Pit

Perhaps it was some secret trick the Count employed in the timing, or the way he put his strength
into the move, but for whatever reason, D was unable to take his hand off
the hilt. He was thrown along with the sword into the center of the hall.
However…

The Count quite unexpectedly found his breath taken away. There were
no crunching bones to be heard; the youth somersaulted in midair like a cat
about to land feetfirst on the floor with the hem of his coat billowing out
around him. Or rather, he was ready to land there. With no floor beneath his
feet, D kept right on going, falling into the pitch-black maw that opened
suddenly beneath him.

As he heard the creaking of trapdoors to either side of the massive thirty
by thirty-foot pit swinging back up into place, the Count turned his gaze to
the darkness behind him. Larmica appeared from it. “It’s a primitive trap,
but it was fortunate for us we had it put there, was it not, Father? When all
your vaunted atomic armaments were useless, a pitfall of cogs and springs
rid us of that nuisance.”

Shaking off his grimace, he said, “At the same instant I hurled him, you
pulled the cord on the trapdoor—who but my daughter would be capable of
as much? But is this for the best?”

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