Pocket Dungeon 2, page 29
“Wes?” Iris hissed out my name.
I realized then that I had lost track of the blonde woman in the darkness sometime after I threw us both backward. One second, she had been beneath me on the wooden floor, and the next, I couldn’t feel her at all.
I shifted up to my knees on the ground and began to blindly feel for her in the dark with one hand. Phantom Doomslayer emitted a soft, nearly nonexistent light that haloed the sword, and while it wasn’t much, it provided me with the first bit of actual vision I’d had since we’d entered the dungeon at all. If I moved the sword even more than a foot in front of me, I could barely see its light, and even then, it was only because I knew to look for it.
With the sword in front of me like a torch, I shifted in a slow circle to try and catch sight of Iris. On what felt like the thousandth turn, I finally saw her.
The blonde woman was crouched on her knees with one hand on the wooden floor to brace herself.
“Iris,” I said. “I’m here. Can you see the glow from my sword?”
“I think so?” she said, but she didn’t sound sure of herself.
“You’re alright,” I said. “It’s dim, you have to focus on it. I don’t know what magic the dungeon is using to dampen the effects of glowing items, but this is as good as we’ve got. I’m right in front of you. I’m reaching out now with my free hand.”
As I spoke, I did just as I said and reached out toward the blonde woman. I took a few careful steps toward her. In the incredibly dim glow of Phantom Doomslayer, I was finally able to make use of the Pauldrons of Wisdom, but their effect only extended the foot or so in front of me where I could see, and while nothing was illuminated in red or yellow, I was still taking things slowly just to be on the safe side.
Iris stumbled up to her feet and took a step forward. One of her hands was outstretched in front of her, and her fingers grasped at nothing in the darkness that surrounded her.
I took another step toward her, and finally, our fingers brushed. I felt the sigh that rocked through Iris before I saw it happen, and she curled her hand around mine. She squeezed tightly and pulled herself toward me.
“Watch out,” I warned and pivoted on my heel so she didn’t run smack dab into Phantom Doomslayer.
“I can see you now,” she breathed out the words in relief. “Barely, but I can. I was worried it was some sort of trick.”
Her eyes were wide and wild as panic radiated off of her like heat.
“No tricks, I promise,” I assured her. “Right now all we have to worry about is that.”
As I spoke, I turned and moved Iris alongside me. The two of us spun around to fully face the massive blade as it continued to swing across the hall’s opening.
It was hard to make out much, even with the faint light from Phantom Doomslayer, but I was close enough to see that the blade wasn’t anything to mess with.
It was about the size of two refrigerators pressed up against each other, and it was curved along the bottom like a bell. It swung from a heavy rod from some sort of rigged mount on the ceiling that I couldn’t quite see in the darkness.
It also, unfortunately, looked wickedly sharp.
The reflection of Phantom Doomslayer reflected back at me in the metallic gleam of the hall’s trap blade in a way that felt distinctly mocking.
“Yasha?” I raised my voice and called out to the fox-woman.
The blade seemed to cut the hall in two, and while I had a faint bit of light on my side, the other side was just as dark as it had been before.
“I am still here,” she shouted back to me over the sound of the blade’s swinging. “But I do not know what we should do.”
“Do you see anything over there that could stop the blade?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “The hall behind me offers no help, either.”
“Shit,” I swore softly under my breath and glanced around. “Come on, let’s see if there’s anything closer to the blade itself.”
Iris hesitated, but she didn’t fight it as I moved closer to the giant trap in the center of the hallway with her in tow. I raised my sword up over my head in an attempt to give us more light, but all it really did was make my fucking arm ache like a son of a bitch.
The blade swung back and forth too quickly to simply run under one side, and it was too wide to risk that anyhow. It effectively cut us off from Yasha and the rest of the dungeon in one fell swoop.
My mind started to churn with thoughts and plans as quickly as I could. There had to be something we could do. So far, nothing came to mind. I eyed the blade as it swung like a pendulum and traced a pathway up to the rod that held it bolted to the ceiling.
It was hard to see much of the rod and the mechanism in the darkness, but I thought that would be our best chance at getting through.
“What are you thinking?” Iris asked me.
“That we have to interrupt the rod up top to halt the blade,” I said. “I think we’re going to have to make it stop swinging entirely so we can get through.”
“And how are we going to do that?” she asked.
