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.
We were all extremely anxious. We were scared.
Looking around us, I counted ten tiles that Eva had marked as safe. We had those to get back to, if push came to shove, along with the neutral area at the back of the room, which we’d left behind. Somewhere beyond these strange walls, a battle was being waged. We could all hear the muffled booms. I didn’t even want to imagine what that was all about, especially after I’d seen the Hermessi in action and understood exactly how vicious they were in combat.
An idea involving Raphael’s flight ability began to blossom in my head, but I dared not voice it just yet. There were still unknown factors regarding the door, the tiles around it and the speed with which Raphael could fly, given the freezing particles. I kept it on the backburner while we figured out another way forward. The last thing we needed was to waste time on something that might not pan out in time to save us all.
“Eirexis might not help if some axe is hurled at us,” Herakles added, wearing a permanent frown. He pressed his lips together, as if forcibly silencing himself. I figured there were other thoughts he wanted to share, but none would help us in this situation.
“I’m in no mood to get my head chopped off,” Varga said. “Frankly, I’m in no mood to get poisoned, shot, paralyzed, or maimed again, either.”
“We can’t stop now,” Eira replied. “Our only option is forward.”
“True, but we definitely need to change our game here,” Lumi said. “Forward is one thing. Smart forward is something else entirely.”
“What is ‘smart forward’?” Raphael asked, raising a skeptical eyebrow at her.
Her white eyes glistened coldly, the blue rings around the irises sharpening her gaze as she looked at him. “How about not dying in this wretched room, for starters?”
“Okay. Yeah. That sounds great,” Raphael replied. “Any bright ideas? You haven’t heard from the Word recently, have you?”
