Jack raised his club, ready for one last, futile strike as the monstrous scorpion closed in on him. Just before the snapping pincers could reach him, a black blur shot across the creature’s back. If he had blinked, he would have missed the panther-woman as she pounced and slashed at one of the scorpion’s protruding eye-stalks.

The creature emitted a high-pitched keening noise and flailed its claws and tail into the air while bucking like a horse. But the panther woman had already leapt free and was dashing towards Trotsky.

She would have been too late, except the giant did not need her help quite as desperately as Jack had. Trotsky now sat on the ground, his bleeding lower legs anchored in place by the monstrous claws, but when that whip-quick tail came down at him, he caught it in one meaty hand. The tail jerked in an attempt to pull away, but the giant’s anger had awoken, and he clamped his other hand down on top of it, squeezing until a visible crack snaked out along the tail’s chitin segment.

While the giant squeezed, the panther-woman bounded up onto the backside of the tail, wrapped her arms around it, and began kicking downwards violently, the claws on her feet tearing great chunks out of the scorpion’s tail.

Jack could see from the way the panther-woman’s bodyweight pinned the tail in place that the scorpion’s tail, like an alligator’s jaw, was capable of slamming down with tremendous force but was not so strong on the return trip. He decided he could use this information, and dashed around the other scorpion’s claws to seize its tail. He jammed his stick under the stinger and used it as a bridle to cling to the hairy appendage. At the moment of his contact, the tail reflexively shot downwards with such force that it almost flipped him over and off, but Jack clung to the beast with the tenacity of a bulldog. Once down, he could feel the tail surging against him, but it lacked the strength to lift his body. The tail remained flattened against the beasts back.

The first of the two giant scorpions lunged in, but Jack whacked the claw out of the way. The tail twitched menacingly above him, a drop of translucent venom flicking from its barbed tip. The giant arthropod attempted to seize him again, this time with both claws, but Jack wedged his stick sideways into the left claw propping it open and making it useless. The scorpion immediately backed up two paces and shook its claw but could not clear the stick.

The Spartan closed in on the distracted arthropod, bringing the heavy stick down on its back. The creature spun violently in place and the Spartan darted around it to rain down more blows, but they bounced ineffectively from the creature’s exoskeleton.

Jack turned to grab another stick and saw that Trotsky wasn’t faring any better. The other scorpion had seized him around one of his colossal thighs and the giant could not wrench himself free. Blood trickled past the claw to dot the arena floor, while the giant lurched backwards and to the side to avoid the lashing, venomous tail and the second, snapping pincer. He was as large as the scorpion and had enough strength in his one free leg to drag the monster with him as he moved, but when he made a single misstep, the second pincer seized his one free leg, and now it held him in line with the deadly tail.

Jack drove in to help the giant, but his way was cut off by the first scorpion as it backed away from the Spartan and slashed forward with its tail. The Spartan, caught by surprise, and the barbed tail slammed into the breastplate. The venom had been blocked, but the sheer strength of the blow sent the Spartan sprawling.

Then the scorpion turned to face Jack, held up its one blocked claw and shook it as if it were making a threatening gesture. Whether the gesture was intended to be intimidating or was simply a reflex, it hardly mattered as Jack watched the stick he had wedged in to incapacitate the pincer. The iron-hard wood bent, then split. With a noise like a thunder-crack, it broke in half and landed in two jagged-ended pieces on the ground.

The scorpion stepped over the pieces as it closed in on Jack. The crowd roared in approval.

This post is part of an ongoing story set in the pulp-era world of Hollow Earth Expedition. If you are new to this series, I suggest starting at the beginning.

The pair of impossibly large scorpions scuttled out through their gate in a confusion of legs and claws. They moved rapidly for creatures of their size, their many limbs flashing dusky yellow beneath the bright Hollow Earth sun. In the spectator seats above, the Nazi soldiers and their chosen slaves cheered on the deadly creatures.

Jack darted across the arena floor, back towards his cage. The motion seemed to catch the attention of the scorpions, prompting both to pivot towards him and then rushed forward. For a brief, panicked second he wondered if he shouldn’t just crawl back into his cage, hold the door shut, and hope that the scorpions filled up their bellies by feasting on the other three unfortunates in the arena with him. But that wasn’t Jack’s style: he would rather become arachnid food than leave someone else to do his fighting for him.

The bars of Jack’s cage had been cut from a wood that felt as hard as iron, but Jack had been wearing away at the thin rope that tied it all together. He had been intending to use this weakness a means to escape, but now he had more pressing needs. With a swift kick to the corner of the cage, he burst the seams of the enclosure and scattered a small pile of deadly-hard sticks before him.

