<~> CHAPTER 38

We had been going for another few hours, trading off fights between the two groups while our tag-along held her shield up and Luna took shots when the matchups were too unfavorable. I still occasionally heard that clicking sound but I was still never able to detect anything. I had dealt with everyone's looks enough times that I had stopped mentioning it to them. I was in the very back of the group at the moment making sure nothing snuck up on us. Even if I wasn't hearing things, the enemies on this floor were capable of coming from behind us or even in pincering groups, not that it had happened yet.

Suddenly the group stopped at an intersection in the hallways. The intersecting hallway wasn't perfectly perpendicular, it crossed at an odd angle we had seen a few times now. Maxwell had a serious look on his face, turning back and forth, he seemed unsure of where to go. He started quietly talking to Piper but they were going so fast that it was hard for me to keep up and puzzle out what he was saying.

Instead I turned to Luna who had a concerned look on her face. ("What's going on, Luna?")

("Maxwell thinks we may have gotten turned around somehow. They're arguing over which hallway to take.")

I scratched my ear a little before turning back around and watching our back while they figured it out. ("Can't we use that thing we used when we got lost in that trapped floor with the minotaur?")

("...I think he was saving those for the sixth floor, but I'll ask.")

She walked over to the group and started using the rings with Piper. Piper translated for Maxwell and I assume they started arguing over that too.

Click click click click

My eyes went wide and I looked around us. Four of them, different directions. We're at a crossroads, is there more than one?

("Luna, I heard more of those clicks from all around us. Four, one from each direction!")

Her eyes widened and she shook Piper's shoulder, she stopped arguing with her brother and focused on Luna again.

"....! What is she ....?" Aria asked.

"Helena is hearing .... .... We should be ...." Piper replied to her.

I gripped the axe handle. Whatever we did I didn't want it to be here where it attacked us. I turned and looked at Piper in the eye. ("Piper, please get Maxwell to use the thing. Either the paranoia is really starting to set in or something is hunting us. Either way, we need to get off this floor as soon as possible. Even if we don't use the thing we should at least get out of this crossroad.")

She nodded to me and started intensifying her argument with Maxwell. Right before I was going to try and get more involved Luna suddenly sent a ball of fire down one of the hallways. Her ears were perked, her eyes were wide, and her tail had grown to double the size, all of the hairs on were standing up straight. The only time I had seen something like that before was when the cat I used to have was threatened and scared.

("Helena, I saw something,") she whispered through the rings. ("I'm not sure what it was and it disappeared the moment I cast something. You're right, something is hunting us.")

Click

I turned to where the noise came from and I could swear I saw something turn down the corner of the hallway.

"It's coming... nearby," I growled out. The words I knew were failing me but by the looks on my friend's faces, they were taking me much more seriously now. Maxwell finally relented and slipped his bag off, pulling out a yellow stick. When he broke it in half the golden mist I had seen on the minotaur floor started spreading out of it and started flowing towards... the direction we had come from. We had gotten turned around.

We didn't talk about it, Maxwell just started walking in the direction and I fell in line at the back of the group again. If something was hunting us I wanted to be in the back, I am the hunter, I won't let it think it's top of the food chain. I hesitated for a moment before slipping the shield off of my back and gripping the handle in my other hand. I was leaving my back vulnerable but I wanted the versatility to block an attack with it if necessary.

The five of us began to walk more quickly now. Aria, the tag-along wasn't arguing with us, she seemed just as wary as we were in the situation. I don't know if she had said anything about feeling paranoid too but with our quickly diminishing morale and the fact that our golden guide mist had gone the opposite direction, none of us were feeling jovial right now.

We came across a T intersection and the mist abruptly turned left. At the same time, a groaning screech sound echoed all through the halls. Unlike the other noises this one was real. It sounded like metal grinding and scratching against metal.

("It came from behind us, let's keep going,") I told Luna.

She nodded, tapped Maxwell on the shoulder, and did some of those military signals at him. He nodded and started moving with a quick word to the others. I glanced back in the direction we had come from. No other sounds followed the noise but whatever was behind us now was real.

All of us were moving fast now, not quite a jog but getting close. It seemed as if this was as fast as we were willing to go without tiring ourselves out before the potential fight. ...For the first time, I noticed that we hadn't fought anything in a while. That constant trickle of enemies had completely stopped.

("Luna, where are the monsters?") I whispered to her through the rings.

("I noticed that too,") her voice was calm, almost eerily so. It felt like a front though, like she was trying to remain calm for my sake.

Suddenly Luna turned and hurled a ball of fire past me. Another loud screeching sound echoed through the halls. When I turned to see what it had been a fire-covered tail or tentacle pulled back around a far-off corner. How far away had it been? If the sound of the fire hitting it was that close then that thing was fucking fast.

"I saw it. Tail," I said out loud to the group.

