD…

EPISODE TWENTY-SEVEN: THESE DOORS ARE MADE OF STONE

“At least no more of those golem things appeared when you pushed the doors like last time,” Ryn called up to Sagar where the skypirate stood at the top of the flight of earthen stairs.

“Yeah, that’s something…” said Elrann nearby.

“Sure,” Sagar called down, “but how are we going to get through these doors? They’re shut fast, I tell you!”

“Maybe Huld can try them?” Ryn suggested.

“Rrrr,” came Sagar’s growl of irritation from above, echoing through the large hall. Despite himself, the side of Ryn’s mouth twitched up into a half-grin. “Fine! I wouldn’t say he’s much stronger than me, though!”

Ryn turned to the monk, who wore his usual blank smile.

“Do you mind having a go, Huld?”

“I will try.”

The monk plodded up on the steps and stood next to Sagar. He put his hands on the doors and pushed.

“No,” he confirmed, “I am not strong enough to move these either.”

“See?” said Sagar, holding out his hands sanctimoniously.

“Why don’t you try your special technique thingy?” yelled up Elrann.

“You mean The Strike That Moves Mountains?” Huld said.

“Yeah! That one.”

“Hang on,” Sagar called down, “the last time he did that, those golem things appeared and attacked us! We don’t want that to happen again!”

“I’m ready with my fire,” Ryn said.

“Yes,” said Nuthea, “but you are meant to be conserving your mana.” She shook her head at him like he was a naughty child. Annoyance tightened Ryn’s mouth, but it quickly turned to a suppressed laugh. Nuthea could be so bossy sometimes he just had to laugh at her.

“Right,” said Elrann, “that could happen, but this is the best bet we’ve got at the moment.”

“So would you like me to try?” said Huld deferentially from the top of the steps. He was the picture of politeness, but Ryn wondered if underneath that gentle giant exterior the monk was experiencing any irritation with them.

“Yeah,” said Elrann. “Go for it!”

“Rrrr,” growled Sagar.

Huld set his feet, pulled back his hands behind his body and breathed in loudly, sucking in the stale air.

Ryn braced himself. His fingers tingled, ready to summon flame if need be.

Huld drove his open palms into the stone doors. 

An almighty boom resounded throughout the chamber, followed by...

…cavernous silence. 

“Well that’s done absolutely nothing,” observed Sagar. “Again.” 

The skypirate marched back down the stairs. Huld followed.

“Anyone else got any smart ideas to try?” Sagar said in exasperation as the two of them re-joined the circle of the group in the faint glow-worm light.

“It’s another puzzle…” said Cid, stroking his beard. “Like the last floor. Although it seems we may not be able to solve this one just by blasting through it, since these doors are made of stone.”

“Rrrrr!” growled Sagar loudly, turning purple in the light from the glow-worms as he lost his temper. “This is a load of chocobo-poodoo! I’m sick of puzzles! There must be a simple way through!”

All of a sudden he turned and ran back up the stairs, so fast he must be calling the wind to assist him, and indeed Ryn felt his hair flutter. When Sagar reached the top, this time he shouted “WIND!” and flung his hands forwards at the doors.

The party didn’t see the gust but they felt the disturbance in the air even from where they were sitting on the floor. 

The back-blast of his own wind attack off the doors knocked Sagar backwards, and he flew into the air away from them. His hands waved around frantically for a moment, but then he managed to convert his momentum into a backflip and put them out on either side of him to raise a smaller gust below himself and float to the floor more slowly. 

Sagar touched down on the ground almost gracefully.

“Godsdammit!” he yelled all the same, most ungracefully, frustrated that his attack hadn’t done anything to the doors. Ryn wasn’t sure why he evoked the gods, or the hells, so often when he didn’t even believe in them.

“That was pretty cool, too,” said Elrann.

That seemed to calm Sagar down a bit. He sighed, and let his hands drop to his sides. “It didn’t work, though...”

“Of course not,” said Cid. “We’ve established that the element of Earth is highly resistant to the element of Wind.”