Jack scooped up several and tossed one to the Spartan, who caught it in one hand and whirled it expertly to face the beasts. He tossed a second stick to the giant called Trotsky. Trotsky was not nearly so deft: he watched it coming towards him and watched it bounce off his chest and settle to the sandy floor. At least the giant now had some kind of weapon within reach. Jack looked around for the third combatant, the panther-woman, but he didn’t have time to see where she had gone before he needed to parry the thrust of a claw with his own stick.

The crowd howled in anger from the stands. The games-makers had wanted a slaughter, but Jack had turned it into a fight.

“Arrogant, overconfident imbecile!” Dr. Wurmhausen stalked over to one of the equipment tables and snatched up a little steel box with vacuum tubes and dials running down its side. Two long wires dangled from its front end and a small vial of red liquid percolated on its back.

“Atlantean technology may only be utilized by someone with Atlantean ancestry,” he waved the box at them angrily. “The one and only member of the Thule Society with that heritage allowed me to draw a sample of his blood to allow the Reverse Bio-mimetic Key to operate, and I haven’t even tested it yet. And you tell me that Professor Scrumtumbler—that pompous fool—thinks he has invented something so simple it can be operated by you?”

“Listen, mister Worm-house—”

“That’s Dr. Wurmhausen, you mental midget,” The doctor spat.

“Sorry. Doctor Worm-house,” Reggie pressed on. “Here’s the thing: we don’t need to know whether Scrumtumbler is better than you. Let’s just destroy the camera. Go ahead and have your goons here fill it full of lead. Sure, we’ll spend the rest of our lives wondering who is the better scientist, but the important thing is that your gizmo will be the only one left.”

“Silence!” Wurmhausen slammed his bio-mimetic device down on the table. “Come over here. Immediately. Show me how your device is supposed to work.”

“Are you sure?” Reggie said. “I’m just a hired hand. I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen if that gate opens.”

“You will do as you are told,” Wurmhausen waved his luger dangerously. “And if you fail to open the gate, you will be shot. You will do your best and die knowing that Scrumtumbler’s failure is your doom.”

The color drained from Reggie’s cheeks, but he nodded and rose to re-position the camera. With shaking hands he unscrewed a side-plate and rewired the battery connections to the lighting attachment.

“You might have noticed that this camera has a special bulb attachment that looks like it’s for providing direct lighting. But Scrumtumbler said something about connecting the whoozi-whatsit to the thinger-majinger over here and then running a wire from the battery to this light bulb. The whole secret comes from this industrial-strength light array right here. See this?” He held it up with a flourish, as though he were a magician about to transform it into a pigeon.

Then he clamped his eyes tightly closed and jabbed the wire against the battery terminal. The sudden jolt of power overloaded the bulb, which emitted an intense, blinding flash.

“Arrogant, overconfident imbecile!” Dr. Wurmhausen stalked over to one of the equipment tables and snatched up a little steel box with vacuum tubes and dials running down its side. Two long wires dangled from its front end and a small vial of red liquid percolated on its back.

“Atlantean technology may only be utilized by someone with Atlantean ancestry,” he waved the box at them angrily. “The one and only member of the Thule Society with that heritage allowed me to draw a sample of his blood to allow the Reverse Bio-mimetic Key to operate, and I haven’t even tested it yet. And you tell me that Professor Scrumtumbler—that pompous fool—thinks he has invented something so simple it can be operated by you?”

“Listen, mister Worm-house—”

“That’s Dr. Wurmhausen, you mental midget,” The doctor spat.

“Sorry. Doctor Worm-house,” Reggie pressed on. “Here’s the thing: we don’t need to know whether Scrumtumbler is better than you. Let’s just destroy the camera. Go ahead and have your goons here fill it full of lead. Sure, we’ll spend the rest of our lives wondering who is the better scientist, but the important thing is that your gizmo will be the only one left.”

“Silence!” Wurmhausen slammed his bio-mimetic device down on the table. “Come over here. Immediately. Show me how your device is supposed to work.”

“Are you sure?” Reggie said. “I’m just a hired hand. I don’t even know what’s supposed to happen if that gate opens.”

“You will do as you are told,” Wurmhausen waved his luger dangerously. “And if you fail to open the gate, you will be shot. You will do your best and die knowing that Scrumtumbler’s failure is your doom.”

The color drained from Reggie’s cheeks, but he nodded and rose to re-position the camera. With shaking hands he unscrewed a side-plate and rewired the battery connections to the lighting attachment.

“You might have noticed that this camera has a special bulb attachment that looks like it’s for providing direct lighting. But Scrumtumbler said something about connecting the whoozi-whatsit to the thinger-majinger over here and then running a wire from the battery to this light bulb. The whole secret comes from this industrial-strength light array right here. See this?” He held it up with a flourish, as though he were a magician about to transform it into a pigeon.

Then he clamped his eyes tightly closed and jabbed the wire against the battery terminal. The sudden jolt of power overloaded the bulb, which emitted an intense, blinding flash.