“Great question,” I murmured. I had brought the Ivycaster bow and arrows with me, and while the bow was powerful, I didn’t think the arrows had enough strength to sever the rod. Not to mention, I would run the risk of missing the narrow target in the dark and potentially could hit Yasha on the other side.
So, that wasn’t the right plan. But I did have a weapon that could cut through anything.
“Here,” I told Iris as I passed her Phantom Doomslayer. “Hold this up so we can use the little bit of light it puts off. I think I might have an idea.”
Iris took the weapon from my hands without questioning me. She raised it up in the air with both hands to offer us as much light as we could get.
“I think I have an idea,” I shouted so Yasha could hear me. “I’m going to try and get up the wall next to the blade. There has to be some sort of mechanism that’s making the blade keep swinging like this. Pendulums can’t swing forever. If I can break it, the blade should stop, and we should be able to get through.”
“That sounds like a clever plan,” Yasha shouted back. “But how will you climb the wall?”
“Still working on that part,” I said.
I turned my focus to the wall next to me and was relieved to see the stones were less smooth here. In fact, they were kind of ragged and possibly bumpy enough for me to locate some decent hand and footholds among them.
Iris followed me closely at my heels as I moved over toward the wall.
It wasn’t going to be easy to free climb this, but it just might work.
We were standing close enough to the giant pendulum blade now that I felt a soft breeze with each swing of the deadly metal through the air. It was still hard to see, and any wrong move could send me careening right into the pathway of the killer blade, so I was going to have to be very, very careful.
“Keep the sword up, and when I tell you to get back, run,” I told Iris. And then I reached up and found a solid hold for my fingers to start my climb.
I braced myself on the wall and pulled, and it was far from easy, as the soles of my leather boots attempted to slide from the meager footholds I found, but I held firm. I gritted my teeth and hauled myself upward with all the strength I could manage.
But the looming task ahead of me threatened to make my palms sweat by the time I was high enough to go after the rod.
I was now wrapped entirely in darkness up here. Phantom Doomslayer’s dim glow didn’t reach up this high, so I was quite literally about to pull off this move blind.
The timing was going to have to be perfect, and my aim needed to be even more precise. I could hear the slashing through the air of the massive pendulum blade at my side, but I pushed all worry from my mind as I continued climbing.
Then I finally stopped and looked down.
If I turned at just the right angle, the dim glow of Phantom Doomslayer backlit the pendulum blade as it swung below me now. I was probably about fifteen feet up in the air as I plastered myself to the wall like some sort of knockoff Spider-Man.
I couldn’t see the rod that held the blade up, but I could see the blade as Phantom Doomslayer’s reflection glinted off the metal down below, and I could hear it as it cut through the air with each deadly swing.
From my new vantage point, I was able to see that the top of the pendulum blade was maybe four inches across. It wasn’t very wide, but it was wide enough to balance on if I was careful.
“God, this better work,” I muttered to myself.
I watched the blade closely as it moved back and forth and back and forth so I could get the timing just right. I waited until the blade was a foot from the wall, and then I jumped.
I careened through the air, and just as I started to drop like a stone, the blade swung into place beneath me.
My feet landed hard on the narrow edge of the blade, and the sensation sent shockwaves up into my legs. I was nearly knocked off balance as the rod holding the blade swept under my feet, and I all but tumbled to its center of weight distribution.
I collided squarely with the rod that held it up in the air, and a surge of triumph rocketed through me.
I had done it. I had fucking done it. But now wasn’t the time to be elated. I still had more work to do.
“Yasha, Iris, back up as far as you can from the blade,” I shouted down to the two women. I waited until I heard their calls of understanding and their feet shuffling back against the wooden boards before I even thought about fucking with this contraption.
The rod was made of iron and was as thick as my wrist. It was attached to some sort of mechanism above my head. Thankfully, it was only about a foot above me, so I was able to get a decent look at it without having to climb up the connecting rod itself.
I was glad to see that I hadn’t entirely forgotten everything I’d learned about in my mechanical engineering courses. I had been right that there was a mechanism meant to keep the pendulum swinging without stopping. The rod attached to the blade was linked up and attached to a metal hook that bracketed a set of gears. It looked like a take on an escapement mechanism.
A wild, feral grin spread across my face. We weren’t dead in the water after all. I wrapped one of my legs around the rod to help steady myself as I removed one of my hands so I could reach for my belt.
