We Can Be Heroes ...?

17

Shion hadn't really known what adventuring truly involved as she once watched adventurers pass by the farm, stopping for healing, never to purchase what she and her Papa produced. It had all seemed so exciting, with visions of epic battles and wily enemies. Incredible acts of bravery and terrifying practices of arcane magic. What it really involved, it seemed clear to her now, was a lot of sitting around in-between rapid, chaotic encounters that looked more like people panicking a lot, rather than standing up for what was good and right.

She watched as Dave laid upon the ground, staring at the metal plate embedded in the street, looking one way, then the other, scratching his head, rubbing his nose, but not actually doing anything to the trap. After long, long moments, he returned to his feet, tapped the metal plate with the very tip of his boot and jumped back. The sequence of traps erupted again and he leaned forward to light yet another cigarette with the flames.

"Can' disarm i'." He strolled back, hooking a thumb over his shoulder, ash tumbling from the end of the cigarette, coating the front of his armour. "No way 'roun'. No way over."

"Then we go through." Mila had sat apart, casting and recasting her summoning of Bob. Or, rather, the Bobs. Both of them. "There's a delay, right? Between each stage? We cross in single file, set the trap going and stand between them each time. Slow, but doable."

It seemed reckless to Shion, putting themselves in danger that they need not put themselves in. She chewed her lip, looking back the way they had come. For certain, they had the skeletons to deal with, but it seemed possible that the other way, the way toward another totem piece could prove less risky. She said so and suffered a flurry of disdainful looks, scowls and curses under breaths.

"Sweety, we barely managed to get past those skeletons in the first place." Jova patted Shion's arm and then rubbed it. A little too long for Shion's liking. "It's always best to go forward. Going back only complicates things that don't need complicating. And that skeleton chieftain will have respawned by now and that was tough."

It made a kind of sense and Shion would be the first to admit that she wasn't experienced in these matters. In truth, she had stood up before and urged everyone onward, but now, after taking the arrow to her back, she felt more uncomfortable with risking her life unnecessarily. She couldn't reach where that arrow had struck, but she felt no pain or discomfort from it. She felt as healthy as ever, but now she worried about never seeing her Papa ever again.

She dipped her head and tried to make her breaths slow, her heart to stop pounding. The traps worked so fast, she wasn't certain she could manage the task before her. Brought up on a farm had not taught her the necessary skills. Had her companions wanted her to help birth a lamb, or to milk a cow, she could help. Collect eggs from the chicken coop? For certain. Dodging gouts of flame, spikes and darts, likely poisoned, she doubted she could do at all.

"Maybe ... maybe we can make the traps go off enough that they run out of fuel for the flames and darts?" She looked around for more stones large enough to activate the traps. "Then we would only have the spikes to deal with and we could, I don't know, put something heavy on top to stop them springing up?"

"Doesn' wor' like tha', gel." For some reason, Dave leaned backward, shaking his shoulders as he stared up toward the cavern roof. "We could chuck stones a' day, an' i'd still keep goin'. I's jus' 'ow games work."

That couldn't be right. She scowled, trying to understand why such things could happen. The lamps she and Papa used at home on the farm needed the oil pan replenishing, though she couldn't remember the last time she had done so. Fire, flames, needed fuel of some kind. And just how many darts could sit under this street anyway.

Unless, she considered, that, beneath the street upon which they stood, there sat another path. A hidden path where enemies could maintain the traps, refuel them and add more darts. For certain, the machinery required to shoot up those spikes must require oiling. With her new idea running through her mind, she rose to her feet. If she could find a way into the underfoot tunnel, she could spare all of them more danger. She used her staff to tap on the ground, moving from one side of the street to the other.