What light filtered into the courtyard barely glinted from blackened plates as much weapons as armor, bladed and forged with the visage of a fiendish skull dominating the breastplate, its monstrous teeth gnashed together in a wall of daggers. The infernal steel piled upon a mountainous figure, his face now hidden behind the featureless visor of a newly donned helm. Had the night itself sent its own legionnaire against me, its manifestation could not have been more menacing.

by F. Wesley Schneider

My face isn't a welcome one here. Too many have seen it too recently and too often. Everyone has their bad memories, their reasonable hatreds, and many of those injustices look like me. I'd started out hoping that maybe I could change that, but a year of stinking alleys, tear-soaked streets, and steel rusted by blood made me doubt.

The halfling tomb raider had been doing this long enough to know that he was standing on a pressure plate. In fact, Xaven had known of his predicament for over eleven hours now, a fact carefully measured by the notched candle to his left, now slowly burning down to a stump. During that time, he had been left to stand in as near perfect stillness as he could manage. A stretch, a sneeze, a momentary lapse of concentration--one of these things would eventually kill him. Judging by the fatigue of his aching muscles, it would be sooner rather than later. Xaven had had plenty of time to contemplate the trap's mechanism. Indeed, he had experimented with a disarmed deathplate once before, a year prior. As soon as any portion of his weight came off the plate, the ceiling arches would collapse. And judging by the placement of those arches, a hundred feet of stone corridor would come down on top of him, cascading all the way back to the entrance.