“Its enough to make me regret that I had to kill you the first time,” Calliope responded. The words were glib but truthfully she was impressed. The minotaur thing was clearly designed to face of both magical and physical threats. But where a group of knights would have been hacked to bits, Neil had triumphed through guile and quick wits. It was a strange thing to have a partner, even stranger to have one that she was at least reasonably sure wasn’t planning to knife her in the back at the first opportunity. There was no time to ponder however. Whomever had set the necromantic guardian would notice the change in the spell eventually and very probably send someone to investigate. She examined the trapdoor the thing had been guarding. Potent wards were laid across it in complex patterns that seared Calliope’s mage sight. There were spells graven into the wood and surrounding stone that would strip the flesh from a woman’s bone, snatch her soul from her body and worse besides. Even more impressively, the spells were intermingled like the threads of a spider’s web. Calliope couldn’t pick them apart without triggering or alerting others.

 

“I have to find a way between,” she mumbled, not really intending the remark to be heard.

“Between what?” Neil asked. She opened her mouth to ask what she could possibly be talking about beside the spells but the words died on her lips. Between what. Neil was thinking in terms of physical locations, not the spells themselves.

 

“That isn’t so stupid a question afterall,” Calliope declared, her smile flashing bright in the darkness. Without another word she set off down the tunnel, moving deeper into the area that her mind map told her housed Therman’s mansion. She stopped when they came to another opening, this one filled with strange glowing fungus which clung to the walls.

 

“Are we going to have to fight mushrooms or something?” Neil asked uneasily. Calliope didn’t blame him, there was an unnatural smell coming from the cavern that seemed to compliment the sickly light.

 

“We would if we were going in,” Calliope agreed, “so we wont do that.”

 

“We go back then?” Neil asked, glancing over his shoulder in the direction of the ossuary. Calliope shook her head.

“No,” she replied, “I have another idea. Lift me up.” Neil’s confusion was palpable.

“What?” he demanded.

“Lift. Me. Up,” Calliope responded speaking slowly as though to a child or an idiot. Hesitantly Neil crouched down and made a stirrup of his hands. She stepped into it and he lifted her easily, corded muscles bunching. Calliope balanced herself with a hand against the corridor wall and reached up to touch the ceiling with her left hand.

"Try not to admire the view too much," she teased as she ran her fingers over the carved stone ceiling, probing at cracks and small imperfections.

 

“If all the entrances are warded…” she mused, “Then all we need is another entrance.” She held her hand against the tunnel roof for a moment, reaching into a pouch to touch a spell component, then she climbed down.

“Ok… so…” Neil began, glancing up at the ceiling. A thin trickle of dust was drifting down from where Calliope had touched the stone. It began to increase to a flow of sand, like that through an hour glass. The took a step back as the deluge continued to increase, pounds of grey sand pouring downwards in eddying clouds. There was a cracking sound and heavy paving stones fell through the hole the sand was eating in the roof, kicking up shockwaves of sand and dust. Something heavy and wooden fell through and hit the pile with a thunk. It upended with a crack and hit the ground, beginning to leak dark liquid into the sand. Calliope made a gesture with her hand and the flow of sand stopped. Neil sniffed the air.

“Smells like wine,” he commented. Calliope nodded and they both stepped forward. The object was indeed a wine barrel, an expensive vintage judging by the seal. Above them was a three foot square hole, bored into the ceiling as though the stone itself had been nothing but sand. A smell of must and wine came down from above, and she could see heavy timber crossbeams.

“A wine cellar,” she observed, sounding pleased.

 

“If all the doors are warded, all we need is a new door.”