Chapter 325: Cast-Iron Espionage
To execute tonight’s grand prison heist, she first needed to survive a daytime reconnaissance mission. She simply had to sneak into the most highly guarded, dangerous section of the castle, ask a trickster fox for a map to his secret cave, and sneak back out before anyone noticed she was missing so she can start preparing for the feast.
"Just a quick stroll into the abyss," Ren muttered to herself, peering cautiously around the corner of the stone archway.
With her frying pan held at the ready like a makeshift shield, Ren crept into the dimly lit obsidian corridors.
Thanks to her recent tour with Syris, she knew exactly where the lower levels began. She navigated the labyrinth of the castle with surprising speed, sticking to the deep shadows cast by the towering stone pillars.
Eventually, she reached the narrow, unlit corridor that branched off from the main stairs.
The descent was an immediate, brutal shift in atmosphere. The bioluminescent blue moss that illuminated the upper castle completely ceased to grow here, leaving the winding, jagged stone staircase bathed in darkness. The air turned stale, reeking of damp earth and the acidic tang of venom.
Ren tiptoed down the stairs, pressing her back flat against the freezing wall. Her heart hammered a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She was entirely out of her element. Ren Reynolds was not an explorer.
As she reached the bottom of the first flight, her foot barely grazed the surface of a slightly raised stone tile.
Click.
Ren froze. The tiny, mechanical sound echoed ominously in the pitch-black hallway.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," Ren breathed, her pulse skyrocketing.
She retrieved a glowing, bioluminescent mushroom, that she got from the wall earlier, from her inventory, holding it out like a crude flashlight. The faint blue light illuminated the corridor ahead. A mere two inches off the stone floor, a nearly invisible, translucent thread stretched tight across the hallway. Beyond it, dozens of tiny, perfectly round holes were drilled directly into the walls.
It was a classic Indiana Jones booby trap.
Ren carefully stepped back off the pressure plate. She took up a piece of obsidian stone, and tossed it onto the thread.
SNAP.
Thwip-thwip-thwip echoed through the narrow hall. Dozens of sharp, bone-carved darts coated in a green liquid shot out from the walls at blinding speed. They slammed into the opposite stones, the acidic venom hissing and eating away at the solid rock.
Ren swallowed a terrified squeak. If she had walked forward, she would have resembled a melted block of Swiss cheese.
She shone her mushroom-light further down the hall. There wasn’t just one tripwire. The entire corridor was crisscrossed with a randomized web of translucent strings.
"Okay. Channel your inner Catherine Zeta-Jones," Ren coached herself, referencing her favorite laser-grid scene from Entrapment. "You are a nimble, athletic jewel thief."
She took a deep breath, extended her right leg, and carefully stepped over the first wire. She ducked her head, bending backward at an awkward angle to slide underneath a wire suspended at chest height. Her joints popped loudly.
"Not quite Zeta-Jones," Ren grunted, holding an awkward yoga pose as she carefully balanced on one foot to step between two crisscrossing lines. "I’m way too old for this."
A bead of sweat rolled down her nose as she contorted her body, twisting her torso sideways to squeeze past the final cluster of venom-rigged threads. She leaped the last two feet, landing safely on the stone on the other side.
She barely had a second to celebrate her victory when a new sound chilled her blood.
Slither. Scrape. Slither.
It was coming from the corridor ahead. The distinct sound of scales dragging across stone.
Ren frantically looked around. The hallway was perfectly straight. There were no pillars, no tapestries, and no side rooms. She was completely exposed, holding a glowing mushroom and a frying pan.
The slithering grew louder. Two deep, hissing voices echoed off the walls. They were seconds away from rounding the corner.
Panic seized her. Ren opened her inventory, searching for anything useful. Her eyes landed on the woven foraging basket she had stolen.
Ren dropped it upside down onto the stone floor, quickly hid the glowing mushroom under her dress, and dove underneath the wicker dome just as the snakes turned the corner.
She crouched in the pitch-black darkness under the basket, covering her mouth with both hands to muffle her ragged breathing.
Through the tiny gaps in the woven reeds, she watched two snake beastmen slither past. They walked right past the random, upside-down kitchen basket sitting in the middle of the dungeon corridor, entirely unbothered by its sudden appearance.
