Mazerynth by Jeffery Russell

Author:Jeffery Russell [Russell, Jeffery]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-01-22T22:00:00+00:00

Ginny left her to her scrolls and within a minute was following Mayne to another wall of shelves. It did not take her long to find a stack of papyrus relating to pyramid construction. There were two entire rows dedicated to it, just above the rows for ‘Giant Statue Construction’. Oooh, and a shelf for tomb-trap design.

She returned to the table a few minutes later with her arms loaded. Ruby was gone.

“Oh, bugger,” Ginny said.

***

“What’s up next?” Thud asked.

“Well,” Keezix said, “with a name like ‘The Mazerynth’ you’re going to expect a maze of some kind, eh? This is it.”

“I hate mazes,” Thud said. “A maze on its own ain’t nothing but a time delay. Even adventurers are smart enough to bring chalk or twine to trace their way or, barring that, just follow one wall. Inevitably you’ll get through it.”

“That sounds easy enough,” Durham said.

“Aye, too easy. There’s always something else in a maze, otherwise it ain’t worth the time to build. Traps, monsters, hostile livestock…”

“Mirrors in this one,” Keezix said. “Placed in ways to make it look like there’s halls where there’s walls and walls where there’s halls. And some of the mirrors, once they catch your reflection, create a copy of you that comes out and attacks.”

Thud gave an appreciative nod. “Mondolian dueling mirrors. Nice havin’ that part written down for us instead of havin’ to discover it. Suppose we have the whole route mapped?”

Keezix nodded. “Except the dueling mirrors are in different places each time through.”

“Can we break them?” Durham asked.

“Not easily,” Thud said. “Not if they’re Mondolian mirrors or anything similar. Anything coming at ‘em gets reflected in the mirror. If you fire a crossbow bolt at it then it reaches the mirror and goes nose on with an exact copy crossbow bolt traveling just as fast. Just pings right off onto the ground. Hit it with a hammer and you’re going to meet a reflecting hammer hittin’ just as hard. Now, I ain’t one to worry, but I’m a pain in the ass to fight against.” He nodded at Keezix. “You got a plan so we don’t have to fight copies of ourselves?”

“Of course.”

“Do you think that’s how they make the goblins?” Durham asked. “Reflect a goblin in the mirrors and get a bunch of copies? Mirrors are made of glass, after all, and glass is made from sand. Maybe reflections fall apart into mirror sand.”

“That’s a fine hypothesis,” Mungo said in a way that clearly communicated he was about to refute it. “But reflective constructs dissipate as soon as they lose visual contact with their mirror.”

“Maybe Frothnozzle found a way to improve them.”

“Fortunate that we have some available here for testing,” Mungo said.

“Wait,” Keezix said. “Activating mirrors was not part of the plan I had for going through. Thought that was the part we’d be wanting to avoid.”

“What’s yer plan?” Thud asked. “Might be easy to slide a modification in.”

“Well, Plan A was to just to eliminate the room’s light source if possible. No light means no reflections and we can just work through the route we have on the map.

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