Chapter 236

The room they had just left was now fully engulfed in flames and Jay could hear the sizzle and crackle of fire as it ate away at the wooden room behind them. Carly, the last one through the door, shut it behind her. That would help for a time but the fire would get through the door eventually – the door made out of highly flammable wood.

The room they were in was shaped just as the last one had been – shaped like one third of a pizza pie, or a cherry pie, the pie type wasn't important. What was important was that no one was currently on fire.

Smoke was filtering in to the room from underneath the closed door behind them. The roar of flames could be heard quite clearly, even through the closed door. Across the room was another door, also closed.

The group made a mad dash across the smooth polished wooden floor for the opposite side of the room and crossed it in record time. There was nothing and no one else in the room to stop them.

“Anyone else nervous about this room?” Jay asked with a slight smile as they ran.

“It's empty, what's to be nervous about?” Aiden replied flippantly as he breathed heavily and tried to keep up with the group as they ran. He was finding it tougher than usual to run as fast as the others.

Norri laughed. They were running for their lives but Norri was still having a great time. “Dungeon rooms are never empty! There's always something!”

They reached the other end of the room finally and paused to catch their breath.

Carly started coughing as the room continued to fill up with smoke.

“We're running out of time!” M'redith yelled as she waved at Jay to check the door for traps. The others were all hunched over as they tried to avoid as much of the smoke as possible.

Fire or no fire, one should always check for traps.

Jay hurried over to the door and checked the frame and door itself for traps. He immediately made a horrified noise.

“What? What's wrong?!” Carly asked from the rear of the group.

“There's a trap,” Jay said hesitantly.

“SO? Disarm it!” Norri answered as the room continued to fill with smoke. There was now a thick cloud of smoke forming towards the ceiling of the room.

“I can't! There's no accessible trap housing! There's just a line under tension coming out of a hole! M'redith! Help me with this!” Jay said as he took out a tiny pin from his pouch and waved towards M'redith's sword.

Jay quickly explained to her that he wanted her to hammer the pin in to the door at an angle but in line with the trip wire. She carefully did so but managed to brush against the trip wire at one point. She froze but nothing happened – she hadn't activated the trap thankfully.

Knowing that time was running out she finished hammering the pin in to the door and then took a step back. “What now?”

“Now you all get back away from the door in case I trip this trap. I'm going to keep the line under tension, have M'redith cut it, then I'll wrap the cut end around the pin and tie it off. That way when we open the door the line will stay taught.” Jay explained as he adjusted his body so that he'd be at the right height – knee height – to grab the line.

Jay grabbed the line and pressed it against the pin. Then he had M'redith cut the far end that was anchored in the opposite side of the door frame. One end of the line was cut cleanly and dangled from his hand which still kept the other end tight.

Making sure it didn't loosen even one tiny bit Jay carefully wound the line around the pin. Then he finished up with a no slip knot that wouldn't untie on its own. Finally he stepped away from it and admired his work.

Nothing happened, as it should.

“Good work!” M'redith said and patted him on the back as she reached for the knob and opened the door.

Or at least that was what she had tried to do. What had actually happened was that she had reached out, attempted to turn the knob, and found it stuck in place. As she rattled the knob her group heard a sudden commotion behind them.

Three things happened, all at once.

One. Trap doors in the ceiling opened and dropped tiny creatures on to the floor behind them. They were of various sizes, some as small as a ball bearing while others were the size of a tennis ball. They were colored a revolting shade of reddish-brown and appeared puffy, almost bulbous, in shape and appeared to be made of a thick chitinous material. Their exoskeletons looked rugged and were textured with numerous segments and ridges for protection. They each had eight legs that ended in sharp claws that looked perfect for gripping flesh. The heads held elongated sharp barbed structures designed to pierce the skin.

Two. The door to the room they had just left collapsed as the fire ate its way through the flammable door and lit the adjoining wall on fire. The temperature in the room instantly rose.

Three. Norri yelled “Ticks!” and a sudden notification appeared for each of them.

