"A question is a trap and an answer is your foot in it." ~ John Steinbeck

  After revising the hot wax trap to something more reasonable and hopefully more effective, I thought about which other traps I wanted to change. Only a few of them had been particularly effective – most notably the slip and fall trap in the potters’ shop and the stink trap in the tannery. The caltrops in the farrier’s shop still seemed like a reasonable choice to me.

  Some of the others just needed some adjustments. I deepened the trapdoor into the cellar in the carpenter’s shop so that even the orcs would need to be more careful. I considered doing the same for the anklebreaker trap on the first floor, but I ultimately decided I could leave the first-floor traps as less troublesome.

  Likewise, I considered expanding or moving the wolf trap in the paddock to make it a bigger hazard or even adding more of them, but that didn’t make much sense with the skeletons there. For that matter, the existing wolf trap wouldn’t make much sense with skeletal warhorses moving freely about the paddock. Admittedly, as dungeon creatures they knew instinctively not to walk on the trap, but a real horse would certainly trip the trap. Instead, I decided I’d do better to trap the cache of treasure more directly. I considered trapping the box in which I’d stored the loot, but I assumed that would likely be noticed. Instead, I coated the gold chain with a thin layer of batrachotoxin overlaid with just a bit of wax. It shouldn’t be noticeable, or if spotted might seem like something to protect the metal. But if the chain were worn or handled very long with bare hands the toxin would be absorbed through the skin as the wax melted. I was very careful with the dosage, though a lot depended on the individual adventurer, their size and their poison resistance in particular.

  It shouldn’t be fatal for any being who could reasonably wear it, but it would be debilitating without an antidote - starting with numbness and tingling around the mouth and in the extremities, followed by muscle weakness, and eventually paralysis if the chain wasn’t removed. The amounts were small enough that I’d expect an adventurer to recover in the space of a few hours, but it would be a potentially serious issue if they were in combat. Unlike in my old world, my reading on traps indicated that a standard antidote potion should work on this poison. I kept in mind that I didn’t really want to become associated with poisons broadly, but a couple of instances shouldn’t cause comment.

  After that, I decided that having two mimics in the manor was both excessive and unlikely to fool many adventurers. I started with the main bedroom, removing the mimic there and replacing it with an actual chest, but trapping it with a double runic trigger – an easily found one on the lock and a more discreet one on the hinges of the lid that was only activated when the one on the lock was disarmed. If the adventurers triggered the lock rune, a simple arcane boltcaster would be activated directly from the keyhole. If they deactivated the lock, but subsequently missed the second triggering rune, opening the trunk would trigger a crystal of minor explosion. That would both cause more damage and increase the odds of the contents of the trunk being damaged or destroyed. If they caught both triggers, then the crystal itself became part of the potential reward.

  Blueprint Received: Double-Trapped Trunk (Boltcaster and Explosion)

  Having essentially upgraded the danger of the room, I felt I should also upgrade the accompanying loot. I started by including a basic potion of healing, an instance of my newly discovered gold locket, a small stack of enchantment-ready parchment, and a set of lockpicks of dexterity.

  Leaving the other mimic in the dining room seemed fine, but I did feel like some other trap was warranted. In the end, I went with trapping the front door. Realistically, what I wanted was a trap that would punish a brute force approach like that of Ushug, but I wasn’t entirely sure how to do that. I started by simply reinforcing the door panels with an underlying layer of iron. That would hardly stop Ushug for long, but it wouldn’t do his axe any good. That wasn’t a trap, though, so I turned my attention to the lock.

  I figured this might be a good place to start utilizing my air affinity – though I intended to lean into that harder on the third floor. I installed a canister of pressurized air and an adapted version of the orcish blowgun with a narrow aperture directly above the keyhole that would be triggered by the insertion of any magnetically active metal in the keyhole. That would both fire a needle and lock down the door mechanism for the space of an hour. I considered poisoning the needle but opted instead to simply coat it in an extract of nettle that would sting ferociously (and make targets suspect poison). I could always swap it for poison if I felt a sterner approach was warranted.

