Bread and the Circus

Chapter 11, Part 2

We’d just been guessing that the spear trick would work, but as it turned out, it did.  Perfectly.  Neph didn’t even lose any of his spear’s length, either, as a section of the wall sprouted a horizontal trio of long metal spikes, which clanged as they struck the far wall.

“There’s no way a real ancient ruin would have traps like that,” I muttered as I hopped over the pressure plate before the spikes even receded all the way into their holes in the wall, Neph right behind me, letting me get to the fore for my turn.  “I mean, even if you had some sort of perpetual motion device to reset the springs or whatever making the spikes jump out, the tips would get worn down really fast hitting the wall like that.”

“Maybe if the builders of a place only figured the trap needed to be used once,” Neph opined.  “You know, leave a tomb robber’s body dangling there, impaled, as a visual aid to all the rumors about death curses and that sort of thing.”

“As long as the attempt didn’t happen too long after the  trap got installed,” I agreed, making a face at the grisly mental image, “yeah, I could see it.  As long as there were a lot of other traps as well, scattered around randomly.”

“To keep off the ones too stupid, desperate, or brave to take the hint,” Neph finished, grinning (not that I spared him more than a glance, of course – I was kinda busy poking the floor, after all).  “Put in enough one-shots, and make sure nobody knows the exact number, and I think that would be enough to keep off everybody but the real professionals and the terminal idiots.”

“Which are we, though?” I asked.  “Stupid, desperate, or brave?”

“Who says it has to be just one?” Neph replied.  “We’re not professionals, though, and I’m pretty sure we’re not terminal idiots.  Maybe we just didn’t think things through as much as we could have, but all the same…”

A whole section of ceiling came smashing down right then, and I nearly lost my spear as it slammed against the floor beneath it, then started pulling back upward with a loud clanking noise from somewhere off in the walls.  Naturally, this gave me and Neph plenty of time to scramble over the fallen block while it was retracting, and then he was at the front again, taking point.

“All the same, I don’t think we’re really the tomb robbing sort,” he continued as though nothing had happened – he was getting used to this pretty fast!  “So none of those categories are exactly right for us.  Stupid would mean we didn’t consider our options, and I know we both did; you even did research on what to expect.  Desperate, well, maybe a little, but even so, we could have found other ways to survive that didn’t involve risking our lives.  Maybe not as nice a way of life as we’d always been used to having, but not the end of the world.  Brave?”  He paused for a moment, glancing back at me with a slight smile, which I returned, before turning back to his task.  “Is it bravery if you just adapt to something?”

“We’re not panicking,” I countered.  “We could lose our heads, go screaming and running around.  Or freeze up and do nothing at all.  Instead, we’re doing like you said, adapting, because it’s the thing to do if we wanna survive.  And I wanna survive, whatever else might happen.  Getting into that fight where we were surrounded, backed into this dungeon, and thinking we were about to get rushed, overwhelmed, and killed, it made me realize it, realize just how much I wanna survive, how much I wanna go back and see my family again.  I didn’t know how much I love and miss ‘em until right at that moment.”

“Yeah,” Neph said, and the one word had a lot of meaning to it.  Enough meaning, actually, that neither of us really felt like talking for a while after that.  No point, I guess, not when we both had a lot to occupy our thoughts, and more to occupy our attention; after all, if we got distracted and missed one of those deathtraps, we wouldn’t have anything to worry about ever again in the imminent future.

Except we didn’t run into any new traps for a while.  What we encountered was the passageway narrowing a bit, to just one flagstone in width, so we had to go single-file, rather than having the option of going side-by-side (even if we hadn’t taken it).  And then, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes later (I’d forgotten to look at the stat suit’s timer when we began, so I wasn’t really sure how long we’d been down here), the dimly-lit passage came to a stop at a big doorway, lots of light streaming out of it, making it hard to see what lay beyond.

