“How did you know the entrance was trapped?” Juniper asked, kneeling down beside me as I examined the floor trap mechanism.
“I have an ability…Environmental Mapping. It shows me nearby resources, enemies, and apparently traps, among other things. When Shrek started stampeding toward the door, I engaged the ability and this room lit up like a Christmas tree.”
“I’ve never seen that kind of tree,” she said. “Do they glow?”
“Uh…yeah, kind of, I guess. June, I’m going to need a moment here.”
She nodded and stopped talking. She did not, however, back up to give me space. She had been fairly adamant that if I died, she was going with me. I guess it was probably supposed to be motivational so that I had extra incentive not to screw this up but honestly, it just made me more nervous. I wanted to tell her that the last thing I needed while disarming a potentially deadly trap was a cortisol spike and a curious ghost hovering over my shoulder, but she’d already made her position clear. She wasn’t going anywhere. That was a sentiment that apparently the stoat agreed with wholeheartedly. It had settled inside my shirt, its little head and forepaws spilling over the top button. I tried to put it down on the ground and have it move away, but it kept climbing back up my arm faster than I could accurately track.
So, I worked with an audience. The trap appeared to be the classic step-plate design that I’d seen a billion times in movies, games and every other Earthly media type over the course of my life. I’d never seen one in real life, though, so all I really knew about them was the general rule of “no steppy”. If the tile had any weight applied to it, it would trip whatever mechanism was meant to kill you. In this case, there were small, sharp bolts littering the entrance near the bodies, so I figured it was probably shooting poison darts at people as soon as they set foot in the dungeon. That seemed a bit harsh to me, but what did I know about dungeon design? Maybe it was industry standard.
My Infiltration Kit was laid out next to me. Environmental Mapping was engaged. Looking around the room, I could see at least ten more traps just like this plus a few that were other varieties on top of that. Whatever the dwarves hid in this dungeon, they did not want people getting further than the first room. I focused on the trap at hand and poured as much energy as I could into the mapping skill. I reasoned that its whole purpose was to show me where things were in a given area, so, if I hyper focused on a small enough space, the mapping skill should theoretically zoom in and show me where things are located in micro. It took three minutes of near meditative concentration on the step plate before the ability finally zoomed in. A notification popped up, but it barely registered to me. I was in a trancelike state…the entire apparatus of the trap was highlighted for me in red and yellow lines.
If I were to just pry the plate up on that side, remove the spring from this side…and then disengage the trigger, here…
I followed the red lines that connected one trap to the next, then looked at the walls. Hypothesis confirmed, I reached for my kit and got to work. The actual disarming only took a few minutes once I understood the mechanics of it. The hardest part was just prying the damn stone slab up from the floor. The stupid thing had to be a couple hundred pounds. I had Shrek come over and hold it up for me as I tinkered with the innards of the trap. Once I’d finished, I put my tools back in the kit, put the kit back into my inventory and stood up. Juniper and I stood back and gave Shrek a countdown to release the tile slab and let it fall back into place on the floor. The plan was, he would drop the plate and leap back as soon as he let go. Worst case scenario, the disarming didn’t take and the poison darts would shoot into an empty room.
The caution was probably wise but proved unnecessary. The trap was successfully disarmed. I used my mapping ability again and verified my previous hypothesis once more.
“Yup,” I said, “that worked just about like I thought it would. Whoever designed these traps didn’t plan for them to ever be disarmed. If you take out one of them, they all lose connection to the trigger that actually fires poison darts from the walls. The entire room was rigged in various places, but they’re all inert, now. You’re welcome.”
I dusted myself off and made an “after you” motion to the others…both of whom hesitated. I sighed. Where was the trust? So, with a wild stoat in my collar, I led the way into the dungeon. I made it a point to step directly onto the trap plate and then look back at them with a satisfied grin. Then, I turned up my nose to them and walked farther inside. I strolled casually to the middle of the room and waited for them to find their courage and follow me. As I waited, I looked at the notification I had missed.
Environmental Mapping had also bounced up a few levels. It now sat at level seven, which meant that I finally had access to the built-in targeting system. I couldn’t wait to test that out with the handgun. As I was contemplating the possibilities, Juniper laid a hand on my shoulder.
“Good work, Rocky. Right, Shrek?”
He grunted in response. Juniper sighed. They had clearly spoken about him telling me I’d done something good, for a change, but the knucklehead couldn’t bring himself to do it. That was fine. The way he was avoiding eye contact with me told me everything I needed to know. I’d saved his proverbial bacon back there, and he knew it.
“Well,” I said, glancing at the door ahead of us that marked the entrance to the rest of the dungeon, “the next door isn’t trapped, so it looks like things ease up a little bit from here, maybe. Shall we?”
“It looks like things ease up from here,” Shrek said in a snide, mocking mimicry of my voice. He was currently fighting off three level 15 draugr – former dwarven mine workers, from the looks of them.
“Hey, look on the bright side,” I said, using my targeting system for the first time and immediately – satisfyingly – landing a headshot on all three draugr in quick succession. “Now you’ll get those draugr buttholes you were so eager for.”
“What??” he growled as bone shards peppered his face.
“Remember? You said, ‘I’d rather eat deep fried draugr sphincter than to speak like him’,” I said, imitating his deep, rumbly voice. “Well, now you’ve got three of them ready to harvest! I’ll lend you some cooking fat, but you’ll have to use your own pan. No way am I letting you use my pan for that.”
