It was a little different from going into the spire, but I felt a familiar tension in my shoulders.
And I planned to approach the scenario in a similar way.
This should be good practice.
I had to duck down to avoid hitting my head on the low ceiling, and the light from a single lantern was far from ideal. Still, we had an easy enough time making it down the first corridor. It was wide enough for us to walk two abreast, but I stayed behind Mara for the time being, planning to support her with ranged attacks when we inevitably ran into something we had to fight.
Our first challenge, however, was a fork in the path. The path to our right led upward, and I could see some sort of light source in the distance. The left path led downward, into deeper darkness.
“Left or right?” I asked.
Mara frowned, glancing from side to side. “I’m nay sure. S’pose if monsters are in the dark, it’s the dark we should follow.”
I nodded at her logic. “We’ll probably want to explore both routes eventually, but we may as well start down there.”
“Right then.” Marissa led the way, her lantern seeming woefully insufficient.
As we descended further, I began to hear what sounded like running water, but I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination.
We continued until Mara raised a hand, gesturing for me to stop. “Down ‘ere.”
I paused, ducking and squinting. It took several moments before I could see what she was talking about — a hair-thin thread near ankle level. I blinked. “A tripwire?”
“Or something alike, aye. I see more of ‘em up ahead, too. Gonna have to watch our toes.”
I winced. My vision was far from great. “All right. We’ll take it slow.”
Mara stepped over the glimmering strand first, and I cautiously followed. I could see more of them up ahead, just like she said, crisscrossing the hallway and intersecting with each other.
I ducked under a patch of them, then the wires got thicker and thicker up ahead. That made them more obvious, but the passage was thinning, making it harder to avoid them.
We reached an area where the path narrowed to single-file and saw something thick and shiny on the ground ahead, surrounded in rubble. It was about as tall as the hallway…and about as wide, too. It was made of solid metal and covered in those tripwires.
Mara knelt down as we reached it. “It’s a door. Torn right off the hinges.” She glanced from side to side. “And by the looks of it, it was attached to solid rock.”
I blinked, examining the door with her. It was made out of metal and as thick as my arm. It looked like the type of thing I’d expect to see on a bank vault. I saw a few runes on the surface, too. They weren’t charged, but they were similar to the ones I used on a shield sigil. They must have reinforced the already solid door with magic when it was still intact.
It must have taken tremendous force to break it down.
Or, more likely, just break the rock around it and knock it over, I realized.
“Guess we’re up against something big. Or at least strong. An oni, maybe.”
Marissa kept going, and I cautiously followed.
“Oni?”
“Similar to an ogre, but a bit smarter. Generally scary looking, often wields an iron club. I don’t see an ogre being smart enough to lay wires like this, but an oni might.”
I glanced back at the door as we continued. There were an awful lot of strands in that particular area. They were extremely obvious, but there were so many of them that they were still difficult to avoid.
Maybe they were just there to distract us from something else? It was certainly possible.
We stepped and wove through a patch with a half-dozen strands at different angles, then crawled on the floor to avoid a section that took up the whole top of the passageway.
As we advanced, I realized a few important things.
First, it was strange that the strands were glimmering like they were metallic. I wasn’t an expert on tripwires, but that sounded like it was a bad idea in a place like this — the reflection on our light made them more obvious.
Second was that they didn’t seem to have any obvious anchors points in the floors or walls. No nails, no screws, nothing holding them into place.
Third, they didn’t seem to be attached to anything that would set off a trap or alarm. In fact, I didn’t see any traps or alarms at all. The only thing the strands connected to was each other.
It was that last bit that gave it away. “Uh, Mara? I don’t think these are tripwires.”
We could see the cavern opening up just ahead. Mara paused, turning her head toward me. “Oh?”
I thought I heard the slightest hint of movement up ahead. “I think they’re spider webs.”
“Spider…?”
She glanced back toward the large room, then threw herself to the side just in time to avoid a spray of green liquid coming from the center of the room.
I stepped back, avoiding the resulting puddle. That was good, because it sizzled and burned the stone.
Acid? That’s not good.
“Heh heh heh.” I heard a cackling coming from the room ahead of us, but I couldn’t see anything.
“Metallic webs…of course!” Marissa snapped her fingers. “It’s a jor…uh, joro… spider woman!”
I had pretty much no idea what she was talking about. I’d already fought one giant spider, though, and I had no desire to fight more.
Unfortunately, I could already see a handful of person-sized spiders descending from the roof of the cavern ahead. The webbing they were using wasn’t the metallic kind — that must have been from the other creature Mara was describing, but I couldn’t see that yet.
Beyond the spiders, I could see a raised section of stone with a single glowing green crystal on it.
“We fighting or leaving?” I asked.
“We’re going in,” she replied.
Then she rushed into the center of the room and punched a spider in the head.
“Fair.” I drew my sword and followed.
Something snagged my leg only a moment later.
I stumbled, but I’d been ready for this. I managed to keep my balance, sweeping my sword down and severing the web.
I spun, following the webbing to its source, and I saw her.
She was six feet tall, with black hair that reached all the way down to her feet. From the neck down, she was wrapped in that same metallic webbing that we’d seen on the walls, and she had a strand in her hand that I’d just severed.
“My, my. What a sharp sword you have there.” The woman smiled at me.
Meanwhile, Marissa grabbed another person-sized spider around the neck, lifted, and threw it over her shoulder. I heard a crack as it landed, then she kicked backward. It went limp.
Three more spiders descended around her as she moved toward the back of the chamber. “Resh it. Don’t talk to her, Cadence. She can compel men to do her bidding with her voice. Just stick her with something sharp.”
I looked back at the dark-haired woman. “Sorry, purely business. I’m sure you understand.”
I advanced, swinging my sword upward in an arc and sending a shockwave of force in her direction.
She waved a hand and the webbing around her rippled, shifting into a shield of webbing, blocking the attack. “Now that’s a rude way to start a conversation. I really wish you’d stop.”
I shook my head. “Nah.”
I took a few steps forward, barely avoiding another strand of webbing that was on the floor at ankle height.