Sonja, Stephen, and I spent several minutes yelling at the cave-in, hoping against hope that Constantine would hear us and yell back. I’m not sure what we would’ve done if we did hear him, but at least we’d know he was still alive. We even tried digging, but it was soon apparent that characters with our relatively limited strength and magical abilities could not move those boulders. So we returned to the octagonal room and sat down to rest, exhausted from the battle, the poison, and our efforts to dig through the cave-in.

Those few moments of rest allowed me to check out my forearm and see what I’d just killed.

You have multiple rewards. Do you wish to view them now?

Yes, now / No, later

I shook my head at how similar my forearm “interface” was to a typical smartphone. Kudos to the UI skills of whatever magical entities designed this world. I tapped, “Yes, now.”

Congratulations, you have dealt the killing blow to strangler 1! You have earned (75) XP toward your next Rank and (1) Character Stat point to allocate. Do you wish to allocate it now?

Yes, now / No, later

When I tapped “No, later,” another pop-up declared in green glowing text:

Congratulations, you have dealt the killing blow to strangler 3! You have earned (75) XP toward your next Rank and (1) Character Point to allocate. Do you wish to allocate it now?

Yes, now / No, later

I tapped “No, later” again and saw a green “6” next to the Character Stats label. I’d need to allocate those points soon, or I could be in a load of trouble during our next encounter. Also, the Rank label was greener, and I wondered how far I had to go to the next Rank.

But finding Constantine came first.

“Those monsters were called stranglers,” I said. “You guys encounter them before?”

Sonja and Stephen shook their heads wearily.

“Last time we came through these rooms,” Sonja said, “we fought some giant rats.”

“And those giant rats were pretty tough for us,” Stephen said. “The Tomb is ranking up with us.”

“Maybe a strangler that we didn’t see took Constantine,” I suggested. “Maybe one came from the entrance behind us.”

“The tunnel worm blocked the entrance behind us, genius,” Stephen said. “And nothing got past me.”

“Well, you were standing right next to him.”

I probably could’ve sounded less accusatory, but at the moment, I was tired and scared and didn’t give a giant rat’s ass about Stephen’s sensitivity.

“I didn’t see him get taken,” he said slowly, “for the same reason you didn’t notice the trap that cut him off from us. And yes, I heard that stone click when you stepped on it.”

I ignored his jab because I already felt horrible about it. “You didn’t notice him in the battle at all?”

“Hey, pretty boy,” he growled, “I had an evil tongue monster coming at me. I was a bit focused on not dying.”

“You mean the one I killed for you? Your Strength is what, a ‘2’ now?”

“Enough!” Sonja yelled. It was the same feral tone she used in battle, and it got our attention. She stood and towered over us with her bloodied ax in hand. “I will not be as kind as Constantine if you two don’t stow your bullshit and help me find our friend.”

Damn, I lost control over Mace again. I thought I could control his instincts so long as we weren’t in a fight. But I was scared that Constantine—Tom!—might be dead or that we left him behind in the cave-in that I caused. I wasn’t thinking clearly, and Mace was filling in.

“Right,” Stephen muttered and then stood. He rubbed his gaunt, scruffy chin as he raised his torch to the doors on each wall of the octagonal room. Unlike the other rooms with yawning, dark openings, these were solid, wooden doors. “These weren’t here last time. Maybe one of them can get us back to the strangler room.”

He went to a door on the left side of the room and put his ear to it. After a few moments, he tried the handle. It was unlocked, so he opened it slowly to peek inside. I held my breath, half expecting a monster to jump out at him, but he huffed in disappointment and opened the door wider. It looked like a storage closet, for the space inside was only three or four feet deep, empty, and made of the same gray stone as the rest of the room.

Sonja and I stood and tried the doors on the right side. We did the same thing—put our ears to the door before opening—but found more empty closet space than any dungeon should need.

Inspecting the doors, however, gave me a chance to check the dark niches between the doors. They were oval and carved into the corners about four feet off the floor. Each one contained a vase with lids, and each vase was of a different shape. The one to my right looked like an ancient Greek ceramic vase with handles on either side of a slender neck. It was dark red with elaborate silver etchings in three bands around the top, middle, and bottom. The one on my left was made of dark wood that looked like a tall, sealed bowl. It had a red-painted band around the center. Something about it felt familiar to me, but I couldn’t tell if it was Mace’s instincts or my memories. I didn’t recall seeing anything like it before, yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that this item was important.

When I started to reach into the niche to pick up the wooden vase, Stephen yelled from across the room, “Don’t!”

I stopped and turned to him. He answered my questioning look with, “Those are burial urns. Given our luck so far, you might awaken something unpleasantly undead if you picked one up.”

Stupid, I said to myself. How many years had I played RPG games, and here I was about to pick up something from a creepy niche in the wall without having the wizard check it first. That’s where a “1” Intelligence got me.

“Hey,” I said to them, “have you all allocated your Character Stat points?”

“Of course,” Sonja said after shutting another door that led to yet another closet. “You might want to do that right away. The Tomb seems to be keying off the collective strength of the party. We’re higher Rank than you, so we’re seeing higher ranked monsters and challenges.”

I sighed. “But we need to find Constantine. Allocation sounds like something I need to think about, and I can’t think about it when I’m worried about my friend.”

“Sorry, Mace,” Sonja said, “but there’s always going to be something to worry about in this place.”

“I was afraid of this,” Stephen said on the other side of the room. He found a door that led to a corridor. However, the door was directly across from the collapsed passage behind us, so it didn’t seem like it would circle back to the previous room.

“Wrong direction,” Sonja said grimly.

“Yeah, and this door is in the same place as the archway we used last time through.” Stephen waved his torch into the corridor. It kept going straight ahead without a turn or ending in sight. “Same dark hallway, too. I’m guessing it leads to the same damn rooms as before. With a twist, I suppose.”

I looked back at the wooden urn in the niche and still couldn’t shake the feeling that I should know what it was.

“Do, um, these urns seem familiar?”

“What do you mean?” Sonja asked.

“This wooden one,” I said, staring at it. “I feel like I should know what it is, but I can’t remember.”

Stephen came over and gave me a narrow-eyed stare. “That usually means your character is trying to tell you something. Nothing happens randomly in The Tomb.” He looked over the wooden urn and said, “Identify.”

I didn’t see anything change about it, but Stephen’s eyes took on the look of someone zoning out while staring at something a thousand feet away. Then that oily mist that he usually got around his hands came out of his eyes in smoky tendrils that wrapped around the urn. The tendrils caressed the urn for a few seconds and then dissipated.

He blinked and then grinned. “I have an idea.”

He picked up the urn. I flinched, thinking some monstrous spirit would attack him, but nothing happened. He opened the closet door next to its niche, placed the urn on the floor, and shut it.

Then he just stared at the door.

“What are we waiting for?” I asked.

He didn’t say anything or even move.

I was about to ask again, but the room’s temperature seemed to drop thirty degrees in an instant. I could see my breath in the torchlight. I shivered, and my nose suddenly felt frigid.

A soft feminine voice came from behind the closed door.

“Who has awoken me?”