by David Adams
The scorpion wheeled left, then right, then tried to retreat, but never could gauge its opponent nor gain a footing for battle. Its right pincer was cloven in two beyond the natural joint, rendering it useless, the left was sliced off. Twice it tried to sting with its tail, the stinger moving with blinding speed but only finding a stone floor. The first blow caused a few chips of stone to fly through the air. The second, much harder, drove the tail in an inch and forced it to become stuck for an instant. As the scorpion bunched its muscles to free itself the tail became taut, and at that moment Lucien’s warblade flashed and removed the tail three feet above the stinger. Now weaponless, the scorpion backed away as the goblin moved in to finish it.
Rowan started forward as soon as the cracks appeared in the scorpion statues, then charged when Alexis’ first blow deflected off her opponent without doing any damage. Opposite the now-living creature he could see Demetrius and Corson racing to the attack as well, and from behind he heard the twang of Tala’s bow.
Alexis was in a purely defensive mode. She batted away a succession of pincer attacks, doing no damage but taking none herself. With the others racing to her aid she would have been content to remain where she was and occupy the scorpion’s two forward weapons, but her real concern was the tail. As the terror advanced, forcing her back, it also boxed her in, giving her precious little room to dodge when the tail flicked forward.
The scorpion’s motion made it difficult for the group to take advantage of their superior numbers. As it spun, Demetrius and Corson had to swing in a wide arc to try to flank it—approaching under the raised tail was not an option they wanted to pursue. Rowan was forced to halt and retreat a few steps as the gigantic scorpion corralled Alexis back toward him, then he too tried to move around to flank the creature.
Tala waited with her bow poised, watching the battle unfold in front of her and looking for an opening. She tried to forget the near disaster of her first shot, knowing her mind needed to be as steady as her hand if she was to help her friends. As she saw the tail start to come forward, she loosed an arrow.
The missile found its mark, and while it could not stop the forward momentum of the scorpion’s sting, it may have slowed or deflected it enough to save Alexis. The stinger just missed her as she rolled to the left, instead cracking impotently against the stone floor. She tried to use the momentum of the dive to regain her feet, but the scorpion swiped at her with its right pincer, catching her full on the head and sending her sprawling face-first to the ground. She allowed herself only an instant to reclaim her spear before she rolled to the right again, swinging the wooden shaft above her blindly as she moved. The random swing was a fortunate one, batting away a follow-up pincer attack.
Seeing Alexis down, and the scorpion’s tail again pivoting in front of him, Demetrius gave up on flanking maneuvers. Praying the scorpion was focused fully on the fallen prey in front of it, he jumped in, hacking at the base of the upraised tail. The blow did not sever the tail cleanly, but it bit in far enough to render the stinger an ineffective weapon, though still a danger as the scorpion writhed in pain, causing its tail to thrash around haphazardly.
Rowan was given an opening as the creature turned from Alexis to Demetrius. He took out several legs with one powerful slash of his blade, then leapt back before a wildly swinging pincer could connect with his head.
As Corson had started forward behind Demetrius he saw that everyone but Lucien was battling one scorpion. Thinking the goblin might need help, he veered to the right and drew back his sword to strike. His mouth parted in a surprised gasp at the speed and fury of the goblin battle chief, and he had a moment to wonder if he might have been struck down as well if he had ventured within the warblade’s range. As Lucien finished off his opponent, Corson turned in time to see Rowan, Demetrius, and Alexis eliminating the other. With a soft sigh he sheathed his unbloodied sword.
“Everyone okay?” Demetrius asked, taking in the scene around him.
“Better than those scorpions,” Alexis answered, giving the one she had battled an extra jab with her spear. “Thanks for the help—all of you.”
Corson turned away at the words, at first feigning a study of the hallway ramp that had pushed Demetrius back, then doing so for real. He pushed with feet and hands but felt no give. His feeble attempt to scale it only resulted in modest progress before he slid back down, his boots and fingers unable to find purchase on the smooth stone.
Lucien joined him, and together they put their shoulders against the blockade and pushed. Again they met with failure. As Alexis and Rowan stepped forward to help, the floor/wall slowly dropped back into place on its own. Opposite, the stairs they had first descended reappeared.
Now it was Demetrius who studied the floor. “I felt no give beneath me when I triggered the thing.”
“A pressure pad does not need to give to be set off,” said Rowan.
“True enough.” Demetrius started forward, gauging his steps and counting as he went. When he felt he was at the right point he leapt forward. To his relief, nothing happened. Another half-dozen steps convinced him he had passed the trigger cleanly.
The others followed his lead, and soon they were making their way forward again. The hall stretched another forty feet before turning right, where it widened into a pair of parallel halls split by a wall. Demetrius stepped into the left hall, looked around the corner, and stopped. “A maze,” he announced.
“Go right at every opportunity,” Tala suggested. “It is slow, but we will eventually reach the end.”
