“The Magical Generator”

Doubling back through familiar corridors, Keeb, Stumpy, and Dannix, now led by an enthusiastic Kittykat, sought the fabled magical generator. It only took them a few minutes to find the door, a caution-style triangular sign with a blue zigzag bolt painted on its grimy, wooden surface. Now they would see if Kittykat's theory was correct.

Keeb pushed the door to discover a small, torch-lit vestibule with an open exit immediately after. He went in first and Stumpy followed, leaving Kittykat and Dannix to bring up the rear.

Beyond the second passage, the four found themselves venturing upon a long, narrow walkway bridging a bottomless pit. On each side of the slab-tiled path, iron spear railings matched the explorers' average height. They were positioned closely together like prison bars, which was helpful in that they guarded against a drastic fall. Several yards ahead stood the adjoining doorway, but curiously there were other exits carved into the walls of this rounded chasm, two on each side of the bridge with short disconnected planks that dropped off to nowhere.

The party reached the midway point when Keeb and Stumpy realized the error in their group's ordering, for suddenly the walkway jerked violently, and though the two heroes in front maintained their balance by grabbing onto the guard spears, their inexperienced followers fell backward onto their rumps. It was as if something forcefully struck the passage causing the floor to crack and split apart, but this was no accident, and no collision took place, for both halves of the bridge began to mechanically rotate on respective pillars that before had been invisible under its length. Dannix and Kittykat scrambled desperately to the edge of their floor while Keeb and Stumpy reached out rescuing hands, but it was to no use: the gap between them had grown too wide for any contact to be made. Both walkways swiveled rapidly, one in a clockwise motion, the other counterclockwise, into two parallel divisions, and the gates of spears that were once considered safety precautions now acted as partitioning walls— not to mention that the space between the two bridges was far too great to jump anyway.

With a loud latching noise, the two automated subpaths locked into place, now joining the once mysterious disconnected floors on both sides of the chasm. The outlook was doubly grim, for the team was separated again— Keeb and Stumpy on the farthest right of one bridge, and Dannix and Kittykat on the farthest left of the other.

A tremendous worry loomed over the two mere civilians, for they knew that they could not possibly fend for themselves, and that truth came to light as the door in front of them burst open, pouring out a scoundrelly bunch of drooling, snarling orcs. It was a familiar sight to Dannix, and he instinctively reached for his sword. For what it was worth, Kittykat presented her spear too; but then the door on the opposite side of the bridge kicked open, and a backup squadron of Skullduggery knights charged forth. Converging on the bridge, squeezing Dannix and Kittykat tighter in their trap, their combined numbers were too great to count. Surely, not even a complete Good vs. Medieval could have stood against such an offense. There was nothing Keeb and Stumpy could do but watch helplessly behind a gate of bars as their friends were swallowed up by the fiendish mob.

Dannix, who gave up his last shred of hope, saw no choice but to surrender to the orcs again, and his arms fell to his sides without contest. He lowered his head bitterly, knowing that his ill premonitions caused by venturing away from home were cashing in.

Kittykat, however, tried to fight the orcs' overpowering restraint as much as she could while screaming, "NO! Keeb, Stumpy! Please! Help us!" But the presentation of a demon knight's axe in her face quieted her to where she, too, saw the futility of her struggle.

The two were ushered at axepoint out of the left exit, the raucous gang hollering a slew of demented laughter and cheers as they crowded out the door.

When all was clear, Stumpy turned to Keeb with round, worried eyes and cried, "What do we do now?"

"Get out of here, of course," uttered the elf. "It ain't gonna take 'em long to come back here for us if we don't start moving. And since all those baddies are going that way, we're going this way!" He pointed to the door on the immediate right.

"We ain't gonna try to rescue them?"

"You gotta think realistically, doofus! Let's get our priorities straight: scram first, think later!"

Stumpy nodded blankly in agreement.

(Later...)

Onto yet another abyss-crossing Keeb and Stumpy ran. It seemed they could not escape these things now. The setup was similar as before: narrow footpath, iron spear rails, dark gaping pit below; but what was different about this chamber was an enormously wide central column of glass encasing a pulsating blue energy, standing tall as the entire chasm and washing everything in its glow. The walkway led straight to this dynamic nerve center and circled around it, intersecting into three other directions.

Who knew when this straight and unassuming passage would do something funny like break apart and start spinning? So Keeb and Stumpy wasted no time racing to the central cylinder where it was presumably safe.

Halting on the sufficiently wider ring-shaped walkway, the two heroes timed out to catch their breath and gather their wits. It was then Keeb turned to the excessively vibrant glass column, wide as an entire wall and humming with energy, and noticed a control panel of sorts.

"Hey, Stumpy," he called, "does this look like a magical generator to you?"

The dwarf simply shrugged. "I dunno."

Keeb examined the control panel that resembled a tile puzzle with different symbols inscribed on a five-by-five grid. One space was empty for a neighboring tile to be slid in its place, but where would the elf begin? He had no idea what the abstract symbols meant or if, by moving them, he would do more harm than good.

