TRAPS: TIPS AND TRICKS

The woman walked into the room with long, confident strides, dark hair trailing her like a mantle of night where her sunglasses shone like pools of oil. She walked like she owned the room, like her life was much more interesting than yours. Unafraid. Her stance said there was definitely going to be trouble, and it was all going to happen to someone else.

The effect was not spoiled by the host of pirates in matching uniforms levelling an armory’s worth of weapons at her.

A painting that had spent the last couple of years under careful study – so it could be determined if it was an incalculably valuable piece of world history done by one of the old masters or a worthless piece of garbage expertly copied down a hundred years later – trailed through the air in ribbons. He Who Manipulates Shadows was still busy on his end of the room, cracking things against tables and hard shadows and tossing them away again, muttering.

“Dad! Oh, for…” yelled a pirate. He turned to a smaller pirate wearing an adorable miniature version of the same outfit. “Go tell grandpa there's an intruder.”

The kid obeyed, running through the tables and pulling on He Who Manipulates Shadows’ dark cloak.

“Wha’?”

The kid pointed. The old man’s eyes focused on the semicircle of his family/lackeys pointing energy blasters at a tall, dark, and very mysterious stranger.

“Howdy, Shadows,” the woman said. “Long time.”

“Who’s that? Who’re you?” he asked, quickly shuttling himself nearer by means of cane. Little tendrils of darkness coiled and snapped in the air around him like hungry snakes.

“Izzat an academic?” he demanded. “Where’s the spell, prof?”

“Now, now,” the woman said. “Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten, Shadows.”

Pause for effect. Dramatic build up. Tension in the air.

She’s good, Kae thought.

Right before the old man spoke again, the sunglasses came off. The woman’s eyes were a dazzling blue. An ocean you could drown in. Shadows recoiled.

“You,” he gasped.

“You,” he muttered.

“You!” he cried.

“Me,” she agreed. “And you want to hold your boys’ fire, not just because of what would happen to them if you didn’t.”

Her hand dove into her pocket and back again, quick as a shooting star, holding a black cube, small as a grape. Every eye in the room turned to look at it.

Oh, shit, Kae thought.

She recognized the unassuming little solid. Though the function, the materials, and the mode of operation was mostly the same as a dowser, this piece of tech was so far beyond it it might as well be called a finder. It was a nine-speed X-Flare cruiser to the cylinder dowser’s wheelbarrow. It was the future of spell-searching incarnate. It was very bad news.

Was Kae the only one who noticed the woman glancing at her?

“This is the last word in dowsing, Shadows,” said the woman. “And I happen to know for a fact that the Eletes spell is in containment. Whatever piece of junk dowsing equipment you have isn’t enough to identify it.”

Was the little cube dragging the woman’s arm imperceptibly in her general direction? The woman’s sky-blues turned to her again, languishing a second longer than before.

She knows.

“Did any of you sorry lot see a containment sphere?” He Who Manipulates Shadows asked the room. He seemed more alive somehow, standing straighter and only nominally supported by the cane. He was smiling.

Ollie stirred next to Kae.

“There was… Gramps? There’s a sphere on a table over there. The dowser didn’t pick up anything.”

“It wouldn’t, would it, Ollie-boy, if it was a containment sphere,” the old man said, tapping the cane against the floor. “No, you’d have to have something stronger to breach those defenses. Something Guard-made.”

Guard? First Guard? Kae watched the woman with renewed interest. She had the bearing, certainly. But what’s a Guardian doing here?

The woman smiled, giving nothing away.

“Go fetch the sphere for grandpa, Ollie.”

The young man moved. In a blur of movement, the woman was suddenly holding a sleek and expensive-looking gun.

“Nobody approach that sphere,” she said. “It’s coming with me.”

And we move into the stand-off portion of the evening. Every pair of eyes was fixed on another, every finger had found the comforting pressure of a trigger.

“Oh, I think someone is approaching that sphere,” He Who Manipulates Shadows said, watery eyes suddenly filled with fire and heat.

“Gramps?” Ollie.

“You might be wondering who this is, lads and laddettes,” the old man continued, unperturbed. “This ain’t no two-bit Guardian with a name longer than my arm, oh no. We’re among royalty, my dears. One-word royalty.

“Which begs the question, why is someone so powerful carrying a gun like she’s some sort of peasant?” spittle flew out of his mouth as he talked. Shadows built up around his figure, mixing with his clothes and expanding so that the old man looked like he was floating in a vortex of nothingness.

The woman kept smiling, though the rest of her expression soured and froze around that single feature.

