Now, Lex had quite a lot of stuff in his bag seeing as it was a magic enchanter’s bag and so was much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside. He was fairly sure he didn’t have any salt but he did have salty snacks? crispy things that tasted great, and slowly rotted your teeth, according to some people (who were probably very prim, bossy and wore fussy-looking glasses).
Ignoring Jesse, who was demanding to know what he had found out from the book, Lex thrust his hand into his bag, pulled out a bag of salty snacks, ripped it open and shook handfuls of crisps out on to the octopuses that were clinging to him. It was only a hunch, but it paid off. As soon as the crisps touched the octopuses, their skin began to bubble and smoke and they dropped off Lex, squealing even more loudly than they had been before.
Straight away, Lex grabbed a second bag, ripped it open and threw crisps at Jesse. Soon the octopuses on the cowboy were smoking on the floor at his feet as well. The others, who’d been making their way along the floor, stopped, presumably frightened by the noise their fellows were making.
Lex wasn’t going to waste time hanging around. He made straight for the open door, calling over his shoulder to Jesse, ‘Come on, quick!’
A moment later they were in the next room with the door firmly closed behind them. The previously water-filled room was mercifully free of octopuses, although the rotten boards did creak beneath their feet in a worrying way.
‘They’re one of the most poisonous sea creatures known to man!’ Lex gasped. ‘We were covered in them! How the heck did we get out of there without them biting us?’
‘They were trying to bite us,’ Jesse replied, pulling the sleeve of his jacket outwards so that Lex could see the tiny little pinpricks where the octopuses’ teeth had gone through but had been unable to reach the skin.
‘Their teeth aren’t long enough,’ Lex said, staring in horror at his own clothes, all with identical little holes in them. ‘If they’d managed to find some bare skin…’ He trailed off with a shudder.
Before going on, he and Jesse put on the spare coats that Lex had brought in his bag. They would offer more protection from the octopuses and they had hoods to shield their heads. They also each opened a packet of salty snacks to carry with them and fling at any other octopuses they might come into contact with. Lex had dropped the starfish again when the water had flooded out at them but there were plenty more stuck to the walls in this room, emitting their faint, greenish glow.
‘I have to say, these Games seemed a helluva lot more fun from the stadiums,’ Jesse grumbled.
Lex said nothing, but the truth was that he completely agreed with Jesse in that moment. This was not fun. At. All. He wondered briefly how the others were faring.
‘The sooner we find the captain’s medallion, the sooner we can leave,’ he said. ‘Come on, we need to get to the bridge.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Lex would’ve liked to think that the poisonous octopuses were the only dangerous thing on the ship? the only thing standing between him and the captain’s medallion and glorious victory for the first round. But he knew better. Games did not tend to work that way? it would make them too boring. Gods? and the human spectators? liked a little variety. The likelihood, therefore, was that there would be several different nasties on board this ship? possibly a mixture of natural inhabitants (such as the octopuses) and things put there specially by the Gods.
When Lex heard a noise coming from behind a closed door a little later he braced himself to throw it open and discover what was behind it. It was no use trying to avoid the horrible stuff, for there were probably more traps around the captain’s medallion than there were anywhere else on the ship. The more traps they came into contact with, therefore, the closer to their ultimate goal they probably were. But before Lex could open the door, it was flung open from the other side and Jeremiah burst out.
It seemed that Jeremiah must have heard Lex and Jesse because he came flying out braced for attack, shouting and waving his sword. For a split second Lex didn’t realise it was Jeremiah and thought instead that it was something coming to get him, so he used the only weapon he had? he threw his packet of salty snacks in the nobleman’s face.
It was a surprisingly effective? if slightly ludicrous? form of attack, for Jeremiah stopped dead, clutching at his eyes with his free hand and yelling. Clearly some salt had got in there and was stinging. He was making a tremendous fuss about it, though. Anyone would think that he’d just had acid thrown in his face.
‘Sorry, old bean,’ Lex said, not really feeling sorry at all.
‘Oh my Gods, what have you done?’ Jeremiah shrieked, dropping his sword so that both hands could clutch at his eyes. ‘I can’t see! I’m blind!’
‘Well, that’s how these Games work, you know,’ Lex said cheerfully, declining to correct Jeremiah’s misimpression that he had just been attacked with something extremely harmful and possibly deadly.
‘It was only a packet of salty snacks, Jeremiah!’ Tess said scornfully from behind him. She fixed her brother with a withering look and said, ‘Stop being such a baby!’
‘Eh?’ Jeremiah lowered his hands and looked up with eyes that were a little red but, other than that, perfectly fine. ‘Oh. You ass!’ he spat venomously at Lex. ‘What are you walking around munching on snacks in the middle of the Game for? You’ll never win that way!’
‘When you’ve been playing these Games for as long as I have, Jeremiah,’ Lex replied, deliberately flippantly, ‘you become such an old hand that you can eat and play at the same time. Isn’t that right, Jesse?’ He gave the cowboy a stern, meaningful look. No point in telling Jeremiah about the Squealing Blue-Ringed Octopii if he didn’t know about them already. It would spoil the surprise. And Lex certainly wasn’t going to come out and tell a competitor how to deal with a potential threat.
Jesse nodded and put a crisp into his mouth for emphasis, then remembered the Binding Bracelets and hastily handed the packet over to Lex so that he could eat a crisp, too, and they wouldn’t swap bodies.
Jeremiah shook his head and bent down to retrieve his sword. ‘Well, I think you’re a pair of asses.’
‘I think anyone who’d use the word “ass” as an insult is a stuck-up toff who has no business doing anything more dangerous than playing a game of croquet!’
To Lex’s pleased surprise, Tess sniggered at that, even if she did hastily try to turn it into a cough.
‘What happened to your leg?’ Lex asked, noticing for the first time that part of Jeremiah’s right trouser leg had been ripped away, and there was a jagged gash stretching down his calf? not deep enough to cause any damage, or a limp (more’s the pity)? but enough to draw a bit of blood.
‘Never you mind!’ Jeremiah snapped. Obviously he, too, felt that it would not do to give anything away about threats the other players hadn’t come into contact with yet. It looked to Lex like the handiwork of something with claws? a giant crab, or lobster, perhaps. Unpleasant, but hardly deadly.
‘Well, it’s been fun, but I don’t have any more time to waste standing here chatting with you,’ Lex said.
Jeremiah gave him a haughty, superior look and turned away to continue the Game as well.