A droplet of frigid water dripped from the ceiling and landed on Thien’s cheek. The [Goldsmith] winced and fought back a shiver, but didn’t dare stop her careful manipulation of the runic lock she held between her hands. Carefully, she counted how many times she spun each of its three dials, frequently referencing the sheet of paper she’d pasted to the wall before attempting the break. One turn of the left, two counter turns of the middle, four turns of the right. Two counter turns of the left, five turns in the middle, and three turns on the right. That was all followed by seven turns of the left dial, one turn in the middle, and then none on the right.

Thien handled pressure well, but when another droplet of water trickled down from her forehead, she wasn’t sure that it’d come from above. Making a mistake now would be dreadful; this was the ninth lock of twelve, and if she messed up trying to unlock it, the mysterious skill keeping the golden door closed would nullify the last day of work for her and her companions.

Now, by itself, that wouldn’t be such a big deal; Thien and the rest of the workers that’d been “recruited” by Sacre had all watched their efforts go up in a proverbial ball of smoke more than once since starting to try and unlock the door. However, what made this attempt so important was the simple fact that the large counter above the door – which had started at 99 and decreased by one each time they failed – was now down to three. While nobody knew what might happen if it hit zero, Sacre’s men had been quite clear that failure would have “consequences”. Thien didn’t want to be the one responsible for throwing away such a promising attempt.

She was nearly finished with her work, and consulted her sheet once more to make sure she knew what she was doing next. Sucking in a deep breath, she spun the middle dial four times and waited. Time stopped and the moment stretched into an eternity, but then she heard what she’d taken to thinking of as the most beautiful sound in the world: the soft click of the lock opening.

“Thank you, Piper,” Thien said, sagging in relief as she drew her hands away from the freshly opened lock. Luckily, after the fifth, there weren’t any time limits between locks, so Thien and the others could now take as long of a break as they wanted to before attempting the tenth.

Turning around, she looked over at her companions. Like her, they were worn down and filthy; they’d all had better months. Though she’d sufficiently gotten used to the…earthy scent of the underground tunnels to no longer notice the stench, the [Goldsmith] increasingly found herself dreaming about climbing into a hot bath and not coming out for at least a day. The buckets of lukewarm water that Sacre provided as “showers” weren’t particularly comforting.

She ran a hand through her oily hair and frowned. Scratch that. Make it two days. She just had to get out of here first.

After accepting the slew of congratulations from her fellows, Thien walked over to the meager tent that served as their makeshift kitchen. Her stomach rumbled, as if angry that it’d been ignored since breakfast. Tough break, stomach. Grabbing herself a snack, Thien did her best to think about something other than germs as she bit into a biscuit as dry as sand. She chased it down with a sip of weak, cold coffee, and while neither were pleasant, the [Goldsmith] didn’t care.

Three locks remained.

For reasons none of the workers understood, the golden door was basically impervious to physical force. Sacre's goons had failed to batter it down, and even their most powerful skills hadn't managed to force it open. It couldn't be cut, or melted, or frozen, or manipulated in any other way. The only way inside was to open each lock in succession, a delicate task that was impossible for the men who made their livings with their clenched fists.

Thien felt her dread recede as she took a sip of water. Thank Piper, the door’s later locks weren’t necessarily harder to open than the earlier ones had been. Certainly, the tenth – a small pyramid made of movable parts that needed to be transformed into a cube within eighteen moves – was devious and tricky, but the trick to it was simple and the group managed to open it with ease.

The eleventh lock was similar, and Thien made short work of it thanks to her [Rapid Reforge] skill. Before coming down here, she never would have thought that a skill best suited to changing the size of rings, bracelets, and earrings would be useful for making a pick grow and shrink in time with a maniac’s lock, but it was.

However, her dread came roaring back soon after it disappeared because the group was now facing the door’s final challenge: the twelfth lock. They’d reached it four times before, and while they’d gotten closer to finishing it with each attempt, a small voice in the back of Thien’s mind whispered that the reason they kept failing was the door shouldn't ever be opened in the first place.

Some things are better left undisturbed, she thought. That notion had been increasingly common as the days and weeks wore on, bolstered by the fact that she had no idea what Sacre even wanted down here in the first place. There were tunnels beneath Westown, sure, but so what? They’d always been there, remnants of…something. An old market, maybe? Something to do with shipping? Thien couldn’t remember. But still, those aside, what could possibly interest him behind this door?

Her stomach rumbled once more and distracted her from her brooding thoughts. None of her companions seemed particularly eager to attempt the last lock just then, which was a blessing. She wasn’t either.

Instead, she sat down on the mucky floor with everyone else, lounging around and making small talk while they waited for their “protectors” to bring dinner. Years of working in customer service meant that the [Goldsmith] instinctively paid attention and participated in the conversation, but her heart really wasn’t in it. She was tired of this dreadful monotony. With every passing hour, her desire to return to her workshop, to her home, to her life grew stronger and stronger.