I unsheathed the Talon Blade of a Silver Dragon Wyrmling and balanced the weapon in my hand. I needed to time this just right. It was hard to see the mechanism properly in the darkness high above the light that the Phantom Doomslayer offered, but it was partially silhouetted at least.
I focused on the rhythm of the pendulum swinging and listened for the sounds the gears made until I caught onto the rhythm. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and raised up my arm to ready it. And when the pendulum went to swing back in the opposite direction again, I slammed the blade between the anchor point of the mechanism and the gear.
The blade beneath my feet jerked violently, and it nearly sent me careening to the ground as a gear tooth sheared off from the pressure, but I held steady.
“Iris! Go!” I shouted as loudly as I could to the woman down below. The blade had stilled, but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. The pressure the mechanism exerted onto the blade in my hand was almost unbearable, and I knew I didn’t have much time before something snapped.
“There’s a gap, I see it, hang on!” the blonde woman called back. “Don’t move yet, Wes.”
I heard the sound of metal clanking softly against metal and looked down. I was only able to follow her progress by the faint, nearly imperceptible gleam of my sword as Iris made her way up to the stilled blade.
She ducked her head down and slowly crept beneath where it had lodged itself partially into the wall.
Relief washed through me as Iris made it safely to the other side. I had been certain nothing would go wrong, but it still felt like a relief to know I had been right.
“We are both here now,” Yasha said.
“Then give me just a second, and back up,” I warned them both.
This wasn’t going to be fun.
I sucked in another breath through my teeth, and without hesitating, I yanked as hard as I could on the Talon Blade to free it from where I’d slammed it into the mechanism. The entire blade gave a loud, creaking groan and all of the pent-up momentum was released at once.
The blade swung violently to the left and nearly sent me flying off, and probably would have if it weren’t for my grip on the connecting rod next to me.
God, this was all about timing today, wasn’t it?
“Step back!” I shouted down to the two women below, just to make sure they really, really stepped back.
I waited until the blade was at the apex of its swing, and then I used its added momentum as I hurled myself toward the two women below. I was getting better at the whole ‘bending my knees so I didn’t send my femurs straight up into my spine’ thing when landing, but I still tumbled into the ground on impact.
“Wes!” Yasha cried out. I barely had a second to register the sound of her voice before the fox-woman threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck in a tight embrace, half hauling me up onto my feet in the process. “I was worried about the two of you.”
“We’re alright,” I told her. “But we need to keep going. If Monty’s anywhere ahead of us, I’m sure he needs our help. Can you lead the way down the hall? We have a little bit of light from my sword now, but you still have the best vision.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Here,” Iris said as she passed her Phantom Doomslayer.
Yasha raised the sword up in the air over her head, and I was able to see the top of her fuzzy ears with much more clarity now. She turned and began to lead the way down the wide hallway with me and Iris in tow.
It felt like we had been walking for an eternity with nothing to show for it before Yasha came to a halt.
“Do you see that?” she asked in a low tone.
I blinked a few times to let my eyes refocus but was surprised to see that I could in fact, actually see.
It took me a second to make out what I was supposed to be looking at, but finally I was able to make out the shape of a door a few yards ahead of us embedded in the smooth stone wall. The door wasn’t closed, though. It hung open no more than a few inches, but it was still open.
“Let me,” I said. As I spoke, I took Phantom Doomslayer from Yasha’s hand and moved to step in front of her. Now that I could actually see, I was far less concerned about taking the lead.
My heartbeat hammered in my chest as I moved slowly toward the open door with a healthy amount of caution. I had no idea what potentially waited for us on the other side, and I wasn’t about to get jumped by some sort of monster.
Light emanated from the room and cast a faint yellow halo around the open doorway. My nerves were on fire as I moved closer and closer to the door at a slow, tedious pace. I wasn’t about to get jumped by whatever waited for me on the other side, no way, no how. I was smart enough to avoid that, at least.
I poked open the door a little further with the tip of my sword, and it swung open without any sort of resistance.
But nothing could have prepared me for what waited for us on the other side.
“Monty!” I shouted in alarm.
Our new companion was about to fucking die. There was no other way to put it.
The room in front of me was shaped like an octagon. Thick grooves in the wooden floor cut from each joint in the wall to a central point in the middle of the room, and rushing rivers of a deep, dark red substance filled each of the makeshift channels.
The liquid inside pulsed like it had its own heartbeat as it was drawn up from the center of the room where Monty laid prone and trapped, and it filled the cracks between the stones in the walls as it flowed upward. It reminded me of the strange puzzle door that Yasha and I had faced where we ran into my doppelganger.
