13 Click

SHCK!

The quick chop of wooden panels came from both sides of the cave. Dotted embers packed like bundles of stars revealed themselves.

"Fire arrows." Frina cradled her lute. She strummed and sang her previous song, The Grace of Wind. It was a song that increased the agility of all those the performer considered an ally and lucky for Athalos, she thought of him as one although of honorary status. She didn't completely trust him yet.

"Athalos, get down!" yelled Maya. She wanted to pull him back but the flame-tipped arrows took flight.

"As the lady commands me!" Athalos proudly accepted Maya's instruction. He didn't need to hear anymore.

Instead of dropping to the ground and taking the position of a fur rug, Athalos simply bowed his torso. He couldn't fully comply with Maya's advice due to his knee. His hands clenched on his staff for stability, one foot firmly planted on the ground, his other leg with the bruised knee hung in the air like a crane, and his butt protruded excessively backwards, that was the lowest he could go.

"Oh my god. He's gonna die." To Maya, it looked like a tai chi pose for one submitting to death.

Graff watched with glee. He even took a sip of ale from his backpack, emergency provisions he said. Eager and lying down on Gregory's wing, he was like an office worker about to receive his December bonus.

But would that bonus ever come?

"AAAH!" Maya, peeking through her fingers, and Frina, still strumming, screamed with eyes open to the brink. Athalos joined the screaming midway. Gregory too.

With the zen of an immovable boulder, Athalos stayed still with an unworldly confidence that he probably shouldn't have been blessed with. He didn't even use the added nimbleness that Frina's song provided.

The fire arrows whizzed and in a blink, were upon Athalos. The smell of burnt flesh never intruded the group's noses unlike Maya's stench. The flames passed through every open crevice on Athalos' body: between his forearms, behind his head, over his nose, under his chin, around his staff, below and over his bent knee, behind his back, and a warm brush by his belly.

Sweat dripped from Athalos' temple, his neck, and his pits. He was a wet rag and he was still screaming. There was no remnant of confidence on his face save for pure fear.

"Blast ye!" Graff threw his portable cup of ale in frustration at the cavern wall. He regretted the action. He remembered how hard it was to procure ale at the depths they were in and salvaged what he could on the wall, mouth opened to the drip like a person starved for alcoholic rain. "Forgive me, bittersweet nectar."

"A-Are there more?!" Athalos shouted, his voice quivered as one would in winter's bite. "Damn you all, speak! Athalos must know! If you're all still screaming— AAH!!!"

Maya and Frina were still screaming too but it soon died down just because they were out of breath and lightheaded. They both struggled to catch their breaths.

"I don't think I can watch anymore of this…" Maya thought she would pass out. A single trap claimed years of her life and she knew there were more to come. Once she realized Athalos' scream reached a falsetto, she called out to him, "The trap's over, Athalos! You… You can breathe. We all could actually… I'm so dizzy…"

Athalos finally stopped screaming. His chest went up and down with every gulp of oxygen his lungs begged of him. His throat was drier than an overcooked steak under a summer's sun in midday. As he straightened his odd posture, he spoke with bated breath but not without a humble brag, "Well… Well… Well… Is it true? Did Athalos just live to see the morrow-"

His hands, sweaty from nervousness and the fire arrows' heat, slipped on his staff like an oiled tree. His body, which wasn't accustomed to his posture like a jogger who hasn't jogged in months and decided to run a marathon for a charitable cause, creaked, popped, and tightened. He fell to the ground face first on the next row of stone tiles.

CLICK.

"Oh god." Maya wanted to punch Athalos.

Another wooden panel opened but this time, it came from above. A swarm of wasps, as large as the length of the tip of one's pinky to the tip of the thumb, rained down. Their icepick stingers were all aimed for the downed blind man.

"Whoever made this is quite a sick imaginative craftsman," commented Graff. He sucked on the ale-splashed rock like a janitor fish.

"Athalos! There are big fucking wasps above you!" Maya shouted. She hated bugs and that hate grew the bigger they were. But hating one thing also meant one gathered as much information as possible about it. Weaknesses. Io Hara and bugs were no exception. And like most living things above water since the dawn of man, fire was always the weapon of choice. She readied her torch and called out to Athalos, "I'm gonna throw you a torch, Athalos! You have to try and catch it!"

"I-I'll definitely try, my lady!" Athalos' voice shook with fear and went higher than the limits of his register. He knew it was a tall order of coordination to ask of a blind man but his trust in Maya would not waver. He stretched his open hands in the air and planned to close his grip the moment he felt wood graze his hands.

Maya could only make out Athalos' back. He didn't need a torch in the first place so the only lights that illuminated him were the torch she held and Frina's.

Maya practiced her lob like a golfer's putt then heaved it into the air. The arch of the torch was just right; The flame of the torch traced through the dark.

And as the torch neared, it revealed Athalos' hands opened and stretched out, ready to receive it. But his hands extended to his left, not his back where his Maya and the group were. There was a moment of silence as the torch flew past Athalos' head and rolled two tiles forward. He asked, "Did you throw it yet—"

"We aren't even that far! Over here, goddamnit!" Maya grilled him as she nabbed Frina's torch on the floor, the bard dropped it when she began her song. She was irritated but she reasoned to herself that maybe her voice bounced off the walls and confused him. It didn't matter. The wasps were closing in on Athalos and she had to throw it now. She had to reconfirm his position. "From where your hands were, turn a quarter to your left! Follow-my-voice! You got it?!"

