Guile

Getting past the first set of traps is surprisingly easy. They are just the first traps, so I fully expect that to change, but in the meantime, the triggers are clear beams of light, so it's a simple matter of stepping through underneath them. Since the beams seem mostly set to inconvenience a grown man, this means most of our more petite party just sticks close to the wall and is fine.

Special notice goes to Korrigan, who calmly strolls beneath the beams with her only recognition of their presence being holding her staff horizontally.

… On the other end of the spectrum is poor Leuke, who is tall even for a man. This leaves him constantly ducking and curling in and being cautious of even his hair for fear of disrupting the lazy beams of sunlight. He can't even keep Ryutaiji sheathed, as its size would prevent him from clearing the beam.

"You know, Leuke," I finally say, looking back at him as he crab walks underneath the beam, "it might be easier if you just crawled on your hands and knees at this point."

"Don't tempt me," he sighs as he comes back up. "All of this up and down is more squatting than even guard training had me do!"

Meanwhile, Ayre is more concentrated on the traps, themselves. "How did you recognize these traps on sight, Remmi? They look just like normal beams of light from a broken ceiling."

"Eh, I saw it in a movie once."

The elf pauses and looks back at me with a reprimanding frown.

"Okay, okay, more seriously!" I point to the shafts of light, themselves. "They're all too regular. Each one comes down precisely the same way, perfectly overlaid with these mounts in the wall." I run my hand over the series of vertical holes embedded into the stone. "It's really obvious one's the trigger for the other."

The frown on my friend's face changes from reprimanding to considerate. "Huh, okay, so there is something going on in that head of yours. That makes sense. But then, how does the trap actually work?"

"Magic!" I answer goofily.

Okay, the frown just went back to reprimanding.

So I sigh and kneel down to motion to where the beam of light strikes the ground. "Look, there's obviously some sort of sensor concealed by the ground. If it were me, I'd be using the sunlight to power a hydraulic switch. So long as there's power, the trap remains retracted. The moment the power breaks, the compression releases and the trap fires."

"And what happens then? What, exactly, are we avoiding?"

I motion for Ayre to step back, then I move all the way to the opposite wall and take my wakizashi out. I then slip it into the beam of light.

Immediately, three vertical spears erupt with enough force to skewer a person from the holes in the wall, making Korrigan and Ayre yelp in surprise. I remove the blade and the spears slowly retract once more.

"Is it weird I want shish-kebabs now?" I ask with a thoughtful expression.

Ayre glares at me in response. "I'm not going to even dignify that with an answer. And if you make shish-kebabs when we break for lunch, I'm going to make you eat the sticks!"

Korrigan shudders after the trap retracts and cracks me one with her staff. "Are you crazy?!"

"Highly likely." Ayre nods.

"Oh, come on," I protest. "I exercised plenty of safety in triggering it! It's fine!"

"Girls," Leuke tries from the rear, "let's not roughhouse in the middle of traps? I don't want anyone stumbling into one."

"Good point," I agree, and not just because it protects my skull from more abuse. "Let's keep going. No telling how much more we have to go through. These easy traps won't hold out forever. Ayre, keep your eyes peeled. I'll point out anything if I think you're about to miss it."

Sure enough, it's not long before we're past the last of the light beam traps. Leuke gives a sigh of relief once we're past the last one, leaning backwards to pop his spine, but Ayre soon comes to a stop again, kneeling down to look at the terrain from a different angle.

I grin as I come to a stop next to him, folding my arms behind my head. "Spot something, Ayre?"

"This section of the floor is raised in a way that doesn't look natural," the archer observes. "I'm not sure it's stable."

I nod, picking up and tossing a large rock onto the raised floor. The ground rumbles and the floor drops, shattering into pieces in a pit far below us.

"Pit trap, a classic." I observe sagely. "Good catch. It looks like there's enough of a rim to make our way through."

Korrigan's gaze is pulled down into the deep trap, where distinctive hissing rises up to meet us that sounds disturbingly organic. "Did she have to trigger it again?! Is she a compulsive disaster poker?!"

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"Only when it's illuminating," I dismiss with a grin. I motion ahead for Ayre. "Elves first."

Ayre nods and starts forward, but I grab him by the shoulder. "Hold on," I warn. "Before you get going, look up first."

His gaze follows my index finger to a gap in the roof. "... Are those vines?"

"And along the only walkable path," I agree. "I doubt it's a coincidence, but some of them could also be snakes, I've seen that before."

Ayre is no doubt reminded of my tales of rat-snakes from the Desert Cove dungeon, and he visibly suppresses a shiver. But then he peers more deliberately at the vines, and frowns. "Actually, I don't think there's snakes there. I recognize that species of vine. Maybe."

I just smile at his knowledge getting applied. "Alright, whatchagot, Ay?"

He turns the frown on me again. "Don't you start using that, too!"