A blast of cold shot past us and knocked over several draugr further down the tunnel like they were bowling pins. Juniper had just fired some sort of ice spell right between Shrek and me, which I suspected was her way of telling us to shut up and focus. I glanced at my mini map. There weren’t many enemies left in this particular mineshaft, but my mapping ability didn’t extend into dungeon areas we hadn’t explored yet. That was a future-me problem anyway, I decided. We needed to just clear out a section at a time and cross the forthcoming bridges when we got there.
I sprinted to follow up Juniper’s attack, but the stoat was faster. It leapt from my shirt and before I could even get halfway to the draugr Juniper had struck, the little beast was already standing dead center in the middle of their formation. The stoat’s fur began to glow, dim at first but growing brighter by the second. By the time the draugr had got back to their feet, the stoat was glowing so bright I could barely stand to look at it. It chirped…then, it exploded. Bright yellow and orange flames burst out from it in all directions, swallowing the remaining draugr. Juniper, Shrek and I all shielded our faces from the heat of the blast. When the bright yellows and oranges dimmed to bronze and reds, I squinted through my fingers and saw the little weasel sitting there cleaning its paw amidst piles of ash where the draugr had been.
I called it over with a few psps noises and it ran back to me, making happy little hops here and there along the way. I scooped it up in both hands, then both Juniper and I cooed and told it what a good little fire ferret it was. It wriggled happily in my hands and turned over so we could rub its belly. We skritched it and lavished it with praise until Shrek cleared his throat meaningfully. I tucked the stoat back into the front of my shirt, we looted the draugr remains and walked into the next mineshaft. The entire dungeon after that first room had been nothing but mining tunnels. None of us could figure out what it was they had been mining. There were crystals occasionally jutting out of the stone walls, but they all seemed inert and relatively useless.
This new stretch of the mine we had just entered was just a short ledge which was connected to a long, suspended bridge of rail cart tracks. The bridge stretched out for an uncomfortable distance before ending at another ledge across a ravine that was even more uncomfortably deep. If Earth lore was anything to go by, I had a feeling that this ravine had no bottom to it. There were a few stalled rail carts at varying points along the bridge, which I suspected to be traps of some sort. After a bit of deliberation, we decided to let me take point and scan the area with Environmental Mapping as we walked.
As we approached the first rail car, I noticed a red dot light up inside of it. An enemy lay in wait there…and if there was one in the first car, I was willing to bet there were more in the others. I whispered instructions to the stoat and sat it on the rail. The moment its tiny feet hit the metal, he shot forward, a blur of white lighting up the darkness of the massive cave. It hopped into the first cart, there was a moment of silence, then a loud but muffled explosion. The stoat leapt out and continued swiftly down the tracks to the next cart. Another moment of silence, another muffled explosion. It repeated this process for every cart along the tracks before returning to me for congratulatory pets. I even threw in some Tyrant meat as a treat, this time. I put the stoat in my front pocket, rather than inside my shirt so it could eat comfortably as the rest of us walked the length of the bridge. We stopped at each cart and looted the remains within.
“You know, this isn’t so bad, really. It’s actually been kind of easy, if you think about it,” I said, as we stepped off the bridge and onto the landing. The words had barely left my mouth when a loud roar echoed through the tunnel before us. Juniper and Shrek both looked at me sourly.
“You have got to stop saying things like that,” Juniper admonished.
“Or just stop talking altogether,” Shrek agreed.
The stoat squeaked and leapt out of my pocket and streaked straight into what appeared to be a small ventilation tunnel in the wall. I called for it to stop, but it paid me no mind and disappeared into the darkness. I got down on all fours and tried to see where it had ran off to, but there was no sign of the stoat whatsoever. Shrek grunted.
“Probably scared off by that roar. Almost can’t blame it. What was that?”
“Level boss,” I said, my face still down by the vent. “Environmental Mapping has the next room marked as a boss room. There’s a big ass red X hovering over it. Might as well be a skull and crossbones. Wait…I think…yeah!”
I moved back a bit from the vent and a few moments later, the stoat reappeared…butt first. It was dragging something back out with it, and when it was fully in sight, I just shook my head. It was a small notebook. The stoat dragged it over to me and dropped it before sitting on its haunches and cleaning the dust and cobwebs off itself. I picked up the book and looked at its cover. The words swirled for a moment as my translation ability did its best to translate them. I almost keeled over from dizziness, but eventually they settled into place and read “Rune Weaver Codex”. I thumbed through it for a few seconds and then threw it into my inventory. The stoat clambered back up into my front pocket and I patted its head.
“Thank you for that, my weasely friend.”
Shrek and Juniper were just watching me silently, so I looked at them and smiled.
“My little buddy here found me a book,” I said, then paused. “You know, neither of you two ever bring me presents.”
“I give you the gift of friendship,” Juniper said haughtily.
“I give you the gift of not bashing your stupid face in,” Shrek added.
“Well, it’s the thought that counts.”
We decided to sit and rest for a bit before taking on the boss. It had been a long, eventful day already, and we wanted to be 100% before stepping through that particular door. So, the stoat blessed us with a little fire and I made us lunch – a Giant Dickcissel open faced sandwich with mashed root vegetables and an impromptu Dickcissel gravy. I wasn’t a fan of the name, but the sliced breast meat was actually quite tasty when roasted over a fire right in front of a boss room you were likely to die in.