Steamforged Sorcery - Chapter 45 (Patreon)

Cowl caught his balance. His muscles tensed, and Angel prepared for the man to spring at him. Then the Hunter let out a metallic growl and gave him a single nod. “Apologies.”

“Just don’t do it again,” Angel said, the adrenaline starting to leave his system. He didn’t trust the Hunter in the slightest, but he was well aware that he had no chance against the man in a fight. There was no way to confront him – not yet at least.

“Is it safe to come down?” Vanessa asked.

“Yes, but jump onto the metal door instead of the ground,” Angel instructed. “Traps take a long time to recharge, but there might be more than one trap here. It’s impossible to tell with all the rubble.”

Vanessa nodded and hopped down, landing on the huge door with a thud. She grimaced, standing up and brushing the dirt off her knees. She showed Angel a spent canister. “I don’t suppose you’ve got another I can have?”

Angel handed her a canister from what remained of his dwindling supplies. “I’m running low. Make it last.”

Cowl stepped up onto the metal door to stand beside Angel and Vanessa. He adjusted the mask on his face and nodded towards the glowing room in front of them. “So, what’s that?”

“Danger,” Angel replied. “Looks like a bait room to me.”

“Bait room?” Cowl asked.

“It’s a bunch of expensive or powerful artifacts surrounded by traps and dangerous stuff,” Vanessa said before Angel could respond. “Seekers try to avoid them.”

“Not bad,” Angel said, giving her a nod. “Only got one thing wrong: most Seekers avoid them. Bait rooms, especially obvious ones like this aren’t hard to spot. But they’re also some of the best places to find loot.”

“So we just have to leave the room as quickly as possible?” Cowl asked.

“We could,” Angel said, starting towards the room with a hungry look in his eyes. “But why would we do that? Look at all those artifacts. The tubing in the walls, the glass orb – beautiful. We can’t just leave them here.”

Vanessa glanced at Cowl nervously. “Has he gone insane?”

“He’s a Seeker,” Cowl replied, following after Angel until they were standing directly before the glowing room. “They’re all insane.”

“Angel, shouldn’t we try to just escape?” Vanessa tried. “Dangerous trap rooms don’t sound like a good idea.”

“You don’t understand,” Angel said. “This is how we’ll escape. A Great Catacomb’s bait rooms must be full of powerful artifacts. It’s not going to want us to take anything. If we loot the place dry, it’ll try to get rid of us as soon as possible before we take anything else.”

“Or we’ll get blown up,” Vanessa pointed out. “Aren’t bait rooms very well defended?”

Angel just shrugged. He peered into the room, scanning the floor and walls. There were no trap lines to be seen, but he scanned the room anyways. The orange light washed over it and a ding rose up from the eyepiece as drew several dozen crisscrossing lines in the air.

“Ah,” Angel said. “Invisible lines of energy. If we interrupt them, the room gets triggered and we go boom.”

“I presume you’ve got a solution for that?” Cowl asked.

“Of course. I just need to find the artifact that they’re coming from,” Angel replied, tracing the lines mentally. It took him a few moments, but he eventually managed to find a point that every single one emerged from.

He loaded a canister into his arm and aimed it at the spot. A bolt of lightning jumped out of his palm and slammed into the seemingly plain wall with a crackle. The lines on his eyepiece blinked out.

“No more lines,” Angel said. He knelt, picking up a rock and tossing it inside the bait room. It clattered across the ground, sliding to a stop against one of the doors.

“Is it safe?” Vanessa asked.

“Not in the slightest,” Angel replied. “But it’s safer.”

Now that he was closer, he could see that the podium beneath the floating glass orb was covered with hundreds of runes. He also had no doubt that there were several other traps around the room. His artifact could find some of them, but trusting it implicitly was a fast track to getting fried.

The more Angel examined the room, the deeper his frown grew. He spotted more and more runes the longer he looked, and they weren’t simple. The chances of making a mistake were astronomical.

