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Transporting a heavy chest full of coins up a tall flight of stairs was no picnic, even after Ehlissa offered to stuff her purse with coins to lighten the load.  Yrag kept urging them on, wishing for the relative safety of the surface world before he could take his time to search for false bottoms on the chest. 

Once they reached the top of the stairs and the ruined keep, Tenser watched intently as Yrag tipped over the chest and began tapping on the bottom.  He reached inside and shoveled out the coins with his hand so he could get to the bottom from the inside.  He tapped on the inside bottom and then all around the sides of the chest.  He slid his fist down to the bottom of the top-facing side, pulled down, and punched upward to see if he could make the wood perceptively buckle and judge how close to the bottom of the chest it was.

Frustrated by his lack of findings, Yrag glanced up at Tenser.  "Do they teach you anything about searching chests in wizard school?" Yrag asked with irritation in his voice.

"I must have missed that day," Tenser answered flatly.

Yrag grumbled and continued searching.

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Page 32

Tenser was still fishing his hands through the copper pieces.  Yrag glanced down bitterly at his dented shield and wondered if all that copper would even be enough to pay for having the dent banged out.  But he remembered his first kill in a dungeon and his first taste of loot and could not begrudge Tenser his excitement at having won this prize, as slight as it was.  And Yrag still hoped to find more hidden in the chest, mixed in with all that copper. 

"Right," Yrag said at last.  He guessed they had been resting about 10 minutes since the battle and there was at least a 1 in 6 chance of something showing up soon to give them trouble again.  "Close up that chest.  We'll take the whole thing with us, topside..."

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