Getting out of the trap corridor without triggering the traps was a lot easier with Callie's directions, though admittedly my ability to not touch the ground for several hundred feet didn't hurt. Once I settled down where we had landed, I leaned against the wall to wait. Cicero, who was apparently waiting up there, yelled down to me. "Are you giving up? I didn't expect you to leave your lady love behind. Children these days are so cruel. Shall I send you down a ladder so you can get out of there?"

I sneered up at him, though between my mask and being in a literal hole in the ground, he couldn't see. "We aren't quitting, I'm just giving her space to work. Also, if I wanted to get out of this hole I wouldn't need a ladder, I could be punching you in the throat before I finished this sentence, I'm just not willing to do so before we accomplish the objective and earn those suits. Don't suppose you're willing to just cut the bullshit and tell us what it is we're looking for? The whole mysterious game master thing was old before it even started."

I heard a chuckle float down through the dark. "It's a piece of paper. Tied with a red ribbon. I won't be telling you any more. Just bring it to me and you'll get your reward. I would pay more attention to your lady, however. My brother's defenses are nothing to sneeze at. Anyone save Abel could easily die facing those traps alone. She could be in grave danger and might need your help." He sounded genuinely concerned. But then, he'd also sounded like a nice guy before he dropped us in a fucking hole, so I trusted that about as far as I could throw my car.

Turning away, I decided to ignore the mustachioed asshole and focus on my girlfriend. Callie had started to stretch a bit, getting herself ready with a series of graceful bends that never brought her into the path of the triggers for any of the traps. Once that was done she started bouncing on her toes. Despite the weight of her body her bouncing was light and fluid, and after she built up some momentum she landed smoothly and with no lag time darted forward off her toes, using the same bouncing motion to push herself forward at blurring speeds.

She blasted into the hallway, feet touching lightly in a series of seemingly random places as she almost floated from one spot to the next, using every bit of Perception and Might together with her new skill to avoid any of the traps as she moved. Each tap of her feet set off a new trap, and I almost had to look away as she was nearly skewered, burned, sliced, and various other terrible fates. Despite the close calls though the traps never managed to actually touch her, not even her hair was damaged by the attacks as she whirled and spun between the dangerous mechanisms.

I could see the influence of her Balam Mastery in her movements, the cyclical dance of her evasion resembling nothing so much as a dissipating whirlwind. Each rotation began to fade as if dispersing before she lightly spun up again. It was staggering to see. Her dodges and pirouettes were almost a dance, skating gracefully from on spot to the next in a series of movements that would have been terrifying if she were an enemy, but instead were just absolutely breathtaking to behold. I was mesmerized watching her, and I got so caught up in the beauty I almost forgot to be afraid for her. Almost.

By the time she finished darting through the corridor, the whole place was a fucking wreck. Spikes, blades, acid, fire, tons of other traps I hadn't even noticed (including a really nasty looking needle attack that she managed to swirl away with her coat without actually getting any stuck in the fabric) the stone hallway was absolutely destroyed. I looked around, checking for more traps with Seek Hidden before I walked back in, but didn't see anything. Even the traps from earlier in the hallway had triggered and tried to kill her, but she'd just slipped between all of them.

I whistled appreciatively. "Damn. This was quite a gauntlet. How is it going to reset though? These can't all have been single use traps can they?" Having to reset these every time would have been a labor of months. No way Abel could have made it back in here to get his shit without setting them off. Though the mess did make it clear why we'd been sent in. I was guessing Cicero had sent plenty of people down here before. I wondered how many of them were dead. I was guessing more than a few.

Callie nodded. "They are. You notice when we landed we had a bit of space before the trap corridor started? That area was the beginning of the gauntlet originally. There were a few signs of it once I got the trap Skill. Whoever came down here before undoubtedly died in the attempt." Her voice was cold, and I could understand why. Cicero had set us up to die. What had we done to deserve that? Ruthless or not, this was a massive provocation for no apparent reason. Why would he do something like this?

I asked Callie and she frowned contemplatively. "I'd say desperation. If he sent every random person who came his way down here it would have long since gotten out. This can't be normal behavior. He's panicking over the impending crisis. We showed up and offered to help, but he isn't buying that we can deliver. This way he either gets rid of fake helpers, or gets what he wants and proof we can follow through. It's pretty fucked up, but I can at least see the logic there. Doesn't mean I'm not pissed about it though."