Only instead of having to fill the door with my blood to get it to open, it looked like the room was draining all of the blood from Monty’s body.
His limbs were pinned down in a star formation by thick, dark shackles attached to the stone floor and large prongs that reminded me of a spider’s legs punctured all over his body.
“Shit!” I shouted and bolted forward into the room.
Light danced across my vision as my eyes adjusted to being out of the gloom of the hallway, but I didn’t let that slow me down.
Monty was even paler than he had been when Yasha and I had first found him. His skin had gone so sallow-tinged white that it was nearly translucent, and I could see the dark network of veins beneath his skin as clear as if he were a fucking roadmap. His eyes were glazed, and his mouth hung open as if in a scream that simply wouldn’t come.
The sight chilled me to my bones.
Yasha and Iris were hot on my tail as we charged into the room, but as soon as the three of us were inside, the door slammed closed like it had a mind of its own.
I whipped my head around but saw nothing that could have closed the door itself. I would deal with whatever that was in a second. Right now, all of my focus was on Monty and making sure whatever the strange spider thing was wouldn’t suck all of the blood from his body like he was a personal Capri-Sun.
I skittered across the wooden floor on my knees and came to a stop right at Monty’s side. I dropped Phantom Doomslayer onto the ground with a loud clatter and quickly pulled the Talon Blade of a Silver Dragon Wyrmling out of its spot on my belt.
“Come on,” I shouted. “Help me get the other side.”
As I spoke, I began to hack and slice at the strange metal limbs puncturing Monty’s body with the sharpened edge of my blade. Each strange piece I cut through let out a tiny, hissing scream like it was actually alive before it fell away and retracted. I realized then that the limbs weren’t actually metal at all. They were some sort of… flesh. The limbs were coated in a chitinous armor that appeared, from a distance, to be made of metal.
What the fuck were these things?
They all left gaping holes the size of a cigar burn across Monty’s exposed skin, but that would be a problem for later, when he was actually alive. The wounds oozed blood in a slow, thick trickle, and I had no idea if that was a good sign or a bad one, but it wasn’t enough to make me stop my onslaught of the limbs.
I realized then that I had lost track of the blonde woman in the darkness sometime after I threw us both backward. One second, she had been beneath me on the wooden floor, and the next, I couldn’t feel her at all.
I shifted up to my knees on the ground and began to blindly feel for her in the dark with one hand. Phantom Doomslayer emitted a soft, nearly nonexistent light that haloed the sword, and while it wasn’t much, it provided me with the first bit of actual vision I’d had since we’d entered the dungeon at all. If I moved the sword even more than a foot in front of me, I could barely see its light, and even then, it was only because I knew to look for it.
With the sword in front of me like a torch, I shifted in a slow circle to try and catch sight of Iris. On what felt like the thousandth turn, I finally saw her.
The blonde woman was crouched on her knees with one hand on the wooden floor to brace herself.
“Iris,” I said. “I’m here. Can you see the glow from my sword?”
“I think so?” she said, but she didn’t sound sure of herself.
“You’re alright,” I said. “It’s dim, you have to focus on it. I don’t know what magic the dungeon is using to dampen the effects of glowing items, but this is as good as we’ve got. I’m right in front of you. I’m reaching out now with my free hand.”
As I spoke, I did just as I said and reached out toward the blonde woman. I took a few careful steps toward her. In the incredibly dim glow of Phantom Doomslayer, I was finally able to make use of the Pauldrons of Wisdom, but their effect only extended the foot or so in front of me where I could see, and while nothing was illuminated in red or yellow, I was still taking things slowly just to be on the safe side.
Iris stumbled up to her feet and took a step forward. One of her hands was outstretched in front of her, and her fingers grasped at nothing in the darkness that surrounded her.
I took another step toward her, and finally, our fingers brushed. I felt the sigh that rocked through Iris before I saw it happen, and she curled her hand around mine. She squeezed tightly and pulled herself toward me.
“Watch out,” I warned and pivoted on my heel so she didn’t run smack dab into Phantom Doomslayer.
“I can see you now,” she breathed out the words in relief. “Barely, but I can. I was worried it was some sort of trick.”
Her eyes were wide and wild as panic radiated off of her like heat.
“No tricks, I promise,” I assured her. “Right now all we have to worry about is that.”