Shielding our eyes, I pressed up close behind Neph, while he kept on tapping his way forward, right up until we got up to the very edge of the empty doorway.  Looking forward, we saw that the walls of the huge room were coated in gold, or maybe bronze or copper (not like I’d know the difference), which made the light coming streaming down from the high ceiling reflect all over the place.  While it wasn’t so bad once our eyes adapted, it was still eye-wateringly bright.

Good thing we didn’t just step straight into the room, though: we could both see the pressure plate that would trigger the next trap, right in front of us.  I mean, the trigger was so obvious, a bit of the stone of the same type from the pathway behind us right in the middle of the pathway leading into the big gold room, slightly depressed, as though whatever had been beneath it had settled a little.  Neph and I shared a glance, then nodded, before we took a few steps back, and got running forward, ready to leap right over the depressed flagstone.

If we’d just spent a little more time thinking about it, I think neither of us would have fallen for such an obvious trap.  Really, at even a little bit of consideration, the whole setup was plain as day: make an obvious trap trigger, the only obvious trigger we’d seen up until then, and then make sure that’s not the real one.  But it was only the fourth trap we’d encountered, and we were both still getting the hang of thinking like tomb robbers, or pulp archeologists, or whatever, so I hoped that whoever tuned into our adventures later would cut us some slack.

As it was, we both landed right on the hidden pressure plate beyond the fake, which sank down enough for us to see its seams against the otherwise flawlessly smooth golden floor.

“Nuts,” we both said together as we heard the door behind us slam shut with a very solid-sounding air to it.  Yeah, no getting out that way.  Forward, though, we saw a dark passage, looking a lot like the one we’d just used to enter the place, and we scrambled toward it as fast as we could go, and faster still once we heard the grinding of gears behind the walls…walls that soon started closing in on us!

There was only one problem with the single exit from the room: there was somebody in the way.

Well, something, actually, as we both discovered, coming up short right next to each other as the towering, metal-clad skeleton knight stepped out from the darkness, sword drawn, shield raised, barring the only path out of the deathtrap.

“There’s no way this is a real undead,” I stated flatly, trading out my spear for the double shillelaghs, while Neph took a step to the side, spear up and ready to thrust.  “No possible way.”

“It’s got to be a robot!” Neph declared, his voice making the creature turn its blazing red eyes in his direction, sword raised menacingly.  “Maybe that’s ceramic instead of real bone?”

“Big difference,” I growled, leaping forward, only for that shield to swing around, catching one of my shillelaghs with a resounding clang, while the skeleton’s sword turned at the last moment, catching my other swing on its blade, which sank a little into the tough wood, scarring it.  “We’ll take it down all the same!”

Neph didn’t hesitate, using the distraction I provided to slam his spear forward with all his might…only for the tip to be turned aside by the metal breastplate of the skeletal warrior, sliding off like grease down a frying pan.  Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy: we might as well be n***d savages against a knight in full-plate!

“His limbs!” Neph called out while I continued to struggle with the knight, now jabbing at the bare bony knees of the creature, trying to aim for a spot between the old-fashioned plates.  “I’ll keep him busy while you go for his limbs!”

Yeah, no pressure or anything…not when the walls were about to put some very real pressure on us both!  They were closing in fast now, apparently having needed a little while to build up some steam, and the situation was looking grim.  This knight was as good a fighter as either of us alone, and he had better armor, so our only chance was to work together.  Only he didn’t have any vital bits to hit, not like the baddies we’d tackled outside the dungeon; he was a skeleton warrior, robot or not, and that meant the meaty pieces that would take down something alive weren’t on the table of options.

Joints, on the other hand…

I guess I’d whipped out my shillelaghs instead of sticking with my spear as soon as tall, dark, and bony showed up was ‘cause…well, I don’t really know, honestly.  It just felt like the right thing, getting something in both my hands for this fight.  Dad had only spent a little time with weapons training, enough for some stick fighting, but I’d seen plenty of videos (some on old-fashioned betamax tapes, no less, saved from almost prehistoric times) of Dad’s favorite training tutorials from old-time masters of their respective arts, real gems all.  Some of those old videos, the ones labeled eskrima or sometimes kali, showed these guys fighting with long sticks, one in each hand.  While the shillelaghs were thicker than the skinny wands those guys used, the memories of what I’d seen just resonated with me in that moment of crisis, and for us Humans, memory is the start of instinct.

