TREASURE CAVE
"Fuck, what a huge door!"
That was the first comment that came out of the bearded mouth of the colossus leading the group; and his 31 companions could only agree, since the metal door that opened on the mountain face was certainly more than 100 feet high.
"Chief, how do we open it?" asked one of the bandits.
Konrad made an irritated grunt, then said: "What a question! The dwarf will take care of it, if he cares about his life."
Two other bandits pushed forward a young man, barefoot and dressed in rags, whose blond hair was uncultivated and filthy like his beard, and whose beautiful blue eyes expressed nothing but sadness and despair; he was not really a dwarf, but he was a little more than five feet tall and tiny, and at that moment his body was macilent after months of malnutrition, and covered with bruises and abrasions due to countless mistreatments.
"Come on, dwarf!" said Konrad, kicking the prisoner, who moaned but remained silent. "Show us what you can do."
Simon nodded without a word, but he was thinking: "Eighty-two days...I've been a prisoner of these bastards for 82 days, I still haven't found a way to free myself, and now that they are about to achieve their goal, I don't have long to live."
The young man had been kidnapped from the small town where he often went to get away from the hectic life of the city, and from his stressful job as an university researcher. How could he ever have foreseen that his knowledge of ancient tombs, and therefore of their mechanisms and traps, would attract the attention of a band of marauders? Konrad and his acolytes were obsessed with the legend of the Palace of the Thousand Treasures and Thousand Dead, which according to tradition was located in the Dark Mountains but no one had ever found, and was protected not only by an impregnable door, but by many deadly traps as well.
Thanks to Simon, the criminals had finally managed to find the entrance to the underground Palace, huge but hidden in a small valley among the arid and unexplored mountains. Now there were two other obstacles to overcome: open the door and deactivate the traps.
Simon could do both.
But he had secretly decided to do only theformer.
"I'm destined to die, anyway." he thought sadly, as he examined the giant knockers. "Better to take these bastards with me; at least this way I will rid the world of their presence.
It only took him an hour to understand how the door mechanism worked, and to open a crack wide enough for a man to pass through. Soon all the bandits, increasingly excited, found themselves inside a huge dark hallway; lighting their flashlights, they saw the entrance to an even darker corridor.
Konrad grabbed Simon by the neck and pushed him in front of him. "Now, little one, be careful to locate the traps and disarm them. Remember that if you make a mistake, you will be the first to die."
"For me it's OK, as long as you all die afterwards." The prisoner would have wanted to answer, but of course he was careful not to.
The group advanced into the corridor, and after some time everyone began to be surprised that they had not yet encountered any traps. Was it possible that the treasure palace was just a legend? Simon was the most nervous, thinking that, in that case, he would die under atrocious torture, and his assassins would get away with it.
But finally the corridor widened, and when the brigands lit more flashlights, an unforgettable spectacle presented itself to their eyes.
In a corner, you could see many gigantic pillows were piled up next to a wooden table, also gigantic, but they were not the ones that attracted the attention of the bandits. The immense room was full of mountains of gold coins, pearls and other precious gems, forming piles several meters high. In the middle of the room, you could see a group of statues: they represented life-size men, in strange and twisted poses, but they were not made of stone or marble, but of precious stones of all kinds.
The bandits started screaming with joy, jumping here and there like crazy, and many of them ran to the mountains of diamonds to check if they were authentic.
Konrad giggled, looking at Simon. "Damn, midget, I have to admit that taking care of you all this time has served a purpose."
The prisoner growled with rage. If only he had found a way to eliminate all those monsters....
A blinding light interrupted his thoughts, while the others were paralyzed by surprise.
A moment later, Simon noticed that the light came from myriads of lamps and chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, which had suddenly turned on.
"What's going on?" cried many guys.
"This place is not uninhabited!" exclaimed Simon, speaking more to himself than to the shocked bandits.
At that very moment, the door through which they had entered closed with a deafening thud.
As the men looked around, frightened, A reddish smoke filtered from one of the gigantic doors; it soon formed a cloud that took the form of a column 100 feet high.
Then the smoke dissolved, showing a human being.
A very big human being.
The giant was 80 feet tall, dressed in wide black pants, tied with a multicolored sash, and a red jacket with wide flaps, covered with complicated golden embroidery, and long, wide sleeves, from which protruded two hands with long fingers ending in sharp claws, negligently open at the front, so that a hairy muscular chest and a pair of swollen pecs were clearly visible. The feet were covered only by gray socks, inside of which ten toes moved as if they wanted to run away and walk around on their own.
His skin was purple and the pupils of his eyes, now coldly staring down at the newcomers, shone a golden-red light like that of sunset while, in a bizarre contrast, the long hair that fell on the monster's back and shoulders until reaching his belt, barely covering a pair of large pointed ears, glittered in a pearly white color with blue, pale green and pink reflections. The giant's face looked like that of a man just over twenty years old, decidedly handsome with features that were as virile as they were graceful, but when the titan grinned down to his unwilling guests, his meaty lips parted to show 32 huge fangs, and a long serpentine tongue came out, alongside a hissing chuckle, that increased the terror of the wretches at his feet.
As if that wasn't terryfying enough, a pair of immense black bat wings spread wide from the behemot's shoulders, and from the back of his pants protruded 7 scorpion-like tails: they were all differently coloured, but each of them ended in a sting dripping venom.
"WELCOME TO KRAIGOR'S DEN, LITTLE MORSELS." A deep voice thundered, while the monster bent down a bit to inspect his preys closer.