A Shade of Vampire 75: A Blade of Thieron

by Forrest, Bella

  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.

  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?”

  She blinked rapidly, as if not following him. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “And what is up with that snark?” Nethissis replied, glowering at Raphael.

  “Guys, gals… We need to cool our heels here,” I said, trying to smooth things over as best as I could. I could see where this conversation was going, and it was nowhere beneficial to us as friends, as a crew, or as the would-be saviors of our worlds. “There’s a pattern here. We just need to find it.”

  Taeral glanced at me, clearly curious. “What pattern?”

  “The tiles,” I replied, motioning around me. “Notice where we’re standing, and how the safe tiles are positioned. I’m in the middle on a safe one, right?”

  “Right,” Riza said, looking down at her neutral spot.

  “And my safe tile is surrounded by traps to my north, south, and east,” I said. “How is yours, for example?”

  “Facing the door?” Riza asked, and I nodded. “South, east… and north.”

  “Mine are different,” Varga interjected. “South, east, and west.”

  “North, east, south,” Raphael said.

  Soon enough, I was able to identify one small pattern from what I could see around the rest of our crew members. “Almost all safe tiles marked until now have a pressure plate to their right. I think we can follow this and sort of work our way across to the door. If we manage to spot another such recurrence, it might help speed this along even more.”

  Taeral thought about it for a moment. “Right now, I know my safe plate has triggers to the right and the left. Not sure about what’s ahead.”

  “Try stepping on it as slowly and as carefully as you can,” I advised him. “You might be able to sense if it dips.”

  He put his foot forward and slowly pressed the tile in front of him. Nothing happened. He stepped on it, smiling. “Safe,” he said, and Eva marked it with chalk. The tiles we’d already triggered were neutral now, as well, though no chalk was required to mark them. They were lowered by a couple of millimeters, and we could all see them.

  “Now, based on what you have around you, we know your south was a pressure plate. Chances are your right tile is definitely booby-trapped,” I said, occasionally re-counting the tiles he’d stepped on. “Try the tile to your left, now. Just like before, slowly and carefully.”

  He did, and we could all see it shift downward, ever so slightly. “Stop!” I breathed. “Okay, that one is set up to do something. So… try the one ahead.”

  Taeral followed my lead and discovered another safe plate. “I think we’re on to something! How are you doing this?” he asked me.

  “It’s kind of difficult to explain the equations rumbling through my head right now,” I replied, wearing a faint smile. My brain was fired up, analyzing and identifying potential pathways across the floor. I’d been so bogged down by our situation and the repeated injuries that I’d forgotten to just breathe and focus on the only thing I knew how to do best.

  If there was one thing the Soul Crusher couldn’t take away, it was my ability to calculate every single ounce of matter and possibilities around me. He might’ve stripped me of my healing ability, but there was no way he could mess with my brain.

  Eva marked the tile safe and looked at me. “Where to next?”

  Following the same logic, I went over the potential routes in my head, based on what we’d already identified. “Try diagonally to the right.”

  Taeral moved carefully and pressed the tip of his boot against the tile I’d indicated. “It’s clear,” he said and stepped on it, as Eva applied another chalk mark in its corner.

  I chuckled softly, pleased with my prediction ability. So far, so good, I thought. We still had a long way to go across the room, but, if the patterns stayed true to what I’d noted so far, we had a pretty good chance of making it out of here with minimum damage.

  We caught up with Taeral, keeping to the safe tiles that had been marked along the way.

  “Try diagonally to your left, next,” I said to him.

  The air thickened as we prepared for another step. The freezing particles made my shoulders feel heavier than usual. Even my neck hurt, as if my head suddenly weighed too much. We were in a crazy race against the clock, in a place designed for tiptoeing carefully… the complete opposite of what we needed.

  Taeral stepped on the diagonal, to his left.

  Before he could pull his foot back, something still clicked. “Dammit,” he hissed, and ducked.