Once they’d eaten and it was socially acceptable for her to do so, Thien got up and walked over to the door to get another look at the final lock. It was huge, and depicted a horrifying monster’s face made of silver and a strange crimson metal she didn’t recognize. The beast had four eyes, three horns, and more teeth than the [Goldsmith] could count without focusing hard.

Their previous failures had taught the group that proper manipulation of all the pieces would reveal a keyhole in the creature’s mouth, which would then need to be opened with a freshly forged key. Thien’s fingers tingled at the thought of making one – By Piper she longed for more familiar work! – but that’d come later. For now, she focused her attention on the creature’s face and took to counting how many pieces they needed to manipulate. Like all the other locks, the twelfth was different each time they reached it. Thien begrudgingly felt some respect for the door’s maker as she went from one tooth to another; the skill keeping the door locked was beyond anything she’d ever seen before.

“It’s a heck of a thing, isn’t it?”

The sound of the man’s voice startled the [Goldsmith], and she looked over her shoulder to see Ranald walking toward her. The [Locksmith] was as thin as his tools, with a sharp chin and hard eyes that seemed to pierce the gloom surrounding them. He’d been the first person “recruited” after Sacre’s goons found the door during their exploration of the tunnels underneath Westown, and if the time away from the surface bothered him, he showed no signs of it. Ranald was friendly, serious, and, Thien admitted, quite good looking.

Looking back at the monstrous visage, she nodded. “It’s pretty incredible that it’s still active like this. I thought skills that lingered after the user’s death were just something in history books.”

Ranald chuckled as he walked up to the mask. “Same here. But, maybe the user’s not dead, huh? Maybe they’re still out there, keeping this thing shut. Geez, wouldn’t that be something? Do you think they’ll be mad when we open it?”

“I sure hope not.”

He grinned, and Thien smiled back at him as they both fell quiet. Admittedly, down in the darkness wasn’t exactly the most fertiple place for romance to blossom, but maaaaybe once all this was done and the two of them were back in the world above they could get a drink or something. See where things went. Thien preferred that approach, where nobody had any real expectations, or got hurt if things didn’t work out. It was simple, and for all that the ornate designs of her work said otherwise, Thien liked simple.

“I count fifty three teeth,” she said to break the silence, which had stretched for just a moment too long. “How about you?”

The [Locksmith] looked disappointed for a moment, as if sad that she’d gone back to business so quickly, but he regained his composure and scanned the face for himself. Ranald tapped each tooth gently with his index finger as he went, though he was careful to not accidentally start the puzzle by pressing too hard.

“That’s what I got too. Hey, Kenna, what do you think the formula for this thing is again?”

Kenna was a short woman with dark hair and violet eyes. While she’d declined to tell them what her real class was, she claimed to have a “professional interest” in locks.

Unlike the rest of them, Kenna hadn’t been “recruited” to help unlock the door; Sacre had hired her after the first week or so of failed attempts. That, paired with her almost feline grace was enough for Thien to doubt that the other woman had ever earned an honest fleur in her life.

Still, Kenna was the reason that they gotten as far as the door as they had. The woman had an uncanny knack for seeing through the tangled web of logic and psychosis that governed some of the locks.

Taking out a small notebook, Kenna flipped to the back and read from her notes. “Lock twelve. Multiply the teeth by the horns, divide by the eyes, and then we have to do something to unlock the keyhole. I’m still trying to figure out where we went wrong last time.”

“I think it was the ears,” Ranald said. “We should try pulling both at once instead of one at a time.”

Kenna frowned as she studied the face, then nodded. “Seems reasonable. I’m going to go ahead and count the teeth, then we’ll go ahead and start, okay? Thien, would you mind getting your stuff set up again? We’re going to need a key once we get to the end.”

“Sure.”

Meeting Ranald’s eyes and lingering perhaps a hair longer than was strictly necessary, Thien walked over to her makeshift workbench and drew out another tiny bar of metal from the supply Sacre had given her. It was cheap stuff, but this wasn’t an heirloom piece. It just needed to be functional, and the supplies were perfectly adequate for that.

She added some fuel to Furneace – her [Friendly Forge] – and waited for the small blue creature to perk back up. Once her little familiar’s mouth was good and hot, Thien gave Kenna the go-ahead.

Cracking her knuckles, Kenna walked forward and got to work.

Time slowed to a crawl as Kenna twisted teeth, angled horns, and even closed one of the face’s eyes. No one else – including Sacre’s guards – dared even breathe when she pulled both ears at once before pressing the creature’s tongue. The lock was silent for a few seconds, but eventually there was a low groaning sound as the keyhole appeared in the center of the creature’s mouth.

Another surge of relief. They’d reached the – hopefully – final step.

Thien, Ranald, and one of the other [Locksmiths] stepped forward at Kenna’s request. Their job was to use their skills to try and discern the proper shape for the key. It wasn’t exactly her specialty, but Thien extended her hand toward the lock, closed her eyes, and said, “[Visualize Design].”