Defeat all enemies to continue.

Jay boggled at the thought. Ticks? Jay hated ticks. They disgusted him. He didn't even want to touch them with his staff. He would rather fight a glimmerhide than deal with a bunch of ticks.

One of the tennis ball sized ticks leapt through the air and jumped towards Jay.

Jay gave out a short high pitched scream.

In spite of the smoke, the fire, the monsters, the fear, Norri ended up laughing at Jay's reaction before she caught herself. Then she noticed that the others were all as horrified as Jay was. Norri seemed to be the only person not revolted by the ticks.

“What? You don't have ticks where you come from?” Norri asked as she began to step on and squash the little ones while she batted the larger ones away from her with her staff. It was enough to stun the larger ones but not kill them.

“We do but they're small and disgusting! Not big and disgusting!” Jay managed to reply in a high pitched tone of voice.

Even M'redith giggled that time – and she was almost as grossed out by the ticks as Jay was.

“Oh.” Norri said and paused for a moment in the smoke to cough. She continued to fight ticks off as the others tried to kill the ticks while at the same time touching them as little as possible.

The entire group began to try to kill the ticks as best they could but the ticks were either tiny or small, and fast as well. Moving targets that were tough to hit, it was taking forever to kill them – the bigger ones were especially tough to damage with their thick exoskeletons.

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Jay heard what sounded like popcorn off to the side and behind him and he turned just in time to see one end of the room begin to catch fire just as Carly had swung her staff like a bat and knocked one of the larger ticks in to the flames.

The tick exploded in the fire and made a popping sound as it did so.

Carly grinned at figuring the tick's weakness out. “They explode in the fire!” she yelled out as the others all turned to see her bat another large tick in to the flames.

The room was now half on fire and the fire was steadily creeping closer towards the small area that Jay's group had fallen back to, near the exit doorway.

They all excitedly began to knock the ticks not just away, but in to the fire itself. The ticks that landed in the fire rarely returned. While some of the larger ticks managed to make it out of the fire once, they never made it out of the fire a second time.

Still, the group was outnumbered, and the ticks slowly were overwhelming the group. Jay made a horrified gasp as one tennis ball sized tick managed to scuttle rapidly up his staff and sink its mouth in to the back of his hand.

Jay screamed but managed to hold on to his staff – until another one jumped on to his face and attached itself to his cheek.

The bites burned and hurt worse than a wasp sting. These were not normal ticks, and not just because of their size. He could feel the insect tear at his skin as other ticks piled on him as well.

It was M'redith's turn to scream as she watched Jay stumble as ticks continued to attach on to him while the others fought their own ticks.

Norri heard M'redith's scream for help and looked over to see Jay stumbling about blindly, but still holding on to his staff with a death grip. He was screaming in a high pitched voice. Ticks hung from all about his body, including his face and neck.

Norri didn't even pause but instead grabbed him by the back of his belt, turned him quickly about, and then pushed him.

In to the flames.

M'redith screamed. “What are you doing?!” just as Jay entered the flames and began to windmill his arms in fear from the heat and scalding flames.

Popping sounds were heard as the ticks attached to Jay began to release, and as they fell away they burst like bloody fireworks.

It had only been for a split second that Jay had been in the flames before Norri reached in to the fire, grabbed his belt, and hauled him back out and tugged him over to the door. She dropped him there and Aiden went to work on healing him while Norri returned to the fight.

Carly and M'redith had held the majority of the ticks off while Norri had helped out Jay and were relieved when Norri returned to the fighting line and began to clear out some of the larger ticks. Some rolled in to the flames, others made parabolic arcs through the air as Norri knocked them with her staff, but whatever the route they took, the ticks all ended up in the fire.

Aiden cast healing on Jay as the others finished off the last remaining ticks. Only Jay had gotten overwhelmed thankfully but the others had all suffered minor bites that were in need of healing. There was no time for that however as the heat in the room was quickly becoming unbearable.

“I can't breath!” Carly said in between coughs.

