The Orb of King Wallace
A flicker of a match briefly lit what was in front of me. Darkness. I touched the match with my torch, and the room became clear. Light tried its best to fight the blackness, but even so this place was dismal enough that a bottom-dwelling torkan wouldn’t cross it on its most daring of days. I was no longer standing in the hallway I had been in seconds before. Instead, I found myself in a small room half full of water and half full of the skeletons of previous victims of this trap. The smell was worse than rotten mildew mixed with ammonia.
I pushed against each of the four walls, hoping to nudge one out of place or perhaps find a crevice on their surfaces for a stable foothold to climb. Neither of these solutions presented themselves, but what did happen was far worse than the twenty-foot drop I had just experienced. The walls started to move in towards me. I forced myself to replace panic with confidence. Panic gets you killed. I waited.
The walls moved slowly. At first only a few centimetres a second, but once the old cogs had rid themselves of decades’ worth of dust, the walls’ speed increased to a few inches per second and then even faster. The ten-foot-square room quickly shrank to nine, then eight, seven, six… yet I waited. My leg bounced on the spot, asking for action. I sprang, jumping into the air, stretching my arms and legs out as I went, latching onto two opposite walls.
With the torch clenched between my teeth, I scurried up the wall, carefully moving both legs up in unison, quickly followed by my arms. The fire of the torch was too close to my face for comfort and attempted to singe my eyebrows as it licked my neck with its burning caress. I reached the top of the chamber and pulled myself up onto the safe floor above at the exact moment the walls slammed against each other below, crushing the previous victims’ bones all over again.
I lay there thinking about the two near-death experiences I had already faced in my quest to claim the most prized possession of King Wallace’s tomb, the Orb. Everything – anything – would be worth it once I got my hands on it.
I stood up and continued walking the hallway. I rubbed the burn on my neck as I cursed at the need to use a primitive light source as a result of the electric-pulse-triggered sensors scattered throughout the tomb. I shouldn’t complain. The punishment of a burn is far less than the certain death guaranteed when failing to abide by the king’s rules.
King Wallace had been a smart man and had taken every precaution to stop those unworthy from stealing his life’s work. Thieves, grave robbers and desperate men had fallen victim to gruesome deaths, but these men were nothing like me. I’d devoted years to planning for the challenge, and I wouldn’t let failure enter my sights.
Like I said, King Wallace was a smart man, but not a selfish man. He would share the Orb with the one who proved their worth by overcoming all the dangers of his tomb and receiving it from his place of eternal dwelling. Everyone must have expected such a precious item, symbolising the power that it does, to be protected by electric fields, laser beams and steel doors. They were wrong and had paid the price. King Wallace was a man of tradition, and I knew his tomb would follow suit, having traps made of string and stone.
The path ahead came to its end against a wall covered in ivy vines. I peeled away the vines, revealing a twelve-digit square panel of turning dials with a lever next to it, indicating its use as an entry key for the code. The gold-plated dials reflected the orange flame of my torch. Each dial was a flat square and had two faces. One face showed an engraved image of a zigzag with a rising sun above it; the other displayed two mountains with the moon sinking behind them.
These symbols were hieroglyphics from the planet Sylia, a planet now long consumed by its growing red star, which would one day turn supernova and paint the night sky with colours to inspire generations of poets.
The symbol of the sun rising above the waves represented the climb of King Wallace to power, and the moon fading behind the mountains represented his fall at the battle of Highlands, but what was the sequence the lock demanded? I stood there thinking, stressfully aware that I was getting no closer to an answer. The lever poking out of the wall mocked me like one schoolboy sticking their tongue out, taunting another.
With nothing else to do, I began to turn the dials, half inspecting them, half playing with them, and fully hoping something would happen. The dials creaked as they moved. I stopped the dials in a random sequence. A good enough try for someone who hasn’t got a clue. I pulled the lever. A dull click echoed from within the wall, then silence.
Suddenly, I was startled by something falling from the ceiling above. I jumped backwards, ready to parry an attack that never arrived. Before me hung a shrivelled head tethered to a thick rope made from human hair. The rope came from a small opening in the ceiling above, with two more openings on either side.
I laughed out loud, feeling embarrassed by my actions of being startled by nothing more than a grotesque dungeon ornament, but the message the skull signified struck me still. I had two more chances to enter the correct sequence.
I unpacked my backpack until I located the manuscript of the speech King Wallace gave on his coronation day. I held the torch close as if doing so would cause the paper to reveal a hidden clue. The paper had browned with age and was on the verge of falling apart; thankfully it’d been carefully kept for a number of centuries by the brothers at the monastery until, that is, it was unashamedly misappropriated by myself.
I read the passage until I came to inspiration: “with every sunset, there comes a sunrise”. That was it! It had to be it. King Wallace had stayed in power because he planned ahead. With his enemies constantly spying on him, he had to be careful with protecting vital information. He’d released so much fake information that it would swamp the truth. This dial followed the same principle. Twelve dials to trick people into thinking the code was long and complicated, but much like life, if looked at with a different perspective, it can be quick and simple.