As I spoke, I turned and moved Iris alongside me. The two of us spun around to fully face the massive blade as it continued to swing across the hall’s opening.
It was hard to make out much, even with the faint light from Phantom Doomslayer, but I was close enough to see that the blade wasn’t anything to mess with.
It was about the size of two refrigerators pressed up against each other, and it was curved along the bottom like a bell. It swung from a heavy rod from some sort of rigged mount on the ceiling that I couldn’t quite see in the darkness.
It also, unfortunately, looked wickedly sharp.
The reflection of Phantom Doomslayer reflected back at me in the metallic gleam of the hall’s trap blade in a way that felt distinctly mocking.
“Yasha?” I raised my voice and called out to the fox-woman.
The blade seemed to cut the hall in two, and while I had a faint bit of light on my side, the other side was just as dark as it had been before.
“I am still here,” she shouted back to me over the sound of the blade’s swinging. “But I do not know what we should do.”
“Do you see anything over there that could stop the blade?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “The hall behind me offers no help, either.”
“Shit,” I swore softly under my breath and glanced around. “Come on, let’s see if there’s anything closer to the blade itself.”
Iris hesitated, but she didn’t fight it as I moved closer to the giant trap in the center of the hallway with her in tow. I raised my sword up over my head in an attempt to give us more light, but all it really did was make my fucking arm ache like a son of a bitch.
The blade swung back and forth too quickly to simply run under one side, and it was too wide to risk that anyhow. It effectively cut us off from Yasha and the rest of the dungeon in one fell swoop.
My mind started to churn with thoughts and plans as quickly as I could. There had to be something we could do. So far, nothing came to mind. I eyed the blade as it swung like a pendulum and traced a pathway up to the rod that held it bolted to the ceiling.
It was hard to see much of the rod and the mechanism in the darkness, but I thought that would be our best chance at getting through.
“What are you thinking?” Iris asked me.
“That we have to interrupt the rod up top to halt the blade,” I said. “I think we’re going to have to make it stop swinging entirely so we can get through.”
“And how are we going to do that?” she asked.
“Great question,” I murmured. I had brought the Ivycaster bow and arrows with me, and while the bow was powerful, I didn’t think the arrows had enough strength to sever the rod. Not to mention, I would run the risk of missing the narrow target in the dark and potentially could hit Yasha on the other side.
So, that wasn’t the right plan. But I did have a weapon that could cut through anything.
“Here,” I told Iris as I passed her Phantom Doomslayer. “Hold this up so we can use the little bit of light it puts off. I think I might have an idea.”
Iris took the weapon from my hands without questioning me. She raised it up in the air with both hands to offer us as much light as we could get.
“I think I have an idea,” I shouted so Yasha could hear me. “I’m going to try and get up the wall next to the blade. There has to be some sort of mechanism that’s making the blade keep swinging like this. Pendulums can’t swing forever. If I can break it, the blade should stop, and we should be able to get through.”
“That sounds like a clever plan,” Yasha shouted back. “But how will you climb the wall?”
“Still working on that part,” I said.
I turned my focus to the wall next to me and was relieved to see the stones were less smooth here. In fact, they were kind of ragged and possibly bumpy enough for me to locate some decent hand and footholds among them.
Iris followed me closely at my heels as I moved over toward the wall.
It wasn’t going to be easy to free climb this, but it just might work.
We were standing close enough to the giant pendulum blade now that I felt a soft breeze with each swing of the deadly metal through the air. It was still hard to see, and any wrong move could send me careening right into the pathway of the killer blade, so I was going to have to be very, very careful.
“Keep the sword up, and when I tell you to get back, run,” I told Iris. And then I reached up and found a solid hold for my fingers to start my climb.
I braced myself on the wall and pulled, and it was far from easy, as the soles of my leather boots attempted to slide from the meager footholds I found, but I held firm. I gritted my teeth and hauled myself upward with all the strength I could manage.
But the looming task ahead of me threatened to make my palms sweat by the time I was high enough to go after the rod.
I was now wrapped entirely in darkness up here. Phantom Doomslayer’s dim glow didn’t reach up this high, so I was quite literally about to pull off this move blind.
The timing was going to have to be perfect, and my aim needed to be even more precise. I could hear the slashing through the air of the massive pendulum blade at my side, but I pushed all worry from my mind as I continued climbing.
Then I finally stopped and looked down.
