Was it folly to do so? What choice does she have now, rather than to be as careful as she can while also being as quick as possible? Security will surely be beefed up now that she’s been found, and if this isn’t just a bribe, the jewels will also be a danger.
Yousseff reappears by the palm tree, which is the meeting place. He focuses his magical sight upon the direction Rhea runs off to, only to notice the faint glimmer of many tiny motes of magic, disconnected but parts of a greater whole.
“Foolish girl,” he mutters, heading toward the first one. “Resourceful, but foolish.”
Dropping the last jewels, Rhea returns to her stealthy work toward the vault building. Warning the others is a paramount concern, no matter how on alert the guards may or may not be. When she makes it to the building, she zips around the perimeter, keeping her body low but her eyes on the wall. Soon, she sees the small opening that her companions had created. At least they’re in the correct spot at the proper time, right?
Rhea wriggles out of the small vent inside the building, her head popping free first as she scans the large, unlit chamber before her. It’s cavernous, with items of all sorts of artistic, intrinsic, and sentimental value on display. But the echoing chamber reverberates the sounds that she is not alone, and on the other side, the sounds of muttering toil make their way over to her.
“How much longer?” whispers Fateena, the jerboa’s whispers twitching. I want to crack something open.
“Patience, my love,” chuckles Imran. The badger traces his finger over the security system's magical circuitry. “This is delicate work. Soon, you’ll be able to work the mechanical locks with no problem.”
Fateena frowns, turning toward the back of the building from whence they came. “Did you hear something? I’m gonna check it out.”
“Be careful, my soft dove.”
Fateena hops past the different untriggered traps they had left behind, easy enough to avoid without having to undo or disarm them for the time being. She passes so many fun things they could steal. She won’t until she sees the hooded figure emerging from the vent shaft.
“What are you doing?” she hisses to Rhea.
“We might be compromised,” Rhea responds, pulling the end of her cloak free from the vent.
The jerboa furrows her brow, contemplating this information before a loud bang blasts past them from the vault door entrance. She whirls around, crying out to her lover, “Imran!”
No response.
She hops forward, dodging the same traps as before, but when Rhea follows her, one of the tiles presses down.
A trap!
She leaps out of the way as another loud bang shoots through, a projectile ejected from some hidden launcher that she barely dodged. It buries itself in the floor in a smoking hole that she stares at, the implications flooding her mind momentarily.
Fateena arrives next to Imran, who clutches his shoulder. In it is a large, metallic bolt. He winces, breathing heavily.
“Love, are you alright?” Fateena says, kneeling next to him.
“Damn place is rigged with summoning circuits,” Imran says. “Thing came flying in at sonic speed!”
“Summoning…? That wasn’t on Osman’s briefing.”
“Watch out!”
Imran gathers his strength and shoves his lover aside, pressing the bolt deeper into him as he knocks her back.
A moment afterward, a loud pop fills the room as a warbling mirage-like tear appears above them, and falling out of it comes to a large, thick, scaled creature. It slams down onto Imran, knocking him flat against the ground, its massive frog-like maw filled with so many layers of serrated teeth as it roars straight at him.
Rhea glances up from her predicament to see the beast crushing one of her comrades. She pulls out her weapon and rushes across the floor, shots firing off at her at different angles and velocities. She keeps her focus and slips and dodges out of the way of each one. Evading traps is easy, and without the need for silence anymore, getting past them is a breeze.
Fateena screams out the name of her lover, her voice that of anguish, terror, and despair. She releases a collapsible rod from her pack and hops forward, slamming the pole down onto the creature’s head.
The thing snarls and spins around, its mouth open wide and its tongue shooting out. It wraps around her stomach, and for a moment, Fateena turns toward her lover, her eyes filled with tears, only to see Imran pushing himself up, coughing, a fiery determination in his gaze as he prepares a spell in his hand.
She smiles for that moment as the creature's massive muscles pull her forward, her feet lifting off the ground one second and her whole world covered in darkness the next.
Rhea slashes through the air just as Fateena disappears, stumbling on her feet and spinning around at the creature.
With a roar of fury and indignation, Imran unleashes a blast of magical fire that engulfs the monster. Rhea has only a moment to hop back; even so, the edge of her cloak is singed with the flames.
“What are you doing?” She shouts. “Fateena’s in there!”
Imran stumbles to his feet, clutching his shoulder, staring at the thrashing and roaring remains of the beast before him. “No… that’s no frog… I read the runes.”
Rhea turns toward the creature, only to see it burst open with myriad tendrils, spines, and bones—writhing around in its flailing death rattle.