Chapter 32 - Cat and Mouse

Once again, Roulette found herself running blind.

She was getting tired of feeling like a frightened animal–though, seeing as the man who pursued her was well-equipped to trap her like one, that reaction did seem appropriate. If I want to turn things around, she thought, I have to be smart about it. There was no use trying to take him on directly; Lady Luck just wasn’t up to the task.

That meant she’d have to get creative.

The memory of her and Mimi’s recent trek down the corridor tweaked all of a sudden, reminding her that a corner was fast approaching. Incapable as she was of making it out in the dark, the girl’s hand automatically went for Lady Luck… Only for her to stop mid-reach as the reality of the rough, irregular object in her off-hand hit home.

Mimi’s last gift. Something she’d been willing to risk dying over if it meant getting it into Roulette’s hands…

On a hunch, Roulette raised it to the wall instead of her gun, and was quickly rewarded with an even, ethereal glow. It was Mimi’s arcan chunk! She wasn’t sure exactly why it worked to trigger a reaction from the surrounding arcan, but she also didn’t exactly have the luxury of time to spend puzzling it out. The girl took the corner with confidence and concentrated on the problem ahead of her: outfoxing the deranged mage-reject who was fixing to spin her up inside a Gunslinger-sized cocoon.

This time she was ready for the chamberful of oscillating blade-towers. Mimi had stopped them earlier, somehow, but they’d started up again in her absence; a factor of having her chunk’s arcane energy withdrawn, perhaps? Sure enough, when Roulette lifted the chunk level with the same stretch of wall Mimi had been standing near, a raised section of arcan much like the “lamps” of the pressure plate trap room came alight. The blade-towers slowed to a halt immediately, giving her the time she needed to slip between them and dash to the other end of the room.

She was prepared to continue on down the hall until they whirred to life again a good twenty seconds or so later. The girl looked back at them with interest, and the seed of an idea began to take root in her mind…

As expected, the first indicator of her adversary’s arrival came in the form of a strip of cloth slithering through the air about a minute after she’d crossed the room. It bobbed and weaved in an almost natural way–like a snake on the prowl, tonguing the air for a trace of arcane energy. She could see it by arcanlight; it drew closer and closer to her place by the door, attracted by the mana-rich space where her chunk met with the wall.

Once it was sure of its proximity to its chosen prey, the cloth strip lunged. It struck out toward her like an arc of lightning, intent on lashing itself to whatever creature crossed its path en route to the arcane emission…

…But, without eyes, the strip had no way of knowing that it had extended itself into the path of an even more pitiless predator.

Without thought, without intention, the chamber’s central blade-tower moved into the seeking bandage like a runner crossing a finish line. The result was beyond Roulette’s expectations: rather than being sliced to ribbons the way a human might, the durable cloth strip became snarled up in the machinery of the deadly device! It continued to spin, undeterred, while the impossibly long ribbon of fabric spooled up rapidly around its cylindrical body. A rotation or two later, the portion left un-snagged went taut… And the girl heard a deep, masculine voice shout in surprise.

His gun was towed into the room a second later, clattering loudly against the blade-tower until it, too, was pulled between the blades. Roulette smiled in satisfaction–she’d done it! She’d disarmed him. That was phase one. The next step would be trickier, and it all depended on the man’s psychology. She rose from her place by the doorway and retreated into the corridor, her hand feeling along the walls for a protrusion similar to the one she’d activated at the other end of the room. The girl found it in short order. Just in time, it turned out, for the scion came walking into view mere seconds after she’d finished stilling the traps again.

“Clever, I must admit,” he called from across the room. He stood in the doorway of the opposite hallway with his own chunk pressed to the wall–though not to the blade-towers’ off switch, she noted. “Your kind are less helpless than I thought. Perhaps, when I find a way to claim my rightful status as heir to the mages and crush your pathetic civilization underfoot, you would consider ruling alongside me as the queen of my glorious new empire?”

“Sorry, hun,” she called back. “Already got my eye on someone. Maybe you’d see your way clear to lettin’ me go, though? I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.”

“If you could accomplish that, I am sure you would have done so already,” he replied. “Nonetheless, it will take me some time to work my weapon free–that should give you ample opportunity to gain a head start. Such a pity that your little stunt rendered these traps inoperable. Were they still spinning, you might have won the day.”

Roulette smirked. That was exactly what she’d wanted to hear. With a little light, the blade-towers were easy to avoid if one had the time to observe the rhythm of their movements. Obviously that was what the arrogant scion had done, rather than learning the secret of manipulating the traps through arcan nodes.

He had no idea that Roulette herself was the only thing keeping the blade-towers stationary.

“Well, you’ve got me,” she declared, moving away from the wall. “Guess I’ll move along and take a shot at getting out of here before you can catch up.”

“You do that,” he sneered, striding purposefully toward his trapped firearm.

Roulette turned and ran down the hall; not simply because she wanted to go along with the ruse, but because she didn’t want to see what came next.

Hearing it would be enough. And hear it she did, not fifteen seconds later, in the form of a bellow of anguish.

“YOU…YOOOOUUUU,” the voice cried, its gurgling tones echoing throughout the labyrinth’s vacant halls, “I WILL END YOU! HOW DARE YOU… HOW DARE YOU…!”

She’d been prepared–even eager–to learn the consequences of her deception, but the sheer malice in his voice took her by surprise. The howling continued, prompting the girl to pick up her pace… And when it became clear that his groans of rage were getting closer, Roulette broke into a full-on sprint. It wasn’t certain that he’d managed to extricate his gun from the blades before they’d done their grisly work, but if he had, she wanted to be damn sure she had a way to finish the job before he had a chance to get revenge.

That trap room Morgan and I went through should work, she figured. He’ll never get across without knowing how to identify the pressure plates! It was as close to a sure thing as she could hope for. After his bloody dance with the blade-tower, he’d be in a weakened state–he wouldn’t be thinking clearly. If she could post up at the other end of the room she’d be virtually untouchable!

The girl barrelled into the room in question with her gun and Mimi’s light source at the ready, finding that all the lamps and sigils had gone dark during her time away. She paused momentarily, wondering how best to approach the situation. If she went about it cautiously, revealing sigils and activating arcan lamps, the way forward would be made clear to the enemy as well… But if she attempted to retrace her steps in the dark, trying to follow the correct path from memory, the possibility of accidentally triggering a trap was great.

The pained groans of the scion were almost on top of her now. There was nothing else for it; she had to make a move, and fast. Roulette set her jaw and ran into the midst of the pressure plates, doing her best to follow the zigzag pattern that had originally guided her and Morgan through unscathed.

To her relief, her memory of the route proved to be accurate. She made it to the other side without a scratch, then turned on her heel. How far behind was he? How long until the scion caught up with her?

The answer was staring her in the face. He stood directly across the room, his bloody, mangled arm dangling at his side. He held his gun to the wall with his good hand, and the arcan at his side glowed just brightly enough to illuminate the faintest outline of his gruesome form… The burning hatred in his eyes…

…And the steady pooling of his blood on the sandstone floor.