A giant’s grey hand with skin taught around the bony knuckles grabbed the underside of the heavy gate. At once the weight of the ankh’s levers vanished. Hunter and Tiyana relaxed. They had strained themselves in turning the ankh and lifting the gate. When the weight of the gate vanished, they felt immediate relief. The giant hand lifted the gate all the way to the top of the fifteen-foot tall entrance. The Prices stepped away from the ankh and looked down the hallway into a blazing inferno. The hallway opened up into a vast chasm filled with boiling magma. An inconceivably tall human figure stood silhouetted against the fiery backdrop. In its right hand it held up the gate.

“Dear God.” Hunter sputtered.

Tiyana just stared.

“Ahhhhh, it feels sooooo good to be back in the flesh!” A booming voice announced.

With that, the figure dropped the gate and stepped into the room. Ghaelvord smiled wide as he spread his arms and looked down at the courageous couple.

“Behold mortals the presence of the mighty Dahjaat.” He boomed.

Ghaelvord’s robes had become no more than a loincloth. He stood close to ten feet tall and looked stronger than a rhinoceros. His pale grey skin sat tightly drawn across the sinews of his joints. Large visible veins throbbed with blueish-purple blood across his limbs. Ghaelvord’s face bewitched Hunter and Tiyana more than anything else. The skull had skin drawn tight over a leonine head. The piercing grayish sapphire blue eyes bulged from the sockets. The body’s flesh had an almost white tone. The man seemed made of nothing but muscle and bone with a thin layer of skin covering him.

“Batseko ha sranket!” Ghaelvord boomed. At Ghaelvord’s command, the sound of gears grinding thrummed throughout the room. The shelves with the candles receded back into the wall, creating a flat panel.

“Malmech!” Ghaelvord boomed again as he pounded hard with his fist on the panel. The panel began revolving. The panel turned all the way around to reveal a wall of pegs. A fierce assembly of armor hung on the pegs. A spiked helmet crested the assortment. A mirror-like, platinum-coated breastplate with a raised golden ankh adorning its center hung in the middle of the wall. Below that, the Prices could see reflective platinum cuisses, vambraces, gauntlets, greaves, and spaulders. Intricate gold designs crisscrossed the gleaming metal. Ghaelvord began adorning himself with the imperial vestments.

As he slipped his arms and head through the hauberk he lectured, “This hauberk and all of the armor that you see here are made with a platinum-iridium alloy coved in a patina of palladium and interlaced with gold. This armor has witnessed, firsthand, the real death of innumerable Dahjaat.”

Hunter noticed spikes protruding from the wide shoulderguards, the kneeguards and the elbowguards. When Ghaelvord finished putting on the coat of armor he attached a majestic black cape to the wide shoulderguards. The inside of the cape revealed rich velvet. Finally, Ghaelvord picked up a colossal metal maul with a hammerhead like a sledgehammer. He gripped it near the top and hoisted the weapon over his right shoulder where he dropped it into a scabbard attached to his back. Dark ruthenium covered much of the enormous weapon giving it a Cimmerian look. Then, he strapped jagged falcata short swords around his waist. With his right hand, he reached for an opaque, lapis-lazuli-colored ball. Hunter’s eyes zeroed in on that ball.

Hunter asked himself, “Could it be the Cintamani stone?”

Ghaelvord quickly and unceremoniously dropped the ball into a satchel that wrapped around his chest.

“Transient pedestrians, let us leave this dreadful cave.” With that, Ghaelvord briskly strode with thunderous footsteps out of the room and into the vast treasure repository.

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