IWUAaDNW: Exploration 2.2, Growth 3.8, Party 5.4

Whoever tried to cross the pitfall would have to worry about bugs pouring out constantly from a hole while they were trying to cross the pitfall. If they fell in, they would have to climb out while under heavy attack. At some point, one of my venomous bugs would get lucky, and I’d have one less attacker to worry about.

—IWUAaDNW: Exploration 2.2



They ventured down the hall. At the first curve, which still had a pitfall occupying most of the floor, they stopped.

“Samel, are you noting this down?”

“Un,” the boy noised. “Big hole in the floor.”

“A pitfall,” Gwen corrected. “About… uh… fifteen feet deep?”

Roughly, yes.

“And full of bugs, of course,” Cirys grumbled.

Gwen ignored him, raising her arm so her torch would illuminate the wall opposite the ledge that allowed passage to the other side of the pitfall. Her eyes narrowed as she spotted the ceiling-bound crack that led to my bug reserve hallway in this room.

“…Another bug hole here,” she told Samel, pointing at the crack. She gave him a moment to draw, then turned to her party. “We’ll go one by one. Cirys, spear, stay near the crack and hit anything that tries to get through. You’re going last. I’ll go first, then Samel, then Horzel. Okay?”

There were no objections, and her plan was followed through.

“Do we have to go through here?” Cirys complained with his back against the wall when it was his turn.

When I let them get through unmolested, they seemed to release a unified sigh of relief. Then they spotted the second pitfall, and the bug crawlspace on the opposite wall of that ledge, and that relief turned into a deep and perceptible sense of foreboding.

“She’s going to sandwich us,” Cirys guessed.

“Probably,” Gwen agreed. “Same plan. Horzel, eyes to our back. Let’s hurry.”

She stepped on the ledge. That’s when I started moving. From the pitfall they’d already crossed, I quietly brought spiders forward. I had planned on revealing them by jumping on Horzel, but, proof that no plan survives contact with the enemy, something tipped him off, and he ended up throwing his torch down the hall, revealing my spiders early.

“Incoming!”

Oh well, Gwen was already halfway through, anyway. I waited until Cirys had turned his head, then I popped a spider out of the crawl hole.

Gwen stared at it.

My ambushing spider raised its front legs and prepared its three back pairs.

“…Oh no.” Gwen muttered, raising her shield.

To her credit, her shield blocked the spider, and she managed to push it off before it could get a grip on it.

Unfortunately for her, the ledge didn’t give her much maneuvering room to avoid the wasps that followed that spider, or the beetle that came in to attack her from the other end of the hallway.

---

“Taylor, please don’t take it personally, but I really hate you right now,” Cirys said as he took hold of one of my beetle’s whip-like antennae so he could be pulled out of the pitfall’s crawling depths.

The rest of the party seemed to share the sentiment, though they didn’t do it out loud. Horzel and Samel had been pulled out first, and with the help of Nedagg’s mandibles, they’d mostly gotten the pitfall bugs out of their clothes and hair. Gwen hadn’t fallen off despite my best attempts, but it had been a close call. As it was, she’d managed to get herself to safety before one of my spiders had leapt at her back and shoved her face-first in buggy sand. She had a bright red mark on her cheek where she’d fallen on her shield’s hardened edge.

—IWUAaDNW: Growth 3.8



The next hallway was winding and had two pitfalls, a carbon copy of the hallway that had once led to my core room with one exception. Both pitfalls had bug chute entrances, but there was also another bug chute above the central section between the pitfalls, from which I made wax balls full of blue goop rain while also holding them back with wasps, spiders and a pair of nets made of webs. They made it out after Ulfric used his axe to slash through the front side net, but by the time they tried that I’d had more than enough time to tag them a few times.

Karjn had an impressive vocabulary, though I was a little surprised that the translation effect was able to keep up.

Ulfric grunted and pulled his shirt away from his body in a vain effort to get it to stick less.

“At least it’s not burning,” Maryll chirped. She was as drenched as the others, but looked like she didn’t care all that much.

Gwen… cared. Visibly.

“I hate this stuff,” she growled, wiping goop from her brow. It turned out that blocking a chest-level goop ball didn’t stop it from splashing everywhere else.

—IWUAaDNW: Party 5.4