By David C. Daoust
Page 4 of 10
Efreet felt confident that enough of the floor was not trapped, that he shifted his attention from the dangers that may lurk in the room, to the danger present directly outside the door. He knew he could not approach the creature without being covered in acidic spores. He wondered briefly why he never carried some form of ranged weapon. While his sickles may be immune to the acid, as the metal on the door was, the rest of him would surely melt into a puddle of goo, goo that he was sure the fungal beast would absorb back into itself.
Efreet shivered at the idea of being a mopped up puddle! Almost upon the thought, he heard as the giant mushroom seemed to take another deep breath, sucking air into pores throughout its entire body, and then with an exhaled blast, a green cloud of acid spores erupted out of it. The door sizzling some more! Efreet knew the creature would continue this approach until it was through the door. While the old oak was strong, eventually, it would give way to the assault.
And so he had to be ready. The search for a trap may prove useful, though rather than disarm it, maybe he could get the creature to trigger it. He would have to find it though. If not trap the floor than what? Trap the expensive looking altar? Another screech followed another blast of noxious gas, and the first tendril crashed through the door, sending splinters of wood into the room followed by dripping goo. This was not an occurrence that helped the focused work of trap finding. There was no way this old room was left untrapped, rooms like this always held some form of booty trap. No one goes to the trouble of a secret passageway, without including a secret trap here or there.
Efreet spotted the thing before he was even close to the ground, a slightly disfigured brick set slightly above the masterful brick work. The mason that built this place probably turned in his grave when that was added. No way that wasn’t part of a device; the gnome would just have to get the creature to step on it. Step might not be the right word. Upon the pondering of a term that one may use to describe a mushrooms movement, the door finally gave way. It left behind a rather interesting pile of melting goo and splintered wood. The fungal beast was finally able to squirm through.
‘Squirm’ Efreet thought to himself amending his last statement. ‘I just need to get the thing to squirm on it.’
The creature stopped momentarily and let out another screech, this one so close Efreet thought it may pierce an ear drum. Efreet rolled forward from the altar, not going within reach of the thing, but to the far wall of the circular room. He had to taunt the creature around to the back of the altar, where the device laid. The creature was clearly blind, so he slammed his twin sickles against the wall. The thing started to shake violently, but then shifted toward Efreet’s location, screeching. Efreet was confident this meant the creature was locked on to his location. The agile gnome was weary of allowing range of its ‘spore blast’ which had a pretty powerful radius, doubly so of allowing those tendrils to club him. He leapt whenever he deemed it came too close, slamming his sickles against the wall, ‘kiting’ the creature around the room.
