Erika meanwhile stood back and started rummaging through her pockets, she knew one of the bags in her mantle had… aha! A lump of cornmeal, still faintly warm, bitter greens, and a slab of Warg meat all wrapped up together, Sigurn had given it to her when she left camp, courtesy of that merchant guys cooks, Erika forgot his name, but it certainly looked delicious.

Munching on her treat slowly Erika leant back on Kara and watched the searchers at work, a few were still back at the hall trickling in behind the main pack but the rest had joined the two Erika chose and were now sifting through the vast pile of dust.

Their coughing and spluttering echoed through the silent chamber as Erika thought, if the treasure was jotun sized then they probably would have found it by now in the dust filled silo, Erika’s thralls were on their second lap after all, oh sure a human sized treasure chest would be missed by the key was nearly the size of Erika’s arm, that meant the lock must be commensurately huge in size and to host a lock that big the chest or door or whatever must also be jotun sized.

All of this was obviously of course but Erika liked to thoroughly think through problems by taking them apart and examining each of the sections, they knew what they were looking for, a jotun sized lock, but they didn’t know in what, it might be a treasure chest but it might also be a door or just not anything of value at all… maybe it opened a jotun front door or something

Of course Erika couldn’t say that, the treasure madness had gripped the delvers and nothing would stop them now, everyone who had joined the Silvermane expedition was either desperately or ambitious and neither of those types turned back from a chance at unguarded jotun gold.

The last few searchers waded their way out of the dust and slumped on the ground sweat and filth running down their skin as they poured waterskins over their heads.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Nothing here lady vitki.” Said one of the two Erika had dumped the task on, Erika smiled at him and recalled her thralls. Usually she’d say thank you of course, that much was polite after all, but the delver bore the faded tattoos of a freed thrall and a vitki like Erika thanking him would probably make him more scared than anything else, so a smile would do, besides talking to strangers tired Erika out.

So, no treasure in the dirt pile, no treasure in the hall and obviously none in the passageways between, so where could it be? Obviously, Erika knew she might have been wrong about how the jotun had died, maybe he rolled over just before expiring and now they were going in the wrong direction, but this was still the best lead they had to go on and it wasn't a good one, they could be stuck on this for days!

“Oh, it’s over here!”

Erika sighed and turned around to where a scout was being lifted into the air by his cheering colleagues, Erika couldn’t remember his name but he was one of the newer delvers, probably one here for the money more than the glory, he wore a smooth rabbit fur tunic and long canvas trousers paired with a short sword and a long bow.

Erika let the celebration go on for a moment before she loudly cleared her throat just behind the group, a few moments of embarrassment and motion later and the group had formed a respectful huddle a few metres away from her with the blushing scout lowered back to the ground and trying to look serious.

“Ok so good work but where is it?”

“Ah its right here ma’am, I was looking for a secret door and this bit of the wall is hollow so I tried to find the keyhole and… here, right in this dot ma’am.”

Erika looked closer and realised it was in fact a keyhole, hidden in the stylised dot art that covered the walls, one of the dots sunk in at the centre revealing a tiny dull socket, made from a matt textured metal that didn’t shine or glint, only faint texturing in the depths of the socket revealed that it was a keyhole at all, the tiny ridges that formed the lock mechanism just barely visible to the naked eye… in fact Erika doubted a jotun could ever have found it, it was only about the size of a human palm, jotun stood taller than ancient oak trees.

“As small as a pinprick to them.” Erika muttered to herself as she ordered the thrall that carried the key to her side, ignoring the wet squelching of its grotesque locomotion she grabbed the bar of ancient metal and slid it home into the hidden socket.