Getting the Sneaky Ones

Lithira and Usagi were more than a little annoyed; the chambers they were in seemed to keep looping them to the same room regardless of the path they took. Usagi rooted around in one of her bags a bit before pulling out some pieces of chalk; she handed some of the chalk to her companion and said, “This should help us from getting turned around.”

“Why didn’t you give me these earlier,” inquired Lithira as she held up the pieces of chalk she had been handed.

“Because you assured me your tracking skills would find us a way out,” said Usagi, “that was fifteen minutes ago, and I figured it would allow me to get a better observation of your ability to navigate these sorts of places.”

“Alright,” said Lithira, “that was pretty much on me, but I do have extensive experience with dungeon dives, thanks to my dedication as an archeologist. I thought this dungeon would be similar to some of the dungeons I’ve encountered before, but I guess my assessment was more off than I anticipated. I’m usually pretty good at reading the complexity of dungeons, ruins, and the like.”

“I understand,” said Usagi, “you see it as a specialty, and you fell short, let’s get going.”

A little over five minutes later, the two were back at the room they started in, their chalk a little over half spent, “No wonder I fell short,” said Lithira in annoyance, “the walls of this maze kee shifting so that you’ll end up in this room regardless of which of the four passageways you take. It probably would have taken longer to figure out if we weren’t tracking our paths on the walls with chalk when we did.”

“This nuisance is…” started Usagi before a rope ladder dropped down between the two. They both looked up, the ceiling thirty feet above them was opened, and the ladder was coming from a four-foot hole in the said ceiling. The ladder itself was still ten feet above them.

“You coming up or not,” inquired Althana’s voice, “this ladder won’t be here all day; I doubt it would last half that long. The two women jumped up onto the rope ladder and started climbing it.

When they to the top and rolled to the sides to catch their breaths, Lithira said, “How did you find us?” Althana just jerked her thumb over to the right, the two looked in the direction the gnome had indicated to see a map on the wall with icons that looked like simplified caricatures of the two of them in a maze next to a green box indicating where they just came out.

“It took some debating between Thelsia and Yuri to figure out what it meant,” said Althana in playful annoyance, “and we just got here a few minutes ago ourselves.” It was at this moment the two of them finally noticed an extra party member, a towering lion woman in only a loincloth with a cloth wrapped over her shoulder to hold the holster or sheath for the imposing axe-type weapon on her back.

“Of course, he would pick up another new companion while we apart from him,” muttered Usagi under her breath.

After waiting a few minutes for Lithira and Usagi to catch their breath, Yuri said, “We’ve made a discovery about this dungeon that makes the whole investigation a moot point, so we’re heading back to town.”

“We need to get this report to the guild as soon as possible,” said Thelsia, “and I know the guild master will not be happy about most of it.”

“Thankfully,” said Althana, “Yuri has a pretty good idea of the path we need to take to get out of here, mostly because he was left stuck at the entrance while we were sent elsewhere by that very annoying trap. We’re still trying to figure out its trigger, unfortunately.”

“That would require a team of investigators more qualified for such things than us,” said Lithira, “let’s just head back to town and call it a day.”