Garrett Astram knew it was a good sign when Notice Trap twigged.

  He quickly realized, however, that the trap wasn’t truly one. He slowly righted the half-fallen lintel, then raised and locked a very old, half-rusted iron rod in place. It probably had been part of the door once, but now it was almost out of the frame… and it was the only thing that could prevent the top of the wall from collapsing over the doorframe.

  If you missed that part, well… you could end up truly trapped. Which made it a trap, even if no one ever built it for that purpose. Garrett mentally congratulated himself, metaphorically patting himself on the back on that excellent companion of his.

  In truth, Garrett had not yet the occasion to practice enough to get it to significant ranks, but that was a foregone conclusion he would. Using it in real circumstances, not some training scenario, worked better. Detecting traps you had set yourself was useless.

  It was not the only Skill Garrett had, but if he had to pick, he would have said it was bound to be the most useful ever. It was the one that would let him do what he knew would be the path of his life. Pilfering places of wealth. All sorts of places. Although it wasn’t his main objective, if he could get a Skill increase, it would be a lot better.

  Right now, he’d just practice it in places where no one would notice his passage. Later… who knew? And besides, it was only his third Skill. In the future lay more opportunities, better things…

  As he slipped under the doorframe, making sure it remained stable, he reflected on that fortune. In Garrett’s world, having a Skill, a real Skill, was what separated the real people from the riff-raff. Sure, his parents never had a Skill; no one among his siblings had one, like 99% of the people around. He still loved them but had stepped into a different category the day the first Skill, Night Sight, had manifested.

  It might not be an extraordinary Skill, but having one instantly lifted him into an exalted state from the rest of his family. Having one Skill meant it was easier to get more. To already have three Skills at 24 promised a life of a legend; he knew it already.

  Well, he assumed. It wasn’t as if he got lessons in Skills and the like. He’d probed the apothecary, who was pretty much the only person he’d known with at least one Skill, but the old man was not very forthcoming with gossip. He did not want to disclose his ability then, so he never explained why he was interested in learning more about Skills.

  He looked. The darkness was almost absolute, but it did not bother him that much anymore. After evolving into Night Vision, he could use the Skill underground, like here, with just a tiny, cheap, rechargeable Lightstone marble tucked in his jacket pocket. Even there, it provided enough light through the flap to let him use his Skill while being all but invisible to any other eyes.

  Otherwise, Garrett would have had to use torches and risk setting fire to maybe spiderwebs or something similar. After he’d set the spike right, he moved on. The barrow was slanting downward, without stairs or anything. Well, the ancient, nearly forgotten builders did have an entire hill to use for their tomb.

  Arriving at the end of the corridor was almost anti-climactic. The last doorframe was in better shape, and the room it led to felt large. He regretfully pulled out the Lightstone, using it to cast out more light, but the Night Vision remained limited in range.

  But when he advanced… oooh, man, it was good. There were a few raised half-pillars with square tops where things might have once stood. He spotted two kneeling figures and almost recoiled before realizing they were two statues of some knight figures, stone swords driven into the ground as they bent their stony heads. The tomb was richly decorated. He knew that, of course, but it was better to get confirmation.

  The end of the room had a seat, empty, but the seat was not what had attracted his gaze. A stone coffin cover was between the two kneeling statues and in front of the seat. Unfortunately, it was broken – roots were snaking from the left side of the barrow room and had pushed into the coffin, breaking it open.

  Inside, there were tattered cloth bits and a few bones. When he looked more carefully, he spotted bite marks on them. With the coffin broken, scavengers had gotten into it and made a feast, it seemed.

  What worried him was the lack of any ornament or anything. Didn’t those people bury their dead with all honors, their full armor and weaponry, and all that pomp?

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Come on. It’s a noble tomb. There should be something.”

  He realized he was muttering aloud and shut up.

  He moved around the coffin, checking the angles. It looked like he would have to move the cover to see everything, but nothing seemed in there, save the faded cloth. Garrett thought the ones who buried that person had been particularly cheap.

  However, closer to the seat, he noticed something more interesting. A blade lay in the middle of the seat, pointing toward its rear. He immediately moved there, but he also immediately realized the foot-long dagger was dull and covered in rust. Hardly something of value.

  Now that he was next to the stone seat, he spotted two additional smaller items that looked better preserved. One was a small pendant, a chain with something that looked like a locket, to the right of the dagger and a small metallic ring on the left side.

  He snagged the pendant, but opening the locket almost broke it. Inside was a pearly stone with faded lettering on it. The text was still readable and looked like a maxim of sorts, two words “Victoria Mortis”.

  At least something’s decent here, he mentally sighed, shoving the pendant in his pocket.

  The ring seemed in better shape. It was a simple metal ring, not yet dulled with age, with some sort of repeating knot curve engraved and a small pearly stone similar to the inset of the locket. Probably part of some set of jewelry, which could only increase its value. He flipped the ring between his fingers and then decided to put it on.

