Chapter 30 - Running Scared

The hallway proceeded to the left, the right, and straight on from the room in which Roulette and Morgan stood. The mysterious footprints appeared to belong to someone–rather, two someones–who had crossed the open doorway ahead of them on their own trek through the maze. Roulette crouched down to investigate; the prints looked as though they’d been produced by the soles of slight, narrow footwear, and their owners appeared to have milled around at the hub of the corridor’s four-way split for a time before deciding to strike out to the left.

She heard Morgan approach from behind, no doubt keen to survey the footprints for himself. “Two women, I’d wager,” he concluded. “Guess this convenient little hole in the ground ain’t as deserted as we thought.”

“What should we do?” Roulette asked. “I sure didn’t expect there’d be anyone down here besides us. Maybe the wizards left behind some arcan-bodied guardians to watch over the place?”

Morgan shook his head. “They look like boot prints and sandal prints to me. The boots, in particular, seem modern–look at those tread marks.”

“So they came from outside? Recently?”

“I’d say so. The prints look fresh enough.”

Roulette rose from her squat, looking off in the direction the two strangers had gone. “I say we follow ‘em.”

“I was thinkin’ the same thing.”

The girl led Morgan down the hallway in question, her gun hovering by the wall as they went. She noticed that the scope of the labyrinth was diminishing; there was no need to deviate from the lone path they trod, which greatly simplified the process of tracking their mystery women. Nonetheless, Roulette would periodically bring Lady Luck down to waist level to cast a greater share of light over their trail.

It was on one of these occasions that Morgan spoke up. “That’s odd,” he said.

“What?”

“One of the sets of prints–the boot prints… It looks like they’ve been stepped in twice.”

Roulette started, peering down at the tracks, and found that it was true: there was a secondary outline to some of them, as if their owner had come through a second time and taken pains to walk in their own footsteps.

“Hm. What do you figure–”

Morgan hollered suddenly, gawking at her, wild-eyed, as something ropelike tightened around his leg. It heaved him off his feet and pulled him down the hall behind her with extraordinary speed. He left her field of vision in an instant, skidding off into the darkness before she could so much as scream.

She ran. Her breathing came in harsh, rapid bursts as her boots pounded the sandstone. She ran in darkness–the fear was too strong, too primal, for her to think of lighting the way with her weapon. Luckily, the corridor had no more twists and turns in store. The next time she thought to heft the gun for visibility’s sake was minutes later, when the overpowering sound of running machinery became too close to ignore.

Roulette set the arcan at her side aglow to find a series of spinning blades rotating inches in front of her face. She yelped and threw herself to the floor, narrowly avoiding the path of the cylindrical blade-tower, only to immediately find herself in the path of another!

“I hate this!” she shrieked, clawing at the nearest wall in abject terror. “I hate this place!!”

Her heart pounded as she scrabbled against the arcan, her gun clattering against the wall as she sought frantically for an irregularity–some deviation in the pattern–that might act as a switch and cause the trap to relent… But there was nothing. The girl could only retreat, stumbling against the wall in her haste to escape the rending edges of the approaching death-column.

The one she’d originally evaded was on its way back, now, blocking her chance to make a break to the right while its twin menaced her from behind. The girl found herself forced into a corner, with no gap visible between the impenetrable flurry of blades.

This was it. There was no hope left.

She braced herself for the inevitable…

…When, suddenly, the rotating blade-towers ground to a halt.

In the quiet that ensued, Roulette realized she’d been sobbing. She opened her eyes slowly, blinking away the tears, as she panned her gaze around at the shadowy, motionless forms of the strange devices that had so nearly ended her life. Just beyond them she saw a figure standing at the opposite end of the chamber with her back turned. She had long, blonde hair and pale skin, and she was glancing over her shoulder at the dark corner Roulette currently inhabited. She was holding a strange stone in one hand, which she’d elevated to make the wall’s arcan inlay glow as strongly as it had in the presence of Lady Luck.

