Chapter 178: Chapter One Hundred Seventy Nine

Getting out of the trap corridor without triggering the traps was a  lot easier with Callie's directions, though admittedly my ability to not  touch the ground for several hundred feet didn't hurt. Once I settled  down where we had landed, I leaned against the wall to wait. Cicero, who  was apparently waiting up there, yelled down to me. "Are you giving up?  I didn't expect you to leave your lady love behind. Children these days  are so cruel. Shall I send you down a ladder so you can get out of  there?"

I sneered up at him, though between my mask and  being in a literal hole in the ground, he couldn't see. "We aren't  quitting, I'm just giving her space to work. Also, if I wanted to get  out of this hole I wouldn't need a ladder, I could be punching you in  the throat before I finished this sentence, I'm just not willing to do  so before we accomplish the objective and earn those suits. Don't  suppose you're willing to just cut the bullshit and tell us what it is  we're looking for? The whole mysterious game master thing was old before  it even started."

I heard a chuckle float down through  the dark. "It's a piece of paper. Tied with a red ribbon. I won't be  telling you any more. Just bring it to me and you'll get your reward. I  would pay more attention to your lady, however. My brother's defenses  are nothing to sneeze at. Anyone save Abel could easily die facing those  traps alone. She could be in grave danger and might need your help." He  sounded genuinely concerned. But then, he'd also sounded like a nice  guy before he dropped us in a fucking hole, so I trusted that about as  far as I could throw my car.

Turning away, I decided to  ignore the mustachioed asshole and focus on my girlfriend. Callie had  started to stretch a bit, getting herself ready with a series of  graceful bends that never brought her into the path of the triggers for  any of the traps. Once that was done she started bouncing on her toes.  Despite the weight of her body her bouncing was light and fluid, and  after she built up some momentum she landed smoothly and with no lag  time darted forward off her toes, using the same bouncing motion to push  herself forward at blurring speeds.

She blasted into the  hallway, feet touching lightly in a series of seemingly random places as  she almost floated from one spot to the next, using every bit of  Perception and Might together with her new skill to avoid any of the  traps as she moved. Each tap of her feet set off a new trap, and I  almost had to look away as she was nearly skewered, burned, sliced, and  various other terrible fates. Despite the close calls though the traps  never managed to actually touch her, not even her hair was damaged by  the attacks as she whirled and spun between the dangerous mechanisms.

I  could see the influence of her Balam Mastery in her movements, the  cyclical dance of her evasion resembling nothing so much as a  dissipating whirlwind. Each rotation began to fade as if dispersing  before she lightly spun up again. It was staggering to see. Her dodges  and pirouettes were almost a dance, skating gracefully from on spot to  the next in a series of movements that would have been terrifying if she  were an enemy, but instead were just absolutely breathtaking to behold.  I was mesmerized watching her, and I got so caught up in the beauty I  almost forgot to be afraid for her. Almost.

By the time  she finished darting through the corridor, the whole place was a fucking  wreck. Spikes, blades, acid, fire, tons of other traps I hadn't even  noticed (including a really nasty looking needle attack that she managed  to swirl away with her coat without actually getting any stuck in the  fabric) the stone hallway was absolutely destroyed. I looked around,  checking for more traps with Seek Hidden before I walked back in, but  didn't see anything. Even the traps from earlier in the hallway had  triggered and tried to kill her, but she'd just slipped between all of  them.

I whistled appreciatively. "Damn. This was quite a  gauntlet. How is it going to reset though? These can't all have been  single use traps can they?" Having to reset these every time would have  been a labor of months. No way Abel could have made it back in here to  get his shit without setting them off. Though the mess did make it clear  why we'd been sent in. I was guessing Cicero had sent plenty of people  down here before. I wondered how many of them were dead. I was guessing  more than a few.

Callie nodded. "They are. You notice when  we landed we had a bit of space before the trap corridor started? That  area was the beginning of the gauntlet originally. There were a few  signs of it once I got the trap Skill. Whoever came down here before  undoubtedly died in the attempt." Her voice was cold, and I could  understand why. Cicero had set us up to die. What had we done to deserve  that? Ruthless or not, this was a massive provocation for no apparent  reason. Why would he do something like this?

I asked  Callie and she frowned contemplatively. "I'd say desperation. If he sent  every random person who came his way down here it would have long since  gotten out. This can't be normal behavior. He's panicking over the  impending crisis. We showed up and offered to help, but he isn't buying  that we can deliver. This way he either gets rid of fake helpers, or  gets what he wants and proof we can follow through. It's pretty fucked  up, but I can at least see the logic there. Doesn't mean I'm not pissed  about it though."