As he scratched his jester's hat in confusion, a racket emanated from the doorway in which they entered. The two heroes snapped their heads around and saw a wily bunch of three-foot-tall goblins dashing forward, laughing giddily and wielding small hatchets. This made Stumpy nervous; though his axe could chop a demon knight in half, its heavy clumsiness was not fit for such fleet-footed scamps.

Keeb had it covered though, for goblins were perfect targets for his rapid-firing crossbow. The sharpshooter maintained his position in the center of the walkway and fired a volley of bolts at them, staggering their advance. With frontline goons falling to the floor, arrows stuck in their chests, the remainders had to climb over a constantly growing heap of downed bodies to continue their charge. But their numbers were limitless. A river of green poured in from the entrance and steadily gushed forth, corpses trickling through the iron rails and falling into the darkened depths. Keeb hoped he had enough ammunition to hold them all off.

Then came more trouble, for rounding the column from the back lumbered a monstrous, sixteen-foot gray ogre, simply an animated mound of muscle equipped with a club that might as well have been an entire tree. Stumpy jerked around to see the gigantic weapon about to pound him but jumped out of the way as it slammed onto the floor with a rattling bang. It seemed this behemoth was prepared defensively against the dwarf as well, for it wore solid steel greaves over its shins and calves. Being so short, Stumpy found himself at a loss.

Keeb fended off the goblins, knees slightly bent and his crossbow held at his waist, serious and determined. Incredibly fast and fluid, his left hand drew arrow after arrow from his quiver and nocked each one, followed by a clockwork pull of the trigger. The goblin mob steadily drew closer and began chucking their hatchets at the elf, but with their aim so poor, Keeb barely flinched.

Things got even crazier when, as suspected, portions of the walkway disengaged and rotated into adjacent positions, causing several of the goblins to lose their balance and topple off the edges to their doom. This gave Keeb a breather, for all the goblins could do now was hop and cuss behind a gate of bars and a whole lot of empty space. The downside was that all four walkways in the chamber had rotated, leaving Keeb and Stumpy stranded on a ring-shaped island with a belligerent ogre intent on throwing them off.

Having no place in battle against the enormous brute, Keeb turned back to the control panel and fiddled with the tiles, hoping for some kind of miracle.

Occupied with Stumpy, the giant raised its club with both arms over its head, its muscular face contorted with a fierce growl. Then WHAM, the club came down with another forceful slam, shedding splinters from the impact.

Again Stumpy dodged the attack and snapped around for a counter. With a strong swing of his axe, he lodged his blade deep into the aged wood of the primitive weapon. The ogre, knowing only how to smash and clobber, raised its club for another strike, but this time Stumpy elevated with it. Not until its weapon loomed overhead did the ogre react to the living piece of debris hanging from it; thus began an angered attempt to shake it off. Stumpy clung onto his axe handle with all his might, but the jerking force caused the blade to dislodge, hurling the dwarf straight for the ogre's head.

CHORP!

Stumpy's axe dug into its scalp with a gush of crimson and caught bone like a grappling hook. Anchored, the dwarf flipped over, back-to-back with his oversized opponent, hanging by the grip on his weapon. The ogre's face froze; its club fell from its petrified hand and thunderously bucked across the walkway, barely missing Keeb. Staggering backward toward the edge of the floor, the brute was about to find its final resting place in the bottomless pit, and Stumpy was sure to accompany it, hanging precariously from his beloved axe, refusing to let go.

Just at that second, Keeb achieved a configuration on the control panel that created a floor of magical blue light over the entire chasm. This lucky break gave the corpse and dwarf a short fall onto the solid energy surface, although that mound of dead weight falling on top of Stumpy was not very rewarding. He was stuck!

A new problem arose now that the magical floor freed all movement within the chamber, and the multitude of goblins capitalized on this. Skinny enough to squeeze through the guard bars, they all charged forth with a much broader sweep.

Keeb witnessed this, and his eyes popped in fright. Holding the equalizer in his hand, he knew that all he needed to do was reverse the switch but realized that the one thing stopping him from doing so was Stumpy, who lay flat on thin ice, so to speak.

An elf possessed, he turned to the dwarf and yelled, "Stumpy, waddle your butt over here NOW!"

The dwarf pushed with all his might, squeezing out from under the ogre's muscular mass. With his axe reclaimed, he threw himself forward, sliding across the luminous blue surface onto the slabs of the circle.

Immediately Keeb slid the control tile back to its original position, but to his surprise, nothing happened. "What the—?" he desperately squawked.

Leave it to Stumpy to wind back with his axe and deliver a crushing blow to the control panel, smashing it into a sparking wreck and disabling the magical field once and for all. Countless goblin bodies flailed and screamed to their doom, and the ogre's carcass was disposed of as well— all before the automated walkways kicked into gear again, swiveled, and situated themselves back into four straight paths leading out of the chamber. How convenient!

Where once the chasm glowed with cerulean, it was now dark and lifeless. All the power had dissipated from the magical core, replaced by silence.

Keeb took this moment to pat Stumpy on his helmet. "A gold star for you, Stumpmeister! Looks like that's all she wrote for the magical generator. Now, let's get out of here and see what other destruction we can do!"

"Yeah, yeah," Stumpy nodded excitedly, his tongue wagging over his beard.