“Yes thank you, old timer,” said Sagar, completely unthankfully. “I’ve had just about enough of you stating the bleeding obvious. I’d figured that out by now. So how are we going to get through them? Hey—you should try your fire, pup.”

“You reckon?” Ryn said. For once the skypirate had spoken to him almost like he was an equal, even if he still used the same term of address as for a baby dog. 

“Well why not?” Sagar said. “The old timer says earth is supposedly ‘weak’ to fire, isn’t it?”

“But they’re made of stone.”

“Have you got any better ideas?”

Ryn shrugged, and walked up the steps to test out a small fire attack on the stone doors.

It didn’t even mark them. They remained exactly as they were, indifferent and immovable.

Next Elrann tried shooting them with one of her pistols. Then Cid tried saying some more magic words and passwords. Even Vish, under coercion, had a go at trying to work his blade into the very thin crack between the two doors and prise them open, but to no avail. For some reason Nuthea refused to even bother to try a lightning attack, though Ryn supposed that was fair enough. It made sense to him that lightning was likely to be completely ineffective against earth as an elemental pairing.

Eventually they all found themselves sitting or lying in a circle on the worm-lit floor, tired, fed up and at a complete loss about how to get past the doors.

“Welp, this is fun,” Elrann said sarcastically. “I guess we’re going to have to retrace our steps and find a way back, or else we’re going to die of starvation or thirst in here. Or boredom.”

“Raarrrrr!” Sagar said. That was a really big one, Ryn thought. “There’s got to be a way through!” He slammed his fist onto the floor next to him where he sat.

As he did so, Ryn noticed that the floor got a bit darker for a moment where he had hit it. 

“Hey…” Ryn said. “Do that again, Sagar…”

“Do what?” said Sagar.

“Hit your fist on the ground.”

“Why? Are you going loopy, pup?”

“Just do it,” Ryn said impatiently. Then he thought he better add, “Please?”

“Well, since you asked so nicely…”

Sagar hit the ground with the side of his fist again, even harder than the last time. “There. Happy?!”

This time Ryn saw them. When Sagar’s fist connected with the floor, the glow-worms inside the floor nearest the place that he hit wriggled quickly away from the point of impact for a moment, then slowly came back to it.

“They’re moving!”

“What are moving?!”

“The glow-worms are moving away from your hand when you hit the floor!”

Sagar thumped the floor again to test this.

“...so they are. Who cares?”

“That must be the key to solving the puzzle!”

“What good is that going to do us, pup? It’s just moving some worms around.” 

“No, don’t you see?” Ryn said.

He stood up, and then tried stomping his foot on the ground. The glow worms wriggled away from the spot where he stomped, taking their light with them. He stomped again, somewhere else nearby, and some of the worms that had moved away from his first stomp kept going, moving away from this one too, so that it got a little darker around his foot.

“We can affect them!” Ryn said. “We can move them, herd them!”

The others were frowning at him.

“What good is that going to do us?” said Sagar. “It’s a nice trick, but it’s not going to get us through those doors, pup, is it?”

“No,” said Cid, standing up too, “I think young man Ryn might be onto something. The boy is right—the worms are the only things in this room that we can affect. It’s the best lead we’ve had so far. Come!”

He started to stomp on the ground too and, while Ryn had to admit that the two of them looked quite silly taking big exaggerated steps around the darkened hall together, the worms moved for Cid as well.

Nuthea joined in, then Elrann, then Huld (he got a lot of worms moving), then at their request even Vish. And at last Sagar breathed another big sigh and joined them too.

The worms were definitely moving, only they were wriggling around inside the floor all over the place in random directions away from different people’s feet.

“Hey!” Ryn called over the noise of their galumphing feet. “If we all stomp in the same place, we might be able to make them go in the same direction!”

They all clumped together and began to stomp near each other, their footwear illuminated by the glow worms that fled their feet: Ryn’s brown leather shoes, Nuthea’s golden slippers, Sagar’s steel-capped boots, Elrann’s simple laced plimsolls, Cid’s simple sandals, Vish’s black shoes with upturned toes, and Huld’s bare feet. Combined, they made a tremendous racket, like the sound of drums being beaten very fast and erratically, that echoed throughout the hall.