I was pissed too. This guy had tried to  fuck us over. We needed to work with him for the moment, or I'd have  tried to switch sides and help his dissenter oust him, but this wouldn't  be the end of this. I was going to make sure he fucking paid for this.  Panicked or not, no one got away with doing something like this to me,  and damn sure not to Callie. Not while I was around. I could see in  Callie's face that she was just as furious, though admittedly she was  better at controlling it. Still, I didn't say anything out loud. I  didn't think he could hear us, if I did I wouldn't have granted her  wish, but we needed to focus.

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Callie laid a hand on my  arm, not wanting to be too specific about it just in case, but wanting  to reassure me. "I have some things in mind. Just leave it to me. We can  talk more when we get home. As she looked me in the eye, lowering her  voice a bit to speak softly, I realized that I had massively  underestimated how angry she really was. Callie's blue eyes were  basically ships of ice, and her jaw was white with fury. She was good at  keeping up her image, but being this close, between my Perception and  how comfortable she was with me, I could see how angry she really was.

A  small, vicious smile spread across my face under my mask. I'd thought  for a moment she'd just written this off as the cost of doing business  but I could see in that fury and answering call for payback to what  roiled in my gut. I wasn't the only one who took it personally when  someone endangered a loved one. She was just as furious at me being in  danger as I was at the risk to her. I gave a long, slow nod, making sure  she knew that I could see her fury and was willing to wait for it. I  trusted her.

With that done, we turned to make our way  back down the hallway. There were no more traps, so we didn't need to  work around any obstacles. Still, the Skill was going to come in plenty  handy moving forward I was pretty sure. I was glad I'd been able to give  her one more layer of safety. We both watched the corridor ahead of us  carefully, letting our attention wander ceaselessly, never resting in  one spot as we made our way forward. As we stepped forward I saw a  slight disturbance, putting an arm out to stop her.

I  spoke up absently, focusing on what was in front of us. "Wait. Did you  see that? I could have sworn I saw something move just then." I sighed  internally. This was the very last trope I wanted to play into while  stuck in a hostile underground labyrinth, but ignoring a danger would be  infinitely worse. So, despite feeling like a character from a horror  movie I scanned the corridor as thoroughly as possible, until I realized  my mistake and almost literally face palmed. "Wait, hold on. I can find  whatever it is."

Activating Seek  Hidden, I focused on finding whatever enemy had just been moving. Even  though I didn't know what the damn thing was, just being able to focus  on something that specific relieved a lot of the strain of the skill. I  flicked my eyes quickly over the tunnel, looking for the telltale red  glow of the enemy I was searching for, and didn't see much of anything  as I scanned the nearby walls and floor. I was beginning to think I'd  imagined the whole thing, until I chanced a glance UP.

I  froze. Seek Hidden had been looking for the enemy I'd seen moving, but  the general shape I'd imagined for the skill had been to search for that  TYPE of enemy. I hadn't really consciously considered that, and I  wouldn't have thought it would matter even if I had. In this case  however, I was wrong. Because searching for the TYPE of enemy revealed  the enemy I'd seen, and all the rest of them too. In point of fact, it  revealed dozens of the damn things. Dozens of fucking SPIDERS hanging  from the ceiling and glaring down at us.

Swallowing  hard, I turned to look at Callie, who appeared to have been scanning  the ground like I had. I cleared my throat. "So, weird question. Are you  by any chance arachnophobic?" I tried to keep my voice calm and level,  despite the crawling my skin was doing at the sight of all those eight  legged horrors. I wasn't arachnophobic myself, but I was deeply  unsettled by spiders, and Callie had a lot more exposed skin than I did.

She  turned slowly to look at me, her face looking hesitant for the first  time in quite a while. "Not exactly, but spiders and snakes really freak  me out..." She trailed off, her tone shifting to one of worry. "Why?" I  pointed up at the ceiling, and she tilted her head back slowly, looking  up at the hanging monsters, all G ranked themselves, like a convict  accepting a sentence. She swallowed too. She stared up at the swarm of  disgusting bug beasts for a few seconds warily before finally speaking.  "Ah. Well. Fuck."

The  speaking of those three words seemed to act almost as some kind of  signal. The spiders all released their holds on the ceiling and began to  plummet toward us, screeching a terrifying high pitched battle cry of  arachnid fury as a fucking CLOUD of the things fell to blanket us.  Callie reacted instantly, pulling in a wave of shadow to try to block  off the attack, but the things were too spread out, and too strong. They  hit the huge dome of shadows and started tearing through them. I  snarled up the spiders. "Ok, seriously, I'm going to break Cicero's nose  when we get out of this shit." Well, IF we got out of it. But hey, no  need to jinx it.

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