Dragon Knights Fan Fiction ❯ Twenty Themes ❯ Traps ( Chapter 3 )

Warnings: action/adventure, Thatz, thievery, this is one for all those who play rogues in D&D,
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Just one more. That one thought has sunk bigger ships than our Earth Dragon Knight. Just one more is what adds the bag of gold that collapses the cart, leaving you with only what you can carry. Just one more is what gives you stomach-aches an hour later. Just one more is how your parents learn that you were at the dances and not visiting sick aunt Mildred. Just one more was why Thatz found himself upside down, in the dark, hands and feet firmly pressed against the walls of a narrow chute. Beads of sweat trailed down his body, stinging unhealed scars, but he clung on.

The trinket he'd risked his life for was the first thing to fall to the darkness. He'd plunged a good seventy feet, clutching tightly to it, before his sense of self-preservation won its battle with greed. It took another ten feet for him to discover that the chute did have boundaries. His sense of relief at that discovery was enough to mask the pain as he jammed his limbs against the wall. The initial jerk was violent enough for him to let go. Luckily, years of training turned to instinct and put the brakes back on. He slowed.

The strong leather of his boots jammed in tightly, but his gloves were quickly torn to shreds and he pulled his hands away. His mistake crystallised as his centre of gravity shifted and he fell forward. While his legs comfortably spanned the width of the chasm, his arms fell short: with his right palm pressed into the wall, Thatz's left hand just touched the slick side. His legs held and he just managed to wedge his knuckles into the walls before he'd finished turning and stabilise himself, but Thatz was in trouble. He was now stuck the wrong way around in inky blackness, with only a panicked guess of how far he had fallen and no inkling of what lay below.

All of his weight was now focused on his hands. The strain played across his muscles, which was made worse by the blood rushing to head. Unfortunately, the knuckle wedge didn't give Thatz enough control for a body flip and there wasn't enough give in it to walk himself back up the pit.

"If I can't go up, I may as well go down," he said, thinking it through. "At the very least I'll be able to get my strength back and break out the tools for my climb to the top."

He didn't add "and I'll have a chance to rest before I pass out", but he thought it.

The slow climb down was tortuous. Thatz ached from keeping his muscles taut. If he was the right way around his legs would do all the work and he'd be able to use controlled slips to get down faster. Since he was upside down, the strain of holding his entire weight was falling on his arms and those shredded knuckles; his legs couldn't help. His body was being pulled downward with his own body mass and his arms shook with the effort of holding himself up. If his head fell under the level of his hands, it would all be over; there would be nothing bracing him and he'd return to freefall.

Thatz grunted. He couldn't hold out much longer. He had to do something bold and quickly. He clenched his fists and transferred a final burst of energy into his arms. As his feet relaxed and the full weight of his body rested on the fragile connection between his knuckles and the wall, he panicked. It was too late; his body twisted; his stomach lurched as it swung around the pivot of his hands: they held. His feet dropped beneath him and he grew light-headed as the blood rushed away from it and into under-used veins in his legs. Sore muscles twitched in new places, while his feet sought purchase on the rough walls of the pit, but they were too blooded and sluggish to respond. His arms, promised respite, now gave out.

A frantic slide began. Thatz pressed moaning muscles into operation. They fought back, his feet scrabbling against the stone, but with only a slight effect on his speed. A pinch in his thigh acted where his determination had failed. His feet remembered what they were supposed to do; his over-worked muscles took the strain once more and he slowed, then stopped. A great sigh left Thatz and he thanked whatever had sparked that final burst of effort: the phantom pinch.

He started a careful climb down, but something stopped him; his clothing was being tugged. Confused, he planted his feet firmly against the wall and explored the darkness with his hands.

The answer intrigued him at first: a cold metallic cylinder, barely an inch thick, rose from his trousers. He wondered if one of his tools had slipped from its usual place. Further exploration found the cylinder continued out the other side. Running his fingers up and down the shaft, he realised that it narrowed higher up. "Needle," he said, not realising what the connection meant. He touched the entry point near his crotch. "Needle."

