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haha… did you just compare him to a damsel in distress? haha. I wonder how he’ll feel about that.

I completely agree! So many people try to capture success, and it just can’t be done. All of our society seems obsessed with it. No tropes because tropes are typically over done. But they are overdone because they work and are well liked and enjoyable. Adjectives are overdone so don’t use them, but adjectives are so overdone because they are so helpful. Ad nauseam. Unfortunately, they do the same thing to my profession – teaching. They try to box up what works for some teachers and mass produce it for everyone else, then education departments get their hands on it and try to force entire districts to follow the box exactly and… yeah, I can rant for hours about it… so I’ll stop there.

Ku’Aya

Too slow. The gas was already seeping into the hall.

They weren’t moving fast enough.

“Yo, big man, mind giving a hand?”

The guy was almost as tall as a loxor, and it looked like he wore a dozen layers of clothes and armor. Just one layer of his armor looked like it would outweigh me.

He stepped up and helped carry Abirami up the stairs.

I raced forward, hoping beyond hope that the gas wouldn’t reach up to the top floor. I already had my flies racing through the second floor, searching for dangers, traps, or the next flight up stairs up.

Near the top of the flight of stairs, one of my spies flew up to a sconce. Something strange about it. The wall underneath it had streak marks. The fly flew under the sconce and up inside a crack. The vision in my left eye darkened as I tried to see what the fly visualized, while trying to keep my balance while climbing.

“Oh.” Was it a trap? Would hinder us or help us?

I quickened the pace.

Just as I reached the last loop of stairs, a scream rang out. I leaned over the banister to look down below. Two people were near the bottom of the stairs, the gas was filling the room and had almost engulfed them.

A bright light flashed, and the cloud halted. Then, the two moved up the stairs with inhuman speed. The light, coming from a girl a little further up the stairs, blinked out, and the gas assumed its upward path.

No.

My ants could carry her, if I sent enough of them, but they could neither reach her in time nor could I assume they would be able to withstand whatever that gas was. Instinctually, I sent my ants anyway. Abirami would be furious with me if I didn’t at least try, even if it was futile.

The lever. It was the only real option I had left. But my spies hadn’t figured out where the trap led to yet. No telling if it would help us or hurt us. What if it collapsed the stairwell? We’d all be dead. But what if it didn’t? All I knew was it led down toward the bottom of the stairs.

No time for hesitation. Life was cruel. There was no second chances in situations like this, so might as well live without regrets.

I ran up and grabbed the sconce. “Welp, the greatest only as strong as the weakest. Sure hope you’re right, Ami.”

I pulled the lever.

A gear crunched, and a whoosh sounded. I ran to the banister. The gas covered the lower end of the stairs, and I couldn’t see the girl. Then the cloud quivered, then began dipping down in the middle, toward the back entrance. Like a funnel, the cloud receded toward the center and down toward the floor.

The girl’s prone frame lay on the stairs as the gas slowly receded down.

The gas was still flowing into the room, however, now I could faintly see a trap door had opened up at the foot of the stairs, and the gas was falling into it.

I sighed in relief. Perhaps I did have some of Abirami’s dumb luck, after all.

My ants reached the girl soon after and began lifting her body. Like a sea of moving water, the girl looked like she was floating up the stairs.

The two who had sped up the stairs at tremendous speed stopped just behind me and breathed heavily. They both sounded like old foggies on their deathbed.

“Who knows how much gas was released,” I said. “Gotta keep moving ’til we’re sure we’re safe.”

As I turned, I saw one of them nodding, her hair clinging to her hair with sweat. Her skin looked unnaturally pale.

I sighed and walked into the next room. It was empty, so I walked up and sat in the middle of it.

“Come,” I ordered as I reached into my pack and pulled out the artifact.

The guy looked to the rich girl, but she was staring at the artifact. Couldn’t tell if it was a look of horror, dread, or disgust.

I placed the artifact down in front of me and glared at them. “You wanna die? Come here!”

The guy hesitated, but moved forward, trying to pull the girl with him as he went.

“Doesn’t that thing transfer pain to another person, or something?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said bluntly. “Or something. And my insects don’t feel pain, so get your butt over here.”

Not knowing what poison was in the gas, I chose a millipede for my first option. The millipedes held potent acid within them, so it was worth a shot. I didn’t want my bugs to die, if I could help it. But an insects life was much shorter than a person’s. The trade was highly worth it. Though, I couldn’t help but admit it: I got along much better with my insects than most people.

“Place your hand here,” I told hunk blondie. He had reached me first, so no use wasting time. He smelled of salt, and I wasn’t loathed to think I liked the scent.

He did as I asked, and I placed the tip of the other gem stone to my palm, which held the millipede in its center.

The relief was nearly instantaneous on blondies face. After the gems clicked back into place, I turned my palm out, and the millipede fell to the ground, dead.

It had died the moment the transfer had started. So much for that. Nice thing about the artifact, even if the transfer overwhelms the host, it doesn’t stop until the entire transfer is complete. Life for a life. No need for many sacrifices.

I repeated the process for rich girl, this time with a roach. It died, but the princess was saved.

Instead of gratitude, which I wasn’t really looking for anyway – send that useless stuff Ami’s way – she looked at me with a puzzled look in her face and asked, “If you can use bugs to transfer the pain, why’d Abirami-”

I could guess what her question was, and the answer irked me as much as her question did. “‘Cause he’s stupid.”

She seemed taken aback by my answer.

The loxor-sized walking suit of armor and the womanizer walked in, dragging Abirami up between the two of them.

The princess girl looked back at Abirami, then back at me, tilting her head to the side.

I sighed. “He’d probably say something about taking responsibility and doing what’s right, or some nonsense like that.”

“But can’t you take his pain away now?”

I shook my head. “The artifact has genetic memory, or something like that. Don’t know what it means, but every time a person is drained of pain, it becomes less effective for that person. Makes no sense to me, but all I know is it stops working after about five times.”

She tilted her head the other way, glancing back at Abirami.

“You can still take other people’s pain as many times as you want, you just can’t have your pain taken away more than that.”

Rich girl shook her head.

Yeah. I felt the same. Whoever made the stupid artifact made really stupid rules for it.

The last person to filter into the room was the girl, riding on the back of my army of ants.

I smiled. It always looked so funny, seeing some massive object slide seamlessly over the floor, seemingly from nothing. Sometimes I imagined I was moving them with my mind, instead of with my ants. Always made me chuckle. Of course, that was impossible.

After taking her pain, she woke up and seemed confused about where she was. She repeated a few names I’d never heard before. Poor girl looked like she was in shock, or dazed, or perhaps just drowsy, like she’d just woken up in a strange place. Well, I guess she had.

I stood and hollered out to the group.

“Okay. Let’s move. Who knows how long that trap door will keep the gases at bay.”