So there I was with two heavy sticks in my hands, fading back and to the side while Neph lunged forward, taking front-and-center of the skeleton knight’s attention for just a moment.  I didn’t wait, but instead came in low, almost diving as I threw myself under the guardian’s swing (that guy was fast, even with Neph distracting him!), slamming both clubs with all my might right onto the exposed knee joint.

If I’d been up against something normal, like one of those lizard things, or even a wolfbug, I’m sure I’d have shattered the leg bone in an instant.  But Neph’s theory about the skeleton being made of ceramic rather than bone must’ve had some truth to it, because most of my force rebounded.  Most.

Getting up as fast as I could, Neph and I both saw the boney knight’s knee joint turn wrong as he tried to keep up with us.  The shift wasn’t huge, but it was enough to slow him down, and also to throw his stance a little off-balance.  Neph took the chance to slam his spear into the knight’s shield, using the butt end instead of the point, which kept the boney guy’s attention a little off-kilter until I could shove my whole weight right next to Neph’s thrust.  An instant later, Neph pulled back his spear so that he could join me, shoulders to the shield, while the knight kept flailing ineffectually at us around its protective surface, which was now working for us rather than for it.  Giving a loud shout in unison, we both gave it our all, lifting and pushing, until we felt the skeleton’s feet leaving the ground, and kept on pushing until he went crashing to the mirror-bright floor.

“Let’s get out of here!” I yelled needlessly as the walls kept coming, even faster now than before, and we both dove for the dark portal the skeleton knight had entered by, not even wasting the time it would have taken to grab the sword the bony guy dropped (a real pity: it was a nice sword).

WHAM!

Turning as we lay prone on the floor beyond the gold room, we both stared at the walls behind us, squeezed as tight together as the pages of a book around a pressed flower.  There was a trickle of some weird-colored fluids that I figured were the bone-bot’s lubricant and…well, whatever it was that made a robot go, I guess, but that was about it; yeah, no hope of looting that baddy!  Then, just as Neph and I were getting to our feet, there was a soft clicking sound, followed by a gentle grind from somewhere in the walls, and the golden walls parted again.  We could even see the door open on the other side, making our pathway out clear once more.

We could also see the flattened skele-bot, sort of mushed up right in front of where we’d dived for safety, but honestly, I didn’t wanna look too closely at that: it made my mind go into paths that were a little too gooey for my tastes, picturing what might have just happened if me or Neph had still been in the room when the walls closed in.

“We wanna go back?” I asked Neph, preferring looking at him to what had almost happened to us.

“Not a chance,” he replied, his expression determined once more.

“Just checking,” I added with a mischievous smirk, before we both turned to face down the short dark hallway we found ourselves in.  There wasn’t any light in that short hall besides what was coming in from the gold room behind us, and from a rectangular slit of light right ahead, indicating a door.  “Let’s see what’s behind door number one.”

The door was big, and it was a little bit “sticky,” so we both put our backs into it, sheathing our weapons to lean our whole weights into the effort.  There was a creak, and then a short squeal, and then the door gave way, swinging smoothly open after we’d gotten past the initial resistance.

Stepping into the room beyond, both our eyes went first to the big chest in the middle of the room.  Actually, as I started to look around, once more back into trapfinding mode, I saw that the chest was pretty much it when it came to this room.  There weren’t even those glowing runes we’d seen before, just a soft light radiating down from the ceiling, so subtle that I couldn’t pick out any immediate single source for it.

Neph and I shared a glance, and right away we were poking and prodding everywhere, all the way around the chest, ensuring that not a single flagstone would trigger something unpleasant when we least expected it.  We also stayed well away from the closed door on the far end of the room, or at least as far from it as the relatively small size of the place allowed.  At the last, we met back in the middle, right in front of the sizable chest.

