Before the four of them, formerly five, was a corridor. To their left was a massive wall of nails that hovered above the floor. The floor had pressure plates embedded within it that summoned even more spikes when pressed.

There was a particularly obvious plate right in front of the door, which the formerly person-shaped puddle had tripped trying to scurry away from her. Nikola almost felt bad, but there wasn't anything person-shaped left to apologize to.

The corridor was dimly lit, but painted with chipped black paint. White marks made in chalk were scrawled across the walls but some had been eaten up by the advancing sheet of spikes. Nom nom nom.

She could make out some of the white marks from where she was standing; they were sketches accompanied by words. One sketch looked like a guillotine with the word 'guillotine' right beside it, but several of the other drawings had been swiped away with a hand or a damp cloth.

Nikola could smell a word puzzle brewing. Notably, the letter 'o' in guillotine was circled.

Also notably, someone was on the other side of the hallway, tucked away in a divot in the wall.

There was only one person they could be; the 'bitch Rogue' the tumultuous three had been quarreling about. Upon hearing the body splatter, the figure's shoulders rose up to their ears and their fingers moved at three times the speed.

Nikola, the less bitchy Rogue (she hoped), didn't have time to even step into the room before they were disappearing behind a door with a little wave, sealing her, Nyla, and their hostages in.

"This is what she did to us last time," sighed one of the 'hostages' grumpily.

Upon hearing one of them talk again, Nikola realized she hadn't even given the two of them a once-over. One was wearing a bow and a quiver on their back, and the other had a knobbly wooden staff fastened to their backpack. An archer and a mage, both wearing cloth-style armour with high mobility but little in the way of defense.

"But this time the room didn't reset," the mage stated with a quavering voice, their eyes focused squarely on the panel full of rusted teeth.

"She erased some of the clues," Nikola realized as she stepped over the first raised section of the floor.

The puzzle became clearer to her the more she looked at it. While the encroaching nails hadn't reset when the other Rogue left, the keypad sitting on the exit door had. The attached screen was blinking, waiting.

Somehow, they had to piece together a word using only what was left on the wall; a drawing of a guillotine with the 'o' in it circled and three other white, dusty streaks.

As she was looking around for more information, she noticed a crisp, drawn line disappearing as the wall moved toward her. She cursed beneath her breath.

But the spikes did actually have some space between them, perhaps just enough space for her hand to get some leverage. Was it weak enough for her to force backward? Even a couple inches would help. Nikola began to approach the wall, earning a dubious look from Nyla.

"What are you doing?" She asked, crossing her arms over her chest, raising a perfectly sculpted magenta brow.

Nikola tucked a hand between two long, metallic rods and pressed her palm against the vertical surface that held them. She began trying to force it backward, shoving her body weight against it to no avail. It may have even started to creep in her direction more rapidly, making the small space feel even more claustrophobic. Damn.

"I am attempting to get a better look at this drawing. I have a guess at what we must input, but I wish to be more certain before I try it."

Nyla sighed deeply, as if Nikola had just done something colossally erroneous. "You have a teleporter on your team."

And just like that, she was stepping through a dark chasm in the wall. She looked on the other side of the nails and saw some kind of piston fastened to the back of the board, and a drawing becoming mostly visible as it inched forward.

"It's a rack, and the letter 'r' is circled," Nyla said into the room.

What she said must have been what Nikola was waiting for, because the Rogue carefully navigated the treacherous floor without even responding to her.

Nikola poked the keypad beneath the screen.

T

O

R

T

U

R

E

She entered, after the two medieval torture implement drawings the purple-haired girl had left behind.

She knew she had gotten the right word when the door began to creak open as it had done for the other Rogue.

"She got it without even needing all the clues," one of their hostages whispered in quiet wonder, just as Nyla reached out with her foil and popped it cleanly through the other side of their chest.

"That seems unnecessary," Nikola stated dryly, listening to the wet shlorping noise that happened as she forced the metal back out again.

"We have to get rid of them both eventually." Nyla shrugged, grinning as she approached the door that was open now that this Rogue had also solved the puzzle. She didn't know if the traps in the floor were deactivated now, but she avoided them nonetheless.

"Nobody can remain whose will could tarnish our shining reputations, now that we've killed so many people. It needs to be just you," she pointed the bloodied end of her foil toward the Butcher, "and me." And then she whirled it back around to point at her own face. The end of her weapon flicked blood on her at the end of its arc.

"No witnesses," Nikola agreed, stepping through to the other side.

Even with the two loose ends that remained alive and the mystery of the next room buzzing in her brain, the only thing she could think was:

it needs to be just you, and me.