Reggie had told the truth the first time, but it was obviously not an answer that would satisfy Wurmhausen. Blinking the stars out of his vision, his mind scrambled for what to say, but the blow to his head seemed to have knocked all his clever responses right out of him.

“Don’t tell him!” Clem shouted. “Scrumtumbler swore us to secrecy—” the soldier behind him slammed his machinegun butt into Clem’s back, cutting off his words.

Reggie stared in confusion at the engineer. Why had Clem brought up Scrumtumbler? He was trying to tell Reggie something, but the director couldn’t seem to work it out.

Dr. Wurmhausen’s eyes first widened in amazement and then narrowed in rage. “So, that pompous fool Scrumtumbler sent you. He sent you here to steal my portal to the Hollow Earth, didn’t he? Tell me what I want to know!”

Reggie bowed his head so that only Clem and Dr. Scott could see his wink.

“Okay,” Reggie said. “Okay, you win: Scrumtumbler sent us.”

“So, you are here for that insufferable Professor Scrumtumbler,” Dr. Wurmhausen emitted a laugh that was somehow triumphant and furious at the same time. “As I suspected. I suppose you were supposed to take footage of the key and the portal with this motion-picture camera of yours? I suppose you were going to film me using my Reverse Bio-mimetic Key so that Scrumtumbler could attempt to reverse engineer my technology and use it with another gate?”

Reggie gathered from Wurmhausen’s gestures that “the gate” was somehow related to the two Egyptian-looking pillars, but Reggie had no idea how a pair of old columns could be a gate, and he certainly had no idea what a Reverse Bio-mimetic Key was. Still, he was ready to roll with it.

“No, we weren’t sent to film you,” he said. “The truth is, that’s not really a camera.” Reggie gestured with his chin towards his Mitchell 35mm cinema camera, now set up on the floor next to them almost as if it, too, were considered a prisoner.

“This?” Wurmhausen eyed the camera suspiciously. “My guards checked it. It contains no weapons or explosives.”

“Oh, it’s not a weapon. We’re not here to blow up the gate… we’re here to use it.”

Dr. Wurmhausen’s head snapped around, those beady black eyes drilling into Reggie. “Impossible,” he concluded, but his voice lacked the edge of conviction.

“No, really. Scrumtumbler said he didn’t need your reverse-bio-kahoosit. He said he’d stake his reputation that his doohickey would work better than yours on the first try, even in the hands of an idiot like me. That’s what he said.”

The Nazis led them at gunpoint up a broad flight of stairs to a huge room with a vaulting ceiling. It may have originally been designed as a ballroom that had boasted elegant chandeliers and bright banners but now served as a warehouse of twisted mechanical experiments. Hundreds of eviscerated machines and mutilated engines lined metal tables throughout the room, and the distinct scents of grease and smoke pervaded the area. The far end of the room was an elevated platform that probably was once an orchestral stage but now housed two great, grimy pillars that looked as if they had been pulled out of some pharaoh’s tomb.

“So glad you could join me in my laboratory,” from behind one of the pillars stepped the owner of the voice, a shriveled man in a white lab coat. His liver-spotted skin was so pale that it bordered on translucent, but his hair, greased back to reveal a dagger-like widow’s peak, seemed impossibly black, as if he had been dying it with engine oil. Reggie realized with a sickening lurch that this had been the man who had peered down at them from a window while they were attempting to bluff their way inside.

The guards forced them to their knees before the old doctor approached.

Dr. Scott looked up at him and said “Dr. Wurmhausen.”

“So you recognize me,” the older man seemed pleased. “I recognized you, too, Dr. Mortimer Scott, from the moment you attempted your ridiculous ruse to enter our compound. You didn’t really think it would work, did you?”

“Only some of us thought so,” Dr. Scott shot an angry glance at Reggie.

“And you two,” Wurmhausen pointed a bony finger at Reggie and Clem. “Should I thank you for bringing Dr. Scott to me? After all the trouble of sending in my panzer-kampftruppen, I should have simply hired his so-called friends.”

“We only came to find out why you’re trying to kidnap all those scientists,” Reggie said.

Wurmhausen snapped his fingers and one of the guards seized Reggie roughly by the arms. As soon as he was secure, another guard slammed the butt of his submachine gun into his nose. There was a crunching sound, and then a line of blood spilled down over his mouth and dripped from his chin.

“Do you take me for a fool?” Wormhausen drew a luger and pointed it at his head. “Your next sentence will be your last unless you tell me why you have come here.”

This post is part of an ongoing story set in the pulp-era world of Hollow Earth Expedition. If you are new to this series, I suggest starting at the beginning.

Reggie Sparks listened carefully as the others peered through the binoculars at Castle Wewelsburg.

“They have hangars in the field out back,” Kate had observed. “That means they have some kind of air support.”