"Y-Yes, Lady Maya! I believe so!"

Maya couldn't instruct him to get the first torch for she feared that other traps might be triggered. Her visibility was better now that the first torch she threw shed some light. The first torch landed ahead of the path and she saw Athalos' silhouette. It was enough for her to gauge the distance. As she tossed the torch, she shouted, "Throwing it now! Catch it, Athalos!"

The group was filled with anxiety as they watched the second torch travel through the air. Gregory peeked from under his wing. The wasps readied their sharp stingers and aimed at Athalos. Graff internally cheered for the swarm while flustered and plastered like a lizard on the cavern wall.

Athalos licked his lips and his fingers danced in the air like a gunslinger's hand above the pistol before the draw. He shut out the flutter of the wasps' wings and their buzzing. He wouldn't fail Maya now. He mustered all his concentration into his sense of touch. All he felt was the cold stagnant cavern air then he felt it. The unmistakable warmth of a torch. Without hesitation, he grinned and closed his hand.

"Heh. Wasps? Let me puri- HIIIYIHIHIII! ASUNONTHYPALM!!!" Athalos' hand was wrapped around the torch's flame, engulfed in it. He screamed in a way that shamed a symphony of angels and breached the spirit realm.

"OH MY GOD!" Maya shouted at the horrific scene but also the fact that she realized she could've rolled the torch instead. She continued with utmost urgency, "DROP IT! DROP IT!!"

Graff rolled on the floor, breathless from laughter. He didn't expect Athalos to catch it but the reward was far greater than he imagined. Face reddened from ale and the contained giggles, he embraced his belly, his arms bent like a chicken. "M-My stomach… Athalos… Ye demented donkey… Oh my sides…"

Frina was speechless. She couldn't think anything of it. Her mind blanked out but she still kept strumming.

Athalos finally dropped the torch and both his body and instinct ordered an executive decision. He knew no other painless way to douse the remaining embers except to stomp on his hand. His mind would've suggested using his cloak but it was too fried from pain. He stomped like a madman. He squealed and his eyes bulged like a horse whipped with every step. He raised his spasming simmered and beaten hand and blew on it with the strength of the wolf in the tale that involved three little pigs. "HNGH! HNGH! HNGH!"

But the danger was far from over. The wasps continued their descent.

Maya grabbed Frina's arm. She shouted at Graff, "Let's go, Graff! We have to make a run for it! Athalos is gonna die if we don't!"

"Do we really-"

"Graff!" Maya had the eyes of a woman that would kill you on the spot if you answered otherwise.

"A-Aye! On me feet!" Graff, though still intoxicated, knew the validity of the threat. He slipped and stumbled on Gregory's wing as he did. "Ye heard the lady! Off we go to the sea of traps!"

Maya couldn't wait any longer. The fire arrow trap wasn't set off because she followed Athalos' steps. She, and the dragged Frina, quickly arrived at Athalos' side. She grabbed the torch on the floor. "Come on, Athalos! We're doing this together. We should've from the very start actually."

"Oh sweet Lady Maya Mordeaux…" Athalos, hand burnt and knee still very bent, got up with one hand on his staff. He was assisted by Maya who lent a shoulder. "Forgive my deceitful soul!"

"Wha— What are you saying?! We have to get out of here!" Maya had no clue what he was saying. She thought he had become delirious from the pain.

"I was so scared!" Athalos confessed. He looked like a slobbering child. He raised his hand close to his face. "And it hurts so much but I wanted to hold onto the flames to prove my bravery! ACHOO— THE PAIN!"

"You're an idiot but you're plenty brave, Athalos." Maya assured him. She knew she couldn't do what he did and he traversed the traps without even seeing. She wished for a shred of that, especially back on Earth where she felt lost in both senses of the word. Determined, she looked at the path ahead where the first torch lay. "Let's go."

Frina nodded with a hardened expression. She steeled herself for whatever trap would come and continued strumming.

The three members ran forward as fast as they could, counting the injured Athalos. Maya swung the torch whenever the wasps came too close. The next row of tiles, nothing. The second one as well. They let out a huge sigh of relief with every row they passed. But on the third row, as Frina picked up the first thrown torch…

CLICK. BOOM!

A blast of gooey chicken feed blasted from the sides of the cavern and plastered the members.

"This is just insulting." Maya's comment was the only thing dry about her. She shook the feed of her hands and was mildly thankful that the torches weren't put out and that most of the wasps were pelted by the feed.

Athalos chewed on the feed that went in his mouth. He needed the nutrients to recover and the feed on his burnt hand actually felt soothing for him. "Chicken feed? Now that's a pretty odd trap for a dungeon—"

CLICK.

Maya and Athalos turned to Frina. The feed on her lute's strings and hands made it unplayable. So she hammered it on the floor to clean it up. She didn't know she hit the next row of stone tiles. She returned their gaze with widened teal eyes.

The sound of rain, a heavy downpour. But once they listened closely, they heard the difference. Chickens, thousands of them poured from above.

The group ran at full speed with the mob of poultry and the remainder of the wasps right behind them. Maya shouted, "How did this bastard even think of this?!"

Athalos didn't care about his leg anymore and willed himself to feel no more pain. He cried, "I ate the feed! I ate it! Those beasts are gonna open me up and have a feast!"

Even Frina, who usually had little to say, shouted, "How did they even sustain themselves through the walls?! What kind of farm is this?!"

CLICK.

CLICK.

CLICK.

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