Roll an Investigation Check... (2/2)

Threadbare stared at them for a full second, as the implications sunk in. “Nobody move,” he said, turning to check his group.

He noted, without much surprise, that the door had shut behind them.

“Glub, please try a firestarter on the door. Keep calm if it doesn't work and tell me what you see.”

Glub nodded, and pointed. “Firestarter.”

The spark flicked out, and Glub's eyes opened wide. “Three question marks, boss.”

“It's in the wood, and the ropes, and everything organic,” Threadbare said. “That's what I think.”

“It's all around us?” Apollyon said, then he swallowed hard. “Okay. Okay, we knew we'd be walking into a trap. This is it. Now what do we do?”

Threadbare walked back, pausing to check the nearest chair with Firestarter. Again, a failure. Again, the three question marks.

“It hasn't attacked us yet,” Fluffbear said. “I'm thinking... I'm thinking maybe it has trouble seeing us.”

“I was thinking the same thing, earlier,” Threadbare said, reaching his friends and feeling a small twitch of relief that he'd made it in one piece. This was nerve-wracking, and he didn't even have nerves. “I believe that it works through a sense of touch. The tendrils that attacked us out in the forest may have been on the surface, and stepped on by the mice or perhaps we walked on them ourselves.”

“Either that or, mmmm... it gains some advantage from us touching it,” Dracosnack said. “It IS an ambush predator. That seems fairly obvious.”

“So how do we get out of the kill zone?” Apollyon asked, looking around. “The doors are all shut. And all wood.”

“I maybe have a way to help with that,” Buttons said, slinging her gun. “If we're lucky. And you promise not to give me shit about it.”

“Believe me, taunting you is the last thing on my mind,” Apollyon muttered.

“All right. Then I'm breaking out the Burglar Skills. Case the Joint. Stealthy Step. Find Trap.”

“You know, I was wondering why Garon didn't send a rogue type with us,” Glub said.

“Shh!” Fluffbear hopped up and batted his lips.

“Sorry, sorry.”

The two of them that could breathe held their breath as Buttons glided across the floor, using all the tricks she'd learned from her boring garrison posting and education under a less-than-lawful quartermaster.

Nothing stirred as she moved. With the door shut the braziers had stilled above them. She gave them a wide berth anyway, and picked around the table, then stopped, foot raised, and backed away before she could step on a small throw rug.

And then, as she picked her way around that she paused, and pointed at a section of the wall, where three candelabra stood next to the bare stone. “Ah-ha!”

Her voice echoed and the group tensed, waiting for the thing to strike...

...but the moment passed.

“What did you find?” Threadbare called out, keeping his voice low and calm.

“Secret door, sir. Right Candelabra's got a wire that goes between the floor tiles. Pretty sure that's the trigger. And that section of the wall will swing out, or I'm no Tinker.”

“Okay,” Fluffbear squeaked. “Let's come around to you. When we get there, we'll trigger the secret door together and see if it leads to someplace that has less wood.”

They took it slow. They took it steady. And Fluffbear used every bit of her ride skill to keep an increasingly nervous and growling Mopsy walking carefully around the furniture. At one point Threadbare put his rod up to keep her tail from smacking into a chair leg.

Your Stealth skill is now level 35!

It had been a while since that had happened. But Threadbare didn't need to see those words to feel the danger.

“Okay, stop,” Buttons whispered as they crept up past the table. “Pretty sure this wall swings out. Any closer and you'll risk it running into you.”

“Is there enough clearance?” Fluffbear said anxiously. “If it pushes the table, the monster will probably notice.”

“It should miss the table and the chairs,” Buttons said. “I got an intelligence point when I mathed it out. And here I was thinking I'd never need geometry again. I owe Mrs. Morgenboffer an apology. And maybe her ring back. Anyway, are you ready?”

“Do it,” Fluffbear squeaked, hauling out her sword and shield and taking the left flank. Without a word Apollyon slid to the right flank, and Threadbare squared up the rear.

The candelabra creaked as Buttons tipped it.

The wire pulled taut and something clicked beneath the stones.

And with a rumbling of dust and cobwebs, a seam appeared in the stone, and a ten foot-tall and ten foot-wide slab of stone swung free, mechanisms groaning as old gears labored to push the secret passage open. It went slowly, trailing cobwebs like a bride's dress on the ground, revealing a room beyond.

The rest of the group peered in, trying to see what they could in the gloom and dust and mess.

But Threadbare, used as he was to looking up, found his gaze tracking up above.

Up to where the edge of the secret door was heading straight on a collision course to one of the hanging braziers.

“Look out!” he said, in the second before the wall hit the brazier...

...and the entire room burst into a flurry of monstrous action.