Thudthudthudthudthudthudthud. 

Sure enough, the glow-worms fled through the floor away from the vibrations of their feet, faster than Ryn had seen them move yet, and many of them all in a group together, taking their light with them in a moving puddle of luminescence.

“It works!” proclaimed Ryn in jubilation.

“Yes, this is all well and good, pup,” yelled Sagar, ever persistent in his antagonism, “but what’s the point?! Where are we going to herd them?!”

The answer seemed obvious to Ryn. “Up the stairs, of course!”

“This is ridiculous!” Sagar yelled.

Neither Ryn nor the others bothered to contradict him, but he joined in all the same. Ridiculous it may be, but this was the only action that had changed anything in this room thus far, so Ryn reasoned the worms must have something to do with the doors at the top of the steps.

Under his direction, they began to stomp their way over to the foot of the steps. As they stomped, more glow-worms got caught up in the big group that they were pushing towards the step, and now they were shepherding a big mass of them about three measures across. The light from all of these worms collected together to form a shimmering pool, and they seemed to be emitting it more intensely as they moved away from the party’s thudding feet.

They reached the steps. A few of the moving worms broke off from the main pack and moved around the bottom step, but most of them went into it.

“Keep going!” Ryn spurred the others on over the sound of their stomping feet. “Get them up the steps!”

Once most of the worms had burrowed into the earth of the first step, it lit up white with their glow. This must be the key to progressing through this room. They waited until the worms had moved a little way along the big step, away from their footfall, and then, Ryn leading, they all hopped up onto the step and continued to stomp.

The worms continued to flee, quickly, across the first step and into the earth of the second step.

“Keep going!” Ryn called again.

They carried on like this, driving the worms up another step, then another, another, another.

Thudthudthudthudthud went their feet on the earth below them.

And then they were at the top of the steps, driving the worms they had collected towards the doors of stone, all stood in front of them together and jogging on the spot like idiots.

The mass of glow-worms moved along the top step and arrived at the doors.

Then they disappeared underneath them.

“Huh?” Ryn exclaimed aloud.

Everyone stopped stomping.

“Well, that’s bloody brilliant,” said Sagar. “We’ve chased them into whatever room’s beyond the doors. Now we’ve lost them and it’s even darker in here than it was before. Great work, pup.”

“No,” said Ryn, at the situation. He had been sure they had been onto something. Cid had said so as well.

One God, he found himself saying inside his head. Show me the way through.

Keep stomping! he thought.

“Keep stomping!” he said out loud. He didn’t know why he said it; he just did, and started to stomp again, his eyes fixed on the immovable stone doors.

Nuthea joined in again. Cid. Elrann. Huld. Vish. Thudthudthudthudthud. Sagar didn’t bother this time.

“What’s the point, pup?” Sagar yelled. “This is a waste of time! You’re just driving the worms further away!”

And then the doors began to glow.

The grey stone of them started to turn white. As Ryn’s eyes stretched wide, he saw hundreds of tiny worms burrowing out of the front of them, coming up through their surface.

“Of course!” Cid yelled. “The worms eat earth, and that’s what makes them give off the light! We could see them before because some of their light got through the earth near its surface! But stone is more opaque, and blocks it out! They’re eating through the stone now, so we can see them as they reach the surface!”

Cid was right. Not only were the doors glowing, hundreds of small white worms poking out of them in different places, but they actually seemed to be shrinking too. 

They stomped harder. Ryn noticed that Sagar had joined in again, and gone uncharacteristically quiet.

And now he noticed something else too. The worms were still giving off their light, and when they reached the surface of the doors they were poking their little squidgy glowing ends out, but then they were stopping still, not eating any more of it.

Apparently stone was more filling than soil, or whatever the floor and steps were made out of.

“We need more of them!” he cried. He took charge. “Cid, Nuthea, Vish, you stay here and keep stomping! Huld, Elrann, Sagar, come with me! We need to herd more of the worms up the steps!”

Sagar actually did what Ryn suggested without protest this time and came with him, Elrann and Huld down the steps. 

