The stairs seemed designed to make you regret curiosity.
Each slab was smooth from a thousand feet that had gone before. The light from Ben's torch skated across hand-polished stone as he descended, and the air below tasted like old things: clay dust, cold metal, the faint tang of something long unused. He kept his feet light, as if the step he took down might be the one that ruined everything.
At the bottom, the tunnel pinched. He had to turn sideways to pass. The passage smelled of iron and silence. At the far end, a hulking iron door waited like a dare.
Ben checked his pouch one last time — two stone axes (one strapped to his belt, one stuffed under a roll of vine), a wad of dry sticks, flint, and the banana-peel map folded so many times it had almost become a paper talisman. He scraped a thumb across a flint, feeling the familiar spark in his fingertips. That little scream of confidence helped.
He put his hand on the heavy handle and pushed.
The door swung open with a single, bone-deep creak and revealed a room built to be noticed.
The chamber was a bowl of stone, its walls curving up into darkness. Faint glyphs glowed inlaid like veins under the rock, giving the place a pale, malevolent twilight. At the center of the arena stood the thing that had no business existing anywhere near survival manuals.
Nine feet of soldier. Clay armored like plate, shoulders broad enough to block a doorway, and two swords in its hands so long Ben's stomach did a small digestive flip. It didn't breathe. It didn't blink. It just stood, huge and still, as if it had been waiting a very long time for someone foolish enough to open the iron door.
Words shimmered and settled in the air above the guardian's helmet:
[Clay Guardian of the Tablet]
Ben blinked. "Tablet?" he muttered. "You got me curious."
He took one cautious step forward to get a look at the sword edges. Nothing dramatic — just a single footfall, the scrape of his boot on stone.
Thud.
The guardian's foot moved — one slow, heavy step closer.
Ben froze. The world narrowed to an ugly, bright line of logic blinking in his head: Every action he took made the guardian take a step. Every throw, every swing, every single motion would chip away the distance between them. And when the clay blades could reach — when the space was three meters or less — it could swing and end him in a heartbeat.
"Okay," he said out loud, because talking at your future death helped your brain feel less alone. "So this is a math problem. A very angry, murderous math problem."
He swallowed and did what any marginally competent scavenger would do: he counted.
The chamber felt—by sound and sight—like twelve, maybe thirteen paces across. The guardian's stride was long. Each of its steps would cover almost a meter. Ben measured the flat stones underfoot and worked the numbers in his head: twelve meters between him and the guardian; three meters the strike zone. That left roughly nine meters of "action budget." Nine moves he could spend before the swords could reach him.
Nine actions. Then the sword range.
He exhaled. That was terrifying and oddly precise. He liked precise.
"Fine," he said. "Nine moves. Play nice."
Ben lowered his shoulder into a plank of resolve and started working the room.
He didn't run around. He couldn't waste motion on theatrics. He needed a plan: to harm the guardian without spending so many of his precious actions that it would end up swinging from arm's length while he still had gas in his lungs.
He scanned the arena and spotted a line of regular floor tiles forming a faint seam halfway between him and the guardian. Near the seam, the stone had been piled with thin bundles of old, tinder-dry sticks—maybe a maintenance cache left by whatever cult had made the place. An idea hooked in his brain.
First move: gather. He bent, one motion to sweep three handfuls of sticks into his arms. That was one action. The floor answered with a thud as the guardian closed a step.
Second: more sticks. He snatched another clump and dropped them where he wanted a strip of flame to be. Two actions down; the guardian had taken two steps.
He kept his breathing small and economical. Each movement was a purchase, a coin from a very small purse.
By the time he laid the last of the bundles, he'd used five actions. The guardian had closed five heavy strides; its shadow had eaten up half the distance between them. Ben pressed his back to the nearest wall and counted again. Four moves left until three meters.
He couldn't just stand there and hope the guardian burst into clay-sweats. He needed that line of flame to be ignited at the precise moment the guardian took the step that would put its feet into it. But lighting the fire was itself an action — an expense — and would immediately buy the guardian one more step. Timing had to be exact.