I was pissed too. This guy had tried to fuck us over. We needed to work with him for the moment, or I'd have tried to switch sides and help his dissenter oust him, but this wouldn't be the end of this. I was going to make sure he fucking paid for this. Panicked or not, no one got away with doing something like this to me, and damn sure not to Callie. Not while I was around. I could see in Callie's face that she was just as furious, though admittedly she was better at controlling it. Still, I didn't say anything out loud. I didn't think he could hear us, if I did I wouldn't have granted her wish, but we needed to focus.

Callie laid a hand on my arm, not wanting to be too specific about it just in case, but wanting to reassure me. "I have some things in mind. Just leave it to me. We can talk more when we get home. As she looked me in the eye, lowering her voice a bit to speak softly, I realized that I had massively underestimated how angry she really was. Callie's blue eyes were basically ships of ice, and her jaw was white with fury. She was good at keeping up her image, but being this close, between my Perception and how comfortable she was with me, I could see how angry she really was.

A small, vicious smile spread across my face under my mask. I'd thought for a moment she'd just written this off as the cost of doing business but I could see in that fury and answering call for payback to what roiled in my gut. I wasn't the only one who took it personally when someone endangered a loved one. She was just as furious at me being in danger as I was at the risk to her. I gave a long, slow nod, making sure she knew that I could see her fury and was willing to wait for it. I trusted her.

With that done, we turned to make our way back down the hallway. There were no more traps, so we didn't need to work around any obstacles. Still, the Skill was going to come in plenty handy moving forward I was pretty sure. I was glad I'd been able to give her one more layer of safety. We both watched the corridor ahead of us carefully, letting our attention wander ceaselessly, never resting in one spot as we made our way forward. As we stepped forward I saw a slight disturbance, putting an arm out to stop her.

I spoke up absently, focusing on what was in front of us. "Wait. Did you see that? I could have sworn I saw something move just then." I sighed internally. This was the very last trope I wanted to play into while stuck in a hostile underground labyrinth, but ignoring a danger would be infinitely worse. So, despite feeling like a character from a horror movie I scanned the corridor as thoroughly as possible, until I realized my mistake and almost literally face palmed. "Wait, hold on. I can find whatever it is."

Activating Seek Hidden, I focused on finding whatever enemy had just been moving. Even though I didn't know what the damn thing was, just being able to focus on something that specific relieved a lot of the strain of the skill. I flicked my eyes quickly over the tunnel, looking for the telltale red glow of the enemy I was searching for, and didn't see much of anything as I scanned the nearby walls and floor. I was beginning to think I'd imagined the whole thing, until I chanced a glance UP.

I froze. Seek Hidden had been looking for the enemy I'd seen moving, but the general shape I'd imagined for the skill had been to search for that TYPE of enemy. I hadn't really consciously considered that, and I wouldn't have thought it would matter even if I had. In this case however, I was wrong. Because searching for the TYPE of enemy revealed the enemy I'd seen, and all the rest of them too. In point of fact, it revealed dozens of the damn things. Dozens of fucking SPIDERS hanging from the ceiling and glaring down at us.

Swallowing hard, I turned to look at Callie, who appeared to have been scanning the ground like I had. I cleared my throat. "So, weird question. Are you by any chance arachnophobic?" I tried to keep my voice calm and level, despite the crawling my skin was doing at the sight of all those eight legged horrors. I wasn't arachnophobic myself, but I was deeply unsettled by spiders, and Callie had a lot more exposed skin than I did.

She turned slowly to look at me, her face looking hesitant for the first time in quite a while. "Not exactly, but spiders and snakes really freak me out..." She trailed off, her tone shifting to one of worry. "Why?" I pointed up at the ceiling, and she tilted her head back slowly, looking up at the hanging monsters, all G ranked themselves, like a convict accepting a sentence. She swallowed too. She stared up at the swarm of disgusting bug beasts for a few seconds warily before finally speaking. "Ah. Well. Fuck."

The speaking of those three words seemed to act almost as some kind of signal. The spiders all released their holds on the ceiling and began to plummet toward us, screeching a terrifying high pitched battle cry of arachnid fury as a fucking CLOUD of the things fell to blanket us. Callie reacted instantly, pulling in a wave of shadow to try to block off the attack, but the things were too spread out, and too strong. They hit the huge dome of shadows and started tearing through them. I snarled up the spiders. "Ok, seriously, I'm going to break Cicero's nose when we get out of this shit." Well, IF we got out of it. But hey, no need to jinx it.