“There’s soldiers all over those walls,” Clem pointed out. “This place is meant to look like an innocent little palace, but it ain’t.”

“Dr. Wurmhausen runs this operation,” Dr. Scott said. “That makes this the primary research facility of the Thule Society.”

“Relax, everyone,” Reggie told them. “I got a plan.”

Thirty minutes later, he was standing at the front gates of the castle’s outer wall with Clem and Dr. Scott carrying his camera equipment behind him.

“That’s right,” he said, forcing an air of indignity into his voice as he spoke to the obstinate gate guard. “We’re American. So what? We’re an American film crew sent here to make a documentary for your fuehrer. Glory to the Reich, and all that jazz. Your fuehrer loves films, or hadn’t you heard about that?”

“Nein, nein, nein,” the soldier shook his head. As he did, the guardhouse telephone rang, and a second soldier answered it.

While he spoke, Reggie peered past them at the castle. The windows were dark and empty, but inside one of them a figure in a white coat stared down at them through binoculars. Looking at that figure in the window made Reggie’s palms itch, which is what happens when he gets nervous. He had to put it out of his mind to focus his attention on the guards in front of him.

The second guard hung up the phone and whispered something to the first guard, who suddenly smiled at Reggie. With exaggerated slowness, he undid the lock on the gate and swung it outward.

“Hereinkommen,” he said with a grin and an inviting gesture.

Reggie looked smugly back over his shoulder. “See? I told you my plan would work.”

Clem and Dr. Scott exchanged uncertain glances.

They passed through the outer wall, crossed the courtyard, and entered the castle where they found a squad of soldiers, all aiming their submachine guns at their new prisoners.

Reggie, reluctantly, put his hands in the air and his companions followed his example.

“Turns out yer plan stinks,” Clem offered.

“Shut up,” Reggie answered.

She dashed down the narrow hallway to the point where it opened into the mosaic pattern on the floor and walls. Here she slowed, carefully stepping around the pressure plates hidden among the ancient tiles. As she reached the far side, a bullet impacting next to her shoulder made her flinch. The two Nazis were rounding the corner, weapons aimed right at her.

The foot soldier rushed ahead heedlessly. The squad leader yelled and grabbed at him to hold him back, but it was too late: he blundered right down the center of the hall and onto a pressure plate. A cloud of short spears burst from the wall next to him. With a quick series of sickening thuds and a spurt of blood, he was pinned to the far wall, the rifle dropping from his limp hands.

The squad leader took his time, hopping from one safe square to the next. In between each hop, he fired one round at her. She ducked around the corner, out of the tomb and into the catacombs.

“Sie sindein dummkopf!” she shouted back down the hall, waving the skull so that he could see it one last time. “You didn’t really think I’d let you keep it, did you?”

She stepped back and triggered the stone slab to rumble closed, sealing the passage closed behind her. Then she held the skull up so that she could inspect it in the glow of her flashlight.

Suddenly, a gloved hand seized her wrist. She looked up to see Commandant von Wartenburg glaring down at her.

“You didn’t really think I would let you keep it, did you?” he said with a voice as cold as death.

Maia twisted the shotgun to the side and then slid her hand up the double barrels. The squad leader grimaced and attempted to yank the gun free, but a quick flip of her fingers released the breach, allowing the barrels to swing open. Before the unfired shells could hit the floor, she let go of the rifle and sprang away and out towards the bridge across the magma pool, stuffing the skull into her satchel as she went.

As soon as she placed one boot onto the bridge, a long crack raced down the center of the stone. Just as the bridge crumbled into the bubbling rock beneath her, she leapt away and managed to seize the top of a broken pillar nearby.

A bullet slammed into the side of her temporary refuge, followed by another. She glanced over her shoulder to see the Nazis in the opening of the altar room. Their rifles were too long to do them much good inside the little room, but out in the open she would be a sitting duck.

She flung herself at the next column, slamming hard into it and then dropping a few terrifying inches before her fingers seized a notch in the carven stone. She scrambled around to the far side an instant before feeling two more rifle rounds smash into the opposite side.

Chunks of the ceiling rained down on all sides and the column began to tilt as its base melted in the magma pool. The squad leader cursed at his men to follow her, and as soon as she heard the sounds of their scrambling out of the collapsing structure she jumped to the next pillar, scrambled up, and made one last leap to the solid stone floor of the passage that led out to safety.

She looked back to see the squad leader and the first soldier fling themselves onto the nearby columns, but the second soldier went a different direction. He jumped for the remnants of the bridge, but it disintegrated beneath his boot the moment he landed. He didn’t even have time to scream before he plunged into the boiling rock, disappearing in a radiant crimson splash.

“I should have warned you that lava is bad for your health!” she taunted.

The squad leader clung to his column with one hand while he went for his pistol with the other, but Maia was around the corner before he could draw it.