We all got up, staring down at the rest of the floor ahead. There were hundreds of tiles, and at least half of them had likely been fitted with pressure plates, if not more. The logic of such a dangerous puzzle had already dictated that we’d be looking at a combination of trap and safe tiles. We had to get past them in order to reach the other side, where… a door was forming.
“Check that out,” I said, tapping Varga’s shoulder.
As if drawn with a laser, the rectangular shape of an exit became visible, glowing blue.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Herakles replied, breathing heavily.
“The only way out is through there, that much is clear,” Riza added, crossing her arms.
I exhaled sharply, knowing there was only one method of approaching this scenario. I was immortal, along with Lumi and Eira. I was also the de facto team leader. Naturally, I couldn’t let anyone else take chances with forging a path toward the newly made door.
“I’ll go ahead first,” I said. “The rest of you follow along the same plates. Should something get triggered, we duck. If needed, we move back to the last safe tile.”
Eva nodded, showing us a piece of chalk in her hand. “I’ll mark the safe ones. So I’ll be right behind you.”
“Got it,” Varga replied.
The rest of the crew offered me confident half-smiles as I turned to face the glowing door-line. The first tile was a trap, unwittingly discovered by Riza. I hopped on the next one after it. Nothing happened.
“Safe,” I said, and moved on to the next. A click made my instincts catch fire. “Duck!”
Darts were shot from the walls again. This time, they crisscrossed the room at different angles. I immediately glanced over my shoulder, still crouching, to see if anyone had gotten hurt. Several darts had hit Varga and Herakles, both of whom were on their knees, but Riza and Lumi were already giving them healing potion vials. We still had a few to use, though I wasn’t sure they’d last until the second half of this room.
The problem with healing potions was that they had never lasted. They were short-term artifices that focused on healing any damaged tissue. After that, they’d quickly wear out. Unfortunately, GASP’s magical people had yet to concoct anything long-term. Therefore, we had to ration and make do with what we had. To the Soul Crusher, this was a game, and we had a limited number of do-overs, thanks to these potions. Had we been in possession of stronger and longer-lasting healing magic, I was certain that the Soul Crusher would’ve taken it away.
What quest ever made things easy?
“It’ll get difficult if you have to use Eirexis on those of us at the back,” Nethissis said.
Eva marked the safe tile behind me. “He can swap places with me and anyone else on neutral tiles, if needed.”
“Ugh, this is incredibly annoying,” Varga said, recovering from whatever toxin had been burning through him. Lumi helped him up, while Riza pulled Herakles’s arm over her shoulders. He was slower than most of us, and I had a feeling these weird freezing particles had something to do with it.
“We need to keep moving,” I said. “Otherwise, we’ll all be stiff before we reach the door.”
“Yeah, my legs aren’t exactly my best friends right now,” Herakles grumbled. He and Riza shared a tile, and it was clearly a challenge for two bodies to occupy that relatively small space.
“Make sure you don’t fall over,” I replied. “We don’t know what the other tiles on both sides do.”
Riza scoffed. “Duly noted. Part of hell, I guess.”
I made my way to another tile. Eva marked it as safe, along with two more after it. But my advance soon came to a sudden halt as I triggered a third trap. This time, as we ducked, larger holes opened across the ceiling.
“Crap!” I snarled, as sharpened bamboo-type sticks were shot down at us.
I had no choice but to jump ahead, triggering another mechanism—poisonous darts from all four walls. The crew was in disarray. Varga and Eira had no choice but to dodge the bamboo sticks, thus stepping to the side and, in turn, pressing two more pressure plates.
“Dammit,” Varga croaked.
We all froze as a flurry of arrows and darts were launched throughout the room at different heights and angles. By the time the Soul Crusher’s traps were done with us, we were all kneeling, bleeding from multiple puncture wounds and barely able to move, let alone speak.