Once their tails vanished down the hall, Ren flipped the basket off, exhaling a massive breath of relief. She knew the basket would come in handy! Not like this, but she was happier than ever that she took it.
She continued her descent, moving deeper into the bowels of the fortress. The air grew significantly colder, frosting her breath into white clouds.
She rounded another corner and skidded to a halt.
The floor abruptly ended. Before her lay a massive subterranean chasm. A roaring underground river flowed far below, the jagged stalagmites at the bottom looking like rows of razor-sharp teeth waiting to impale anything that fell.
Connecting the two sides of the abyss was a single, narrow bridge made of nothing but crumbling, moss-covered stone. Half of it had already collapsed into the darkness. It was far too wide to jump.
Ren peered over the edge, her stomach doing a violent somersault. "Right. Because a simple locked door would be too easy."
But there was a thick marsh vine hanging nearby. She needed to swing across. She wasn’t even going to consider the bridge.
"Please don’t snap, please don’t snap," Ren prayed as she held it.
Taking several steps back, Ren took a deep breath, gripped the rough vines with both hands, and sprinted toward the ledge. She leaped into the empty air.
The momentum carried her in a wild, terrifying arc over the roaring abyss. The freezing wind whipped through her red hair as she flew across the chasm. She hit the opposite ledge hard, her feet scrambling for purchase on the slippery stone. She fell forward, scraping her knees on the obsidian, but she was safely across.
"Indiana Jones has nothing on me," Ren gasped, her adrenaline pumping at maximum capacity.
She crept down the final set of stairs, her muscles aching from the exertion. She peeked around the last corner and finally spotted her target.
The corridor ended in a wooden door reinforced with thick vines. Standing in front of the door were two snake beastmen. They held their spears at the ready, their expressions masks of boredom.
Ren pressed her back against the rock. She couldn’t fight them. She needed a distraction.
Her eyes darted around the small space. A few yards away from the guards, an iron brazier burned brightly, providing the only source of light in the dismal corridor.
A wicked, brilliant smile spread across her face.
She opened her inventory and retrieved some red swamp-peppercorns. During her ingredient testing, she had discovered that these specific peppers possessed a capsaicin concentration so intense it practically burned the back of her throat just sniffing them.
Taking a deep breath, Ren stepped out slightly from the shadows. She wound her arm back, aimed carefully at the iron brazier, and threw the peppers with all her might.
They sailed through the air and landed perfectly in the center of the roaring flames.
For a few seconds, nothing happened. The guards didn’t even notice.
Then, the peppers ignited, turning into a billowing cloud of spicy red smoke.
The cloud rapidly expanded, sweeping over the two beastmen.
They dropped their spears, clutching their throats. Because reptiles relied heavily on their forked tongues to taste and smell the air, the airborne capsaicin hit their sensitive sensory organs like a physical punch.
They doubled over, hacking, wheezing, and hissing in pure agony. Tears streamed down their faces as they blindly swatted at the red cloud.
"Water!" one of the guards choked out, his voice a raspy gargle.
Abandoning their post, they stumbled blindly down the opposite corridor, crashing into the stone walls as they desperately searched for water to douse the burning heat.
Ren didn’t waste a second. Tying a piece of fur tightly over her nose and mouth to block the spicy fumes, she sprinted across the hallway.
She reached the door. There was no keyhole, just a crude wooden latch holding it shut. Ren wedged the flat edge of her frying pan under the latch, using the pan as a lever. With a strained grunt, she threw her entire body weight onto the handle. The latch groaned, popped upward, and the door swung inward.
Ren squeezed inside and quickly pulled the door shut behind her, plunging herself into darkness.
The lowest dungeon was freezing. It smelled of decay and wet stone. The air was so thick she could basically taste the misery.
"Vex?" Ren whispered.
Her voice echoed softly into the vast, pitch-black space. She strained her eyes, trying to find any shape or movement, but the darkness was absolute. She took a cautious step forward, holding her frying pan out in front of her like a blind man’s cane.
"Vex, are you in here?" Ren hissed. "It’s me."
"You truly are a creature full of delightful surprises, Little Rose."