David Sakmyster - The Pharos Objective

A spark in the darkness.

He cursed and leapt back two steps and curled into a ball, hugging his knees on top of the symbol for Lead.

Calcination.

A rush of heat, a burst of searing hot light. “Lydia!”

And the room became an inferno.

It was as if he knelt in a protective container. The entire chamber swirled in a fuming cyclone of volcanic fire, gases igniting and flames roaring all around. But Caleb was safe, barely uncomfortable from the heat. And then he felt it: all around the block he was crouched on, a rush of fresh air propelled upward, a maelstrom of wind creating a barrier. The stone block had lowered and compressed, and the gaps surrounding it expelled a rush of fierce, steam-laden air.

And as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The whoosh of flames subsided and Caleb stood, unscathed. He had only a moment to take stock of the smoking room and realize that even if Lydia had somehow survived the blast, neither of them would make it past the next trap.

The cords were gone, incinerated.

Coughing from the noxious fumes and the choking heat, he spun the light around, desperately looking for some sign that Lydia might have survived, terrified he’d see a smoking corpse.

Then he heard the door grating again, and now it started to open as if pushed from the other side by a pair of monstrous Titans. He took one last look around the room, saw the melted flashlight against the edge of the pit, smoke and embers rising from its depths.

Then he turned and fled, racing to the ascending stairs and bounding between Thoth and his mistress, just as the great door burst open and the ravenous flood roared in.

Three steps at a time he climbed, never looking back. The water chased after him like a rabid jackal, snapping at his legs. He splashed up the next flight of stairs, dragging his feet through the rising water, and then lunged and collapsed on the cool, dry steps above.

He screamed and slammed his fists against the unyielding granite.

He aimed the flashlight back down. The waters were receding. He followed them back down, step by step. He walked between Thoth and Seshat, trading a wounded glare for their scolding expressions. His feet splashed on the limestone blocks as he played the light around the room.

He waited, poised to flee back up the stairs at the slightest hint of a new trap. He watched and counted the seconds, counted the beats of his devastated heart, urging it to calm.

Nothing else happened. The door remained open, a yawning cavern of blackness, defying even his powerful flashlight beam. All his other supplies had either been reduced to ashes or swept away in the flood. He was left alone with nothing but his mind, as clear as it had become.

He waited. And then he thought, I’m not on the next block, not putting weight on the Iron stone.

Suddenly, the door closed with a quick, efficient snapping back into place. On the seal, the wheels all spun back to their original positions as if nothing had happened.

Caleb switched off his light. Alone, he hung his head and embraced the silent darkness.

Acceptance did not set in for another week.

A week in which Caleb had divided his time above and below the harbor. He’d read the papers every day, fearing the worst. After the first day he had rented a boat and cruised around the peninsula, looking for anything that had washed up. As always, Fort Qaitbey had brooded staunchly, baking in the sun as a few tourists lingered about beyond the outer walls. He’d resisted venturing again below, but the chamber beckoned, whispering for him to come back, to dwell there forever. To ease the loneliness of those ancient halls.

The guards had replaced the padlock, and without Lydia’s lock-picking skills, he’d had to break it to get back in. Knowing he was embarking on a hopeless effort, he couldn’t help but feel like Sisyphus rolling his boulder to the top of a great hill only to have the gods kick it back down. Even so, he’d smuggled in a small generator and a half-dozen hurricane lamps and combed every inch of the chamber, in vain.

Under another moonless night’s sky, with Jupiter, Saturn and Mars aligned fittingly in a row along the horizon, Caleb crept back inside. Since he had found a mechanism for opening the fortress’s secret door from the inside, he closed it behind him, so he knew he wouldn’t be disturbed. Carrying enough food and water for a week, he descended into the vault. He slept in a roll with a jacket as his pillow. He brought a handful of texts on alchemy rich with imagery and illustrations to aid his interpretation of the next stage. He worked and slept and ate by candlelight. He existed for one purpose only: to study the wall.

To become worthy.

To become Golden.

Again and again he thought about Lydia’s last words. He wondered how she could have deceived him, and he contemplated the breadth and depth of her conspiracy. Who was that man she had been talking to, the one who had chastised him after Nina’s accident? Had Lydia manipulated him into marrying her from the start? Had she worked to become his publicist, then prod him towards the research, pushing him further and further? Had she hoped to spark his psychic talents in order to get the treasure herself?

“You’re asking the wrong questions,” she’d said. And he knew it, but he couldn’t get his mind around the right way of thinking.

All day long, as tourists ambled overhead, he stared and stared, pondering every sign, every etching on the floor and wall. And time after time he endured the flames and the flood, securing himself with steel chains, enduring the heat and standing against the onslaught of frigid water. He reeled as it ripped passed him, tore his clothes and scraped his flesh. He staggered, but held fast, digging his feet in, lowering his head and yielding to the torrent. He held his breath as the waters devoured him, and just when it seemed his lungs would burst the water level dropped in a rush. In the darkness he felt as if he’d ascended and emerged into the clear night air, reborn.

Calcination and Dissolution. Caleb endured them both, and survived.

And then he stepped forward while the water finished draining. His boots splashed to the next stone, and he stood over the symbol for Iron. He breathed deeply, clearing his head and accepting whatever destiny the Fates had woven for him — until the ground shifted. The gaping doorway ahead hissed and a wind blew forth, sending shivers across his raw flesh.

Fire. Water. Now wind. Air. He stood, poised, expecting some great gust to hurl him into a wall of rusted spikes. He was prepared for the brutal piercing, an ignoble death, an end to his hopeless existence, but he merely teetered and stood his ground. He dried, and the shivering subsided.

As the water evaporated, Caleb felt a residue deposited from the water and the fire caked on his skin, on his hair, eyelids and cheeks, covering the tatters of his shirt and ripped jeans. It had the consistency of baking soda. Something to do with the Separation Phase, Caleb thought. In alchemy, it signified that his old life had been burned away by the masculine energy of fire, then washed clean by the feminine strength of water, leaving him with the combination of the two.

Renewed, but somehow certain that he had not yet passed the full test, he considered taking a step forward onto Copper. The next stage was Coagulation, in which the alchemist was supposed to earn the Lesser Philosophers’ Stone, to be imbued with a greater sense of purpose and clarity, to see the way through to the realms of the Above. To set foot on the path to immortality. To Gold.

Instead, Caleb stepped back onto the glyph for Tin. For an instant, he was certain such a backward motion would trigger another deadly trap.