Pain roared through me, my muscles and nerve endings struggling to make sense of all the injuries and toxins that my body had received in the span of a few seconds. Eira’s eyes were drooping, and she had a hard time breathing.
Lumi was mostly okay, though an arrow had gotten lodged in her left arm. “At least it’s not poisonous,” she managed.
Eva was safe, from what I could tell. She glanced around nervously, her attention ultimately captured by Varga, who was unconscious. Raphael and Amelia were covered in poisonous darts, also blacked out. Herakles let out a string of profanities as Riza pulled a long arrow from his thigh. Nethissis quickly removed three of the five poisonous darts in her left arm, before her right arm became limp.
“This is a problem,” Eva said. She dispensed the last few drops of volcanic water she had to the rest of the crew, while Lumi administered the remaining healing vials evenly among those with the worst injuries.
I touched Eirexis, strapped to my thigh, and felt its energy soaring through my limbs, first, then my upper body. Liquid warmth flowed through my veins as the darts’ toxin was neutralized and my entire being was cleansed. Eva was quick to mark the few tiles around us she’d noticed to be safe from our collapse, basically making it easier for me to hop around and touch everyone with Eirexis.
Nethissis pulled the arrow out of Lumi, prompting the swamp witch to cry out in pain. I reached her with Eirexis, and she breathed a long sigh of relief as Thieron’s handle worked its magic. Soon enough, we were all ready to move again.
I went back to the last tile, which had triggered the bamboo sticks. Most of them had broken upon impact with the floor. We’d succeeded in dodging them, but, since we’d caused other traps to go off, we’d found ourselves suddenly overwhelmed.
Worst of all, I could feel myself getting slower. “It’s not doing anything to stop these freezing particles,” I said, looking at Eirexis, safely strapped back on my thigh.
“Because they’re not poison, nor are they causing actual injuries,” Lumi replied. “There’s nothing for Eirexis to fix. They’re weapons of physics, if nothing else.”
“I like you, Lumi. I really do,” the Soul Crusher cut in. “If you weren’t already marked by Death, I would totally root for you to survive to the end of this challenge.”
“You do realize I’ll figure out a way to hurt you when I see you. Right?” Lumi said.
He laughed, and the sound scratched my brain. “Good luck, toots.”
Lumi looked at me. “I’ll hurt him. I promise you, I will find a way to ruin his Reaper afterlife. I will.”
I couldn’t help but chuckle, shifting my focus back to the floor ahead. My humor faded quickly after that, as I felt my knees getting heavier with every minute that went by. We weren’t even halfway through, and we’d already nearly gotten half the crew killed in under a minute, more than once. They took their positions on safe tiles behind me, with Eva ready to mark more when appropriate.
But there was a part of me that kept tugging at my consciousness. They were all tired. I could see it on their faces. The freezing particles were doing quite a number on us. How many more traps could we set off before something much faster and much worse would come out and kill one of my people? Eirexis could heal, but it couldn’t resurrect.
Was I doing this right? Was this our only way forward and hopefully out of here? One blasted tile at a time, fingers crossed?
I understood what the Soul Crusher intended with this puzzle, but I had my crew’s safety to worry about, on top of retrieving Zetos. A distant boom caught my attention. Looking at Eira and the others, I knew they’d heard it, too.
“That might be the outside world,” Raphael said.
“The Hermessi,” Amelia added.
Adding that to my list of concerns, I tried to focus on what I could still do in this place. There had to be a faster way to get through this challenge…
Amelia
“How the hell are we going to get across?” Raphael asked, visibly on edge.
This whole mission was wearing us down. There wasn’t anything Eirexis or the healing potions could do to make that go away. The impact would last for a long time. I wanted to hold him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but who was I kidding?
Nothing in this room indicated that potential outcome. We were all basically human, rendered so by the Soul Crusher through some kind of crazy-powerful magic. At least one of us could get killed before Taeral could reach us with Eirexis.
