To the bottom! The Deepcombers are professional dungeon crawlers in a print-crazed medieval society where reckless teenagers reign supreme above ground and blood thirsty creatures dwell below. Lonastasius is a 17 year old mutant slave who breaks his...
"They can be adjusted." Melcart showed how the dull metal circles could spin and how the two straight bars were sliders that could be shifted to any dial.
"Fire, Air, Fire again and Air again?" Lon counted them off as they appeared, incorrectly, on the panel.
"Just what you'd expect from the Po of Kluth."
"Why bother down here?" Lon asked.
"It's to keep out the uninitiated."
"Keep them out of where?"
"The final passage." Mel said ominously.
Lon grinned. Mel's cocky attitude was refreshing and helped overcome his rising anxiety as he considered the puzzle problem. He tried to remember how Zed had drawn the graphic. This was book-learning for him and not something he'd done with his hands yet or even scrawled on his chalkboard and so it was hard to recall just how the four different symbols had been drawn.
"If we screw this up." Melcart said, "there'll likely be a penalty."
Lon hadn't considered that. He looked overhead to see if a rack of swords hung ready to drop, or if there were holes in the walls... But there were no such clues on display. He looked down to see what crease marks he could find on the floor, but it was all just blank dirty stone. What could be the penalty for failure?
"It's the elements. You said. I agree." Lon was confident he knew how they should be set. He stepped forward and without any more deliberation he raised his free hand to put them right. He set about arranging them as Air, Water, Fire, Stone. "It seems too easy." Lon said just as he was about to turn the last dial.
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"Not so easy." Melcart stopped him. "You have it wrong"
"Hows that?"
"It's Air, Fire, Water, Stone; the four brothers." Melcart said, "Fire is above water. Not underwater."
"Are you sure?" Lon asked. "That was not how Zed drew it".
"Yes, well fire can't live underwater. It's Book of Kluth."
Melcart reversed the center dials until they were aligned Air, Fire, Water, Stone.
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