M'redith rattled the doorknob but it wouldn't open.

“Kneel down everyone! It'll be easier to breathe,” Jay offered and everyone got low. It was still smoky but not as bad and the group was all desperate for escape.

“It's not opening!” M'redith said as she slammed her body against the door in an attempt to force it open. The door didn't budge even an inch.

All enemies successfully defeated. You may proceed.

They all saw the notification but M'redith was the first to do something about it. She tried the doorknob once again, only this time the door swung open easily and she turned back to her group before she left the room.

“Let's go, follow me!” M'redith said as the group crawled out of the room. There was far too much smoke to stand up by that time.

The entire group collapsed in the next room as Carly shut the door behind them. They had a moment to rest, no longer, as the fire was not taking a rest but still making its way towards them. The door would hold the fire off, but only for a short time.

They could hear the roar and crackle of flames in the adjoining room as they all lay on the floor for a moment.

Jay rolled over on to his side and looked about. The room they were in was, again, the same shape and size as the last two. This room however had a set of stairs that led upwards to a trap door shut tight. There were no immediate signs of any enemies. It appeared that they were in a room with no other purpose than to house the stairs to the next level.

Jay rolled back on to his back and let his head rest onto the floor once again.

“You screamed like a girl,” Norri said with a grin to Jay as she sat up and dusted soot off of her robe.

The others laughed and rose to sitting positions as Jay remained on the floor. “Ha ha. I was covered in ticks.” he said but with a smile.

“You scared me witless for a moment there Norri. Pushing Jay in to the fire? What were you thinking!” M'redith said with a shake of her head.

Norri didn't look apologetic in the least. “He was covered in ticks! Could you think of a faster way to get them off of him?”

M'redith didn't look happy about it but didn't reply.

Jay groaned and sat up slowly. He felt groggy. “I feel funny.”

Aiden nodded, “You got bit – a lot. They've got some sort of venom or nasty saliva or something – it should go away in a bit. If not we'll get you looked at when we get back. I don't have any abilities that would help it. Sorry Jay.”

Jay sighed and rubbed his head with one hand. “That's ok Aiden, thanks for the heals. And thanks for the help Norri, although for a moment I thought you'd gone evil on me. I'd rather stand in fire than be covered in ticks any day though.”

Jay shivered at the thought of having ticks cover his face and neck, not to mention the rest of his body. He'd strive to delete that sensation from his memory if at all possible.

The door they had passed through was now making crackling sounds. They didn't have much longer.

“Come on guys,” M'redith said reasonably. “Lets head up. Time to move.”

Everyone groaned and moaned as they were forced to stand up. Thankfully there wasn't much smoke yet in the room and the air was still breathable, not that it would stay that way for much longer.

M'redith got them in to line and then had Jay inspect the stairs and the trap door. Jay took a good look at it before he pointed at one stair in particular.

“See how the wood is notched here? That's a pressure plate – its wood, not metal, I know, but that is a pressure plate, I assure you. Here, let me pull it up,” Jay said as he popped a section of wood off of one of the stairs and removed it entirely.

Jay examined the trap housing that had been revealed until he had discovered the spot that would disarm it. Jay carefully inserted a trap pin in to the correct spot and then stood back up.

“Should be safe now. Don't step on that step though if you can help it,” Jay said as he moved up to the trap door itself and examined it. Then he did the same thing a second time.

“Looks clear now. Ready to go,” Jay said as he got back in to his spot in line.

M'redith took the point position at the front of the line and led the group up the stairs to the trap door.

A crash of splintering wood was heard as the door behind them collapsed and fire began to creep in to the room as smoke billowed in through the now open doorway. The group began to cough as the thick black smoke gathered around them.

M'redith quickly unlatched the locking mechanism and hefted the door up and open. She and her group quickly filed through the opening and in to the next room before Carly helped M'redith shut the trap door once again.

That would buy them only a few moments. As the group looked out over the room Jay discovered that it was exactly the same shape as all the other rooms.

Unfortunately for the group, this one wasn't empty.