Even though I still believed it was dangerous to leave our rope behind, Cadoc had made a good point. There had to be another way back up to the surface, not only because the fallen adventurers must have taken a different way, but also because the Kalamuzi must have gotten around somehow. It did almost seem like they could climb the cliff face, but I doubted that was their normal means of travel. The wall had been smooth, not chipped and scratched where Kalamuzi claws had sunken in. Unless there was a Kalamuzi stone-polisher, there had to be stairs somewhere.

And if we really did get stuck down there, well, we weren’t planning on coming back that way, anyway, not when it was all said and done. We wanted to leave out the back way, if such a way existed, and make sure we were far out of Berenguer’s reach by the time he realized what we had done. We could alway re-enter Eraztun - especially if we were able to become Second Ring mages. Even a body-mage should be able to waltz into town as a Second Ringer, I hoped.

Besides, I had my own reasons for wanting to follow the woman, and they weren’t the same as what I assumed was Cadoc’s anger and Amaia’s… honestly, I had no idea what Amaia was thinking. What else was new.

The next room was a long hallway of stone. There were arrows on the ground, mostly broken, and mostly up against one wall’s edge or the other. I was pondering this, walking slowly forwards, when my foot sunk, and a noise like a *clink* sounded as the stone under me slid into place.

“Duck!” Cadoc yelled, suddenly tackling me, and we barely had hit the ground before-

Before nothing. I looked up from my prone position. Once the stone tile beneath me had lowered, my mind had instantly realized that I was in some sort of trap, and I had expected an arrow to shoot over my head. Or into my head, depending. But nothing seemed to have happened. I shrugged Cadoc off of my back, wriggling out from underneath him.

“Ha!” Cadoc said, jumping to his feet. “RENA smiles upon us today, Miles.” He was against the left-hand wall in a moment, running his hand over a little slit I hadn’t seen before.

“Out of ammo,” Amaia commented. “Or still reloading.”

I got to my feet, and tried to stay away from the line of fire of that slit as I did. Maybe it was out of ammo, or maybe it just messed up once, and the next shot would fire just fine. Like an empty chamber in russian roulette. The only way to win was not to play.

“There are more,” Cadoc noted. “This entire hallway is a series of arrow traps. Looks like the coward got through, however.”

“Let’s not take our chances,” I said. “We’ll crawl.”

And so we did. It wasn’t a short journey, crawling across that hallway, and it gave me flashbacks of the escape from Berenguer’s manor, except with the occasional arrow flying uselessly over our heads, rather than suffocating smoke. You would think that those were bad memories, but they weren’t. He could think what he liked, but I had beaten him, and that made it all worth it. Which meant this whole dungeon would be worth it when I beat him again. That thought cheered me up.

“Hey Amaia,” I said, voice echoing strangely against the floor and walls. “I just realized something, about what you said earlier.”

She didn’t respond, so I took her silence as permission to continue.

“If you’re a Second Ring mage,” I said. “Then why were you allowed to come down here with us? Isn’t that the whole reason Berenguer didn’t come down here himself?”

Amaia’s voice echoed from behind me. “We’re cheating,” she said.

Cadoc laughed, a laugh which boomed even more than normal. “Truly?”

“Berenguer told me when I asked him for work,” Amaia continued. “He would use his magic to cloak my power, and appear as a First Ring mage to anyone who scanned me.”

“Is there a punishment for cheating?” I asked.

“I think they might kill you,” Amaia said simply.

“And you agreed?”

I could almost hear the shrug in her voice. “I’d never cheated before. Sounded like fun.”

Cadoc and I both laughed at that. Amaia was shockingly childish in some ways, I thought.

“Wait,” I said. “I thought Berenguer hadn’t expected competition. Why stack the deck?”

“He said I would make the expedition faster,” Amaia answered. “And I would keep the two of you in line.”

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

“Think you could manage?” Cadoc asked wryly.

“If I had to.”

“Why did he trust you so much?” I asked. I had already noticed the sickly-sweet way Berenguer talked to Amaia, but I thought it was mostly just a creepy old man thing.

“He’s a creepy old man,” she said. “I smiled at him and batted my eyelashes.”

That was too far for me. I had to stop crawling, clutching my stomach as I erupted in laughter, picturing Amaia’s stone face trying to seduce someone.

“A-are you OK, friend?” Cadoc asked, even though I could hear him stifling a laugh of his own.

“Is he dying?” Amaia followed. “Or is he having another breakdown?”

As my laughter continued, Amaia must have realized they weren’t cries of pain. When I was finally able to get myself under control, I could hear her muttering under her breath.

“I don’t see what’s so funny.”

I took a couple of deep breaths. Calm. Calm.

“Wh-“ I cleared my throat. “Why do all of that? Just to follow Cadoc and I.”

“Listen to yourself, Miles!” Cadoc responded. “Who wouldn’t dream of following the two greatest heroes Eraztun has seen in centuries? Who wouldn’t take any measure necessary to grab hold of that opportunity? It is only a wonder we don’t have more followers.”

“Are you calling her a groupie?” I asked.

“I am unfamiliar with the word.”

Amaia interrupted. “I just thought you two seemed like fun. It was better than what I was doing before. Besides, I’d never batted my eyelashes at someone before. Or gone on an adventure before. Or had…” She trailed off.

“Had what?” I asked.

“Never mind.”

I shuffled and turned around to look at her. She was hiding her face. I looked at Cadoc, who shrugged.

