“I think Kat knows who our visitor was,” Lacey announced as she returned to the control room.
“No way,” Colt had solidified his faith in Kat the night before.
“She said she’d ‘fix it,’ not that I know what the hell that means,” Lacey tossed her backpack under her desk and slumped into her chair. “I would have sworn she wasn’t involved. I trusted her.”
“No way!” Colt got up to pace the width of the room.
“We’ll get it out of her during lunch,” Lacey threw her hands up, her new unflappable attitude evaporated with the rest of her faith in anything. “Until then, we’re sitting ducks.”
“You think they’ll come back today?” Colt stuck the pencil he’d been using behind his ear and turned at the wall to return to his desk.
“Why wouldn’t they?” Lacey asked, watching Colt pace away from his desk and back to the wall.
“Because maybe they got a cold?” Colt winced at how lame the statement sounded out loud.
“You think a little level 5 cold is going to affect a level 77 assassin?” Lacey scoffed, kicking the backpack lightly.
“Maybe we shouldn’t jump to conclusions,” Colt pushed his palms at the ground, his pacing slowing but not stopping. “There could be a good explanation.”
“If so, she didn’t give it to me before she went into the race,” Lacey bent down to check that she hadn’t broken anything by kicking her bag. While she was down there, she unloaded her pencil case and sketchpad. “How is it going, anyway?”
“That depends on whether or not we’re still rooting for Kat to win,” Colt threw himself into this poor chair so hard that it creaked.
Lacey glared a response.
“Kat is ahead in points, but not by much,” Colt reported, taking the pencil out from behind his ear to tap on the desk. “The other team is going faster, but they skipped a few of the quests. If they go back and do those quests, they could still win.”
“Where are they?” Lacey asked, bringing up her screen to see for herself.
“Kat’s in 4-Square, and the other group is in the Tumbler,” Colt answered her even though he knew that she was now watching with him.
“How the tumbler working?” Lacey tried to think about pleasant things instead of the things she couldn’t change or protect them from.
“It’s pretty crazy with 5 people all looking different directions,” Colt’s eyes lit with a spark of mischief. “The room keeps spinning in the direction that the last person to move looks.”
“Sure enough, the quest said not to look up, so the first thing they did was look up, right?” Lacey tapped her screen, thoughtfully.
“They did,” Colt grinned. “And the room flipped top to bottom so that they were standing on the ceiling. It was seconds later that they looked up again and it flipped again.”
“I like that puzzle,” Lacey cast a glance around the room and found Spark curled up near the wastebasket. Spark was fast asleep, which made Lacey feel safer. She slid the screen over to Kat and the 4-square puzzle rooms.
Four-square was a game played on the playgrounds of some elementary schools. It was played with 2-4 people in a large square separated by lines so that it was split into 4 smaller, equal squares. One person had a large ball that they had to bounce to another player, who then had to bounce the ball to someone else. It sounded simple and it was, with people being “out” if they missed catching the ball.
The puzzle was just as easy with four players. It was harder with only one, like Kat, who was struggling. There was a round ball in one room. That ball had to be bounced once and then hit a wall. The ball would then appear in the room on the other side of the wall it had hit. Then it could be bounced to another wall. The ball had to appear in each room once; no more and no less. The rules of the game could be bought, but it cost a person half the points for the game to do so. Kat was still trying to figure it out without the rules.
“Did any of them try the library?” Lacey asked.
“Kat did a good job on the book puzzle,” Colt tilted back on his chair and balanced his pencil on the back of one hand. “The other group accidentally burned half the books during a fight with the golems in the cathedral. They got the penalty even though they never went up the spiral staircase.”
“Were the golems the right level?” Lacey watched Kat try to read the cipher on the wall.
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“Kat had no trouble with them, but she only touched one at a time,” Colt dropped his pencil and leaned over precariously to pick it back up. “The other group did 2-3 at a time. They made better time, but their healer had to rest between battles, so it balanced out.”
“It’s looking like a good level,” Lacey complimented his work. “Even if they don’t like the race aspect, it would have been a good level. They’ve been in there almost 3 hours now, so even the timing is good.”
“The race part is tricky to predict though,” Colt pointed at the level with his pencil. “Kat did the quest to find all the holy symbols in the living quarters, but she’s behind them timewise. If the time spent was worth it, she should win. I think.”
“What is Kat doing that is working so much better than the other team?” Lacey wondered out loud.
“The Spunks can’t get her with the traps,” Colt answered her question because he’d been watching the whole thing while she’d been morosely meandering back to the control room via all the distractions she could think up at the time. “Even with the Trap Maintenance Corridor full of Spunks, Kat just slips right past all the traps like they are nothing. The other group had to really slow down. I guess their rogue isn’t as good as Kat at trap detection.”
“Yet,” Lacey found herself glancing at Spark again, only allowing herself to relax when Spark was still napping. “Is this how we’re going to spend the rest of the day?”