Ben crouched, one shoulder pressed to the stone. He struck the flint once — a test spark — and felt the guardian tick forward, thud. He'd wasted an action; the budget shrank. Eight actions down now.
He ground his teeth and caught himself. No dramatics. This was a business transaction with death.
He plucked up the final bundle and, in a motion practiced from igniting a dozen campfires, struck the flint hard and pushed the glowing ember into the center of the sticks. Fire caught. The little blaze licked up slow and eager.
Thud.
The guardian moved. One more step. Distance calc: three steps to go before its swords could reach.
Ben's pulse was a jackhammer in his ears, but his hands were steady. He didn't run. He didn't shout. He did the single most boring, precise thing he could think of: he took another stick — a single, skinny splinter — and dropped it down closer to the guardian, a decoy for its intake knee. That was one more action.
Thud.
One step. Two left.
He could feel the heat now from the strip he'd lit. The blaze wasn't enormous — just a gutter of orange and smoke across the floor — but it would sputter and catch when trampled. Clay didn't like being heated suddenly. Ben had seen pots crack under a hot flame. He'd wager a clay soldier would dislike being softened at a joint.
He had to make the guardian step into fire. But he could not let it close into sword range — not yet. He needed to damage the arms or the swords first, preferably before it could swing. It was about as delicate as trying to disarm someone whose hands were already a half-second from throttling you.
Ben made a decision. He would spend the remaining actions forcing the guardian to close into the burning seam — but he would do it one deliberate move at a time and take advantage of every resulting moment as it stepped across heated stone.
He grabbed a handful of loose gravel from the chamber floor and, with economy, flung a small cloud of it at the guardian's feet. Pebbles pinged across its shin.
Thud.
Another step.
The guardian's movement was predictable in one maddening way: it only moved when he moved. It wasn't hunting in its own rhythm; it crawled forward on his actions like an answer key that only updated when you turned the page. That made it helpless to its own momentum and made Ben both terrified and strangely delighted.
Two steps away from the three-meter line now. He had three actions left.
Ben lined up the last of his sticks into a tighter band in the exact tile he wanted the guardian's front foot to land on. A single miscount and the clay blade would be within reach, like lightning. He breathed, slow and practiced, counting in his head: one—two—three. He'd need to time lighting so the guardian's last permitted step would be the step that put at least one arm into flame.
He struck the flint then — once, twice. The ember flared into life. He thrust the torch into the prepared band. The fire sprang up in a bright hiss, painting the Guardian's gray stature with orange.
Thud.
The guardian took its penultimate step.
Ben almost felt guilty for the chesspiece he was toying with. He shoved one more stone forward — a small, meaningless little kick of pebbles. That, in his ledger, was action number nine.
Thud.
The guardian's front foot fell into the smear of flame.
For a half-beat, it only stood there, the orange licking around its clay toes. Then, something gave.
The clay around its knee bulged and steamed. A small crack spidered up the shin like the beginning of an old map. The guardian's arm trembled minutely as heat bit toward its elbow. The blade in its fist shuddered with the shock of being warmed so fast.
Ben didn't wait for the clay to cool. He used the moment, surgical, efficient: one axe swing aimed at the right forearm where the crack had already begun. That was an action — and the guardian answered with a step, but this time the movement was unsteady, weighted as if it were walking on a limb it didn't trust. Clay dust flew; another line cleaved across the arm.
Thud.
It came again, closer. Closer than the three-meter line. If it wanted to, it could now swing. But the sword still hung in one hand, and its arm was smoking and fractured.
Ben almost grinned, which was a terrible idea in any fight but somehow felt appropriate. He shifted his weight, not to make another big move but to bait a predictable response. The guardian advanced. Its feet left small chips in the arena floor as it moved, each crack a small victory.
Now he had to be clinical and greedy both: he needed to break the arms entirely without giving it the chance to bring them down. So he made the next action count.
He ducked into a slide, low and fast, and rammed the haft of his spare axe into the underside of its elbow joint. The impact reverberated up his arms. Clay dust filled his nose. The guardian lurched, and for a second the sword drooped at an odd angle, clay crumbling like stale bread.
