Aeshma was straining to pull the metal grating loose, her corded muscles bulging at the effort. “Gah!” she groaned. The grating shifted slightly in the vent, but only an inch or so. She sat herself cross-legged on the floor. “This is really stuck. I need a sec to catch my breath.”
With Aeshma seated on the ground, the top curl of her horns still came up to my chest. It was weird being able to see the top of her head. Her scalp, where it showed beneath her dark hair, was a slightly paler lilac than the rest of her skin. And there was something else…
“You have a crazy hair part, Aeshma,” I mused.
“What! Nuh-uh!” she said, her hands flying to the top of her head. “I’ve got a perfectly normal Succubus structure!”
I leaned in for a closer look as she tucked a strip of hair behind a curved horn. “Is it shaped like a heart?”
Aeshma stopped preening for long enough to roll her eyes at me. “It should look kinda like one, I guess.”
“Yeah, no. I can see it.”
“Ugh, enough about that, dude. Check out my lats when I go for this again. I bet I look freakin’ huge,” she said, hoisting herself back into a squat. She looked at the object in my hands and narrowed her eyes in confusion. “Uh, what’re you makin’ with Jie, there?”
I looked down at what was apparently a long wad of wood and clay and sighed. As I chatted with Aeshma I had been trying to mold Jie into a more useful shape. “It’s– he’s supposed to be a prybar. Jie, could we do a prybar?” Jie wriggled playfully in my hands.
“I don’t think it can read your mind, dude.” Aeshma said with a laugh. “Tell it what object you want so we can get outta here.” She braced herself for another try at the vent cover.
“Prybar, Jie, please?” I stretched the Mimic’s putty-like flesh between my hands. “Do you know what that is? It’s a bar with a little bit at the end– yeah, that’s it! And be metal, please.” Jie cottoned on quickly, and wriggled himself into a prybar nearly as long as I was tall.
I hefted him up towards the metal vent. Once he was close, the tip of the bar flattened out and snaked into the thin gap between the grating and the surrounding wall. “We’re ready!” I called.
“On three, then! One, two… three! Hurf!” Aeshma strained at the barrier as I simultaneously levered as much force as I could through Jie.
I hadn’t noticed before, but now I saw that when she flexed, the muscles of Aeshma’s back formed a ridge in the shape of a heart. No matter how she specced, I guess Aeshma couldn’t drift too far from her Succubus origins.
PAANG!
The grating popped loose and the three of us were sent tumbling to the ground by the pent-up force. Aeshma looked a bit surprised but pleased with herself; I had bitten my tongue as I fell, but was otherwise okay. Jie, however, had split along his length into a series of tooth-studded, meaty tendrils and slithered down to the ground
“I think I like him better as a prybar,” Aeshma said as she popped back up.
Jie slowly reformed into a solid metal prybar. His temporary form had grossed me out, too, but it wasn’t his fault that he looked like that. And I felt weirdly defensive of the little guy. I scooped him off the ground and sidled up beside Aeshma to look through the newly opened vent…
And immediately took a step back. We were really high up. In the distance, I could see the stone towers we’d run through earlier. Straight below us, maybe three stories down, was a large, open-roofed gazebo; and all around it was nothing, just a foggy pit that seemed to descend forever.
“So… I don’t know about you, but it’ll literally kill me to fall that far,” I said. “Just in case you were thinking of, you know, jumping for that gazebo.”
“No, dude, I wouldn’t want to jump that, either. I mean I could, but I wouldn’t want to.” She gazed at the shield buckled to my arm. “What about Jie?”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Rope is dirt-cheap. I bet Jie could transform into a rope long enough to reach that platform.”
I hadn’t thought of that. Three stories was a lot of rope… but if I was remembering Jie’s Anyshape perk correctly, his transformations were limited by cost and mechanical complexity, not by size.
Technically, it was possible, but I had a different problem with Aeshma’s plan. I’d never climbed a rope before, not even in gym class. And it wasn’t like I had any free Levels lying around to give myself extra mountaineering skill.
I told Aeshma as much, but she shot me down. “Oh please, Roland, going down is easy. Gravity does all the hard work. Besides, I bet Jie will catch you if you fall. Isn’t that right, Jie?” she cooed. “C’mon, turn into a rope, now. A long rope!” She grabbed the end of the prybar and tugged. Jie growled and grumbled at her touch.
“Careful Aeshma, not like that!” I said, twisting Jie away from Aeshma’s grubby mitts. “He likes how I do it better. Look, you gotta go like this,” I said as I expertly coaxed the Mimic into shape.
