by Deck Davis
The two orbs hovered ten feet apart like cowboys readying to duel outside a saloon, Bee’s anger hot and ready to erupt, Clive keeping a cold tremor of fury mostly underneath the surface, with only the edges peeping out.
Tripp drew out his flail. “The first one to do something like that gets sent to respawn. There’s no coming back while the wave is on, and I’m guessing that if you can’t respawn near me, you won’t get back into the game. Does that sound right?”
“It’s possible,” grumbled Clive.
“Then control yourselves. I can’t climb the mountain if I keep needing to tie my laces. Cut this shit out. You supposed to be guide orbs, so guide.”
“Need us? You need Clive, maybe,” said Bee. “Not so sure about me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can’t write with a pen that’s run out of ink. Clive has all the skills, not me. They nerfed DFs when they got rid of Clive’s generation, so we have to earn any useful skills rather than starting with them. Like my herbalism, remember? They capped what we can do, too. They clipped our stems so we can only grow so high. You don’t need me.”
“Bee, if it wasn’t for you, I would have gotten this far. Get it together and get ready. Everything we do now, we do to finish the labyrinth, and I’ll cut any part of the plan that doesn’t work. That includes both of you.”
Both orbs were silent, pinned under the weight of Tripp’s words. He was glad. Having Bee back made him feel more comfortable. She might not have had Clive’s telekinesis skills, but she was another friendly face, another number on his side of the column rather than Boxe’s.
By the time he crossed rooms one and two and reached room three again, he was ready for the labyrinth. There, he found the door to room three wide open, and the brothers were gone.
CHAPTER 69
Darkness could be a promise of hidden treasure when you knew you could light your way through it, but the blanket of black waiting beyond the passageway to room three was more like a threat. If darkness had a growl, this would be it, even if the only sound Tripp actually heard was his own pulse in his ears, whooshing like the tide trapped in a seashell.
“Warren? Jon?” he said, his voice hurtling down the tunnel, echoing, getting weaker.
The tunnel refused to answer. His orc vision adjusted, turning the black to a dim grey, enough to see that the passageway ahead looked clear of danger. In a place like this, though, he wasn’t going to trust his eyes.
He cast underlay, sending a pulse of blue light through the tunnel. The returning analysis showed nothing he could use, nothing that would help. The passage was made from silt and sandstone, with no sign of levers or traps.
“You know what Boxe thinks about your deal now,” said Clive. “Never shake on a deal with a man with knives for hands.”
Tripp considered what to do. Even with his vision brightening the tunnel, the threat of what was ahead made him feel cold. “Clive, you go in front. Bee, stay behind me. If either of you detects anything, tell me.”
The three moved in formation through the darkness. The utter absence of light made it feel more cramped and hotter, teasing sweat onto Tripp’s forehead. He could hear his pulse again, the rhythm going quick step in his ears and then faster still, and he couldn’t stop thinking of where he was, and that thousands of tons of Old Kimby’s stones were above his head. Even crouching, the tunnel roof still brushed his hair, a reminder of how narrow it was. A person could be buried alive here and even their loudest screams would be less than a whisper of a whisper to the people outside, and the stones would hide their body for eons until some future miner would split a tunnel deep enough to come across their crushed bones.
Darkness like this played tricks. It was the clothing of chaos, a curtain where anything could hide. With every step, Tripp got the sense he was walking into a nightmare warped from his own trauma, as if Boxe could somehow wrench it from his mind.
No. It was just a labyrinth in Godden’s Reach. That was worrying enough, no need to add more fears. But where were Warren and Jon?
“Tripp,” said Bee. “The tunnel is getting smaller on this side.”
He turned and saw the tunnel walls, grey in his orc vision. They were closing in, the stone slowly moving together as the doorway behind disappeared.
“Hurry,” said Tripp.