"All that frowning is gonna give you early wrinkles! Tell us about the carnivorous attack vines!"

That gets me a scowl, too, the kind that says, Why don't you, if you've obviously already figured it out? But I'm patient, and he eventually turns back to them.

"They're a species of ambush vine. They've got really motion-sensitive tendrils that snap down if anything passes underneath. Those spines are tipped with numbing poison that subdues the prey until they die and the body is broken down by goo secreted by the tendrils, themselves."

"Sounds like a Half-Life barnacle!"

"Remmi, I will use you as a distraction to get everyone else past them."

I don't give the empty threat a second thought. "Nah, that's alright, I've got a better idea!" I turn toward the other two. "Korrigan, you're up!"

The oni girl gives a timid step forward. "You're going to use me for the bait?!"

"Of course not," I assure her. "I figured the answer was obvious. You like burning things, these things need to burn! Two plus two equals fire loli!"

My turn of phrase makes her nose scrunch, and I suspect it didn't translate, but that doesn't mean she isn't sharp enough to tell it was meant to be nonsense.

"I have no idea what that word was, but it sounds illegal and rude, and I don't just like burning things!" She cracks me again with her staff.

"Are you sure you didn't put points into Tetsubo Proficiency and that staff is having an identity crisis?" I rub my head as she glares at me with a pouty expression.

"Don't waste your breath, Korrigan," Ayre advises with a sigh, hands perched on his tilted hips. "Heroes have a unique skill called Thick Skull."

Leuke looks around uncomfortably at that, halfway starts to point at himself and thinks better of getting in the middle of it.

Taking Ayre's advice, the little wizard takes a few more steps forward so she has a clean shot, then focuses her mana into the low-level fire spell needed for the task. "Enflame!"

The little fireball flies up into the vines and combusts on impact, spreading flames across the rapidly withering troublemakers. Korrigan targets several more openings we can see from here and repeats the process. In short order, our path is again clear.

Having spotted the gimmicks, traversing this section goes pretty smoothly. With the vines cleared out and the safe zone identified, it's pretty much just walking along the wall again, except this time, even Leuke doesn't have to do fancy bending to get through.

Still, it's a relief when the passageway opens up again, and we can see our first real sign of progress: A few hundred yards ahead of us, a flickering barrier seems the last hurdle between us and moving from the cavern back into a finished temple area.

"Finally!" Ayre sighs. "I'm getting sick of all of these traps!"

Again, I grab him by the shoulder.

"What now?!" he protests. "Hasn't it been enough?!"

"Why such a wide, clear area between us and the next hurdle?" I ask. "Does such an open space really seem in line with what the Hall of Guile has thrown at us so far?"

Ayre just buries his face in his hand and groans. "Of course not … I'm so sick of this place! Fine! What's the trick this time?"

I reach down and take a handful of the loose sand that forms so much of the floor of the natural cavern, and I toss it ahead of us in a wide arc. It sprinkles perfectly for five feet or so in either direction … but anything beyond that disappears.

Korrigan peers at the result with disbelief. "... An illusion …?"

I look back to her. "Got anything for dispelling it?"

But the girl shakes her head. "No, sorry, I'm more of a combat mage …"

"That's alright, we'll do it the mundane way," I declare. "Everyone fill a bag with sand. Use it to trace the path."

This strategy again makes short work of the encounter, and though the route twists and turns, our careful perseverance wins the day. There's even enough sand on the path now that we should be able to just walk right back through on the way out.

That then leaves the barrier, itself. Sure enough, the energy field prevents us from going any further. Ayre places a hand against it, looking up toward the ceiling it seems to stretch into.

"How do we get past this? Is it Leuke's turn? Do you expect him to just power through it?"

"Nope," I answer as I move over to a plinth with assorted, rotating shapes floating above it. "This is the Hall of Guile, not the Hall of Strength. Getting through is going to involve figuring out this console."

The elf gives me a leery gaze. "... You've already figured it out, haven't you?"

"It's a simple spatial-visualization intelligence test," I declare as I begin rotating the shapes around. "The trick is to see the disparate objects and imagine how they're supposed to go together to form a single, compact shape! We do them all the time back home! We even have toys centered around the concept!"

"Because of course you do …"

I finish assembling the pieces into a nice, perfect cube and pull my hands away. "Done!"

Sure enough, a moment later, the field flickers more strongly, then disappears.

Instead of being impressed, Ayre gives me a glare like I'm some sort of dirty, dirty cheater. "Why do I get the impression you're making this too easy?"

"Because I am," I conclude. "Just like how Leuke made the Hall of Strength too easy! These trials weren't built with Heroes in mind. I'd bet Tassim and Benarou would have made this whole run even easier!"

But the glare just deepens. "You could at least be humble about it, deny it a little, blame something mundane."

But my grin just splits my face wider as I plant my hands on my hips, superhero style. "But where would the fun be in that?!"

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