Crowned in Black: Chapter 35

I led the way through the portal, Spear at the ready. The lack of mobs thus far surprised me. Most dungeons in Archemi had a few, at least. It was also bothering me, because we needed a fuckton of EXP if we hoped to face whatever boss monster lurked in here - and without anything to kill, we weren't leveling.

The portal seamlessly sucked me through into a small, low-ceilinged room with two open doors. There was a stone wall separating them; there were five torches mounted in a ring, their tips burning with a strange, ghostly white flame. They cast enough light that I could see into the doors a short way. One corridor went straight ahead. The other advanced only about six feet before bending sharply around a corner. Both corridors were made of obsidian: the glassy black stone caught and bent the light, glinting with a weird, oily rainbow sheen.

"Oh boy." I absentmindedly took one of the torches from the wall, and held it out into each one of the doors as the others ported in behind me. Suri's eyebrows arched as she also took one of the torches, and leaned in to look. "Any thoughts on what the mechanics are for this? Looks like a maze."

"Sure does." Suri held the torch up, searching the walls and ceiling of the antechamber. "If it is, probably just have to find our way through."

"I'm not convinced. This is already too easy." I stepped back so Karalti, Gar and Rin could each take their torches. "Something's off, but I don't know what."

"Yeah..." Rin looked like she was about to say something, but then shut her mouth and shook her head. "Let's remake our camp here. If we have to respawn..."

"Good idea." I really, REALLY didn't want to have to respawn. “If I die and come back as a gibbering idiot or something, just drag my ass to the boss spawn. Because we know there’s gonna be a boss spawn.”

We took our second campsite kit and used it to pitch a temporary spawn point. Fortunately, the game let us. As we worked, Karalti - who didn't know if she'd respawn if she died - paced around the edges of the entry to the maze until we were done.

"Yay, finally! Time to move!" Karalti strode for one of the doors, the left, and held her torch high as she plunged inside.

"Wait a... uuhhhnnn." I groaned in irritation, but followed her anyway. "We don't even know which door to take!"

"Sure we do!" Karalti chirped happily, broadcasting back to us. "Matir thingies are ALWAYS to the left. He's the God of Darkness, silly."

"Yeah, silly me. I didn't know he was a southpaw, especially because he branded me on the right."

"He did that because your brain's crossed, duh." Karalti replied matter-of-factly. "Like your right eye goes to the left side of your brain, and your left hand goes to your right side. And he's the Lord of the Hidden Seed, right? The seed is the brain. So he's kinda-sorta branded the left side of your head bits."

"Uhh... " I'd learned a long time ago to just not ask how Karalti knew some of these things. "Sure. Head bits."

Suri drew one of her smaller axes as we entered the maze. Nothing leaped out at us, but there was a distant hum from somewhere ahead, and as we progressed further, there was a loud metallic THUMP that cut through the sound of the distant god's heartbeat.

"Mmm, don't like that." Suri's nose wrinkled. "We're about to run up on something."

“Either that, or Matir just whipped his dick out and slapped it on the edge of a table somewhere.” I wrapped my fingers around the Spear, absently cycling through the elements of each Keystone. White fire, red fire, golden fire, black fire... like a stabby Dr Seuss novel. As the weapon tapped the Star of Endless Night, I noticed a faint tracery of purple light flash and flow through the wall beside that hand, but whatever magical symbols had displayed slithered away before I could get a proper look.

We stepped out into a small, square room. There was a pit of what looked disturbingly like black lava, blooping and gooping underneath a drawbridge that led into a second, almost standalone maze section. The walls of that second maze were made from metal, not stone. There was no way to get around or above it: the only way was in. I could guess the sound we’d heard was the drawbridge coming down.

"Maze part two." I exhaled thinly. "Alright... I've got good Dex in case of traps, and we'll know I'll come back if I die. It won’t be fun, but I WILL come back. Wait here and let me scout it out. Get ready to run."

"Offload your gear with me first!" Rin exclaimed. "O-or Karalti. If there's traps and you die..."

"Fuck. Good point." I looked toward the open entry to Maze Part Two. "Panty run it is."

Rin turned away while I stripped. Suri and Karalti watched. Gar, old soldier that he was, didn't seem to give a shit either way. He lit a cigarette and frowned pensively at the drawbridge and the boiling tar like substance. "Weird... stuff doesn't smell of anything."

"Probably some kind of magic Darkness goop. Don't recommend swimming in it." I was down to my boxer briefs, my torch, and the Spear. The weapon was soul-bound and would respawn with me. "See you on the other side. One way or the other."

Suri saluted. I turned and trotted off over the bridge.

The drawbridge was wide enough that I had no fear of falling off, but I went over it cautiously anyway, placing my bare feet securely with each step. But when I stepped inside…

"…What the fuck?" There were dozens and dozens of obvious inert traps within a foot of the entryway. Holes with spikes just waiting to lunge out. Grinders. Arrowholes. I froze as I tried to take it all in, then jumped as twin metal doors slammed shut behind me. "Umm..."

"Hector! Are you okay!?" Karalti called to me.

"UMMM." As I turned to face the door, I saw THEY had spike holes too... spikes which shot out, forcing me back away from the Pad of Safety and into what could only be described as a tunnel-shaped blender. At the contact of my feet, every nearby trap activated in a whirling, sawing, stabbing cloud of death. "NO! NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS OKAY!!"

I frantically leaped as spikes thrust from below and the sides, and hit the ground running. An unmanly yelp tore from my throat as I just barely made it between two spinning grinders, stumbling into a bare patch of wall as a forest of spikes erupted barely half an inch from my toes and shot up higher than my head. I was just catching my breath when the wall ahead of me opened with an array of thumb-sized holes. I thought to Shadow Dance through the retreating spikes when an awful, body-deep fiery pain tore through my back and out the front of my belly. Gasping, concentration shattered, I looked down to see what looked like a bloody scimitar blade jutting out just below my solar plexus.

[You have taken a mortal blow! You are hemorrhaging!]

"... Oh." My head jerked up as the murderholes across from me let loose.

Darts thwipped out and struck my tender boyish body in twelve different places, causing me to dance and shudder on the sword blade. My HP was down by two thirds and sinking at unbelievable speed as a flurry of statuses and alerts crowded my vision:

[You are Poisoned! 25HP loss per second!]

[You are Hemorrhaging!]

[You are Slowed!]

[You are Paralyzed!]

"JESUS SHITHOPPING CHRIST, MATIR!" I burbled, coughing a gout of unpleasantly chunky blood to the floor. The sword withdrew, leaving me to bonelessly stagger forward... right into the field of spikes. They exploded underneath me, and I was vaguely aware of being skewered and possibly ripped apart before the world blurred into darkness, and the nothingness took over.