Aeshma sighed. “I’m pretty sure I was doing the exact same thing.”
If Jie had eyes, we would’ve shared a knowing look. But he didn’t, so instead I looked knowingly at a long, slightly writhing length of rope. After a minute, Jie had transformed into a rope long enough to coil around our feet at least a dozen times. Aeshma tied one end off to a pipe in the wall, which she claimed was labeled ‘standard cold water’. She gave Jie a tug and, satisfied that he was firmly in place, approached the opening in the wall.
I was starting to get nervous. “So… you know where we are, right? I mean, roughly?” I asked.
“Mmm, yeah. We’re headed for Tatzel’s Boss room.”
“This is definitely the right way?”
Aeshma leaned out through the vent, seemingly inspecting something down below. My palms were getting sweaty just watching her. “Yeah, the tiles down there look pretty new, so they’re probably trapped. Meaning we’re probably headed in the right direction.”
“That’s a lot of probablies,” I said, but Aeshma just grinned in response. “So if the floor is trapped… probably… should we drop something down there to trigger them in advance?”
“Nah, I’m like twice the level rec. I can probably tank whatever traps Tatzel laid out.”
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Another probably. “That sounds like a really bad idea. Why don’t we– no, wait!” I screamed as Aeshma tipped out of the vent, giving me a cheeky wave before disappearing below the ledge. I stuck my head out just in time to see her catch Jie with one hand and slide about a third of the way down the rope.
I cursed. Aeshma was gonna give me a heart attack if she kept this up. On the other hand, maybe dying of a heart attack was better than dying from whatever traps Tatzel had in store for us.
I carefully took hold of Jie and backed ever-so slowly towards the vent, looking anywhere but down.
“There you are! Taking the service tunnels, Aeshma? Surprisingly cunning for the likes of you! Oh, my apologies, the PA default volume is way too high. There we go!” Tatzel said. Her pompous voice was once again coming from everywhere around us and nowhere in particular. “Ahem, where was I? Oh yes, how unexpectedly cunning of you, to find your way through the tunnels. Unbelievably cunning, in fact. Did you actually pay attention in your Dungeon Design lectures?”
“Dungeon Design was my jam, Tatz! I even got my honor badge.” Aeshma’s voice called from below me. “Mostly I memorized routes from the Boss Room to the Zone One exits.”
Meanwhile, I was inching my way over to the ledge. My breath caught in my throat when my heels went over the side – but I steeled myself and kept going. I tried not to think about the fact that the only thing between me and a grisly death was my paltry upper body strength.
“Typical. Even at Camp you were thinking of ways to abandon your post,” Tatzel huffed. “Were you dreaming of raiding some extra farmsteads? Did you get a taste from your normal Succubus Camp excursions?”
Raiding? Excursions? I hoped these were baseless jabs… but Aeshma’s response suggested otherwise.
“Can it, Tatz! Keep talking like that and I’ll… oooh, I’ll kick your ass so hard it flies out your mouth!” Aeshma screamed, shaking the rope with every word. It was all I could do to hold on. I was barely a quarter of the way down. Aeshma was somewhere lower, but distracted by Tatzel, she still hadn’t made it all the way to the platform.
“Stop jerking Jie around and focus!” I called down to her.
Tatzel responded quizzically, “You… named your rope? Actually… wait a second, Aeshma, didn’t your Human have a shield earlier? What happened? You didn’t… oh no. Tell me that’s not a Mimic, is it?” Her voice transitioned from normal arrogance to the sort of stuck-up disgust I’d only ever heard from snobby aristocrats in movies.
“Yeah, it is a Mimic!” Aeshma shouted, once again causing the rope to shudder and jerk from side to side. “Its name is Jie, and it could kick your ass from here to Zone Three!”
Tatzel chuckled over the PA. “For your edification, Roland, this is about as dignified as carrying around a rat in your pocket.”
I shuffled down the rope a few yards, letting it slide beneath my palms. “That doesn’t sound so crazy. I had a pet rat as a kid. Well, she was my sister’s rat, really, but she liked me better so she was kind of my rat, you know?” Talking helped distract me from how high up I still was.
“You kept one of those snobby pests as a pet?” Tatzel asked in disbelief.
Confusion washed over me until I remembered how things worked here. “In my world, rats can't talk. I don’t think she was snobby, though. I guess she was a picky eater.”
“Ugh, I cannot wait for you two to die,” Tatzel groaned. “Speaking of – Aeshma, have you gotten to the traps yet? For an alleged speedrun, this is taking quite a while. I do have other things on my schedule, you know, besides killing you.”
