Open the silver clasps

The safest way to handle this for who he assumed was Natalie was to open the clasps to the box. Unfortunately for Dago, that meant his hands were going to burn. He took a deep breath and quickly flipped open the first clasp as quickly as he could. He grit his teeth as he flipped all thirteen clasps around the box and quickly opened the box. The person was in a body bag, but Dago didn’t assume they were dead. Why would they have gone to all this trouble to restrain them if they were already dead? Blessed truck, holy water, silver clasped box, and then, on top of that, the body bag was wrapped in silver chains.

Dago frowned, but his hands were already not going to be pretty. He pulled the chains off as quietly as he could, but it was painful. He looked down at the damage to see long tracking burns in the shape of chains running across his palms and several smaller burn marks on his fingers.

He pulled down the zipper on the body bag and sure enough, it was Natalie in there, staring up at him with a glare that could have shot lasers. She sat up out of the box and offered her handcuffed hands to Dago. He pulled apart those handcuffs, too, making a point of breaking the part encircling her wrist, too; something he hadn’t done for himself yet. As soon as they were off, Natalie pulled herself out of the box.

“There was a seal on the handcuffs, preventing me from talking,” she explained, “Now let’s get out of here, now.”

Dago had no arguments there. Natalie dashed out of the truck and looked at their surroundings.

“There are people in the cave there,” Dago said, indicating where he came from.

“Good, we aren’t going there,” she said, running the opposite direction.

Dago followed Natalie into a crudely made stone temple. It seemed ancient and crumbling, so she picked carefully across the floor and avoided touching anything. Dago followed her, figuring it was best to follow suit.

The reached the main chamber of the temple. There was a pedestal in the middle with a shining red jewel about the size of Dago’s fist sitting on top. He assumed that’s what they were there for; this was what Natalie had wanted to get, by the look in her eye. She looked cautious about approaching the pedestal.