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.

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.

“And now, frau,” said the lazy-eyed Nazi squad leader. “You will die.”

“Before you pull those triggers,” Maia said, backing up against the altar of the ebony skull. “There’s something you should know. Something about this artifact that your commandant wants so badly.”

The two Nazi soldiers looked up from their rifles to the squad leader. The squad leader made an impatient gesture with his shotgun. Her shotgun—he had impounded it from her when she had first entered their camp. The thought still made her flush with anger.

“The thing you need to know about this skull is,” she reached behind her and placed her fingers around its cool, hard sides. “It’s booby-trapped.”

She lifted it suddenly, feeling the tiny hair that was tied to its base pull tight and then snap. For the first time in her life, she prayed that the trap would still work, that the tripwire mechanism hadn’t aged too badly.

Then the ground lurched underneath their feet, and she smiled. This ancient culture—the Atlanteans—they built their devices to last forever.

The two foot soldiers stumbled against the quaking walls of the small altar room, their rifles momentarily forgotten in their hands. However, the squad leader was not distracted for as long. Even as chunks of the ceiling began to fall all around them, he leveled the shotgun at her.

Maia feigned a throw of the skull, thrusting her hands towards him but without carrying the priceless artifact along for the ride. Her gambit worked: the squad leader, perhaps acting on pure reflex or perhaps too terrified to allow his commandant’s prize to shatter, brought his arms up in an attempted catch.

The ruse bought her enough time to slam her shoulder into his sternum, but her weight wasn’t enough to knock him down. Skull tucked under one arm, she grabbed her shotgun and gave it a twist, hoping to wrench it free of his grasp. She got it pointed past her, but could not loosen his grip any further.

They vied over the weapon as the ground beneath them shook and the walls around them crumbled. The other two soldiers had regained their footing, but their rifles were too long to be wielded easily inside the cramped confines of the tiny room. Maia managed to spin them around so that she was closer to the door and the squad leader was between her and the soldiers.

If she let go to flee, the squad leader would blast her in the back before she could take a step out the door. If she stayed there, the other soldiers would take her down with their rifles. Through the opening, she heard a snapping and a popping sound, followed by a wet crash. The bridge that offered the only safe passage over the magma pool was collapsing. She would lose her chance of escape if she didn’t act fast.