The floor in this room was rough and covered with a fine layer of gravelly grit. The room we’d entered was actually a wide passage between two curved walls. Strange statues were perched high up on the walls, their bodies seeming to grow from the stone. Their glinting eyes followed us as we entered their domain, and I felt a sudden sense of danger closing around us. Their twisted bodies and malformed, tentacled faces were horrible to look at, but I forced myself to examine them.
One of them looked just like the creature I’d seen in the vision of the Empyrean Flame.
“This is definitely a trap,” Clem said. “There’s something dangerous here.”
“Let’s find out how dangerous it is,” I said.
I stepped forward, ready to activate any of my stitched techniques if the need arose. I had to be more observant, quicker to react, than anyone else, because using a vessel was slower than an innate technique. That split second between knowing when an attack was coming and activating a defense could be very costly.
“Yep,” I called back to my friends, “this is definitely a trap.”
Jinsei-fueled scrivenings covered the floor ahead of us. The grit that littered the floor made them hard to see from more than a few feet away, but they gleamed with a pure white light up close. A quick study of the complex pattern on the floor told me it was a trigger. Any creature that touched it would interrupt the flow of jinsei through the scrivening and trigger the trap.
“Get the dragons in here,” I called back to my team. If the challenge demanded we team up, then there had to be a reason. I’d bet a thousand oboli we’d need the dragons to get past this trap.
“I’ll get them,” Abi said.
“What are you waiting for?” Trulissinangoth shouted when Abi returned with her team. “We don’t have all day.”
“You do,” I shouted right back. “The rest of the teams won’t even try to win. Or don’t you trust them, now?”
“There’s no sense in taking chances,” the dragon said. “Now, move along. I want to get this over with so I can claim my prize from the Empyrean Flame and my people can once again rule over you like the cattle you are.”
I held my ground. There was an obvious trap on the path ahead. Plus, I didn’t want to look like I was giving in to the dragon’s demands.
On the other hand, I did have to keep moving if I wanted to win this thing. If we didn’t get ahead of the other teams, we’d have to deal with all of them when we reached the end of the challenge. Those were odds I couldn’t overcome with quick wits and snarky insults.
“When in doubt, fuel up,” I muttered to myself. I plucked one of Christina’s vials from my belt, tore the cap off with my teeth, and downed it in a single gulp. I flicked the empty container onto the floor ahead of me with a casual gesture.
The instant the vial landed on the scrivenings, the nearest gargoyle’s head swiveled and unleashed a beam of ruby-red light. The blast of energy transformed the empty jinsei container into a puff of acrid smoke.
“And,” I said, “that’s why I’m not walking across that.”
“Coward,” the dragon taunted me.
“Idiot,” I grumbled back.
The rest of my team joined me at the edge of the trap. Clem kneeled down and examined the scrivenings with an expert’s eye.
“Anything that touches the floor will disrupt the flow of jinsei,” she explained. “The scrivening is overly complicated. Whoever designed it made the trigger as difficult as possible to cross, which is why there are so many curls and whorls. They didn’t leave any spaces big enough even for my tippy toe.”
Clem stood and moved away from us, toward the outside wall. “Ah, here we are.”
She gestured for the rest of us to join her, and we scurried over. The dragons watched us with bored expressions, but I saw the look of curiosity on Trulissinangoth’s face. She was dying to know what Clem had found. She was also far too proud to ever admit that.
It was frustrating. If she’d only cooperate with me, we could get both teams through this more quickly.
“I get it now. The power for the circuit comes into the scrivening here and exits right there.” Clem squinted at the design. “I think we can bridge the trigger here, then walk right across.”
“You think it’s that easy?” I asked.
“I do,” Clem said. “I’ll need my serpents for this.”
She summoned the stormy tentacles of light again and directed them down to the edge of the wall where the scrivening began and ended. We all held our breath, hoping we weren’t about to see our friend blow herself to smithereens.
The serpents hesitated, each of them a tiny fraction of an inch above the floor. Clem took a deep breath, closed her eyes, furrowed her brow in concentration, and then let out a long, slow sigh.
In the same instant, her serpents dropped to the floor. Power flowed up the first one, through Clem’s aura, then whipped around her to travel through her other serpent and into the exit point.
“Wow,” Clem said, her aura flickering with raw power. “I’m still alive. That’s pretty awesome.”
“Clem, can you stretch your serpents far enough to cross to the other side?” I asked.
“Not a chance.” Clem sighed. “The trap covers the whole width of the hallway and it’s at least thirty feet across.”
“So, we’re still stuck,” I grumbled.
“Maybe,” Clem said. “But it looks like the pattern mirrors itself. There should be another entry and exit point on the other side. Keep the circuit bridged here, I’ll cross over to make