“This thing looks like it should hold pirate doubloons,” I quipped, and Neph snorted in laughter.

“Yeah, it is pretty stereotypical,” he admitted, then his expression turned serious.  “You think it’s trapped?”

“What could be more stereotypical than that?” I asked, smirking wryly as I slid my spear back into place, and tugged out one of my shillelaghs.  “Get ready: I’m going to poke it with a stick.”

While Neph stood back, spear up and set to thrust at the first sign of danger, I did indeed give the chest a few experimental prods here and there, at the places where I figured traps were most likely to be situated.  Finally, heaving a long sigh of resignation, I tucked my shillelagh away, and pressed my hands into the seams around the hinged lid.  Surprisingly, the big thing wasn’t locked, and my fingers soon slipped into the steadily widening gap as I lifted the lid, its well-oiled hinges not catching in the slightest as it flipped up and fell back with a loud clack of wood and metal.

Glancing over my shoulder, I caught Neph’s eyes.  He nodded, his body tensing beneath the stat suit as he moved forward slightly.  Yeah, he had my back, whatever happened next.  Confident that I wasn’t alone, at least, I rested one hand on the shillelagh I’d just tucked away, half-drawing it, and leaned over the lip of the now-open chest.

About half a second later, I jerked back, both my shillelaghs back in my hands, while a tangled mass of thick, ropey metal tentacles began squirming out of the chest.

“What is that?” I demanded, though I wasn’t really expecting any answer; it was one of those universal questions you ask when you’re pretty sure you’re about to die, I guess.

“Maybe a mimic?” Neph opined, and it felt good feeling his presence near my back as we set up our battle formation.

“Can you get more nerdy?” I chuckled out of the corner of my mouth, eyes fixed on the weird thing slopping out of the chest in almost fluid fashion.  “You actually know what a mimic is.”

“Says the girl who got the reference,” Neph retorted.

“Touché.”

Maybe we’d have attacked the tentacled thing then, except that in a moment I could see an ovular head lifting itself above the rest of the squirming mass, its large, catlike eyes a surprisingly friendly blue color, as was the (for want of a better word for it) expression on its face.  Actually, it didn’t so much have a face as a blank metal panel, but the way it tilted its head on its tentacles as it regarded us, and the way it shifted the appearance of its eyes made for a pretty passable imitation of a proper facial expression.

“Somehow, I think the Arenamaster or the Beastmaster would have made a real monster look a lot scarier,” I finally said as Neph and I started to relax when the accumulation that spilled out of the chest didn’t attack, but simply clumped there, the cartoon-like head bobbing above, eyes watching us with interest.  “This thing’s a little like an octopus, sure, but it hasn’t made any hostile moves yet.”

“Besides scaring the crap out of us when you opened the chest,” Neph added, still a little suspicious of the tentacle thing.

“Would you feel more comfortable if I looked more like you?” asked the mass, the sound coming more-or-less from the head bobbing above.  As we continued to watch, the tentacles sort of wriggled together, fitting themselves gradually into a shape that was mostly humanoid, before tightening up, becoming more solid-looking, rather than the semi-gelatinous form it had been sporting before, when it was all just tentacles.

“’Anyone who hates an octopus is warped,’” said Neph with a sudden laugh.  “Edgar Allen Poe said that.  You have a name?” he then asked, stepping in front of me, pointing his spear at the ceiling as he rested on it more like a walking stick than a weapon.

“My name is Aleph Null,” said the robot – for robot it obviously was, now that she (the voice was female, so calling it a girl made as much sense as anything) was wearing a humanoid shape, the tentacles all bunched up like muscle fibers rather than a loose accumulation like before.  “You may call me Al if you like.  And I, I suppose, shall call you my new masters.”

Our jaws both dropped at that one.  Oh boy, what had we gotten ourselves into this time?