Just by being in the room, Maggie could feel her skin beginning to boil. The heat was nearly unbearable, like walking under the burning sun of a desert for hours, but in a few seconds. Needless to say, she did not want to stay there for long, but at this point, she didn’t have any other options, only going forward.

The room itself wasn’t very big, probably less than ten meters from one side to the other. But it made up for it by being almost twice as tall. Its floor was nearly entirely covered by fire, hence Maggie’s predicament. She had to reach the center, where a dais held a single small maroon box, which might hold her key to defeating the giant creature, but between her and her objective, there was a four meters long, five tall, cage of fire.

The fire flickered every few seconds, turning off and on for but a single moment, tempting her to try to run across it directly in its breach. Of course, that was not the only way to the center. Circling the room, multiple slowly moving platforms led upwards in a circular pattern, towards a gradual fall to the center which ended just a few meters above her objective. Oh, and of course, as if it didn’t seem impossible enough, some of these platforms seemed to just combust into fire out of nowhere, and also, there were multiple openings in the walls gushing fire from time to time… Yeah.

Going forward, Maggie had two choices. She either ran at full speed and hoped she would be able to cross all the fire in the short window it was blinking off, or she tried to climb through the platforms in her weakened state and in the little time she had left before whatever was chasing her finally found her whereabouts.

Yeah, her options were not great, but in the end, she knew she wasn’t fast enough to take the tempting easier way. So she chose the safer, but still very deadly and time-consuming option.

With a running start, Maggie bolted towards the room’s left wall, where the first floating block of stone she had as a platform had wobbled down to almost half of her height, and using her current velocity, she jumped towards it, hugging tight to its extremities and slowly pulling herself on top of it. Doing that was harder than she expected, her body complained with every movement, her sore muscles already spent and her wounds flaring up with the effort. She made sure to land on the good side of her body, avoiding touching her back or her wounded flank as much as she could.

She didn’t have time to stop, though. The platform was steadily moving towards a series of a dozen or so, small, consecutive floating blocks that seemed to spiral around the room a few meters upwards. She needed to move at the right time when her platform and the next were aligned. So getting up, she prepared herself.

“Okay,” she took a deep breath, “here I go!” With an impulse, she jumped towards the next platform, it was close enough to not be difficult, but the thing barely had space for both of her feet, and upon arriving, it wobbled down with her weight.

“Ooh, boy!” Extending her arms, she tried to quickly find balance on top of the floating block, and without stopping too long, she continued to climb up, jumping from platform to platform.

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But of course, it wouldn’t be so easy.

As soon as she stepped on the fourth one, —stopping for a moment to try and regain her balance— she felt heat building up underneath her feet. Her eyes went wide.

“Oh, no!” Knowing what was about to come, Maggie recklessly pushed herself towards the next platform, just moments before the one she was in exploded in flames. And as soon as she settled on this new surface, the familiar heat followed her, starting to ignite below her. She then realized, to her horror, that these combustions seemed to be triggered by her weight. She couldn’t stop moving.

Leaping to the next platform moments before the previous one exploded in flames, she barely waited until her first foot settled on its surface to push herself to the next, skipping from platform to platform. It was hard to balance on a single foot, considering how the floating blocks she was hopping on wobbled underneath her, but as long as she didn’t look down, it was working; she was keeping herself ahead of the explosions and getting higher and higher.

She was midway across her second round around the room when she heard a loud click coming from the wall right next to her, she stopped her jumping just in time to avoid being burned alive by a massive gush of fire, swinging her arms wildly to keep herself balanced on a single foot. Behind her, the previous platform exploded in flames, and she knew she had only a moment before the one she was in did the same. Desperately, she started to look around, searching for a place to go. Her only options were to try to go through the flaming wall in front of her or to skip the careful climb altogether and just throw herself towards the center, where a platform three meters below her hovered over the flaming cage that locked her objective.

In the end, the choice was made for her. Before she knew it, she started feeling the heat building up underneath her, and the flame blocking her path had yet to dissipate. So without thinking twice, she ignored her fear and threw herself in the direction of the platform in the center, falling in the direction of the burning ground.

The platform wasn’t much bigger than the others she had been hopping from. So she knew there was no chance she would manage to fall on top of it on her two feet, considering its height. No, she was already bracing herself for the very painful prospect of having to stop her fall chest first. What she wasn’t expecting, though, was that most of her body would fall to one side of the floating brock, and as soon as she touched its surface, it tilted to the side, as if it was being sustained by jelly, tumbling sideways. Before she could ever react, her body started sliding across the platform, towards the burning cage a meter below her.

“Oh, no! Oh, no, no, no!” She started to panic as her body was about to fall into the burning cage underneath her, but at the last moment, she managed to grasp its edge with her right arm, abruptly stopping her fall for the moment, but she wasn’t strong enough to hold all her weight for long, she needed to let it go.

Every few seconds, the cage would blink off. But she knew if she tried to cross it now, it would turn on before she reached the floor. No, she was waiting for the right moment. Her hand was mauled, filled with cuts from her previous fights, and her fingers were sweaty and already sore. It didn’t take long before she began to slip the stone, but she needed to hold tight a little longer. Grimacing she held the pain, as she started to feel her foot starting to cook inside her boots as the platform she was holding onto slowly wobbled down.

“Come on, come on! Just a little further!” She pleaded, carefully counting the time it took for the fire cage to dissipate, trying to predict the right moment to let go.

The tip of her foot was almost touching the fire, and her grip was about to break when she finally saw the right window. Letting it go almost at the exact same time as the fire extinguished, she started falling.

For a moment it felt like she was frozen in time, praying that her body would cross the death zone created by the fire contraption, until it happened.

“Yes!” She exclaimed as she felt the unbearable heat of the cage igniting behind her back, but just missing her body, as she started to fall safely past its boundary.

Well, not entirely safe. It was still a four-meter fall.

“Oh, frak!” Where her last words as for the second time this day, she fell face first into the ground.