Together, they chased down the remaining glow-worms in the floor of the hall, stomping and stamping and cooperating together to herd them back towards the steps and up them, a group at a time. Each time they got to the penultimate step, Cid, Nuthea and Vish would stop stomping for a moment to let the new batch of worms pass under their feet, and then resume again, driving them into the doors, then up and through them.

At last, Ryn and the others managed to sweep up the last of the glow-worms from the floor and herd them up the steps and into the doors. They had caught every single last one now, and the only light in the hall came from the glowing doors where they all stood at the top of the steps. 

The last worm disappeared into the stone doors.

They all stamped together in front of them, willing the final batch of worms up through the doors.

The doors flared with bright, white light, the brightest yet.

Ryn put his hand over his face to cover his eyes.

The party stopped stomping.

Ryn took his hand away from his eyes.

The doors just weren’t there anymore. The worms had eaten through the entirety of them.

Instead they could now see another cramped, darkened, rectangular, earthen corridor, to which the doors had been barring access.

They could see the shape of the corridor because the worms had apparently all dropped back into the earthen floor, though all Ryn could see of them was a pool of white light now coming from the floor in front of them; a wide disc of brightness.

The disc shot forward, along the floor, taking its light with it, threatening to leave them in darkness.

“Come on!” Ryn yelled to the others. “We need that light!”

He shot forwards too, pursuing the pool of light across the floor, and the others ran with him without hesitation.

The light-pool led them down the corridor, left at a turn, around a bend, right at another turn. If they ran at full pelt, they were just able to keep up with it, sometimes even to run into the encirclement of its glow below their feet, though it was moving fast now, and they never kept this up for very long.

It was as though they were making their way through another version of the ground floor they had gotten lost in before, only this time they had the disc of light to guide them and illuminate their path.

Though that didn’t turn out to be the only thing that was different about this floor.

Ahead of them, in this latest corridor that the light had led them into, running at the front of the pack Ryn could see that the floor dropped away.

He stopped just in time, pulling up and halting his run, and the others crashed into the back of him, and would have knocked him forwards into the pit had he not braced himself for the impact. 

“Oi!” said Sagar.

“Hey!” said Elrann. “What gives?”

Ryn recoiled from the edge of the pit even more when he saw, as the pool of light moved down the side of the pit and passed underneath them, a few metres below at the bottom of it, row upon row of sharpened, earthen spikes.

“Wow,” said Elrann when she looked over the edge and saw them too. “It’s a good thing you did stop.”

On the other side of the pit the pool of moving light came up and reached the floor of the corridor again, and carried on moving quickly away from them.

Their part of the corridor got darker.

“Quick!” Ryn said desperately. “How are we going to get across this gap?”

“We’ll have to jump again,” said Sagar. “I’ll boost us over with a gust. Come back a bit, everyone; you’ll need a run up.”

They ran back a few paces away from the pit. It was still getting darker as the light moved away from them—they could only just see where the pit started now.

“One…” said Sagar, “two... three... run! Jump! WIND!”

Ryn took his running leap over the lip of the pit with the others and felt Sagar’s wind blast rush into him from behind, picking him up and carrying him through the air above the spikes.

A brief sensation of weightlessness, and he landed clumsily on the other side of the pit, lost his footing, put his arms out to break his fall, rolled and came up again, then carried on dashing forwards to try to catch up with the rapidly receding pool of light.

The pool of light which reached the end of the corridor and turned left, deepening the darkness once again.

Ryn hit the end-wall and went left too. He pushed himself to keep running, his lungs and legs burning, and began to gain on the pool of light.

“Ryn!” called Nuthea from behind. “Which way? We didn’t see!”

“Left!” Ryn shouted over his shoulder. “Hurry!” He must not lose the light.

When he had looked round briefly he had seen Sagar, Vish and Huld’s faces lit up in the worm-light behind him, but he couldn’t wait for them to catch up. He must keep pace with the light.

The light which he had nearly reached again, which was moving down the corridor, past a thin tubular protrusion that stuck out about a hand’s breadth into the middle of it, at around chest-height. That was weird. What’s that for? Ryn thought as he ran following the light towards it.