“Right,” Angel said. “New plan. I’m blowing the room up.”

“And how will that help?” Cowl asked. “Make the catacomb pissed off about destroying its artifacts?”

“Yup. I’d prefer to steal them myself, but at this point we just need to escape the catacomb. Blowing its toys up will work just as well as stealing them. Maybe better since it doesn’t have any chance to get them back if we break them.”

“Didn’t you say that damaging an artifact or Old World magic could result in us getting blown up?” Vanessa asked nervously.

“Only a little,” Angel replied, waggling a hand back and forth. “But frankly, we don’t have much of a choice. I’m telling you right now – if you or Cowl set one foot inside that room, you won’t walk back out alive.”

“Then blow it up and stop talking,” Cowl growled.

“Just a precaution first,” Angel replied, drumming his fingers on his thigh. “If things go thoroughly wrong and we get separated, make your way towards Ashwind once you escape the catacomb.”

Angel pulled out the map and unfurled it, pointing to a spot that was just in between the edge of the desert and a darker circle that covered a large portion of the center. “This is about where we are now.”

He moved his finger to a small settlement a short distance away from them. “And this is Ashwind. It’s a shithole, but it’s also completely secluded from the outside world – or at least it was when I was there. Just head northwest. Can you all read the stars?”

Vanessa and Cowl nodded.

“I learned it in a book a year or two back,” Vanessa said with a slight frown. “But I think I remember enough to head straight in one direction.”

“Good enough,” Angel said, rolling the map back up and putting it into his travel pack. “Cowl, please distribute some food to everyone.”

The Hunter shrugged and did as Angel suggested. Once they’d finished, Angel let out a slow breath. “Okay. Get ready. The plan is to detonate all the traps, and then run through the door on the right when I say to.”

They nodded. He licked his lips and fit a canister into his arm. Normally, it would be impossible to trigger every trap in the room at once with a single spell. However, considering they were all runes, he had the semblance of a plan.

Angel knelt beside the entrance of the room and pressed his palm to the ground. His arm hissed as ice shot out across the ground in a cone shape, spreading across the floor and rising up the walls.

As soon as it started to slow, Angel grabbed a second canister and fit it into place, redoubling his efforts. The ice resumed its crawl, moving onwards until it had covered the entire room. The spent canisters clattered to the frozen ground beside him.

“Get ready,” Angel said. He raised his mechanical hand and brought it down as hard as he could. The ice under his palm shattered and cracks spiderwebbed through the floor. Creaks filled the room as the frozen ground started to break.

Thin lines carved through many of the runes, splitting them. A dull home rose up as the machinery on the walls stuttered, trying and failing to continue providing power. A spark flashed from one of the pumps.

A small puff of smoke rose up from it as the gears gave way. Several of the runes started to glow cherry red as their operation was interrupted. Angel and the others took a few steps back as the heat in the golden room started to rise.

Loud cracks filled the air. A glass tube on one of the walls shattered, sending fragments of glass everywhere as it freed the flickering energy within it. The hum turned to a loud whine. With a bang, a valve exploded.

An instant later, a brilliant orange flash lit the room. They were all thrown across the room as a shockwave rippled out of it. It was followed by an intense blast of heat and a loud explosion.

Fragments of stone and metal flew through the air, peppering both them and the surrounding area. The ground shuddered beneath their feet. Large chunks of the floor beneath them cracked and fell, disappearing into an abyss beneath their feet.

Angel staggered upright, raising a hand to protect himself and squinting at the room. Flames covered the floor and walls, and all the precious artifacts were either slag or in the process of becoming it. “It’s working! Go!”

Cowl yanked Vanessa to her feet and they all dashed towards the exit. The ground cracked and crumbled further beneath their feet. Angel felt his foot pass through air when it should have met stone.

A large hole opened up beneath him and plummeted down into the abyss. He spun midair, shooting his grappling hook up at the floor. It connected and he yanked himself upwards, sailing through the air.