  Blueprint Received: Pressurized Dart Lock

  Quest Completed: Automate Trap; Reward: thermosensitive trigger, air displacement trigger, sonic trigger

  New Quest: Diversify Affinitied Traps – Create three air-based traps; Reward: Acid Fog Trap

  Another quest I’d basically ignored up to this point; I think that should be the last for a while. Apparently, the magnetic trigger had met whatever the requirements were for that one. The rewards looked quite interesting, and rather than being purely mechanical they relied on tiny hidden runes that triggered under specific environmental conditions – those being sudden changes in temperature around the lock, extended movement of air internally to the lock, and vibrations beyond a minimum threshold. Essentially, each used different means to detect the movement of adventurers into a given space. I expected I’d work on the new version of the quest once I got back to the third floor – since I wanted to work on my air affinity already.

  For good measure, I added another 15 similar pneumatic needles spaced irregularly throughout the wood facing of the door that would be triggered if the locked-down door was forced. None of this was intended to be fatal, or even particularly damaging, but would be unpleasantly discouraging. Then, purely for the sake of irony, I concealed the key to the door on top of the door jamb – among the first places one would normally look for a hidden key.

  Blueprint Received: Discouraging Door

  That felt like plenty for the second floor, with the traps mostly designed to be discouraging but not lethal, or at least not immediately lethal, unless the adventurers got unlucky.

  ********************************************

  Rangvar Smithsson, Professor of Magical Geography at Talendra Academy, shook his head a bit ruefully at the deliberately obscure note that had been slipped beneath his office door. “You take a quick trip to the Enchanted Dainoru Hot Springs to consult with the kitsune and all of a sudden you’re caught up in a conspiracy.”

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  The half-dwarven scholar grinned suddenly, muttering to himself. “Since when is Ahmed mysterious? The man’s painfully uncomplicated – now, Raina, I could believe it from, except she wouldn’t be nearly so amusing about it.”

  He re-read the brief note once more:

  "Rangvar, old friend:

  We must consult with you on a subject requiring the utmost discretion. Your expertise is called for, and I promise you that it will be beneficial to all involved. Tell no one – not even your disciple.

  Please come to our home this evening. Secrets will be shared, knowledge will be imparted, and dinner will be served. You won’t regret it.

  Ahmed"

  Rangvar ran his thick fingers through his graying red beard as he mused about the likely subject of the discussion. “Well, I know he’s been interested in mountain formation, but most of his focus is more on the distribution of magical creatures across the landscape, so I’m not really sure why he needs MY expertise. Only one way to find out for sure, I suppose. Not like he couldn’t have just invited me over for dinner anyways. It’s been a while, but it’s not like he’s ever known me to miss a free meal!”

  He laughed. “Whether he’s wasting my time or not, this’ll be worth it just to watch him try to keep a secret without exploding!”

  ***************************************

  Dhesmila ran a tired hand through the fur on the back of her neck, as she yawned – normally a daunting sight given the lengths of her canines. The tigerkin undersecretary for Imperial affairs hadn’t gotten more than a couple of hours of sleep in the three days since she’d been informed that a senior adventuring party from the Empire intended to pay a visit to Asmeria – ostensibly on their way to delve a new dungeon on the sky island of Tel Dorinth, due for its annual transit in the coming week.

  The visit had been approved somewhere above her level in the beastkin government, simply because there was no obvious reason to deny it. That didn’t mean that anyone was happy about it, or that their story was actually believed.

  Dhesmila snorted to herself as she reviewed their limited files. “Sure, one last adventuring hurrah. From a baronet, an assistant director of their Institute of Magic, and TWO members of the family of the former Commandant of their Military Academy. And they want to visit a dungeon no one’s ever heard of, and that just happens to be on a sky island that will pass above our top-secret, subterranean research facility. Must be a coincidence...”

  The problem was, as far as she could tell, it really COULD be a coincidence. The sky island would transit directly above the facility, yes, but it had been doing that for years. And according to the local Adventurers Guild office there really WAS a new dungeon, and it WAS one of the sapient ones the baronet had been visiting for years. She didn’t see how the whole thing could legitimately be a covert operation unless the Empire had gotten ridiculously lucky or had some outrageous contingency planning in place. They couldn’t have known about the dungeon for more than a month or two, after all – barely enough time for even a normal expedition to be thrown together, much less some sort of cover for espionage embedded within a larger, legitimate expedition.