Hands grabbed hold of his shoulders.

“Get down, you stupid boy!” shouted Vish.

The hands forced him down with ferocious strength, but he kept his momentum so that he ended up diving to the floor and skidding along it for a few metres on his stomach. It was only a hard earth floor, but it knocked the air out of Ryn and grazed his belly.

Above him, a sound like someone rapidly chopping vegetables—thunkthunkthunk.

“Hey!” Ryn said to Vish, who had forced him down and ended up on the floor with him, his masked face only inches away from Ryn’s own. “What was that for?”

Then he saw. A couple of metres back, a number of feathered darts stuck out of the wall on the opposite side from the tube.

Sagar reached the tube, but instead of diving under it as Vish had with Ryn, he made a wind-assisted jump over it, and three more darts shot out of the tube and thunked into the wall on the other side.

“Watch out, you lot!” Sagar called back the way he had come as he ran past Ryn and Vish on the floor. “There’s a tube about halfway down this one that shoots darts!”

Ryn scrambled to his feet. He wasn’t about to let Sagar get ahead of him.  

Run, Ryn, run, he thought, an old rhyme coming back to his mind as he hurtled after Sagar and the light. But he would have to change the words now. Run, Ryn, run away, live to fight another day, live to train another way, live to find the Jewels and make the Emperor pay.

The pool of light reached the end of the corridor and went right, deepening the darkness again. Sagar followed it. 

Behind Ryn the others were calling and shouting about something, but there wasn’t time to worry about them. He must keep pace with the light.

“Swinging axe!” yelled Sagar from somewhere up ahead.

Huh?

Ryn pulled up just in time, and a huge curved-bladed axe moved across his vision perpendicular to the corridor, inches away from his nose. It swung from the corridor ceiling, and as it reached one wall with the tip of its blade it hung suspended in stillness for a moment, then swung back the other way.

Ryn took a deep breath and waited for his moment, hearing Vish and Huld arrive behind him.

“Swinging axe,” he informed them matter-of-factly.

Vish grunted his acknowledgement. Huld didn’t even bother to do that.

The axe reached the apex of its ascent again and hung.

“Now!” Ryn yelled, and the three of them shot past the axe, further down the corridor, after Sagar, after the light.

“Swinging axe!” Ryn called back one more time as he heard the others arriving in the corridor behind them.

“Slow down, would ya?!” Elrann called back. 

Ryn couldn’t slow down or he might lose the light. “Stay together!” he called back, still without looking. “We’ve got to keep up with this light or we’ll lose our way! We’ll keep telling you what the traps are up ahead as we reach them!”

It got darker again as the pool of light turned down yet another corridor, Sagar hot on its tail.

Ryn, Vish and Huld reached the corner and turned too.

This time they were greeted by Sagar running towards them in pursuit of the pool of light, which was now moving very quickly back along the corridor it had apparently just gone down. Behind him, something stirred and grumbled in the shadows.

“ROLLING BOULDER!” Sagar cried, even as the pool of light passed underneath Ryn’s feet and the skypirate pushed past him in the opposite direction.

“Oh, poodoo,” Ryn swore as he saw the giant grey boulder that filled the entire width of the corridor rolling rapidly towards them.

He turned with Vish and Huld and ran for his life. 

They rounded the corner they had just turned down.

In the distance, beyond Sagar and the light-pool, Nuthea, Elrann and Cid were stood on the other side of the swinging axe, waiting for the right moment to dash past it.

“What’s going on?” said Nuthea when she saw the light moving towards her.

“At least now we can see again!” said Elrann.

“Turn around!” yelled Sagar. “There’s a massive rolling boulder behind us!”

A tremendous crash sounded from behind them.

Ryn dared to hope that the boulder would stop in its tracks now that it had hit a wall, and looked round.

Nope.

“Damned magical shrine-temple!” Sagar cursed in exasperation.

They kept running, barely avoiding another swing of the axe-blade in their mad rush, following the light-pool as it shot back the way it had come, sweeping Nuthea, Elrann and Cid into their wake.

They were all near to the moving light-pool now, as they ran together, Ryn back at the head of the pack next to Sagar and Vish.