They ran along the tunnel while the walls closed in behind them, a loud rumble competing with the thrum of his pulse in his ear, rushing into the room just as it shut completely. With a scraping sound, the walls blocked together, and Tripp was standing in room three with no sign that there had ever been a tunnel behind him.
There was no going back now. He’d already known that only success or failure would get him out of the final room. He beat Boxe’s tomb of tricks, or he died. Seeing the stone wall in place behind him made the knowledge sink deeper into him now, and he felt a cold stab of dread in his belly.
He switched to his in-mind communication.
“Don’t say anything and don’t move yet, okay? Whenever I say anything out loud, Boxe takes it way too literally. Right now, we have enough to deal with.”
“Got it,” said Bee.
Clive flashed red once in the darkness, which Tripp took that to be yes.
He waited, hoping that his orc vision would adjust further, but it didn’t. This seemed like special darkness, a deeper kind that wasn’t just a fact of nature but a more deliberate force, an utter drenching of black that existed to hide something.
The smell was one of age and stone, reminding him of museums and libraries and old classrooms that stank of chalk but he could sense that this was an open space. There was something grand about the darkness, like it spread high and wide around him.
He’d never liked the dark. Not since his terror in the storage cupboard with the spider. It was all he could do to keep taking deep breaths, trusting the oxygen to fill his lungs and clearing his mind. He concentrated on the red and gold glows of Bee and Clive and he let his mind settle, and when it did, there was one thought that wouldn’t lay still: traps.
He already knew some of them, but now there might be more, and he couldn’t take another step unless he wanted to risk a shower of lava or a pit of spikes or some other wicked toy conjured from the blackest part of Boxe’s mind.
Checking his map, he noted that the first traps were a dozen paces ahead of him, where the checkerboard squares began. He must have been standing on the outer square path that ran all along the outskirts of the room.
Soon, all thoughts of traps vanished, because he saw something else. Two icons blinked on his map. Warren and Jon’s icons in the middle of the room, not moving.
A stream of notification text formed in front of him, the words illuminated even in the darkness.
The final Blood Wave has begun.
Time left in room three: 00:20:00
He’d expected both of these things; the onset of the final wave and a deadline to finish the labyrinth. It was a pain, but being ready for a gut punch at least made it hurt less. Tripp had tensed his mental muscles so that Boxe’s fist of disappointment didn’t knock the air out of him.
Besides, there was a bonus to this. He’d tried to make a deal with Boxe and he’d failed, but the Blood Wave might equalize that. With so many creatures above ground, in such a big event, Boxe would have to focus a hefty chunk of resources on it. Maybe that would mean no more surprises for Tripp.
If only. In any case, he could only deal with the here and now. If’s and maybe’s were butterflies of ash that disintegrated when you curled your hand around them.
“Twenty minutes,” said Tripp. “We need light.”
“I thought we weren’t talking out loud?”
“We just ran out of 'be careful' time. Warren? Jon?”
No answer again.
Tripp opened his inventory and search for his torches. “Clive, you can hold this one,” he said. “I know they’re here, somewhere. I can see them on my map.”
“Here we go, sho
wing off with the telekinesis,” grumbled Bee.
“When all of this is through, I’ll find out how we get you a body. I can learn to craft one, or we can go and do whatever quest. That sound good?”
“It does. Only, we don’t have to fight after that. We can just travel.”
“What happened to blood and guts and making a stew out of your enemies teeth?”
“The runt of the litter either compensates with force or they stay a runt,” said Bee. “Maybe I don’t need either. As long as I’m assigned to you.”
Tripp felt a small jolt of warmth cut through him then. This was the real Bee, alright.
Using a piece of flint, he lit the torch and felt Clive take it from him telekinetically. The wood and fire floated away, spreading waves of orange and yellow light as they did.
“There are torch holders around the room,” said Clive.
“Good. Start placing the torches. Here’s another one,” said Tripp.
He lit one torch after another and then let Clive take them until all six were glowing from torch holders spread throughout the room, the flames devouring the oil, the light ushering away the darkness and revealing the room for what it was.