If I turned at just the right angle, the dim glow of Phantom Doomslayer backlit the pendulum blade as it swung below me now. I was probably about fifteen feet up in the air as I plastered myself to the wall like some sort of knockoff Spider-Man.
I couldn’t see the rod that held the blade up, but I could see the blade as Phantom Doomslayer’s reflection glinted off the metal down below, and I could hear it as it cut through the air with each deadly swing.
From my new vantage point, I was able to see that the top of the pendulum blade was maybe four inches across. It wasn’t very wide, but it was wide enough to balance on if I was careful.
“God, this better work,” I muttered to myself.
I watched the blade closely as it moved back and forth and back and forth so I could get the timing just right. I waited until the blade was a foot from the wall, and then I jumped.
I careened through the air, and just as I started to drop like a stone, the blade swung into place beneath me.
My feet landed hard on the narrow edge of the blade, and the sensation sent shockwaves up into my legs. I was nearly knocked off balance as the rod holding the blade swept under my feet, and I all but tumbled to its center of weight distribution.
I collided squarely with the rod that held it up in the air, and a surge of triumph rocketed through me.
I had done it. I had fucking done it. But now wasn’t the time to be elated. I still had more work to do.
“Yasha, Iris, back up as far as you can from the blade,” I shouted down to the two women. I waited until I heard their calls of understanding and their feet shuffling back against the wooden boards before I even thought about fucking with this contraption.
The rod was made of iron and was as thick as my wrist. It was attached to some sort of mechanism above my head. Thankfully, it was only about a foot above me, so I was able to get a decent look at it without having to climb up the connecting rod itself.
I was glad to see that I hadn’t entirely forgotten everything I’d learned about in my mechanical engineering courses. I had been right that there was a mechanism meant to keep the pendulum swinging without stopping. The rod attached to the blade was linked up and attached to a metal hook that bracketed a set of gears. It looked like a take on an escapement mechanism.
A wild, feral grin spread across my face. We weren’t dead in the water after all. I wrapped one of my legs around the rod to help steady myself as I removed one of my hands so I could reach for my belt.
I unsheathed the Talon Blade of a Silver Dragon Wyrmling and balanced the weapon in my hand. I needed to time this just right. It was hard to see the mechanism properly in the darkness high above the light that the Phantom Doomslayer offered, but it was partially silhouetted at least.
I focused on the rhythm of the pendulum swinging and listened for the sounds the gears made until I caught onto the rhythm. I sucked in a breath through my teeth and raised up my arm to ready it. And when the pendulum went to swing back in the opposite direction again, I slammed the blade between the anchor point of the mechanism and the gear.
The blade beneath my feet jerked violently, and it nearly sent me careening to the ground as a gear tooth sheared off from the pressure, but I held steady.
“Iris! Go!” I shouted as loudly as I could to the woman down below. The blade had stilled, but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. The pressure the mechanism exerted onto the blade in my hand was almost unbearable, and I knew I didn’t have much time before something snapped.
“There’s a gap, I see it, hang on!” the blonde woman called back. “Don’t move yet, Wes.”
I heard the sound of metal clanking softly against metal and looked down. I was only able to follow her progress by the faint, nearly imperceptible gleam of my sword as Iris made her way up to the stilled blade.
She ducked her head down and slowly crept beneath where it had lodged itself partially into the wall.
Relief washed through me as Iris made it safely to the other side. I had been certain nothing would go wrong, but it still felt like a relief to know I had been right.
“We are both here now,” Yasha said.
“Then give me just a second, and back up,” I warned them both.
This wasn’t going to be fun.
I sucked in another breath through my teeth, and without hesitating, I yanked as hard as I could on the Talon Blade to free it from where I’d slammed it into the mechanism. The entire blade gave a loud, creaking groan and all of the pent-up momentum was released at once.
The blade swung violently to the left and nearly sent me flying off, and probably would have if it weren’t for my grip on the connecting rod next to me.
God, this was all about timing today, wasn’t it?
“Step back!” I shouted down to the two women below, just to make sure they really, really stepped back.
I waited until the blade was at the apex of its swing, and then I used its added momentum as I hurled myself toward the two women below. I was getting better at the whole ‘bending my knees so I didn’t send my femurs straight up into my spine’ thing when landing, but I still tumbled into the ground on impact.
“Wes!” Yasha cried out. I barely had a second to register the sound of her voice before the fox-woman threw herself at me and wrapped her arms around my neck in a tight embrace, half hauling me up onto my feet in the process. “I was worried about the two of you.”