Thud.
It staggered forward, the motion awkward, the sword nearly falling free.
Ben couldn't waste words. He slammed his main axe into the joint where shoulder met arm, again and again. The guardian's right sword broke with a dull, dumb crack, its blade splintering in jagged shards and clattering across the floor. Clay pieces scattered like orange hail.
The guardian now had one remaining sword, and its right arm hung in ruin. It took a step, then another, its motion more of a tilt than a stride.
Ben's body buzzed with adrenaline and a ridiculous sort of satisfaction. He had engineered the whole thing: set the danger, coaxed the giant into the fire, and smashed at the damage. He was exhausted, but he still had breathing room. The left blade, however, was still whole and could swing if he wasn't careful.
He kept his next moves minimal and meaningful. He let the guardian take a step for the action of him dropping a stone — three paces between them now. One more action and the sword could reach. He couldn't afford a wild swing. He had to finish the arm without allowing excessive motion from himself.
Ben struck the flint, not to light anything this time, but to make a spark that tethered his attention. A fire for the sake of the fight had done its job; now he needed blunt force. He lunged and drove both axes into the left arm like a man hammering stakes. The clay shuddered; the arm buckled under the assault and then gave, shards raining to the ground. The sword sliced free and skittered across the floor, its clay edge dulling in the impact.
The guardian stood unarmed. It was big, still, and very heavy — but its weapons were gone. It tried to take another step, but its hips shifted incorrectly, balance thrown. Cracks fanned out from its knees, and the rhythm of its advance slowed, janky and stuttering, as if it were a puppet whose strings had been severed in too many places.
Ben didn't wait for doubts to form. He attacked the legs — swings and kicks that sounded like breaking pottery. Each blow took more out of the creature: a thigh chip, a knee cleft, a hollowing sound that felt like it should have been the end.
At last, with one final, driving strike aimed at the center of its clay chest, the structure gave. A fissure widened, and the guardian's form collapsed inward like a pot dropped from a ledge. It sprawled in a heap of clay slabs and armor-like fragments, a cloud of dust puffing up around the ruin.
Ben let out the breath he'd been holding for half an age and sat down on the rim of a broken column. His limbs trembled, raw and alive. He tasted metal on his tongue and dust in his mouth. The chamber echoed with the settling noise of debris.
For a while, nothing happened. Then the far northern wall that the guardian had been guarding shuddered.
With a grinding rumble, a slab loosened and slid inward. Stone crumbled. Dust poured down like rain. The gap widened and revealed a narrow passage he hadn't seen from the doorway — a dark throat leading away, curling down and away into the heart of the mountain.
Ben got to his feet slowly, rubbing his arms and flexing his fingers until the pain eased into a familiar ache.
He picked up a shard of clay from the fallen guardian — a jagged, warm piece that had retained the faint impression of a thumb where some long-dead maker had shaped it. He considered taking it for tools or talismanry; in the end, he tucked it into his belt pocket with a small, private smile. It might come in handy, or it might be the ugliest souvenir in the history of survival.
"Tablet," he said to the slab that had slid open. "Alright, tablet. Show me what you were hiding. If you're worth all that, I'll file you under 'very important stuff.' If not, well — I'll probably still file you under 'bedtime story.'"
He took one last, measured look back at the fallen clay and the scorch line he'd made with the band of fire. The math problem had cost him — it had cost him breath and blood and more care than he'd ever paid a single enemy. But the rules in the room had become his rules as soon as he read them. He'd paid for each step with his actions, and the account had been balanced by grit.
Then he stepped through the newly opened gap, torch held high, the echo of his boots swallowed by new, unexplored stone.
Behind him, the heavy iron door settled shut. The dust still fell. The ruins were quiet, except for a faint, satisfied clicking — like a ward snapping into a new position — and somewhere deeper, something else had awakened because a path had been cleared.
Ben straightened his shoulders, hefted his axe, and smiled that ridiculous grin that came on after surviving something that very nearly didn't let him. He had more steps to take. The tablet — whatever it was — waited.
One step at a time.