They turned a corner as they heard a sound of snapping metal. That must be the boulder smashing its way through the swinging axe-trap.

Back they went, back past the shooting dart trap, which they all ducked under or jumped over. 

The boulder rolled after them.

Back they went, back over the spiked pit, which they flew over again with a quickly coordinated jump and wind-assistance from Sagar.

A little way on the other side of this pit, they all stopped and turned, convinced that the boulder would fall into the pit, and stop.

Instead, the spikes at the bottom of the pit rose up to meet the boulder, and it continued to roll over the tips of the spikes, over the pit.  

“Oh, come on!” cried Ryn as they all turned and continued to run.

The boulder rolled after them.

Back they went, back to the first fork they had reached when they had got past the stone doors at the start of this floor.

The boulder rolled after them.

This time the light-pool moved straight on past the turning to the doors, in the other direction from which it had initially taken on their arrival on this floor.

“Stupid bloody glow-worms!” Sagar cried. “It’s like they’re teasing us, leading us into all these traps!”

“We’ve got to keep following them!” yelled Ryn. “It’s our only option!”

“I know, pup! Do you think I don’t know that?”

“It’s not a tease!” yelled Cid, “It’s a test!”

“Shut up, old timer! I’m starting to get testy with you!”

Another turn at the other end of this corridor, more corridors, more turns.

But no more traps, for now.

And yet still the boulder rolled after them. Never more than a corridor behind. If anything, it seemed to be getting faster.

Ryn began to pant and wheeze as he ran, and his chest burned.

“Huld, do you have any idea how much further we have to go?” he gasped to the monk.

“I am sorry,” said Huld as he ran, almost breathless too, exasperation in his voice. “I do not. Just to remind you: I have. Never. Been. Here. Before!”

“Hey, look!” Elrann called out.

The light-pool had stopped. It had gotten some length ahead of them in their exhaustion from sprinting so long, but about twenty paces away at the end of this corridor it had stopped at last in front of a solid wall that seemed to be made out of something shiny which shimmered as it reflected its glow.

It was probably because Ryn was trying to work out what this wall was made of that he didn’t notice the new pit in front of him, into which he fell.

“Oomph!”

He pushed himself up and rubbed his arms where he had landed on them.

There was another thump from nearby.

“Stupid pup!” Sagar said next to him.

“What did I do?” Ryn said.

“You didn’t look where you were going!”

“Neither did you!”

Thank the One, at least there were no spikes at the bottom of this pit, just a cold, flat, earthen floor about ten feet down and a few feet long. 

There was, however, still a giant boulder in the corridor above, rolling towards them.

The heads of the others appeared at the lip of the pit above.

“Quickly!” said Nuthea. “Captain Sagar, we need you to boost us over this pit as well!”

She still manages to add the honorific to his name, even at a time like this…

Sagar wind-boosted himself and Ryn as they jumped back up to the corridor, on the side that they had fallen down from.

The boulder had nearly reached them.

“Hurry!” Nuthea cried.

“Windaaaaaaarragggaaaahh!” Sagar shouted, as he and everyone else were thrown through the air above the pit by the great gust of wind that he summoned.

This time there was no question of a smooth landing. They all crashed into each other in the corridor on the other side of the pit, banging limbs and heads and collapsing in a bug jumbled heap, then disentangling themselves from one another and scrambling up cursing and bickering.

A massive boom issued.

Ryn got up to see that the boulder had fallen into the pit after them.

It rolled forwards a few paces in the pit, then sank down a little and came to a halt, where it made a clicking sound, pressing on some sort of mechanism that he and Sagar hadn’t noticed had been built into the floor of it when they had been down in it.

A creaking noise followed, this time from behind Ryn.

He spun to see the steel doors at the end of the corridor, which apparently the glow worms were not able to eat through, opening.

Opening onto glorious blue sky and sunlight which lit up the corridor completely, dimming the glow from the worm-pool on the floor ahead.

A flood of warm air from the world outside filled the corridor, pleasantly caressing Ryn’s face.

At last; they had made it to the top of the Shrine.

To be continued…