Chapter 27: Falling (Patreon)

The four of us started falling.

My heart leapt into my throat, but I felt my feet hit the ground before I even had time to yell. Damian landed poorly next to me and rolled his ankle. He gasped in pain as he fell to the floor. Amazingly, Harold landed next without injury and there was a flicker of amusement in his eyes from he saw Damian had gotten hurt. Finally, Hugo glided softly down to my shoulder. I sensed he was resisting the urge to brag about how useful and superior being able to fly was, and for his continued survival, I hoped it would continue.

I looked up and saw that we’d fallen about fifteen feet into an underground stone hallway where the sandstone glowed with a faint yellow light to illuminate the area.

Damian grunted as he sat up and inspected his ankle.

“What was that about pulling my own weight?” Harold asked.

“Yeah!” said Hugo, before frowning and realizing he’d gotten swept up in the moment. “Wait, you’re the one who sucks.”

“Hugo, don’t take sides,” I said. Whatever’s going on between them, we don’t need to add to it by pouring gasoline on the animosity fire.

Damian ignored us and forced himself up. “It’s probably just a sprain,” he said. He then put pressure on it and winced. I offered to give him a hand, but he refused.

“I’ll manage,” he said gruffly, indicating that it was not up for discussion.

There were no distinguishing features or markers, and the hallway stretched on in front of us before making a sharp right turn in the far distance.

This time, I took charge of the situation and ordered Harold to move up to the front with me.

“But why?” he groaned, making me wonder how he’d ever managed to get to level 8 so fast with his temperament.

“Because that spear has a good reach to it and it’s wasted in the back,” I said. “Damian has a crossbow and an injury. It makes more sense for him to cover the rear.”

Strangely, Damian hadn’t tried to argue with me or maintain his role as leader. He’d just quietly accepted that he was too injured to make the calls and let me take over. Harold grumbled some more, but he did fall into line next to me with his spear ready. Not that it made me more confident. Given how he’d froze up before, I can’t say I was expecting a lot of fighting prowess to come out of him.

We moved forward as a unit, with me occasionally forcing Harold to stop so that Damian, who was limping, had time to catch up. Normally, in a moment like this, I would have gotten Hugo to fly ahead as a lookout, but with these low, potentially unstable ceilings, I wasn’t comfortable with it. I didn’t want another part of it crashing down and separating us. So as a group, we moved in bursts until I heard what sounded like gears turning.

“Do you hear that?” I asked.

Everyone stopped and listened.

Directly in front of us, the stone ceiling retracted up and away. Three massive buzz saws were lowered down into their place. With a metallic whine, they began to spin and then shot forward. I grabbed Harold and yanked him back against the wall as the high-speed blades rolled past us. Luckily, Hugo had been on my shoulder the whole time, and Damian, even with his injury, had enough dexterity to brace himself against the wall in time.

The buzzsaw blades continued until they reached the end of the hallway behind us. At which point they stopped and more gears could be heard cranking. We watched in horror as more blades descended. It was enough to cover the entire hallway. Nothing could avoid them this time.

“Move!” I shouted.

I sprinted to the end of the hall with Hugo clutching fiercely to my shoulder. We turned the corner and stopped. After that right turn, the rest of the hallway tilted down at a steep angle and into a darkness that even my eyes couldn’t pierce.

I felt Harold bump into me and then Damian a second later, almost knocking us into the death slide.

“It’s still coming,” Damian warned.

We had no choice.

I grabbed hold of Hugo and went first, sliding down into the darkness. The others followed quickly behind and Harold groaned as we began to pick up speed. There was nothing to grab onto to slow down. All we could do was hold on until we reached the bottom.

The slide eventually dumped us out into a large circular pit that was filled with sand. Fiery torches surrounded the walls and there were four metal gates with a lever next to each of them. Two to my left and two to my right, but it was what was directly in front of me that held my attention. A giant door that was barred by four long pieces of stone.

Okay, so four gates and four locks. This doesn’t take a genius to figure out.

“It looks like we have to throw those switches in order to unlock the stone door and progress,” I said. “But considering the fact that they’re right next to those gates, I’m guessing something nasty will jump out of each of them as soon as a lever gets pulled. Once we’re ready, we’ll take on whatever it is, one gate at a time.”

Harold frowned. “There’s four of us. One for each gate. Maybe it wants us to each throw a lever at the same time, and doing it one at a time causes the monsters to appear?”

I shook my head. “That’s too easy. The System would never let us get away with something like that.”

“What about throwing all the switches at once and then making a run for the door?”

“We’d never make it in time,” I said. Though Hugo and I could probably pull it off, Damian definitely couldn’t. “You’re level 8. You should know better by now than to always run away from a fight.”

He scowled but wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Whatever,” he muttered. “Let’s just get this over with.”

I nodded and said, “Hugo, if you wouldn’t mind?”

The bird suddenly became self conscious. “What? Why me?”

“Because you’re smaller and faster,” said Damian, seeing my logic. “You’re more likely to flip a switch and return to the group before whatever comes through attacks.”

That was the main reason. The other reason was that I wanted to give Hugo something to do so that he’d feel included and less likely to get bored and use one of his ghosts. I still wanted that as a last resort. It also didn’t hurt to show Harold and Damian one of his uses, otherwise they might start to wonder why I keep him around.

Damian unslung his crossbow and concentrated. It was a two-handed contraption of polished black steel and I watched as he concentrated. A silver crossbow bolt suddenly appeared on his weapon, cocked and ready to fire.

My eyes widened. Woah, magical crossbow bolts. I looked away before he could catch me staring. Now that I was in charge, I had to play it cool, but I made a note to ask about his weapon later.

I drew my katana while Harold had, for some reason, chosen to put his spear back into his inventory and had replaced it with a flask. Maybe the flask contains some kind of poison? It was an odd choice, especially since we didn’t know what we’d be facing, but I wasn’t about to start micro-managing his fighting style.

I gave the nod to Hugo, and he flew over to the first lever switch. He landed on it and his weight pushed it down. As soon as the lever was pulled, the first bar in front of the stone door disintegrated. More unseen gears could be heard cranking as the gate slowly rose. Hugo hopped off the lever and hurried back to me before whatever was behind the first gate could get to him.

Harold unscrewed the top on his flask, and Damian raised his crossbow.

When the gate was fully open, we waited. After a moment of nothing happening, I frowned and looked around. Above me, out of the corner of my eye, there was a flicker of shadow. I looked up and searched for it.

There!

I saw another shadow flicker. There’s something up there that wasn’t here before.

“The gates are misdirection,” I warned. “Look up.”

As soon as I’d said it, four spiders the size of big dogs dropped down from the ceiling and surrounded us.