It was the size of a school auditorium, the roof low and domed. Red and gold squares covered the floor, a hundred in total, with a thin path around the outside, a safe area that allowed Tripp to walk all the way around the room.
In the middle of the room were four statues; a marble sleel, frorarg, eisschwarm, and a hornfel brute, each with a keyhole cut into their middle. The hornfel looked the most monstrous, all crags and hard edges and with a face that would make the hardiest barbarian turn tail. Tripp guessed that even so, the sleel was the toughest, and looking at its spike-lined tentacles and slinking body cast in marble made him remember the nest in the Reach. The eisschwarm looked like a cloud but with a distinct aura of anger wrapped within its deep grey folds, and how its outer edges resembled more of a steel wool sponge than a fluffy cloud.
The walls were decorated with red murals, forming a story that ran clockwise around the room. Beginning on the leftmost wall near the door, the paintings told the story of Godden and his army and how they retook the Reach. The most interesting was a panel in the center of the wall furthest away from Tripp. Painted on the stone was a spider ten feet tall, legs all sinew and black flesh but with spikes on the end. It was an orb weaver. The orb weavers had been in the Reach before Godden, and he and his army had taken it from them.
After murals of battle and its aftermath, where weaver, human, and dwarf corpses lay hacked and mutilated over the plains, there was a final painting; a giant bonfire so rich in color that Tripp could almost hear the crackles and smell the waft of the flames. Weaver limbs stuck out from the gaps in the pyre, waiting for the fire to take them while a solemn-looking crowd of humans and dwarves watched with their heads bowed.
Turning his attention away from the mural, Tripp saw no sign of Warren and Jon. He checked his map and saw their dots blinking from the middle of the room, right where the statues of the sleel and its friends were waiting. It didn’t make sense. His map said the brothers should have been there.
Wait.
Were Jon and Warren in the statues?
“Tripp,” whispered Clive. “The roof.”
Tripp looked, feeling an icy lake of surprise freeze over his chest. Jon and Warren were stuck to the ceiling. The torchlight barely leached them there.
“Clive, can you float a torch by them?”
As a light stick left a holder and floated up, the orange glow revealed the brothers.
They were fastened against the room roof by strands of web stuck across their legs, chest, and mouth. It was only the widening of Warren’s eyes that made Tripp realize they were alive.
He drew both his flagellation flail and a sword. This was a standard blade, the metal dull and nicked and lacking any sort of artificery. “Clive, use this to cut them free.”
“Yes, Tripp.”
“Bee?”
She floated by him. “What do you need?”
“Do a lap of the room and report anything suspicious. You won’t trigger any traps as long as you don’t touch the walls.”
He watched Clive float upward toward the ceiling, the sword accompanying him inches away. Bee flew left and started a circle of the room. Tripp felt unease churning in him. He didn’t like this. Forget what Warren and Jon were doing in here in the first place, even after Tripp asked them to wait for him; how did they get stuck up there?
A series of tapping sounds answered his question.
He watched a shape emerge from the corner of the room, crawling out from a darkened patch where his torches hadn’t reached. Tripp saw the spindly legs and bulbous body of an orb weaver. It scuttled over the wall, the spikes on the end of its legs chipping away stone as it ran toward him, its eight eyes fixed on his face and blinking one after the other.
The sweat on his forehead felt cold now. An orb weaver was loose in the room, and Tripp was alone against it.
His mind gears slipped into the highest they would go, and he felt a clarity settle on him as his thoughts accelerated, fueled by logic and leaving panic behind.
He spoke quickly. “Bee, can I have the room timer floating in my vision?”
“No problem.”
Time left in room: 14:67
“Clive,” he said,” while never taking his eyes off the weaver, “how are you getting on?”
“Their mouths are webbed shut. The webbing is hard to cut through, like sawing through a rope.”