“What?”
“Analyzing puzzle efficiency and watching to see is Spark goes after another shadow?” Lacey elucidated, her tension heavy on her shoulders.
“I wasn’t watching Spark, but I’m also drawing a new maze,” Colt held up a page of notes next to another map.
“Fine, name two animals that don’t belong together in any way,” Lacey demanded, grabbing up her pencil and sketchbook.
“A camel and a peacock,” Colt threw out off the top of his head.
“A camcock?” Lacey cocked her head to the side.
“Or a peamel?” Colt suggested.
“Or a peacomel,” Lacey proclaimed and began to draw.
“I do not see how that thing is a mix of a camel and a peacock,” Colt remarked an hour later.
“The ruff on the camel expands to show the peacock feathers,” Lacey explained to him as she was filling in the outrageous colors.
“But where’s the hump?” Colt protested, leaning over her shoulder.
“Okay, so the body is more doglike than camel, but I can put in a hump if you really want one,” Lacey groused, grinding her eraser against the back end of the camel.
“Double hump,” Colt pointed unhelpfully about where to put the humps.
“You want a double hump, draw it yourself,” Lacey swatted his hand away from her drawing.
“Oh! They finished!” Colt gave up on the humps and lunged back toward his desk.
“Who won?” Lacey paused with her pencil in the air.
“Kat, but it was close,” Colt grinned, even though they weren’t sure that Kat was still on their side.
“Not quite enough time to run 2 races in a single shift,” Lacey said, checking the time on the finish.
“The other arenas are done, but the holdouts are in the Aztec Tombs,” Colt flipped through screens to see who was still in the dungeon.
Lacey’s gaze fell on the still-sleeping Spark as she fidgeted in her chair. Either their invisible visitor didn’t show up or they’d found a way to remain invisible even to Spark. Colt caught her looking around at the corners of the room and their eyes locked.
“Pedestal, show me the highest levelled adventurer in our dungeon,” Colt shrugged as he tried it. “It’s showing me a level 28 healer.”
“That should work,” Lacey let herself relax, a little.
“Betcha’ they’ve got the sniffles and couldn’t be silent enough to sneak up on us today,” Colt suggested, waggling his eyebrows at her to break the tension.
“I was fine with it this morning when there was nothing I could do about it,” Lacey’s complaint was too close to a whine for her comfort. “I can’t stand not knowing how Kat is involved.”
“We’ll find out soon,” Colt reminded her with a sigh.
The time didn’t fly, no matter how they fidgeted or tried to keep busy. The Peacomelo ended up being a seed-spitting, melon-colored, camel-like creature whose seeds immediately sprouted and rooted a person to the ground. The feathers in the ruff at the base of its neck were sharpened discs that shot off the Peacomelo like a porcupine’s quills.
“Finally,” Colt grumbled, flashing the stack of submissions into the pedestal and then moving their control room near the exit that Kat had used. They picked up their coupons for an hour outside from Adam at the door and were outside within two minutes of the dungeon clearing.
“Lacey and Colt,” Bernard met them at the entrance, and Colt drew back a little when they didn’t immediately see Kat. Lacey raised a hand to Bernard, trying to watch his face for any sense of betrayal. They kept their backs tight to the entrance, Adam and one of his elites right behind them.
“Where’s Kat?” Lacey asked as soon as Bernard was close enough to do so politely.
“She said she had some business to take care of,” Bernard jogged up to them, the friendly smile on his face seeming genuine. “She took that cat with her. I had no idea it was that huge. I’d only ever seen it in its smaller form. She told me a little about the new challenge and I’m delighted by the innovation. She said to tell you that it was a success, for sure.”
“I saw that your son was in the group that went up against Kat,” Colt took over the conversation and Lacey was glad because she couldn’t find the words. They needed to speak with Kat. “The race was very close.”
“That Kat is quite the competitor,” Bernard clapped Colt on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about hurting my feelings. I’m competitive, but I love my son more than I love competition.”
“I wish that all fathers were that intuitive about how to treat their offspring,” Colt let Bernard preen a bit about his fatherhood and his son.
Lacey scanned the clearing looking for evidence of Kat or Shadow, not that she thought she’d find them if they didn’t want to be found. Was Kat out there trying to fix it? Sure, Kat had been level 75 in her other life on some other game server or something, but she was nowhere near that level now and even Shadow might have trouble protecting Kat from a level 77 assassin. Surely Kat hadn’t taken on the invader all on her own.
For the first time since Lacey had heard Kat say that she’d take care of it, Lacey worried that maybe Kat had bitten off more than she could chew. What if they had gotten Kat in trouble?
“Did Kat happen to say when she’d be back?” Colt asked Bernard and Lacey turned her attention back to the conversation.
“Maybe a few days. She said she had business in town. She said that she shouldn’t be long, but that was right after she came out of the dungeon,” Bernard admitted. “I’m sure she’s fine. She’s stronger than she looks.”