  In any event, there really wasn’t much she could do about it; in her discussions with the Imperial embassy staff, it had been transparently obvious that the expedition had come as a complete surprise to them as well. If there was anything covert going on, it must not have been organized through the embassy, but she hadn’t actually thought it would. Oh, there were spies mixed in the staff, of course, that was pretty much standard operating procedure for any embassy anywhere, but the intelligence officer she’d brought along as her putative secretary for those meetings seemed quite confident that they knew who those spies were. More to the point, there had been absolutely nothing to suggest the facility had been discovered to exist, much less had its position identified.

  She was, she realized, going in circles on this – largely because her boss was pressuring her to find a leak or a flaw in their scrying defenses that would explain how the Empire had discovered the place. As near as she could tell, there WAS no leak, and their best mages had failed to discover any flaws in their coverage.

  That said, she had no access to the facility herself. For that matter, she had no idea what they were researching there and only a general sense of its actual location.

  “How do they expect me to find a leak when I can’t even speak to anyone who knows where the damn facility is! I may be an excellent shadow mage, but I’m not a miracle worker!”

  She sighed quietly. “One last review of the expedition members, and then I’m going to curl up in my bed and sleep for at least eight hours.” She knew she was lying to herself, but at least a couple of hours of napping would fix a lot of her current issues. She was getting to the point where she’d start to make mistakes and miss things, and that was simply unacceptable.

  She cracked her neck thoughtlessly, then worked her way down through her spine before popping most of the other joints in her body in a systematic routine she no longer was even conscious of.

  “There’s the Baronet. On the face of it, he’s a perfectly standard minor imperial aristocrat – an expert on his one specialized research interest, but otherwise clueless. He IS, legitimately, an expert on sapient dungeons, or so my staff tells me.

  His butler is the most likely person to be a deep cover agent of the Imperial government. He’s a powerful magic swordsman and a highly competent agent for his master. He COULD double as a spy for the government, but it seems unlikely. He’d have only had a month or two to come out of retirement; it’s clearly possible, yet I can’t think why they’d have left a spy in the baronet’s household for this long.

  There’s the Assistant Director of their Institute of Magic – a dangerously competent woman and a powerful combat mage, but too visible and too active to make a good spy. Plus her documented skill set lends itself more to destruction than espionage.

  We have the front line axeman. Records suggest he’s a strong melee combatant, but not the sharpest adventurer on the team by a longshot. Still, he’s had a long career, which is unusual for a man in his role. He must have learned some caution at some point.

  To that party, they’ve added a half dozen lower-level adventurers, ranging from level 10-20. Two of them are grandchildren of the former Commandant of their military academy, and all of them are under the age of 30. The brother is a healer with the imperial church, and his sister is a scout and pathfinder. Not much data on them beyond that, though, as they’re relatively new to the guild. Chances are they’re highly trained and humorless like their grandfather.

  The others include an archer, a front-line tank, an ice mage, and a second healer – this one relying on alchemy rather than divine healing. Those four were all part of a party at the Commandant’s old academy, though apparently their party leader and damage dealer either wasn’t invited or didn’t opt to come along. It’s just barely possible they represent a covert team for the imperial government, but if so, they either haven’t had any notable missions or were so good they never got caught.

  Either way, they should have good party cohesion; the original members may be rusty, but they’ve been working together for decades. The younger ones are lower leveled, but have been working actively, mostly as a party, for several years. Not sure if they’ll act as one massive party or divide into two groups; I could see it either way.”

  They had a good mix of skills, and a couple of them possessed skills that COULD function for espionage. There was no evidence that they used them for that, though, and as a shadow mage, Dhesmila fell in that category herself. Okay, so technically she WAS involved in espionage, but really it was more counterespionage – even if the line between the two was rather hazy.

  She sighed, one last time. If she was missing something, then she hadn’t spotted it this time either. She doubted the entire expedition was completely transparent and aboveboard, but she assumed most of them were. At a guess, if someone on the visiting team was actively acting as an agent of the Empire, it was most likely the butler, or possibly the Commandant’s granddaughter. Those two were, at least, clearly capable of uncovering secrets and disarming traps, and doing so potentially with none the wiser.