“Hum, grandpa?” Ollie again.

“And suddenly a lot of things start to make sense,” the old man was screaming now, one step away from a mad laugh. “Welcome to the end times, boys and girls, and meet your prophet! Meet Des—”

“Grandpa!” Ollie shouted.

All eyes turned to him. Tentacles of darkness swung in his direction, stopping just short of touching him. The young pirate didn’t even flinch.

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“Boy, you better have a good—” He Who Manipulates Shadows began.

“The sphere is gone. Someone… must have…”

Ollie’s eyes travelled the room, his brow furrowing progressively.

“Hey,” he said. “Where’s that intern?”

Everybody stared at the spot where Kae had just been. Right next to an open grate, leading down into the bowels of the museum.

Tension stretched, twanged, snapped. The first shot sounded, and chaos descended.

*

Kae ran through the half-darkness at a half-crouch, going the opposite way she’d come. Her communicator could blaze a path of light with as tight or wide a focus as desired, but here that would mean death. The old kings and queens relished in devising traps meant for catching would-be tomb robbers, and their methods varied from the falling boulder to technologies beyond understanding. Reading-activated bombs were only part of the fun.

As far as Kae could tell, it was like a family game, only it was played across the royal generations. Each ruler tried to outdo all that preceded them and to keep one step ahead of their descendants in the centuries to come. The rules were simple: whoever’s burial palace lasted the longest without the sacred tomb being tempered with won. What they won was up for debate among academic circles, but the Bragging Rights Theory was still viewed as probably correct.

Skeletal would-be tomb robbers were the first sign you were approaching a tomb. After that, you paid careful attention that you didn't turn into a sign yourself.

With the turning of the millennia, tomb raiders had gone civilized, and these days you had to address them as archaeologists. They had funding, tools, and, more important, bodies to spare. One by one, the old kings and queens had fallen, and their treasures and preserved corpses lay on display in assorted museums throughout the Empire, their shame clear for all to see.

King Mahk-Aete-Ma had been one of the last to taste bitter defeat. The current exhibition was in his honor. Mahk-Aete-Ma had been a worthy player. He displayed as much aptitude for devious little mechanisms as he did gusto in implementing them, and his traps had claimed scores of relatively replaceable archeology students before one made it to the central chamber. The treasures were plundered, the student offered a Teaching Assistant position. And then someone had had the brilliant idea of reconstructing the vicious and deadly traps that guarded the king for centuries uncounted so that visitors could get insights into the fascinating job of modern tomb raiding.

All of which contributed to Kae keeping her light at a minimum and her eyes away from the walls so she couldn’t accidentally decipher the millennia-old languages. Reading-activated incantations were no joke, and tended to explode just as you reached the exclamation mark.

The sounds of fighting, of energy blasts being discharged left and right, grew dimmer as she ran. Still, it wouldn’t do to dally. If the sphere in her pocket could in any way be what she thought it was, a few traps wouldn’t be enough to stop anyone from chasing after her.

A rapidly-spinning blade sliced out from the wall at knee level. A feint; a classic type-2 trap, designed to trigger an instinctive evasion maneuver that would lead the robber into the second trap. Kae stepped on the blade itself, flipped in the air, and flew over the cleverly concealed bottomless pit waiting to catch less careful jumpers.

She landed three points on the other side, ready to rise and salute an imaginary audience. At the very least, she tried, but the ground wasn't she thought it was. Kae spun her arms, trying to stay upright.

Uh oh—

And began to fall backwards.

Fuck.

Here’s what separates the best from the rest when it comes to trapping your own future tomb:

One.

It’s not enough to put traps in place and pray. That’s boring, unimaginative, and frankly silly. It stops one robber, but paves the way for his buddy waiting right behind, who is now sure to side-step the swinging pendulum it took you months to balance perfectly. Add infinite robbers, and no tomb can hope to resist an incursion on the sharpness of its blades alone. Ingenuity, traps within traps, and upsetting the balance of action and rest are crucial robber-stopping measures.

(Kae tried a desperate jump forward. Unfortunately, the bricks on the edge of the pit sloped, and someone had lovingly oiled them to a sheen. She slipped, banged her knee, and slid down into the darkness).

Two.