“Well,” I said, deciding it wasn’t important and continuing my crawl forward. “Remind me not to be around when you want to try killing someone for the first time.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be the first time.”

-

Beyond that hallway was a square room with four doors, including the one we had come from. The room was empty, but the door to our left was wide open. We figured that must be where the woman fled, too panicked to close doors behind her after the first. We pressed onwards.

The further we went, the more a niggling feeling at the base of my skull told me we should turn around. At the same time, the further we went, the more turning around would feel like a large defeat, and like we had wasted our time. I know that’s the gambler’s fallacy, but knowing that doesn’t magically make you immune, unfortunately. I didn’t voice my concerns any further.

We followed the path of open doors through more chambers. There was one with a wide ravine across the center of the room, with bloody spikes and remains down below, which Cadoc had summoned sticks over to make a sort of makeshift bridge. We probably could have leaped over - barely - but we didn’t want to risk it. We also could have had one person cross with the ring, but then what? Throw it back to the next person? I knew that somehow we would end up losing it if we did that.

Another room held an empty chest, its open mouth mocking us. I searched the dark corners of the chest anyway, and of course I found nothing.

The room that took us the longest was in many ways the simplest. It was the only room without an open door to follow, though luckily, there was only one way to go besides where we had entered.

There entrance was just a square hole in the wall - larger than any we’d seen thus far - but when we came in, the door - this time made of stone - dropped down from above, closing us in. We searched, but it was featureless, with no obvious way to open it again. We examined the room.

The only contents inside of the smooth stone walls were bones, scattered randomly, some still wearing scraps of armor and or half-holding rusted-out weapons. Some were obviously human, and some obviously weren’t. I couldn’t identify many of them. There was one particularly long skeleton that looked like it had belonged to a snake longer than a semi-truck.

Directly across, set in the stone, was another door. It didn’t open either, and I couldn’t help but notice the desperate scratches carved into its surface, and the faint stain of blood.

Above the door, high on the wall, was a little target. It looked to have a raised part in the middle, like a button. It was far out of reach, even for a man twice my height. Turning, we saw that there was an identical button over the door we had come in through.

“Lucky I picked up that slingshot,” I said, getting it out from where I’d hung it on my belt. “We’d probably starve in here, otherwise.”

“Could throw spears, if we had to,” Amaia said. “Or bones.” I guessed that was true, although the slingshot should be more suited to the task. The bones would probably break, and the spears would be difficult to use to hit such a small target, and with enough force to press the button.

“How do the Kalamuzi manage this room, do you suppose?” Cadoc asked, jutting his chin out and scratching it.

“Maybe they know better than to come this way.” I answered.

“Or maybe they don’t,” Amaia said, motioning to the bones surrounding us. Some of the piles contained long, thin skulls.

With that sobering thought, I walked back to the opposite end of the room and took aim at the target with my slingshot.

I had assumed Amaia, since she had brought up the spears and bones, would try to help out. Instead, Cadoc and her used this as an opportunity to eat lunch. Fine, I thought. Prepare to be impressed.

My first shot was a disaster. I hadn’t even imagined it was possible to screw up so badly.

I held the sling in my left, non-dominant hand, and pulled back the pouch, little steel ball held between thumb and forefinger. I held the slingshot upright, and was very unsure how to aim. I peered down the gap made by the two arms of the slingshot, and tried to place the target right in the middle. I turned my head and closed one eye, although that didn’t feel right.

The material of the part I pulled and stretched back was like rubber, and I wondered what it actually was. Rubber was an industrial good, as far as I understood it.

Thinking I had set up about as good as I could hope for a first attempt, I released.

The steel ball flung itself straight into the side of my head.

I cried out in pain as a spray of blood arced away from me. The ball had smashed into my cheekbone - luckily only grazing it, not breaking it - and the rubber part had cut into my skin.

I touched my hand to my face. The wound stung, but I could tell it wasn’t serious.

I heard laughter behind me.

I turned. Cadoc was facing the other way, eating - or pretending to eat - but Amaia was still looking at me. She quickly shot a hand over her mouth.

“You got something to say?” I asked, feeling like a buffoon for getting so angry, but getting angry all the same.

She shook her head, but continued giggling. I went back to my task, trying to ignore her. I searched the ground for my steel ball, finding it after a few minutes of frustration.

This time, on a hunch, I tried holding the slingshot sideways, the two tips of the “Y’ pointing to my right, placing the target on the line made between the two ends. I pulled back lower, around where my lips were, though this time I made sure there wasn’t part of my face in the way of the shot. I put the target right in the middle again.

Another miss, but an improvement. Way too high. I tried adjusting my aim with the next one. And the next one. And the next one.

I missed an embarrassing number of times. How am I so fucking bad at this? I thought. I’m fucking worthless. We’ll never get out of here. Fuck.

What made it worse was that after every six shots, I would have to wander around the room, searching for my lost balls. They’d roll into piles of bones so often I almost thought they disliked me, like the were embarrassed to be handled by such a rank amateur, and I spent more time looking for my ammo than I did shooting them. I wanted to give up.

I shook my head. No. I’m going to do this.

Eventually Cadoc and Amaia finished eating, but still didn’t come and help. Not that I would have accepted their help - I was committed now. That would be like admitting defeat.

They moved on to playing some sort of card game that Amaia had taken from her pack. Then, eventually, they went to sleep. We’d been in that room for hours. They told me to sleep, too, to take a break, but I refused.

I wasn’t sleeping until I hit that fucking target.