There wasn't much Nikola could do but listen.

The room was pitch black, save for the tiny bubble of visibility around the screen telling her to AWAIT NYLA'S INSTRUCTIONS.

She used her palms to pull herself to the right side of the room, returning to where she had found the circle. It slipped open as she approached, confirming her suspicions that it was noteworthy.

It sat open, beckoning her to stick her arm in.

"Do you wish for me to reach in?"

"Yes."

Now that the panel was pulled back, Nikola could hear something coming from within the shaft. She leaned in to get a closer look, but it was even darker than the room she was in, offering nothing but a tiny glint of something shiny at the end.

"If my arm is ripped off, I'm going to return the favour," Nikola grumbled as she pushed her hand, trembling, into the tunnel. She found the flat end of the shaft with great haste and grasped at the featureless surface until she found the edge of what felt like tape.

"Don't be so dramatic," Nyla complained in such a way that Nikola could almost hear her eyes rolling.

She tore the tape from the edge and swiftly yanked her arm from the uncomfortable enclosure, dangling it in front of her nose to reveal a key stuck to its sticky side.

"I bet they're going to give you the ability to choose to hurt me this next round. Let's not mess around. We need to get out of here as quickly as possible - we're not the first ones in here, and the people ahead of us will be fighting to keep their place in the lead." (edited)

"Understood," Nikola agreed.

Seeing the key to the door in the flesh was refreshing, with its gentle curve and bronzed colour. She felt her shoulders loosen at the sight. She hadn't expected the pink-haired girl to try anything after having already saved her once, but Nikola knew firsthand how very tempting it was to end a life when nobody else would see. She quietly commended her on her restraint.

Would she have the same amount of restraint, when the situation was inevitably reversed?

She stabbed the key into the keyhole and turned it.

The wall folded open like a book, and light filtered in, blinding her.

Nikola could immediately hear that she wasn't alone in this new room. She didn't proceed because her eyes hasn't adjusted, but there were voices she didn't recognize. They sounded cross, and there were at least two of them.

When her vision returned, she saw a maze spread out before her. There were tracks in the ground running all throughout the room, and the other people in the room were all stacked up in front of a block, straining to push it along. Three adventurers; perhaps the other two skewered with arrows outside had been their fourth and fifth.

"Maybe if you had just trusted me in the last room, we would have made it in before Rogue bitch solved the puzzle by herself and the whole room reset!" Nikola got the sense she had walked in in the middle of an argument. Nyla stepped in and gave her a shrug.

"I told you, that's all they know how to do."

But apparently they knew how to do one more thing, because the sound of a deep click reverberated through the room. Nikola felt it move through her feet. They had slotted the cube into its place and solved the puzzle she hadn't been around long enough to get a sense of. Then, at the back of the room, a rectangular slab parted from the rest of the wall and allowed them access to what would likely be the next room.

The tumultuous team didn't seem to have noticed them yet.

Nyla quickly solved that problem for them, drawing her elastic-looking blade and waving it cartoonishly in their direction as she leaped from the upper platform like a wildcat.

She prowled in their direction, her hips wagging self-assuredly. "Give me one reason to not kill all three of you right now," she roared without even an attempt at a greeting.

The three shrieked in horror as the two who had been dead set on killing everyone in the tower were suddenly in the same room as they were. This did not bode well for their continued survival.

"It would waste time!" One bellowed, putting her hands up and shuffling backward, away from the scary women.

"Y-yeah," another agreed, showing a shocking amount of unity. "There's somebody ahead of us. We need to catch up before she gets to the end. You don't want to waste time on us without even knowing where she is."

Nikola nodded as she approached. "Your point is valid. We will not make any attempts on your life yet, provided you are the first ones to enter the next room."

They nodded feverishly in response, backing up in the direction of the rectangle that had opened into the wall. They kept their backs toward the new space rather than to the two of them. Nikola reveled in the feeling of being more of a threat than the unknown.

As they got closer to the doorframe, unlined and mysterious, a metallic gnashing sound on the other side became more apparent. It sounded a whole lot like the noise in the tunnel Nyla had opted to not make Nikola stick her arm into, but larger.

Nikola watched as one of the three backed a little too far into the room, and before she could even warn them against it, something fell from above and turned their fully formed body into a fine paste that mashed soggily into the floor.

"At least die somewhere where I can take your stuff," Nyla groaned disappointedly to the remaining two.