I flipped the first dial to show the moon and the second dial to show the sunrise and followed this pattern through to the end. I pulled the lever. The clanking of the cogs released the invisible hand tight around my chest. I sighed in relief. The door slid to the side, and I walked through into the room beyond.
The flame of my torch lit what was close to me. There were two parallel lines of still liquid on the floor, stretching from one end of the room and fading away into the blackness ahead. A potent and distinctive smell of oil seeped into my nostrils. I placed a flame onto each line of oil, and the room burst with light. I dropped my torch to the ground.
The room stretched long and wide, opening a space large enough to fit a king’s coffin and all his desired riches. In the centre of the room proudly stood a pyramid holding up King Wallace’s coffin. The remaining room was filled with bars of gold piled in their hundreds, an amount so enormous the room gleamed a golden hue. Multiple one-of-a-kind battle armours rested on their stands, waiting for a war they would never fight. Jewels larger than my skull lay stuck behind glass displays. Silver and bronze coins scattered on every inch of floor space, scraping against each other as I walked over them. It all meant nothing to me. I was here for the Orb.
I started my way towards the coffin. As I grew closer to the pyramid, so grew a deep sense of horror of the situation. King Wallace had total undivided control over the Orb, amalgamating years of research to the one solid goal of living forever, yet he’d still ended up helpless and afraid. What chance had I of using its power?
I stopped at the base of the pyramid, gazing upwards at the long stretch of stairs leading its way to the coffin perched at the highest place in the room. I walked the path one step at a time. Once halfway up, I was high enough to see the room from a vantage point. Now, instead of noticing the expensive treasures, I viewed the room itself, or rather the cave itself, for that was what it was. Undoubtedly a man-made cave reclaimed by nature. Long vines dangled from the rocks above, and algae spanned across the ceiling in spotted patches of dark green.
As I placed my foot onto the next step, it let out a small hiss and sank. Every step of the pyramid simultaneously snapped to a slanted angle in line with the flat surface of the pyramid’s face. With no support, gravity claimed me as its own and dragged me down. I sharply grabbed the rock axe strapped onto my leg and drove it deep into the rock with a hefty blow. The axe had a sturdy hold, stopping my fall. I unstrapped another rock axe and, for the second time, started to ascend the pyramid.
The climb was agony. With no natural fight-or-flight reaction to rely on, I pushed forward with raw motivation. Something my body was running dangerously low of. I pulled myself onto the platform at the top of the pyramid. My arms burned with lactic acid. I would have surely failed if the pyramid were any taller, but the past is to be forgotten, and the future is to be lived. I stepped forward.
The coffin lay before me, longer than twelve feet due to the king’s tall stature. There were markings on a stone plaque dug into the coffin’s lid. It read, “Power comes to those who can take and keep a hold of it”. I ran a hand over the stone lid, my fingers bobbling over the engraving. It was beautiful.
I shoved my crowbar under the lid and wrenched the blasted thing off with all the might I had left. The heavy lid hit the floor with a dense bang, shattering the unlucky tiles it landed on. The body inside had decomposed long ago. In its place lay the skeleton of King Wallace. Its thinness conveyed no hints of the mighty muscles it once wore. The skeleton’s arms were crossed, clenching the Orb in their tight grasp. The Orb’s light was as magnificent as the stories promised. Its blue-white light danced elegant shadows on the surrounding walls.
I respectfully removed the king’s hands and slowly took the item into my right hand. The Orb grew brighter. Its light ominously looking natural and unnatural at the same time. Small clouds whirled around in the Orb’s interior. Something was alive in there. A figure burst forth from the Orb, projected in the same illuminating chilled blue light as the Orb itself. It was King Wallace. He appeared wearing light armour shaped under a long ceremonial gown. I fought my instincts to drop the Orb, but held tight and stayed on guard, ready for anything. The projection proceeded to talk in a loud commanding voice, repeated as it bounced along the cave walls.
The projection of King Wallace said, “I praise you, weary adventurer, for the perils you have overcome to stand before me. You have great promise in displaying some of the finest qualities that I show pride on, yet this may not be enough. Now comes the part you cannot escape, the part where your very soul is judged for all its worth.”
Light and an invisible force emanated from the Orb. The power was intense and coursed through my body before returning to its source. The king spoke. “I see pride and unladened ego. Do you think you are worthy of holding such an artifact?”
The king’s stare was hard to match, but I dared to shy away, knowing that I was worthy. Then, with a graceful nod of his head, he was sucked back into the Orb.
I stood gazing at the power in my hand. My power. Thoughts of future conquests flashed in my mind. I was in awe until reality struck me like a spark of electricity. Well, maybe that was because it was a spark of electricity that struck me. Within an instant, my arm holding the Orb was gone. Flesh floated gaily as ash to the floor. The Orb returned of its own accord to its king’s possession. A primal fear set in and was released as a screaming howl. I had been judged, and I had been deemed unworthy. I fell to the floor. The tomb’s door slammed shut. All light vanished. My screaming continued.