The rope shuddered and shook beneath my hands. Aeshma was getting up to something. “Screw this!” she said. “I’m gonna–”
Before I could counsel her against it, the rope gave one more mighty shake as Aeshma jumped off. There was a crash, the sound of a body hitting a hard surface, accompanied by the sound of shattering of ceramic tiles. Finally, there was a sound like an explosion.
My heart dropped into my stomach.
“You fools!” Tatzel wailed triumphantly. “You forgot about the cipher panel! Oh, Aeshma, I guess you didn’t pay that much attention in Dungeon Design class!”
A burst of warm air wafted up to me, accompanied by the smell of smoke and ceramic dust. Jie was wriggling, quivering, and most disconcertingly, slackening into putty beneath my grip – no doubt trying to pull away from the heat and shrapnel of the explosion Aeshma triggered.
I couldn’t believe she’d done something so reckless.
Well, I guess I could believe it. I just wasn’t very happy about it.
I’d so far avoided looking at the ground far below me. Now I desperately tried to see where Aeshma had fallen. The platform below was all but obscured in billowing clouds of dust and smoke, so thick I couldn’t make out her form. She had to be okay, though… right? Jie seemed to have taken some damage, but it didn’t seem like he was catastrophically injured or anything. And Aeshma was a much higher Level than he was.
On the other hand, Aeshma had probably tanked the brunt of the explosion, not to mention whatever additional damage she’d taken from the fall. I had to get down to the platform to see if she was okay. I loosened my death-grip on Jie, letting myself slide quickly down the rope.
Tatzel was still laughing and taunting us. “Not that you would’ve been able to solve the cipher in the first place, but wow. To just… ga-lomp! Right onto the mines!” She laughed uproariously. “I only wish I could’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Before I knew it I was a few feet off the ground. The tile below me was shattered; this must’ve been where Aeshma had landed and triggered the trap. I lowered myself safely to the platform. The haze had cleared enough for me to make out Aeshma’s silhouette – standing upright, brushing the dust off her shoulders, pretending to check herself for damage.
“Show-off,” I grumbled. “Tatzel probably can’t even see you through all the smoke. I appreciate that you’re trying to look cool and everything, but…”
Aeshma clicked her tongue and dropped out of her showboating pose. “I really wanted her to see me looking cool.”
“Was that… was that Aeshma talking?” Tatzel asked. A tinge of worry colored her previously haughty tone. “How did you… is your Human a Wizard or something? Did you waste a Shield spell just to trigger a single trap?”
Ahead of us, past countless more trapped tiles, was an ominous looking archway set with an ancient-looking wood door, the surface of which was carved into the visage of a mustachioed old man.
Aeshma took a step towards it. The floor exploded beneath her.
She walked on, unscathed.
“Roland, is she still there? Is she alive?” Tatzel asked. Worry and confusion mixed unmistakably in her voice.
“Oh, I’m not sure, Tatz,” I lied. Tatzel clicked her tongue, probably preparing to admonish me for using her nickname.
KABOOM!
Another explosion rocked the room. Aeshma was one tile closer to the strange door.
“Stop it, Aeshma! This is not the appropriate way to complete the Queen’s Threshold!” Tatzel wailed, her voice cracking into a shrill whistle. “You are making a mockery of our traditions! If you’d bothered to read the by-laws, you’d know–”
BRAKOOF!
KRACKOW!
KTHWOOM!
The trail of explosions progressed at an increasing pace towards the door. I gave Jie a gentle tug to let him know it was time to move. He writhed then dropped from above, compressing into the familiar shape of a shield as he fell.
He landed softly around my arm, dribbling purple ichor from a hairline crack along his steel rim. “Sorry, bud,” I whispered, giving him a consoling pat. “We’ll be sure to get you all patched up once we’re out of here.”
“A-BOOOOOOOM-ba!” Aeshma shouted from in front of the door, clasping her horns in her hands. A trail of destruction still smouldered behind her.
“Screw you! And stop doing that stupid meme!” Tatzel screamed over the PA.
I scritched Jie’s wooden planks. “And we’ll have a little talk with Aeshma about being more careful with you.”
Explosive Mine (Lesser)
-----------------------------------
Item Level 3
Usage tags: Set, Fire, Blast
Trigger: Pressure
Effect: Deals fire and concussive damage.
Range: Small burst
Special: Elemental damage type can be altered at creation or through further crafting. May be incorporated into traps to modify blast shape or triggering conditions, or to add other damage types.
