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Adequate light wasn’t going to be a problem. Intense, yellowish-white immediately revealed a second steel grate Derek had managed to knock out. It lay several inches in front of the opening into the furnace area. Stephi didn’t think the magical lotion would protect her from that.
Reminding herself that she had only as long as she could hold her breath to complete what she needed to do, Stephi maneuvered the bone scroll case to push the circular grate aside. The scroll case was two-thirds her height, and it took nearly fifteen seconds to accomplish the task while confined to the pipe. Thankfully the pipe wasn’t made of iron, or they’d have dressed her in some sort of confining body suit. She imagined moving like an inchworm. Like that would’ve helped things along.
Grate out of the way, she peered inside.
The furnace was probably six feet across and wide, and eight feet high. The opposite side had a hole about eighteen inches in diameter a little over six feet up. Someone was apparently working glass, because a pole with a glowing glob stuck to the end was being withdrawn. She wouldn’t have seen it if the porthole had been in the middle of her side of the furnace. Instead it was offset to the left. Because, in the middle was a squat pillar of flame, intense, like a giant welding torch.
A thin spread of liquid glass lined the floor, nearer the furnace’s opening where drops or beads must have dripped off of the poles stuck in. She saw a circular raised area, an inch high. Resting on the elevated area burned the pillar of flame, an elemental spirit of fire, if Ron was correct. He was rarely wrong. Atop and along the edge of the one inch raised circular area were runes, magical symbols that held the elemental spirit captive within the circle. Above the fiery elemental hovered some sort of clear barrier, also with runes carved into it. It was slanted, like a roof, to keep glass from dripping down onto the magical runes that formed the containment circle.
Whoever created this setup, and captured that fire monster—spirit—was powerful. And was going to be super-duper pissed at whoever messed it up. In Stephi’s mind, the pawnshop owner moved up three rungs, from greedy conceited bastard to greedy, super major conceited bastard-asshole!
And what the hell was she supposed to do?
She had to get the lead and copper to melt across the circle of magical runes. Since she was a fairy, a magical creature, she couldn’t do it directly, like by tossing them on the runes. Glenn or Kirby or anyone else in the party could. But not her. So she had to set up a process by which it happened naturally.
Kirby had carved a hole along the bottom of the bone scroll case and the cap. He stuck a sheet of lead over the case’s hole to plug it. When she turned the cap and aligned the holes, the lead near the fire would melt and release the beads, which would melt and break the circle.
But, with the circle’s elevation, that wouldn’t work.
She was about to go back out and ask Ron for advice, and get a fresh breath of air, when Petie shouted into her head, <Fighting!>
Stephi sent, Okay, then cut him off. Time was running out, and she needed to concentrate.
Once whoever made this oven circle prison for the fire monster showed up, the party was not only over. The party was dead. She’d witnessed what high-rank spell casters could do to low-rank characters. She hated it when Derek called the party a bunch of low-rank peons. But that’s what they were.
Time was also running out another way. Her lungs began insisting that breathing was something she should be doing. Only, she reminded herself, if she wanted to cook her lungs.
Stephi looked around, lamenting that she wasn’t an engineer. She refused to take shop class, and never paid attention when setting up physics labs in high school. She always got the boys to do it for her.
Well, none of those people were there. If she didn’t do something, Glenn, Kirby and everyone outside would die. She’d be stuck, alone, as a fairy. If she didn’t die, too.
She was naked, with nothing but the stupid bone case. Maybe she could fly out and find something in the shop. But there were people, and the glass guardian things.
Then her eyes fell on the round grate. Lying on the floor, it was about an inch tall. It looked heavy, and just touching it would burn her. An image of playing shuffleboard with Grandpa came to mind.
She flew over and shoved the scroll case against the steel grate and pushed. Feet braced, shoulders and wings working, Stephi immediately remembered why she always made her brother shovel snow.
The metal disk scraped across the stone floor easier than Stephi anticipated, especially when it met the liquid glass. For a second, it slowed, but only for a second. Nevertheless, the physical exertion caused her lungs to burn with the need for air.
The case jolted in her arms when the grate ran up against the edge of the elevated circle. Rather than walk through the thin sheet of liquid glass, Stephi flapped her wings and lifted the scroll case. The melted glass wouldn’t burn her feet, but it’d probably harden when it cooled. Then that jerk Derek would call her Maracas Mariposa Cinderella Barbie, or something else stupid.
The fairy put her strength and Kim’s balance into the effort, struggling to keep from exhaling while balancing the cap-end of the scroll case on grate’s rim and crossbars. She aligned the cap’s hole with the circle, carefully placed her left foot on the rim of the cap. Then she held it in place, and slowly twisted the bone case. The intense heat had already caused the scroll case to become brittle.
She mentally thanked Ron for insisting a small portion of the magical lotion be used to, “Reduce the frictional coefficient, should the cap and bone case expand unevenly due to differential exposure to intense heat, or other unforeseen factors.”
She spotted the lead plug, already glistening. Taking an additional second to ensure the case wouldn’t topple once she let go, Stephi fluttered away and turned toward the pipe exit.
Before she flapped her wings twice, white fire engulfed her, then shoved her aside. The lead had already melted and broke the magical barrier. The unexpected force hurled the hapless fairy against the wall. She rebounded from the impact, having the air knocked out of her. Reflexively, Stephi breathed in.
Searing, agonizing pain filled her chest.
She collapsed to the stone floor, lacking the ability to scream.