Above, he found an entrance that made him stop: three blocks of carved stone formed a doorway, while the door itself was made from slabs of granite, carved with two dragons standing sternly. There was a lock set into it, and Renard fished out his picks. He was about to set to work when he spotted the second hole next to the obvious lock, one of the dragons claws giving way to reveal it. In the main lock, Renard saw the point of a dart gleaming. He set to work on the hidden lock instead, and soon the door snapped open.

Within was a tunnel, set on each side with niches that held stone caskets. Each was carved in a language Renard didnt know, but it was thick with cobwebs. Renard took out a small lantern, lighting it so he could see his way as he went deeper.

The second trap almost caught him, buried as it was under layers of dust. Ordinarily, Renard would have spotted the shift in the floor from cobbles to black-and-white tiles, and would have been instantly suspicious. Now, his foot touched one before his mind registered the shift, and he threw himself back on instinct as a pendulum like blade scythed down from the ceiling, right through the spot where he had stood. He lay on his back panting, before forcing himself back to his feet.

He ignored the swish of the blades, ignored the floor that had triggered the trap. Access was the key. People who set traps like this wanted to be able to come and go if they needed to, which meant that there always had to be some way to disarm what they had put in place. He looked closely at the surrounding walls, examining each in turn, searching until he found a lever. Renard didnt pull it, but kept looking until he found the lock beside that lever, the sphere that would drop otherwise to release poison, or fire, or acid.

He disarmed it and set off, deeper into the complex. He came out into a large, open space, filled on every side with mausoleums and tributes to the dead. There was no roof in this space; it seemed to have been lost in some long ago eruption, or perhaps there had never been one. Perhaps this had always been a place where the sun could shine down on a floor patterned with a map that was not the world as Renard knew it. There was no Slate in that map, while Sarras to the west looked green and wholesome, alive, not devastated by fire.

There was another doorway at the far side of the room, this one outlined in what looked like gold rather than stone, with strange gouges on it, as if something had tried to get in there. Somehow, Renard knew that what he sought would be there. He set out across the floor…