[Visualize Design] was a simple skill that Thien used often, mostly for interpreting the whirlwind orders of clients who couldn’t be bothered to explain what they wanted, but were snippy if it wasn’t exactly what they had in mind when they came to pick up their piece and pay. As she focused on the keyhole, the [Goldsmith]’s mind was filled with a hazy gray shape.

With every moment that passed, the key grew clearer. It was long and slender; she was sure of that much. It seemed to be two-sided, but she wasn’t sure if the sides were opposite of each other, or on adjacent faces. The number of teeth was somewhat ambiguous, but Thien figured it was at least six.

When her skill deactivated, she frowned. Frankly, that wasn’t enough to really go on.

Thankfully, Ranald and the other [Locksmith] seemed to be having a better time of it. Their skill – [Understand Lock] – was much better suited to this type of task, and after a brief period of conferring together, they produced a quick sketch of what they thought the key might look like.

Kenna scanned it, clearly using a skill of her own, and nodded. “Looks good to me. Go ahead and get to work, Thien.”

The [Goldsmith] did so, heating her metal inside Furneace and bending it with her tongs. She grunted as the metal resisted her hammer, then put it back to warm further.

She didn’t know how long she worked on the key – time went funny when she was focused on a piece of metal – but eventually she found herself looking down at a small golden object that looked vaguely like a pipe.

Mopping the sweat from her brow, Thien handed the key to Kenna and sat down oddly exhausted.

“I think this will work,” Kenna said as she held the key up to the light to get a better look. “Good stuff.”

The creature’s face seemed even more ominous than it had before as Kenna gingerly inserted the key into its mouth and turned it. Thien’s eyes flickered up to the display above the door. Any second now, her worst fear would come to pass: the three on the display would become two.

Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

Groaning like a man woken from a deep sleep, the door opened ever so slightly, and like everyone else who’d been pressed into service, Thien let out a whoop of joy. Along with Ranald and Kenna, she helped pull the door open, unwilling to believe that she wasn’t somehow dreaming.

They’d gotten through! But what was behind such a well-protected door?

Thien peeked into the darkness. It…looked like…a factory? Maybe? There were odd contraptions here and there, and big glowing bottles on a line of long shelves that went further than she could see. Many of them had horrifying labels - men with wings, women with extra arms, kitrekins and salamanders bathed in flames or made entirely out of rock - and sadly, Sacre’s goons rushed forward and blocked the door before could she step inside to get a better look. One of the men summoned a large rock out of thin air and set it down next to the door so that it couldn’t close again while his comrades shoved the workers away.

“Back it up, back it up. Everything in here now belongs to Mister Sacre,” one of the men said. “He thanks you for your assistance in this matter. Collect your belongings, as we’ll be escorting you back to the surface immediately. Of course, I’m sure you’ll all be smart enough to keep from mentioning anything you saw down here to anyone, right?”

The threat in his words was too obvious to ignore, so they all nodded. De-summoning Furneace, Thien scooped her tools into the single bag she’d been allowed to bring and followed the rest of the workers back towards the surface. Ranald walked beside her, and somehow their hands found each other as they stepped out into the moonlight.

Far away from Westown, on the steps of her boarding house, Sculla looked up at the twin moons. A tiny ember floated through the air, landing in the bowl of her pipe as she took a long, slow draw. Little as it was, the ogre relished the sensation of reclaiming some of her power.

Tipping her ashes out onto the snow beneath her feet, Sculla looked back at the wing of the boarding house in the middle of being renovated. It was still a mess, but she had no doubt that another thirty six rooms would be ready to go in a few more weeks. There wouldn’t be any time to waste after it was done, though. There were other wings, and other buildings that needed to be fixed up too.

A need for more space was rapidly approaching, and the [[#$%( #$*%&]] had to make sure she kept up with it.

Despite the snowflake that landed on her cheek, the air was surprisingly warm.

Sculla knew that it was still far away, but the end of winter – in more ways than one – was on the horizon at last.

Taking another draw from her pipe, the ogre started humming. The hymn had been old long before she was born, but it remained the prettiest song she’d ever heard.

Bonus: Thien’s Character Sheet

Thien Ludan

Primary Class: Goldsmith (Yuliet Rasten), Level 34

Secondary Class: Jeweler (Yuliet Rasten), Level 31

Tertiary Class: Metalworker (Melissa Ludan), Level 28

Additional Class: Aesthetic Afficionado (Self), Level 24

Additional Class: Amateur Lockbreaker (Kenna McClure), Level 1

Might: 40

Wit: 41

Faith: 50

Ambition: 14

Taste: 29

Flair-For-The-Dramatic: 20

Negotiation: 36

Steady Hands: 43

Keen Eye: 29

Kinetic Intelligence: 16

Budgeting: 15

Creativity: 25