A sharp theoretical knowledge of traps is a good start, but experience as a trap-evader is a must. Sure, Queen Molag-Gaesh-Ver rested unperturbed for hundreds of years, but her grand-grand-granddaughter, Queen Damera-Kulma-Kha, lasted for thousands. The difference? The years Molag spent llearning engineering Damera spent finally cracking the secret to her granny’s traps. Not only did she get great practical knowledge and found enough gold inside to finance her queendom for ages (it ended up financing her own tomb), but Damera also developed a keen sense of practicality. There’s no reason in having great big bottomless pits if the robbers can simply build a bridge over them. Fair play is loser’s talk.

(Kae spun quickly as she gained speed. Just as the slope finally reached the downward chute, she shot out her legs and found purchase on the opposite wall. She hung there by the dim light of her communicator, slipping slowly, precariously).

Three.

Both robbers and trapmakers should prioritize developing a philosophical attitude and a robust sense of humor. No trap lasts undefeated forever, and forever is a dim prospect at best in the tomb raiding business. The curtain closes on everyone, and we should all strive to never leave the stage without a bow.

(Kae attempted to shift her weight to free her hand, which only brought the other closer to slipping. The bricks above and around her were some of the most solidly set she’d ever seen. She tried toeing her feet up in search of a ledge, and found instead that the chute curved over her. This choke point, she realized, was no oversight. Rather a pause, letting the would-be robber think on the set of life decisions that brought them to this moment in time. Her communicator illuminated the pit wall. Even without meaning to, she read King Mahk-Aete-Ma’s message to her, millennia removed: Never Forget to Laugh, followed by a pictogram of a man clutching his belly in merriment. Somehow, Kae didn’t think it was that funny).

Four.

Plan for the unplannable.

(Kae could no longer hear the blasts over the din of the spinning blade above. A crash, like a thousand falling columns, signaled to her that the fight had turned more intimate, and the museum quite possibly more level. Under all, there was a deep rumble as the Wave approached, ready to gobble up the city of Eletes. And then, miraculously, staccato steps.)

Whoeve was comming, they walked at a leisurely pace. The buzz of the spinning blade suddenly choked, slowed, and stopped. Kae could see nothing but a mounting light growing over the lip of the chute until it stopped.

“Oy,” she said.

The light pointed down, blinding her.

“Oh, hello,” said the voice. It was unmistakably the Guardian's.

“You should consider turning that off,” Kae said as calmly as she managed. “The walls are filled with reading-spells, and there’s a big chance they’re the exploding type.”

The light swung from side to side, pointing directly at the walls. Kae nearly choked on her warning.

“These?” the Guardian said. “Oh, they probably only work if you understand what they mean. I don’t.”

“Ah,” Kae said.

They were silent for a little while. The light was pointing down again, letting Kae see nothing but a perhaps and imagined hint of blue. She had other things to worry about. Her back was beginning to slip on the oiled bricks, for one.

“Hey,” she said, as if something had just occurred to her. Her arms were sore and tired. They shook.

“Hmm?”

“Is there any chance you could get me out of here?”

“Oh. Of course! A fairly substantial chance, even. Is there a chance you have the spell I’m searching for?”

Kae considered this.

“No?” she tried.

“My dowser says there is,” the woman replied conversationally. “And it’s a really nice dowser, this one.”

Kae slipped a little further. Her aching back wasn't up to the job of holding her up.

“Alright,” she said. “Let’s say I have your spell. Wouldn’t it be a shame to lose it in a bottomless pit?”

The woman appeared to consider this. The light bounced a little as she shrugged.

“There are other spells. It’s a really good dowser.”

“I’m not giving you the spell!” Kae yelled defiantly. “I found it!”

“Alright, fine!” the woman replied, throwing up her hands.

The light vanished. The sound of the woman’s steps dwindled down the trapped corridor.

Finally, Kae thought. Now I can regroup, focus, and…

She threw a leg up, twisting her body until she was pressing painfully down on her cheek, keeping herself from falling with the left leg and reaching up with the right. If she could catch the lip of the chute with her foot, she could pull herself up. Maybe.

“That doesn’t seem very comfortable,” the woman said.

“Shuh- uh!“ Kae managed.

“Honey, your foot is a whole arm away from where you’re trying to hook it, and there’s nothing to hook it to,” the Guardian said.

“Noh-ohdy ahked you.”

The woman sighed. Kae tapped her foot against the sides of the chute. It didn’t matter how much her arms hurt, how tired she felt, how much her leg was cramping. She felt for any hidden crevasse, a misplaced brick, a—

Something touched Kae’s cheek. She almost yelped, but managed to catch herself. Whatever it was, it was soft. It dangled past her eye.

Rope.

“Grab on, stubborn,” said the Guardian. “I’ll pull you out. You can give me the spell after.”