“I’ve got the key from this room,” Edge said as he walked through the door. “It was hanging at my level. Must be why you people didn’t see it.”
The floor of this cavern was smooth on the other side of the wooden door, although the walls remained jagged stone. Twenty feet ahead, the floor was broken into 5'x5' stone tiles, laid 8 across and 12 lengthwise. Each tile had a letter of the alphabet on it. Over the floor was a huge sheet of fire, leading all the way to the ceiling, blocking visibility or safe passage to the other side of the room.
“I remember this one, somewhat,” the floating skull said. “You have to cross the tiles in a certain order. Oh, to be alive again, when peril meant something…”
Myramus said “Well, undead, if it will pleases you, I will destroy you. How’s that?”
“Quiet,” Dartan said. “You’ll do nothing of the sort. I grew up with her.”
“If it IS her, Dartan. It’s just a skull. We don’t know.”
“We can resurrect her if it is.”
The skull said “Don’t waste any resurrections on me, friend. You’ll need them to survive the Gauntlet. Now, what are you planning to do about this trap?”
“This.” Dartan was tired of puzzles. He’d never liked them. He placed his weight on one tile and grunted as shadowy hands reached up from the floor and grabbed him. A tiny piece of his life’s essence was taken, and he leaped back. The shadows that rose were quickly destroyed, and the puzzle was rethought. In fact, the puzzle was bypassed completely. Myramus’ holy sword Starfire created a tunnel through the stone wall. They went entirely around the puzzle, and left it behind them, collecting a new key on their way out.
They passed much of the dungeon this way, leaving behind them the staircase with its fire traps and the locked room at its top. They found themselves at the entrance to the room with the mirror. This is it, Snooky said. The end of the original Gauntlet.
This thirty by forty foot room beyond sported a ceiling height of twenty-five feet and was lit by golden-hued firebrands on the walls Four columns stretched from floor to ceiling in the room. The entire chamber had been carved from stone and painstakingly smoothed and polished, giving the room the appearance of a fancy hall in a lord’s manor rather than part of an underground dungeon network. Across the room was a large mirror, flanked by what appeared to be four skeletons in plate armor, each grasping a sword. There seemed to be letters carved into the wall above the mirror, but at this distance the Knights couldn’t make them out.
“There’s a portcullis here,” Broldek observed. He pointed at the twin grooves on the sides of the doorway, and the barely visible seams in the ceiling that marked the trap for what it was. “Shall we block it?”
“Nay,” Edge said. “I’d like to walk right into this trap, honestly. I could use a good standing fight. I hate puzzles.”
Kizzlorn scowled. “Edge, this is no time to be cavalier. We can’t take any chances tonight.”
He looked ashamed. “Yes, Mistress Kizzlorn. You’re right, of course.”
“Light in the face of darkness is a good thing, save at the cost of wisdom,” Menerous sighed. “Snooky, what was the solution to this puzzle?”
Above the mirror was spelled the legend TIRIANISPORITIUS. The skeletons didn’t have eye sockets, and the clue there was that if you were to drop each instance of the letter I, you would have TRANSPORT US above the doorway. Saying that aloud would open the doorway into the next room, where the final opponent- the coin dragon- lay.
“These skeletal guards don’t have eyes,” Dartan observed. “They look just like the old ones that I helped destroy. They were constructs, by the way, so spare the undead-slaying holy claptrap just yet.” He stepped into the room.
That’s odd, Snooky observed of the inanimate skeletal statues in the room. The original constructs didn’t have those curious paintings on their breastplates… Two had well-painted flowers on their chests, one had a cooking pot, and one had an eye.
“Tirianisporitius, this mirror reads as well. Huh. All right, then: Transport us,” Dartan said, and the portcullis crashed down behind him, and the skeletons came to life, raising their longswords. Dartan drew his own sword and readied to fight as his companions behind him struggled to life the portcullis. The skeletons rushed in and Dartan ducked one’s blow easily, spun, and brought his sword up through its arm, severing it. He parried another incoming slash, then kicked it in the kneecap, shattering it. The creature did not relent in its attack, but Dartan was in his element. He bashed a third skeleton in the nasal bone with the butt of his sword. The fourth swung and connected, driving his sword deeply into Dartan’s upper thigh. The Godless grunted the pain off and kept fighting.
“Out of my way,” Broldek said as he muscled up to the portcullis. He kneeled and grasped the latticework, then lifted. His enormous back crawled with flexing sinew as he hefted the heavy iron grate to chest level. The others ducked beneath and ran into the room to aid Dartan. “Hurry,” Broldek wheezed. “I don’t know how… much longer… I can hold… it… just kidding.” He laughed and lifted the portcullis to the ceiling with one hand, placing his other on his belly as he chuckled at the sour look on Edge’s face.
The floating skull giggled with him. “That was funny. Oh, it’s been so long since I’ve had reason to laugh!”
“Pelor cast thee DOWN, SHADOW-DEMON!” Myramus cried dramatically as he swept his sword, Starfire, through a skeleton. It may not have been a genuine undead creature, but the hound archon seemed satisfied enough just slaying something that LOOKED skeletal. The thing was consumed in a brightly burning rash of white light. Nothing remained.
The three other skeletons were destroyed quickly and fell to the ground. Nothing changed in the room- the portcullis remained closed (though Broldek could easily lift it again) and the mirror didn’t ripple with the same magic it had twenty years ago for the Knights of the Silver Quill. “I said the words,” Dartan muttered.
You said the wrong words, I’m guessing, Snooky replied. There was a new clue. The skeletons each have a new painting on their chests. An eye, two flowers, and… He cast his yellow eyes about the floor from Kizzlorn’s shoulder. The fourth skeleton was destroyed by Myramus. I don’t recall what its painting was. I only saw it briefly.
Myrmamus held his head up indignantly. “I cannot be blamed if the Shining One’s gifts work so well that we are left shorthanded for clue-bearing bodily remains.”
Menerous grinned. “Ooh, that almost rhymed, brother!”
“Ha ha!” The Maximus twins bumped their fists together.
Edge rolled his eyes. “Ugh.” He wandered to the mirror and looked into it, if only to distract himself from the self-absorbed and entirely dull humor of Myramus and Menerous Maximus. In the mirror was reflected a room exactly like the one they stood in, and he saw his and the others’ reflections milling about in the room. One thing, however, was different. Edge looked behind himself to see if what he spied in the mirror was true in this room as well, and it was not. “Hey, there’s something in the mirror that’s not in this room.”
Snooky jumped down from Kizzlorn’s shoulder and walked towards him curiously. In the original Gauntlet, a vast treasure was shown in the mirror’s reflection. Only by passing the mirror’s challenge could you reach it. What’s in the mirror?
“Some old man.” He pointed, and Snooky looked and saw his master, Gorgoldand, dressed in rags and slumped against the far wall in chains.
All over Greyhawk, the sun had set, and the stars were blotted out by immense thunderheads that spanned miles and miles, like great black wings. The air felt charged and the wind didn’t move. All over the continent, heroes were readied with armor and wand and sword for what the prophets said would arise at the midnight hour.
They all knew there wasn’t much longer to go.
NEXT: Finale
I think the time has come for an honest speculation on the outcome of the adventure...boiling down to who survives and who doesn't 