  I almost didn’t see it coming. Dozens of thin filaments slashed across the room. I barely managed to drop to my knees in time. The ghost wires sliced through the air, moving at lightning speed from the glowing door to the other side. I heard the metallic swish above my head, followed by puffy blond hairs falling to the floor.

  Touching the top of my pixie haircut, I realized that the filaments had cut through some of it. Breaking into a cold sweat, I looked at Raphael, whose expression was a gut-wrenching mixture of concern and relief.

  “Not that I don’t like your hair short… I love it. But do you really think a haircut was due?” he asked, sarcastically.

  “That was close,” Herakles muttered. “What else is in this room? Dragons? Shills? Volcanoes?”

  It had taken every ounce of strength to duck, this time. I worried that the next time, one of us wouldn’t make it. The freezing particles continued to stick to us, making every movement increasingly hard.

  “We can’t stop,” Eira said, repeating it like a mantra as she sat on a safe tile, knees up to her chest, arms wrapped around her calves. “We can’t stop…”

  Lumi reached out to her from two tiles away. “Come on, kiddo. Snap out of it.”

  Eira stared at her for a moment, shaking her head slowly. “I never thought I’d live through something like this. I never thought I’d experience this kind of fear.”

  “What do you mean?” Taeral asked.

  The poor girl was pale as a sheet of paper, shaking like a leaf. I’d thought I had it bad, but Eira was much, much worse.

  “The fear that I’d be a survivor, that I’d watch my friends die in this place,” she whispered.

  “Whoa, hold on, no one’s dying here yet,” I said, trying to sound more upbeat than it actually came out. “I mean, there’s the obvious risk and increased probability, yes, but Eira, it’s part of our job. We’re trained for this type of stuff.”

  “Are you, though?” she asked, wholeheartedly.

  Were we? All our training had worked through multiple wars and secret intelligence scenarios. None had dealt with insanely powerful Reapers and maniacal elementals. All our antagonists had been creatures like ourselves, gifted in one way or another… but they were living and breathing. They could be killed by our weapons, by our ability to work together and overcome whatever they thre
w at us.

  In many ways, our situation here was different.

  “Fundamentally, the challenge is the same. Adapt and survive. Take calculated risks. Prepare for the worst. Do everything that you can in order to get out of this alive,” I said firmly. “I’d rather focus on that.”

  And I meant it. I could collapse right here, in the middle of this room, and give up. I could die in here, just by stepping on random tiles and triggering some kind of killer mechanism. I could surrender and just let the end come, sooner rather than later.

  But every fiber in my body screamed against it. Regardless of the issues ahead, my mind refused to call it quits. My entire being burned with a powerful desire to survive. To get the heck out of this room. To get to Zetos, then Phyla, and to put an end to this Hermessi debacle.

  I’d found something to hold on to, deep in my soul. My love for Raphael throbbed inside my chest, beckoning me to keep going. If I had to carry Eira, Herakles, Varga, Riza, and everybody else in this crew in order to complete this challenge, I was ready to do it. Even if I broke my legs again, or got poisoned over and over… it didn’t matter.

  I had to keep going. We all had to keep going.

  The Soul Crusher clicked his teeth. “Um, I take it some of you are starting to fizzle out?”

  He’d been watching and listening, quietly, for the most part. He only seemed to intervene when things got tough. It sounded as though he was teasing us, but what if he was actually doing the opposite? What if the Soul Crusher was trying to encourage us, in his own twisted way?

  Perhaps there was something in this room that we’d yet to see. Something we’d missed. I almost slapped myself when it suddenly hit me, my gaze fixed on the two tiles in front of the glowing door frame.

  “That’s the door, right?” I asked aloud.

  “Of course. Why’d you think I drew it? To mess with you? I’m not that cold,” the Soul Crusher replied, and a grin slit my face, ear to ear, prompting Raphael to chuckle.

  “Uh-oh. Watch out. Amelia’s getting an idea.”

  Indeed, I was getting a great idea. An idea I should’ve had much, much sooner than this. Better late than never.