IWUAaDNW: Party 5.4

A few minutes later, Maryll was staring nervously up the cliff, an arrow nocked on her taut bowstring, as they waited. Karjn’s hookshots were once again pulling Gwen up as she ascended the relatively small amount of height they had crossed, and Ulfric was glaring daggers at the dissipating corpse of the beetle that had nearly knocked him off the ledge, while on the other end of the room, the webweaver that had lassoed Gwen and pulled her down retreated to the ceiling.

“I… think I’m starting to see, now,” Maryll replied. “We can’t really dodge anything on this path.”

“Fuck… cliff… rooms,” Karjn swore.

Ulfric grunted in agreement.

I kept things relatively simple, and only tested each of my traps once. The beetles swinging their antennae from the cliff side, out of reach of all but Karjn, Maryll, and Gwen’s thrown dagger, only aimed for their chests and arms. The spiders I kept in very short hallways concealed behind thin wax trap doors tried to fake-bite them, or attacked their shields and armors instead of trying to shove them off the cliff. The will o’ wisps’ barrage of fireballs––each about the size of a tennis ball, but advertised by the wisp’s rapid spinning on itself––wasn’t as intense as I could make it. My wasps were dropping wax balls full of water, too, which actually helped them against the fireballs. It was still enough to let me evaluate the efficiency of the trap; if these had been napalm balls, they would have made the entire trip while on fire.

A spider launched itself out of its ledge trap and wrapped itself around Maryll. The girl fell on her back with a surprised screech which turned into giggles almost immediately after. She patted my spider on the back while it faked plunging its fangs into her skull.