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Entry Fifteen.
The thing was huge. It looked at me with its enormous, bulgeous eyes, and I saw nothing appealing in that stare.
All sorts of thoughts raced in my head. But the most insistent of all was : what am I supposed to do ? I mean, I was now certain that these 3 rooms had been planned for the three of us ; so, who was the supposed target of this precise trap ? What weapon was he or she supposed to use, and how ?
It couldn't be me : I'm useless. I can't do a thing correctly, especially not in a fight. So, my room should be empty, except maybe with a bottle as the obvious but inevitable trap, and my weapon would be the bottle once emptied. But what would the dwarf do ? What would he use ? What use would he be against a giant spider-thing ? What would Sharon do ? Seduce it by showing its breasts ? (at that moment I thought of them, bare as I had seen them at the Babies level, and even stained with blood, and maybe even more so, they were beautiful and if I was to die here I wished to die with that beautiful thing in my mind's eye).
One thing was for sure : if the spider reached me, with my feet glued in the soil and my poor fighting skills, I was dead. So I did the only sensible thing : I got rid of my only efficient weapon.
I threw the sword at the thing, without aiming, without thinking, without doubting. And that's why I made it. It went right between the creature's eyes, and planted itself in its forehead. That didn't kill it, not right away, and I thought I was lost, but the shield bought me enough time for it to finish agonizing. When it died, it sort of imploded, taking with it all of its children and the slimy thing covering the room. Weird. In an instant, I found myself standing in a hole on the ground, and the room was totally, absolutely empty. The sword was gone as well. And so was a part of my self-hatred. After all, I had made it without the others, so maybe I wasn't that useless...
I went to the second room, shielding myself from whatever could be there.
I stood on the doorstep, the shield also preventing me from seeing anything. Therefore, it was a total surprise when I hear a warm, attractive, female voice : "Please do come in, mighty warrior." I knew this part of the trap was designed for me. Not because I was in any way a mighty warrior, but because I was the only one in the group susceptible, in my opinion, to be seduced. So I entered as a true warrior should : cowering behind my shield. And that was that.
I heard nothing more, so I looked up. The room was a sleeping-room, and on the bed was the statue of the most gorgeous babe I'd ever seen. Very realistic statue, snakes included. "Oh no, I thought, not the Medusa trick !!". What lack of originality. What silly and witless conceptor would have put such a gimmick in this place ? And how in hell did I not fall for it ? I thanked my luck, my lack of courage and my shining shield, and thought that the greatest pages of legends must have been written by wittless but very, very lucky soldiers.
Now, I was sure I could cope with whatever awaited me in the last room.
I was, as usual, very, very wrong.
to be followed...