  He thought it was almost a perfect fit as he raised his hand to check.

  There was a loud noise, like some bassoon sound coursing across the barrow, and Garrett straightened. But before he moved, force snapped on him, pushing in from all directions almost painfully.

  For a fraction of a second, he thought the entire barrow was crumbling on him. From all directions. He reflexively tried to protect himself, but the pressure dragged on his arms and every part of him.

  The floor vanished under him, and he fell.

  Before he even had time to scream, the fall stopped, and he bounced.

  Uh?

  He found himself in a horizontal circular tunnel. Maybe fifteen feet wide, completely circular without a floor, and he was floating in the middle of it. He tried to move and found his arms gently rebuffed, pushed back to the center of the cylindrical tunnel. The walls were very smooth, almost polished, but of a substance he’d never seen. Circular incisions delimited segments of the tunnel, and in the distance, it curved to the side.

  He realized the tunnel was lighted and more than called for Night Vision. He could see in the distance until the curve hid the tunnel from his sight, which would be too far for his Skill.

  His head snapped back and forth before he tried to move. His limbs flailed, but he barely shifted from his position at the center. As soon as he stopped moving, he was gently pushed back into position. He redoubled efforts, managing to move maybe two feet closer to the wall, before he had to stop and was shoved back to the middle. He panted, the effort feeling nearly painful.

  It’s a trap, he realized.

  The barrow had to have been trapped, after all. His Notice Trap was certainly way too low to detect such a trap. He was sure it was some sort of advanced magical trap. You heard all sorts of stories about the most Skilled and powerful mages and how they broke reality with Master spells, and even if one-tenth of the stories were true, they could work wonders.

  And it was a prison trap, he suddenly realized. There was no other reason why he’d still be alive and kept in some suspension, in a tunnel that was under the barrow. It was not a barrow, Garrett suspected. That was why it was so bare of anything. It was some sort of decoy, a fake barrow covering the real whatever was there.

  At least it’s a prison, he thought before blanching.

  The “barrow” was old. Very old. Ruined, abandoned. Why would the magical whatever under it be any different? It might have been abandoned for as long. The magical trap might be holding him prisoner for a jailor who had been dead for centuries.

  He panicked, failing randomly. However, this time, he noticed himself drifting. He stopped, then more purposefully swam in the air, and the drifting motion increased. He moved slowly, crossed one circular delimiter, and moved into the next section of the tunnel. He swam more forcefully, slowly accelerating his movement. He remained locked in the center of the circular tunnel, but at least he was moving along, following the curve.

  After a few minutes, he realized the tunnel kept curving in the same direction and wondered briefly how big that trap was until he saw a difference ahead.

  He stopped swimming and left himself move around the curve as the feature grew. Twenty seconds later, he found the regular shape of the tunnel interrupted. There was another circular tunnel intersecting it, or at least the beginning of one, since the other cylinder ended abruptly, maybe three feet from the original tunnel, ending with a circular milky-white stone plug.

  He’d barely taken stock of the crossing before he started drifting out of it, keeping his inertia along the original tunnel. He frantically swam, trying to stop himself, and succeeding before the intersection vanished behind the curve. He slowly drifted back toward the other tunnel, noticing that his speed slowly dropped as he let himself move. He swam slightly to restore movement, but in a few minutes, he drifted back into the tunnel crossing before stopping.

  Unfortunately, trying to swim toward the stone plug failed as badly as trying to swim toward the tunnel’s walls. He tried to center himself as much as possible, but the only thing he managed, as he desperately focused on the remote plug, was the pop-up of a descriptor.

  He was startled, and the pop-up vanished immediately. Focusing deeply on the plug-in managed to bring it back, and he found it quite recognizable. Letting go and focusing on himself brought the version he was now intimately familiar with.

  The only difference, he noted, was that the “other” descriptor didn’t list his name or the number of Skills, just stating “Skills”. But his Skills were there, and he could even pull up the descriptions as he usually did.

  Then he smacked his face with his hand, quite literally in fact. The smacking sound even echoed briefly across the cylindrical tunnel.

  Of course, if you built a magical trap prison, there had to be a way to figure out who exactly was inside. To see how dangerous the trapped person was, how to deal with it. There must be some kind of constructs – or maybe even Skills – that could read someone’s descriptor. That stone plug was it. It was probably the door to the jail, and all that someone had to do was come, check, and then decide on the fate of the prisoner.

  He relaxed slowly and let himself float. He was the prisoner, after all, and absolutely helpless. His fate was out of his hands and into whoever built this pernicious trap. He just hoped that there was some kind of alarm warning of a triggered trap or something and that there was someone listening to it as well.

  At least, there did not seem to be bones floating in the prison. So either he was the only one to trespass, or those people had been extracted from the prison.

  Or… maybe they drifted?

  He started swimming again toward the tunnel curving.