Demetrius retraced his steps to the maze’s entrance and set out again, going right this time instead of left. He worked his way around a wall, always veering right, when the now familiar sound of stone-on-stone sounded once again. The walls began to move, forcing him to hop a couple of steps left to avoid the one nearest him. When they ground to a halt he realized he was now dealing with a new maze. He turned to see that only Tala was with him. The others had been cut off by one of the moving walls.
“We’ll see you on the other side,” said Corson, his voice sounding distant as it made its way through the stone.
Tala took the lead, beckoning Demetrius to follow. She managed a handful of turns before the maze shifted again. The wall directly in front of her slid back as if to make way, while those on the right and left both moved left. She danced ahead, turning to see if Demetrius could follow. Her eyes lit up as she saw what the moving left wall revealed, and she grabbed Demetrius’ hand and yanked him forward.
Demetrius, feeling unthreatened by the wall, was surprised by the look on Tala’s face and the urgency in her grasp. Following the direction of her gaze he turned, and beheld an ice-blue vortex in the floor, like the one that now served as the castle’s courtyard above but smaller. The wall finished its movement and the portal was hidden from them once again. Demetrius hated to think what would have happened had he been pushed left by the wall.
Tala was ready to voice a warning when she heard Rowan call out. “Be careful! There are areas here with the blue portals!”
“We just dodged one ourselves,” Tala replied. To Demetrius she said, “And here I thought this room no more than a nuisance to slow us down.”
They huddled close as they walked, keeping away from the walls as much as possible to increase both their decision time and their options when the next shift occurred. They realized their plans to always move right were being foiled as well, so they tried their best to simply make progress away from the entrance, guessing the exit to be placed as far away from that point as possible. They knew it was an assumption, maybe not even a good one, but for now it was the best they could do.
Eventually a rhythm in the wall shifts became apparent—roughly every ten seconds—even if no pattern to the direction of movement did. Often a wall section would move one way and then double back to where it started. If he felt they were being forced in a bad direction Demetrius would often hold up a hand, and they would wait for a new pattern to see if their choi
ces were better.
The thing Demetrius feared the most happened after they had been in the maze nearly ten minutes. They had stopped any effort to stay in verbal contact with the others, the voices fading as the ever-changing room managed to force the two groups apart. They had glimpsed only a handful of the portals, and seen no other traps or dangers, and had made steady if slow progress across what was shaping up to be an extremely large room. For a moment a path several wall lengths long opened in front of them, and they pressed ahead until the next shift. A wall cut them off in front, while those to the right and behind closed in. To the left the nearest wall pushed back, revealing a portal. This last change had left them in a rough cell one square long and three wide, with the portal at one end and Demetrius and Tala at the other. Demetrius drew his sword while they waited for the next change.
“What good will that do?” Tala asked, gesturing at the weapon.
Demetrius shrugged. “Maybe as a wedge. I don’t know. I guess I just want to go down fighting.”
“We do not know that—”
The walls ground to life again, the rumble coming from every direction, but of the walls surrounding them only one moved—the one to their right, forcing them one square closer to the portal.
“Could be coincidence,” Tala said without conviction.
“I actually think it is,” Demetrius answered, rubbing the sweat from his brow. “Just bad luck. But one more bad break…”
They waited, the seconds stretching out, leaving them to listen to the sound of their own pounding hearts.
The wall to the right lurched again, coming at them. Demetrius saw the wall across the portal move away, but the leap over the blue void was too far for him by several feet, even if he had time and space for a running start. He tried the sword at the base of the moving wall, but it was thrust back at him, the space between wall and floor too small for the blade to fit. He scanned the wall frantically, desperate for another option.
“Back!” Tala yelled.
Demetrius turned, seeing as she had that the wall near the portal in the direction of the entrance was sliding further left, leaving a diagonal and much shorter leap over the void as a possibility. He followed Tala’s lead, quietly berating himself for being so focused on moving forward that he had reacted to only the front and side walls. To his surprise he saw Tala dart further left and jump diagonally over the portal a second time. The reason she did so soon addressed him directly, another massive wall pressing forward to take the place of that which had just departed. He pivoted, took two large running steps, and then jumped to the open space where Tala stood looking for their next move, his boot clipping the receding wall before he cleared the void and landed safely on his rear end.
Tala helped him to his feet and led him away from the vortex. Compared to where they had just been, the maze now seemed to yawn wide with possibilities, the walls parting before them as if to make up for the near fatal trap. Soon Tala and Demetrius had left the portal well behind, and fell into steady progress once more. Two other portals eventually came into play, one directly in front of them revealed like a caged tiger as the wall hiding it slid aside, but they danced away from them easily. A few maze shifts after this Tala grabbed Demetrius’ arm and pointed left, where what looked like an exit waited. They worked their way over and stepped into the hallway they hoped was an exit. After several shifts of the maze confirmed they were out, they breathed a sigh of relief, having safely escaped.