“Can you catch them when you cut them down?”
“My telekinesis isn’t that strong. I can soften their fall a little.”
That left nothing else but the weaver to handle. The weaver, now halfway across the wall, kneeled so that it was ready to leap. Tripp smacked his chest plate with his flagellation flail once and then again, and he felt hitpoints leave him and then store in his weapon as damage, only for his artificery to restore the hitpoints to him.
Holding his breath, he waited. His muscles were tensed up, he had a whole whisper of moths fluttering in his belly, but he was ready.
The weaver leaped, two pincer legs out front to him first. Tripp stepped out of their path and let the weaver crash home, its eight legs absorbing the force of its drop onto the stone.
Before it could right itself he brought his flail down on its eyes. The stored damage burst out in an explosion of power, popping six of the weaver’s eyes and reducing them to a gooey mess that dribbled down its face.
The weaver skittered and then straightened up. Deprived of most of its vision it hobbled one way then the other, a drunk after closing time, bumping into the wall and then lashing out at the stone as if it was an enemy.
Tripp stored more damage in his flail and then crept up behind, slaughtering it in two blows.
There were two loud bumps as dark shapes fell from the ceiling. A question tipped toed through Tripp’s mind: more weavers?
“They’re okay,” said Clive.
Tripp looked around for more weavers, but there were none. Then he saw the brothers on the ground, slashed webbing stuck to their clothes.
Warren was the first to stir, with his knees and palms on the ground, and retching. Jon sat up and brushed webbing from his sleeves, but the material was stuck fast.
“Fifteen minutes until the wave,” said Bee.
Tripp eyed the dead weaver. Like the spiders he saw in his garden at home, its legs had curled in on themselves in death. Its two remaining eyes were glassy and almost accusatory, but Tripp didn’t feel even a sliver of guilt. The only thing he saw when he looked at the weaver’s corpse was a husk that might now contain loot, but that would have to wait.
“Hitpoint check,” he said, turning around to see Jon helping Warren to his feet. “I’m okay, but you two need to share a potion. Here,” he said, handing Jon a bottle of a slimy green liquid. “Drink it and let’s get going.”
He wanted to know what had h
appened to them, but there was no time. That could come later when he’d beaten the room and won the prize in time to go help the others in Godden’s Reach survive the final wave. After that, they could have all the story time they liked. They’d all have earned it.
“This tastes like death threw up and bottled it,” said Warren, drinking the potion.
While the brothers replenished their hitpoints, Tripp stood at the edge of the checkerboard and counted the squares.
“Sixty-four,” he said. “And we need to get to the statues in the middle without getting our legs blown off or triggering a giant guillotine that cleaves our heads off, or whatever else Boxe has planned. Keep your maps open so you can see the traps.”
He opened his own map and made it translucent. Some checkerboard traps had been uncovered by the arrows Jon had shot into the room, but Tripp didn’t trust his psychic arrows enough to be completely sure there weren’t more traps in hiding.
A quick cast of underlay told him that the checkerboard squares were made of marble. He would have guessed that anyway from the light sheen that reflected the torch lamp glows. Nothing in his underlay suggested the presence of more traps. Although underlay wouldn’t have told him about traps specifically, if it had returned with a list of materials that included iron or steel, he’d have a good idea that traps were hidden. Then again, maybe his underlay skill was too low to detect them.
“Clive, your anti-illusion skill is silver-ranked. Can you do a sweep of the board and see if there’s anything disguised on the squares?”
“I’ll join you,” said Bee.
“But you can’t unmask illusions.”
“So? I have eyes. Sometimes you can rely on skills so much you miss things you’d see if you just looked.”
As Clive and Bee floated over the checkerboard, Tripp checked on Warren and Jon. Their hitpoints were topped up now and the only leftover sign of their trouble was the weaver webbing stuck to their clothes.
“Aren’t you going to ask?” said Warren.
“We don’t have time.”