One upside of the gladiator being enormous now was that the hole in his side was big, that Cooper no longer had trouble removing the arrow. He did have to stick his hand into the wound and root around a bit first to find the thing, but once he had it, out it came. Once the arrow was out, the circle over the gladiator’s head turned frim dark purple to red. Cooper had no idea what that meant, but when he tried giving the man another blast from the snake stick, his circle actually went up a bit finally. Relieved, Cooper gave the gladiator one long shot, aiming to bring his circle all the way back to full.
He got to around 60% before the circle stopped filling. Suddenly Cooper felt light-headed, like he was about to pass out. He lowered the staff, waiting for the feeling to pass. Then set about recollecting his belongings, which were now strewn all over the floor. The good news was that the money was still in the duffel bag, wrapped carefully, as it was, in Cooper’s BVDs. Moving the duffel bag itself to a clean tile in the middle of the hall, Cooper began collecting individual glass bottles and freak-carrots, cleaning them off as best he could with a bit of water from his canteen, then placing them on the tile to dry. Once he finished he went to check on the honeycomb, which was a total loss. It was now a thick, sticky mass of either honey-flavored jelly or jelly-flavored honey. Cooper gave up on it, going to check on the gladiator.
His circle was still kind of reddish, but it appeared to be mostly holding steady at around 60%. Cooper gave him another blast from the snake stick that brought him up to 75% or so before he (Cooper) started feeling faint again. He leaned against the wall to rest for a moment while he figured out what to do next.
Cooper decided he needed to get the gladiator out of the hallway. If they stayed here much longer eventually someone was going to find them. They would be much safer in a room, where Cooper could stash the man behind a row of planters or something until he got healed up. The main problem was that Cooper didn’t know of any rooms nearby, and he didn’t like the idea of leaving the gladiator alone while he searched.
Eventually, Cooper decided it was a risk he would have to take. He started by walking to the intersections at either end of the jelly-coated hallway to see if there were any rooms immediately visible in the neighboring hallways. When that didn’t pan out, he walked to the far ends of all those hallways to check the next intersection the same way. In between checks Cooper returned to the jelly-coated hallway to make sure the gladiator was okay and also give him a quick honk from the snake stick. At one point, while he was in the next hallway over, Cooper heard a loud thunk from the jelly hallway. Sprinting back, he found that the floor tile that had caused all the trouble had popped back up into place. That tile had no drawings on it at all. It was exactly the same height as all the tiles around it. To make sure he didn’t step on it again, Cooper pulled out his charcoal and drew a warning sign on the wall above the tile that looked like this…
It took some searching, but eventually Cooper found a Cafe-style room just three hallways over where he felt he could safely stash the gladiator for a while. The next challenge was moving the man. By that time his circle was up to like 90% or so, so Cooper felt like he could take a chance on removing the cumberbund. Lifting those enormous, tree-trunk legs was hard, especially one-handed, but eventually Cooper got the ribbon loose enough to hear the thump that meant the gladiator had returned to normal.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
His first idea was to simply drag the dude by his legs, but that didn’t work at all. The jellied-up floor around him was way too slick. There was no way for Cooper to get traction. His second idea was to string some rope through the man’s armpits and drag him that way. That worked okay for a while. The rope was just long enough for Cooper to pull from dry tile, and once he got going, the gladiator slid across the jelly like a hockey puck. It was when they reached the edge of the jelly slick that Cooper started having problems. The gladiator kept getting stuck in a divot between tiles, and if Cooper pulled too hard the rope would pull his arms up over his face and catch under his chin. Cooper tried a bunch of other rope arrangements, looking for one that allowed him to pull hard without too much risk injuring the gladiator, but he couldn’t find any. (As it turns out, dragging a half-naked man across a tile floor is just a bad idea in general.)
The solution Cooper finally settled on was the simplest one: picking the gladiator up in a fireman’s carry and walking his unconscious ass over to the cafe. It wasn’t easy. Hell, it would have been hard even two-handed. But with a little luck, a wall, some rope, and a whole lot of four-letter words, Cooper eventually managed to climb to his feet with the gladiator balanced across his shoulders. From there all he had to do was walk the length of three hallways without tripping, bumping into a wall, stepping on a trap tile, or running into a bear, or having one of the other thousand things that could go wrong go wrong, and then find a way to put the guy down one-handed without dropping him on his skull. As it turned out, he was able to do all of those things but that last one. He arrived at the cafe just fine, but he was also gasping for breath, pouring sweat, his legs and his lower back screaming at him, and when he tried to slide the gladiator from his shoulders down onto a coach he stumbled and they ended up eating shit together.
Luckily there was no damage done. Just some scuffed knees and a bloody nose, both of which the snake stick made quick work of. Cooper stashed the gladiator in the corner next to the wall, where he wouldn’t be seen from the hallway. Then he pulled a leather coach into the opposite corner so he could lie down while keeping an eye on his patient.