“Come on!” she whispered, waving back at the center of the room. “Find my footsteps and walk in them, if you can!”

Roulette’s lip quivered. “W-Who–”

“SHHHHhhhhHHH! SHUT. UP,” the girl hissed. “Do what I say if you don’t want to die! And if you’re wearing something stupid like flats or pumps, you can just stay there! I’m not going to risk getting killed over some silly cow who’s too dumb to wear practical footwear into a fucking ancient ruin!”

Roulette sat there blinking for a moment, stunned, before shakily rising to her feet. She just barely managed to squeeze between the wall at her back and the blade-tower that had hemmed her in by the chamber’s entrance–had it still been moving, the feat would surely have proven impossible. Then, using Lady Luck for guidance, she navigated her way into the middle of the room. The moment she stepped into the halo of light created by her savior’s stone she aligned her feet with the girl’s own footprints as instructed.

The haughty blonde sniffed, looking back at her boots with obvious disapproval. “Hm. Kind of an eyesore, but similar enough to mine I guess,” she said, pausing to look Roulette over appraisingly without turning to face her.

She didn’t seem impressed.

“They’re very… ‘You’,” she decided, looking straight ahead. “Try to follow in my footsteps exactly… And I do mean that literally. If we try to get you doing it metaphorically we’ll be here all day.”

Too exhausted to muster any kind of comeback, Roulette simply followed along behind her as gingerly as she could. She wasn’t exactly sure why she was being asked to match the girl’s step so closely, but she assumed it was important somehow. After all, the girl had evidently been very careful to do so herself thus far.

Before long they came to a small, ornate-looking chamber that didn’t appear to host any traps; on the contrary, the arcan’s light revealed a wealth of gleaming treasures arrayed behind what looked to be a sarcophagus on a big sandstone dais! They kept walking until they were right beside the dais, at which point the strange girl began to speak without stirring from the imprint of her own tracks.

“Listen to me very carefully,” she said. “We’re going to climb into that big stone box, there. We will not step on the dais–we will swing ourselves gracefully into the box, lie down, and stay there, completely still, until the danger has passed. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Roulette replied. “Bu–”

“No questions. We can do questions later. Now, watch me.”

The girl did just what she said she’d do: she reached out, grabbed ahold of the sarcophagus’ edge, and swung herself up and over it. Her movements were smooth, and the tomb seemed surprisingly deep; once she’d entered and settled into a kneel, Roulette could see little more than the top of her head.

“Go ahead,” the girl prompted, making space for her. Roulette took a deep breath and tried to recreate the display as accurately as she could. It wasn’t perfect–she nearly ended up kicking her new companion in the face–but she made it in the end, slinging herself safely into the great stone coffin beside her.

“Okay, now lie down next to me,” the girl instructed.

Roulette noticed a large lid lying off to the side. “Shouldn’t we close the lid?”

“No, no. He’ll definitely notice. Just lie down,” she urged. “And… Get as close as you can to me, alright? We can’t let him spot anything over the rim. Oh, and keep your hand off your gun.”

The girl lay down flat in the corner of the tomb nearest the open hallway, and Roulette lowered herself into place beside her with some reluctance. She pressed herself as close to the girl as she dared, feeling heat build in her cheeks as she was struck by a sudden flash of envy; the curves of the blonde stranger’s body dwarfed Roulette’s by a considerable margin, and being squeezed so closely together made the disparity all too clear.

The two remained utterly silent for a time, the rhythm of their breathing being the only sound. It wasn’t long, though, before the familiar glow of arcanlight filled the air just above them. It lingered for a long, uncomfortable moment. Roulette could hear the sound of feet shifting quietly on the floor just beyond their hiding place…

That’s when Roulette felt it–something unwanted, and entirely inconvenient, building in her body:

The stirrings of an oncoming sneeze.