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Luna let out a breath, she had been holding it since she had attacked.

("Whatever that was, it was real. I saw it, Piper,") I told her through the rings.

("Okay, I believe you. I need to save my mana from here out.")

I nodded.

We started moving again. We slowed down a little, with as fast as that thing had been, the walking jog we had been doing was only going to tire us out faster, nothing more. We kept moving without any encounters for a while but the tension was driving us crazy. After walking for another half hour or so, it was Aria who eventually broke the silence.

"I want a weapon," she stated firmly.

This started a quiet argument but we never stopped moving. Even Aria hadn't stopped, it was a request that she was willing to argue over but not enough for any of us to risk stopping. The golden mist kept us on the correct path but the turns we were taking had become much more windy than they should have been. I had been told that you would make it out as long as you kept moving in the same general direction but whatever part of the dungeon we were in had turned into a labyrinth, even more winding than the previous floors. I was beginning to believe that the winding halls we were in didn't make sense. I swore the turns we were taking doubled up on themselves, impossible geometry. And then the golden mist we had been following led us into a large circular room that made the hairs on my neck stand on end.

This place felt wrong.

The room we walked out in was a twisted version of the room we had fought the minotaur in, the only difference was the fake sky above us was pitch black and the entire floor was made of a solid plane of the worn steel it had always been instead of being ringed with spikes. The walls stuck out like jagged and torn sheets of bent rusty metal.

"Give her sword," I said to Maxwell. I did not think we were going to make it to the other side of this room without a fight.

He didn't argue, just handed over the spare sword we had taken from the ones that tried to kill us on the last floor. The woman took the sword and gripped the handle, not drawing it yet but ready for whatever would come. The five of us slowly walked into the center of the room and for the briefest moment, I thought I had been wrong. But no.

clickclickclickclickclickclick

I turned and faced the sound just in time to see a giant spider with random sharp metal pieces grafted to its exoskeleton crawling through the wall near the ceiling. Blood poured off of it as it came closer, two large X-frames were attached to its back with vivisected bodies strapped to it. It looked like an amalgamation of spider and mechanical monster.

The four of us with shields formed a circle around Luna as she immediately began to cast one of her largest fire-circle spells. I could feel the gathering magic rush around us like a warm summer haze. The monster didn't attack immediately.

Click click click click

It slowly paced around us sideways on the circular wall, the disgusting bodies continued to pour blood like fountains, already they would have spilled more than would exist in a normal corpse.

Click click click click

It continued to pace even as the fire spell collected energy. For a heartbeat I thought it would just let the spell kill it but the moment the spell was about to activate the monster disappeared.

The fire roared in the room, all around and through us. Luna's magic was smart enough not to target us but the brief heat made me pant for a moment to equalize the pressure. And then as fast as it came, the fire disappeared.

Aria screamed as she was thrown back into Luna. The shield she had been holding was only barely thick enough to stop the spider from piercing it but the attack had thrown her off her feet and knocked her and Luna to the ground behind me. I wasn't close enough to the spider to react to the attack but luckily Maxwell was. His faintly glowing blue sword slashed through one of the spider's legs and it fell to the floor. Hot steam poured out of the spider's leg and Maxwell had only barely managed to duck behind his shield to avoid the scalding heat from burning him. The leg that detached from the spider thunked on the ground and let out a hollow ring but the monster didn't react to the attack at all. It merely pulled back from us and began to pace us again.

Luna helped Aria up and they got back in formation behind me. Being able to trace their steps on the echoey ground gave me a surprisingly good amount of situational awareness as long as I didn't get overwhelmed by all the stimulation all at once.

The spider leapt up suddenly and tried to attack Luna from above. I growled and swung my axe at it. For the briefest moment, my axe found purchase, a gout of steam even poured out of it, but the entire thing turned into a black shadow and disappeared in midair. I looked around wildly just in time to see Luna spin a ring of fire out around her to displace the shadows away from us.

It crawled back out of the floor from one of the long shadows the fire behind us cast and then its body suddenly looked tangible again.

("Luna, are you okay?") I asked without taking my eyes off the monster.

("I'm okay,") she replied. ("Aria got hit but Piper was able to heal her. All of us are fine now.")

("Good,") I replied.

The spider began to pace around us again.

Click click click cli-click

One of the spider's legs was removed and it looked slightly more awkward for it. Each eighth step it briefly stumbled.

Weakness!

On its eighth step I dashed forward and pummeled it with a two-handed swing. Three legs pierced through my body and boiling steam burned my torso. But I got a damn good hit.

I leapt back into formation, shrugging off the pain of the stabs and burns. Even the spots where my flesh tore against the rusty spikes of metal knitted themselves back together with no issue. Unfortunately, the only real feedback we got that I had hurt it at all was the large hole in its belly and the slight daze that it was in for a brief moment before it recovered. The fight wasn't over yet.

Click click click cli-click