“We’re alright,” I told her. “But we need to keep going. If Monty’s anywhere ahead of us, I’m sure he needs our help. Can you lead the way down the hall? We have a little bit of light from my sword now, but you still have the best vision.”
“I can do that,” she said.
“Here,” Iris said as she passed her Phantom Doomslayer.
Yasha raised the sword up in the air over her head, and I was able to see the top of her fuzzy ears with much more clarity now. She turned and began to lead the way down the wide hallway with me and Iris in tow.
It felt like we had been walking for an eternity with nothing to show for it before Yasha came to a halt.
“Do you see that?” she asked in a low tone.
I blinked a few times to let my eyes refocus but was surprised to see that I could in fact, actually see.
It took me a second to make out what I was supposed to be looking at, but finally I was able to make out the shape of a door a few yards ahead of us embedded in the smooth stone wall. The door wasn’t closed, though. It hung open no more than a few inches, but it was still open.
“Let me,” I said. As I spoke, I took Phantom Doomslayer from Yasha’s hand and moved to step in front of her. Now that I could actually see, I was far less concerned about taking the lead.
My heartbeat hammered in my chest as I moved slowly toward the open door with a healthy amount of caution. I had no idea what potentially waited for us on the other side, and I wasn’t about to get jumped by some sort of monster.
Light emanated from the room and cast a faint yellow halo around the open doorway. My nerves were on fire as I moved closer and closer to the door at a slow, tedious pace. I wasn’t about to get jumped by whatever waited for me on the other side, no way, no how. I was smart enough to avoid that, at least.
I poked open the door a little further with the tip of my sword, and it swung open without any sort of resistance.
But nothing could have prepared me for what waited for us on the other side.
“Monty!” I shouted in alarm.
Our new companion was about to fucking die. There was no other way to put it.
The room in front of me was shaped like an octagon. Thick grooves in the wooden floor cut from each joint in the wall to a central point in the middle of the room, and rushing rivers of a deep, dark red substance filled each of the makeshift channels.
The liquid inside pulsed like it had its own heartbeat as it was drawn up from the center of the room where Monty laid prone and trapped, and it filled the cracks between the stones in the walls as it flowed upward. It reminded me of the strange puzzle door that Yasha and I had faced where we ran into my doppelganger.
Only instead of having to fill the door with my blood to get it to open, it looked like the room was draining all of the blood from Monty’s body.
His limbs were pinned down in a star formation by thick, dark shackles attached to the stone floor and large prongs that reminded me of a spider’s legs punctured all over his body.
“Shit!” I shouted and bolted forward into the room.
Light danced across my vision as my eyes adjusted to being out of the gloom of the hallway, but I didn’t let that slow me down.
Monty was even paler than he had been when Yasha and I had first found him. His skin had gone so sallow-tinged white that it was nearly translucent, and I could see the dark network of veins beneath his skin as clear as if he were a fucking roadmap. His eyes were glazed, and his mouth hung open as if in a scream that simply wouldn’t come.
The sight chilled me to my bones.
Yasha and Iris were hot on my tail as we charged into the room, but as soon as the three of us were inside, the door slammed closed like it had a mind of its own.
I whipped my head around but saw nothing that could have closed the door itself. I would deal with whatever that was in a second. Right now, all of my focus was on Monty and making sure whatever the strange spider thing was wouldn’t suck all of the blood from his body like he was a personal Capri-Sun.
I skittered across the wooden floor on my knees and came to a stop right at Monty’s side. I dropped Phantom Doomslayer onto the ground with a loud clatter and quickly pulled the Talon Blade of a Silver Dragon Wyrmling out of its spot on my belt.
“Come on,” I shouted. “Help me get the other side.”
As I spoke, I began to hack and slice at the strange metal limbs puncturing Monty’s body with the sharpened edge of my blade. Each strange piece I cut through let out a tiny, hissing scream like it was actually alive before it fell away and retracted. I realized then that the limbs weren’t actually metal at all. They were some sort of… flesh. The limbs were coated in a chitinous armor that appeared, from a distance, to be made of metal.
What the fuck were these things?
They all left gaping holes the size of a cigar burn across Monty’s exposed skin, but that would be a problem for later, when he was actually alive. The wounds oozed blood in a slow, thick trickle, and I had no idea if that was a good sign or a bad one, but it wasn’t enough to make me stop my onslaught of the limbs.