Demetrius called out with the news that he and Tala were across, hoping his voice might guide the others. Lucien answered from somewhere nearby, and a few moments later appeared with Alexis. As the two of them stepped into the safety the hallway, Alexis saw the worried question written on Demetrius’ face. “We were separated from them soon after we were parted from you. I’m sure they’re fine.”
They took turns calling out. Each unanswered cry caused hearts to sink and stomachs to tighten.
“I should go back,” said Demetrius, his voice taut.
“No,” Tala said gently. “You cannot help them find the way if you are lost yourself, and they might arrive while you are gone.”
“And if they are in danger? Or worse?”
“You cannot stop the walls. And if it is ‘worse’ there is even less you can do about it. The portals will not give them up if they have claimed them.”
Demetrius drew his sword half out of its scabbard, paused, and then slammed it back in. He stalked a few paces away, seeking something to lash out at, even a loose stone to kick, but even that small satisfaction was denied him.
He gazed at nothing, looking further down the hallway but without focus. He listened to the sounds behind him, the steady, slow cadence of the shifting walls, the times between punctuated with the calls of his companions. His mind started to form a thought around how long they should wait, but he pushed it aside. Just before a shift he thought he heard a different voice. The walls came to a halt, and he waited, holding his breath.
“We’re getting there!” It was Rowan. And he had said “we.”
The two stragglers came into view a few wall shifts later, looking somewhat abashed but unharmed. “We took a few bad turns,” Corson said by way of apology. “Hope you haven’t had to wait too long.”
“Now we know who not to follow on way back,” Lucien said.
The happy reunion was short-lived, and stern, serious looks soon returned as they forged ahead. This new hallway went on for a time, straight and true, and they paused when it finally turned right, reading the words carved into the stone at the end of the straight section: Having fun yet?
“An opponent with a sense of humor?” asked Rowan.
“Not ask Corson,” said Lucien. “He only novice at such things.”
“Lucien, your wit has become as sharp as a round stone,” Corson retorted.
“Joke or no, I don’t like it,” said Demetrius. “But it doesn’t matter.” He led the way through several short turns of the passage until it opened into a small, empty chamber.
As he stepped warily into the room, a section of the wall opposite slid upward to reveal another chamber beyond. He emitted a small laugh and glanced at Alexis, who had moved next to him. “Whoever set this up sure isn’t shy about revealing obvious traps.”
“Because he knows we have no choices other than pressing on or turning back,” Alexis said. “Either way works for him.”
“I’m tempted to split the group. Half go in and half stay back.”
“You did not seem too happy the last time the group got separated,” Tala reminded him as she looked beyond him and into the newly exposed chamber.
He nodded, knowing he couldn’t deny what must have been obvious to the others, although he was ashamed to think his anxiety was so apparent. It could be seen as weakness, especially by Lucien. A goblin warrior would never let personal feelings interfere with his ability to lead and fight. Depending on your point of view, that could be construed as either a weakness or a strength. Demetrius cleared his throat. “Well, I was pleased we were split up when you and I were nearly trapped and pushed into that portal. At least the others were safe. I guess there is no right answer.”
“Exactly,” Tala replied. “So do not agonize to find one.”
“I say we spread out a bit, “Alexis offered. “If a trap springs, better we not all be in one place.”
“Like the scorpion room,” Rowan agreed with a nod.
“Okay,” Demetrius said. “Groups of two. Alexis and I first, Tala and Corson, Lucien and Rowan.”
Hearing no objections, he drew his sword and proceeded with Alexis at his elbow. They moved slowly, pausing frequently, looking for movement. Before them the new doorway beckoned, inviting them inside.
Demetrius poked his head through the opening. The room was similar in size to the one they were leaving, except the ceiling was much higher and there was no visible exit other than the one he peered through. He glanced at Alexis, who shrugged. He stepped inside, his head on a swivel,
studying walls, floor, and ceiling. Behind he heard the footsteps of Tala and Corson as they made their way across the first chamber. He went to the far wall, seeing nothing of interest there, then slowly started to his left while Alexis moved right. With a jolt the floor moved beneath his feet, throwing him at the wall. He regained his balance and wheeled about, seeing the floor had split in the center, the gap widening quickly, while the entryway began to seal itself once again, stone sliding downward from some hidden hole. Just before it slammed shut Tala came skidding underneath it, her legs pulled close to her body so she could avoid being pinned. Faintly Corson’s voice called from beyond the wall, the sound drowned out by the booming sound of the door striking the floor.
Tala regained her feet and charged forward, leaping the gap in the floor and joining Demetrius on the far side of the room. Any sense that they were clear of danger was short-lived. The floor continued to slide beneath them, forcing them to shuffle their feet to stay upright, and the walls offered no place for them to pull themselves upward. Opposite them Alexis had backed up to the near wall, straining to see what would be revealed beneath the opening, thinking it likely to be a beast or perhaps a pool of deadly liquid. Suddenly a perplexed look crossed her face. “Shards,” she announced, pointing. “Thousands of them.”