That was pretty much how they spent the first night. Within an hour or so Cooper’s canteen ran dry, and as tempted as he was to go try to find a fountain to refill it, he wasn’t prepared to take the risk. Even after ‘night’ fell, and Cooper drifted off to sleep, he woke up a few times in a panic, sure the gladiator had died in the night. Every time that happened, Cooper found the other man resting comfortably in his spot on the floor, the circle above his head firmly parked at 100%.
On the second day Cooper began finally leaving Geek alone for brief periods, first to go fill his canteen and then to go find some sort of food other than day-old freak-carrots. Once that was accomplished, Cooper decided to go back to the scene of the accident to retrieve the gladiator’s shield and spear. As had happened to Cooper previously, the hallway was basically spotless now. There wasn’t a single speck of grape jelly anywhere. Even the divot marks in the floor from the arrows were gone. Weirdly though, the red diamond marks left by Cooper’s shoe were still there, as was the charcoal Cooper had drawn marking the trap.
Seeing that mark again gave Cooper an idea.
* * *
The gladiator finally awoke on the morning of the third day. Cooper was out exploring when it happened. He came back to fine the man standing against the wall holding his sword and spear, his face completely blank, like nothing unusual had happened.
“Good morning sunshine!” Cooper said cheerily. “Feeling better?”
As usual, the soldier didn’t reply.
“You know you gave me a scare back there,” Cooper continued. “From now on no more arrows in the back, okay?”
Cooper paused a moment before continuing, like the way people talk on sitcoms.
“Up for a walk?” he said. “I need to show you something.”
The gladiator’s legs seemed a little shaky at first after, but once they got going he was fine. He didn’t seem to immediately notice the charcoal marks on the walls and the floor, so Cooper helpfully pointed them out.
“I finished exploring this part of the maze,” he said. “I put signposts on at all the intersections, so we shouldn’t be getting lost any more. Also check this out.”
Cooper pointed at the floor tiles beneath them, each of which had been marked with a single black point. “At first I was thinking it would be easier to mark all the booby-trapped tiles, but then when you see an unmarked tile you don’t know if it’s been checked or not. So instead I started marking all the safe tiles. So as long as we only ever step on marked tiles, we should be perfectly safe. Now I know what you’re thinking. Sounds like a lot of work, right?”
Cooper paused for the amount of time it would have taken the gladiator to agree that it did.
“That’s why I made this little guy,” Cooper said, pulling the snake stick out from behind his back. “It wasn’t rocket science. All he had done was wedge the charcoal between the snake head and the shaft of the stick, and then tie it in place with a piece of twine.”
“It’s like a marker,” Cooper explained helpfully. “This way I can mark the tiles without having to get down on my hands and knees. But that’s not what I want to show you. Follow me.”
The spot Cooper was looking for was three more hallways over. He had left a freak-carrot in the middle of the hallway to mark it. Cooper parked Geek against the wall right next to the carrot, instructing him to stay right on that spot.
“Watch this,” Cooper said.
He put the piece of charcoal against the opposite wall, and then began walking, creating a long, horizontal line of black, smoldering ash. He did this all the way to the intersection, then turned continuing to the line into the next hallway. A minute later, Cooper appeared at the other end of the hallway, continuing that same long, horizontal line until he returned to the place it had started.
“You see that? Cooper asked of geek. “The wall goes all the way around. No rooms or anything. Crazy huh?”
Whatever Geek was thinking, he kept silent, eyes locked on the wall.
“The way I see it,” Cooper continued, “either the whole thing is one continuous block of stone or there’s a secret door somewhere. Anyway, I spent like an hour looking earlier this morning and I couldn’t find anything. What do you think?”
Geek said nothing of course. His eyes were still locked on the wall, like he was turning the problem over in his head.
“I mean it’s just a theory,” Cooper said. “There doesn’t have to be a door.”
But even then Geek doesn’t acknowledge him. Eyes still fixed on the wall.
“What is it?” Cooper asked. “What do you see?”
He follows Geek’s gaze to the wall. Then places his hands on the stone, running them up and down the surface.
He almost missed it. It wasn’t even a divot. Just a tiny little dimple, the shallowest possible depression in the wall. When he took away his hands he couldn’t even see it, but feeling for it again, yes, it was definitely there.
Holding his breath, Cooper placed two fingers in the center of the dimple, pushing has hard as he could.
Without a sound, the wall swung open.
* * * * *
Name: Cooper of Vancouver
Gender: Male
Affiliation: None
Age at Entry: 29
Current Level: The Labyrinth (1)
Jing: 10/10
Qi: 6/14
Shen: 0
Status: Cursed (3)
here.