"It entered at my crotch and came back out," he said, as he worked it out. "It only sliced through cloth and not skin, but if my head had leaned forward, as the needle clove through my pants, it could have continued straight through my eye and I would have been impaled on it." He shivered. "Nasty trap."

Pierced by the cold metal, he plotted his next move.

His first move was an attempt to break the needle and free himself. Without leverage it was impossible. After ten minutes of hopeless grunting he gave up and broke out cutting knife number three. Thatz's clothes were expensive and hard wearing. Cheap clothing doesn't last many missions; buying it is a false economy, not to mention the fact that you stand out when you've torn clothing. Thieves need a low profile. The thought of wasted money briefly stayed his hand, but fresh tremors from his legs moved him to action and with a careful cut, he was free.

"I was lucky to miss you," Thatz said to the needle, "but I bet you're not the only one."

With a hidden smile, he cut a scrap of cloth from his ruined trousers and wrapped it around the needle. He wound his legs around it too and began a controlled slide, keeping in tight to the metal and waiting anxiously for a second prick that would spell the end of Thatz.

He had to stop several times and shuffle clockwise or anti-clockwise to avoid new pointed threats. He also switched from spike to spike, once he judged the thinner, new needles could bear his weight. After countless shifts, muttered prayers and several new piercings, Thatz found his way to the ground.

He collapsed once he touched the bottom of the pit, but jumped up straight away. The spikes varied in height from the first monster, to ones only several inches tall and his bottom bled from the mini-spikes he'd found when he tried to rest. He reached into his bag and pulled out two solid blocks of wood, which he attached to his shoes. They were loud and they were clumsy, but they kept feet safe from caltrops and related hazards. Relaxed again, Thatz shuffled carefully around the pit floor, examining the spikes, the floor and the walls with his fingertips. He eventually discovered an exposed and loose brick. Removing it took a bit of wriggling, but it fell through and with a bit of prodding, its former neighbours joined it. The hole was just big enough for Thatz. He squeezed through and dropped onto the floor of a new room nearly twisting his ankle in the blind fall.

He was careful from then on; tip-toeing around and testing the ground before stepping forward. When he reached a wall he stroked it gently, searching for spots that were different and jumping for joy when he discovered an iron sconce with an unlit torch attached to it. He pulled a tinder-box from his pocket and struck it. The sparks took hold in the straw of the torch and soon a spluttering light illuminated a dull, circular room, with a corridor leading from it. He scrutinised the sconce carefully, looking for hidden needles and triggers. When he found none, he removed the torch, thrust it through the hole in the ceiling and pulled himself after it. With the light from the torch, he saw the glitter from the trinket that had led him to his doom: a golden medallion, now proudly decorating the vicious spike that had almost impaled him.

Thatz returned to the room below.

A small click, imperceptible to most ears, sent him diving to the floor. Several clangs resounded from the wall to his left. Thatz glanced up and sprang away from the ricochet of a dozen barbed bolts. His heartbeat thumped in his ears, echoing slightly in the gloomy room. When he got his breath back, he stood up and retrieved the torch, which had been damaged and shone with half the light it had before. There were several other unlit sconces in the room and he approached the nearest one. Just as he was about to light it from his flickering flame, a strange scent caught his nose: the scent of almonds. He backed away quickly and cautiously checked a third torch. This one had a different design on its sconce and he bypassed that one too. A fourth and fifth torch failed his examinations, but he was happy with the last one in the room and lit it. He froze as the flame took hold, but nothing untoward happened and he breathed deeply.

Thatz walked over to the bolts which now lay on the floor, then pulled a cloth from his pocket. He used it to pick up one of the bolts. He held it up to the light, sniffed it and twirled it in the cloth. Evidentially satisfied he picked up the rest of them and stowed them carefully in the cloth, not touching them with bare fingers. "Waste not, want not," he said cheerfully.

When they were safely stored in one of his many pockets, he walked to the edge of the room and stared into the gloom, lifting the torch to illuminate the corridor ahead. It looked innocent, but that meant nothing. The traps that Thatz had uncovered before he'd fallen into the pit weren't a patch on the ones that he'd triggered since, which meant, of course, that there was an even greater trove further on.

Thatz marched on with a gleeful smirk.