Chapter Text
To be fair to Senshi, Chilchuck should have known better than to place his trust in the dwarf’s instruction-following abilities.
I mean, really, how could the lockpick expect Senshis’ clumsy, frog-skin darned feet to stay away from the trap triggering tiles?
Now however, Chilchuck is pissed. Rightly so, as a misplaced dwarven boot on the wrong tile has just dropped him through a trapdoor ten feet below his party and into a damp, dark room.
A trapdoor that had now clamped closed above him, shutting out the cries of shock from his party right alongside his hopes of climbing out.
The Half-foot painfully levers himself into a sitting position, gauging his bruises and mentally cataloging the space around him. He spots an unlit torch holstered above him on the wall to his right, and sags with relief. ‘at least I won’t have to trip around in the dark for fuck knows how long’.
“uurgh…”
Chilchuck scrambles to stand, whipping toward the pained noise behind him, hand poised at his hip (the storage place for one of the few knives he keeps on his person), to see-
oh… that lump of clothes looks a little too much like a certain elf’s.
Fuck.
He stares at the grumbling heap of his party’s mage, assessing her form for signs of injury, seeing nothing but scrapes and what he’s sure will develop into some nasty bruises.
‘I guess we won’t be needing the torch’.
He hopes there’s no major wounds masked by the darkness, because he is not going to be carrying the 3-times-his-size woman out of this mess.
“Hey,” Chilchuck crouches down, impatiently slapping his palm on the magic user’s cheek, “Marcille, get up.”
“Nngh,” the fallen witch intelligently grumbles while pushing up off the ground, rubbing the back of her head, “’m up, I’m up, wha- happn’d?”
“You fell down a hole.” Chilchuck deadpanned, only to be met with a blank stare.
He clarified; “I also fell down a hole.”
“Oh…ok,” Marcille rises on unsteady legs and looks around the room they landed in, squinting (unsuccessfully) through the dark, “Where are we exactly?”
Chilchuck raises an eyebrow at her, “Same place we were before, just lower.”
The elf glares, “No, I mean- How are we going to get out?”
Now content with his companions’ living status, Chilchuck stumbles to his feet before responding; “Well for starters,” Chilchuck states, “We could use your magic glow-y orbs to, y’know, see.”
Marcille grumbles under her breath before crouching down and searching the floor for Ambrosia, bumping her hand into the staff, and grasping it to her chest in a hug, “Oh thank god I didn’t lose you Ana!”
Chilchuck rolls his eyes, prompting Marcille to blush and hastily incant light bearing balls which settle, floating, above the two.
Now able to see their surroundings, the half-foot freezes through a spike of panic. Not because he doesn’t know where they are, but because he does.
Interpreting Chilchuck’s lack of movement as him not recognizing their environment, Marcille whines, “Ugh, great if you’re lost, then we’re out of hope,” she slumps against the nearest cavern wall, “Let’s just wait for Senshi and Liaos to open-” She cuts herself off, spotting the wide eyes of her partner.
“What? What’s wrong? Chilchuck?”
Chilchuck seems to shake himself from his anxiety, vision clearing, “We have to move,” He grabs Marcille’s arm and pulls her along towards a particularly crumbled wall of the room, marching through into a dingey stone hallway with the occasional off shooting room.
The elf digs her heels into the ground stopping Chilchuck in his tracks, “Wait, wait, what do you mean ‘we have to move’? Do you know where we are?”
“yes,” The smaller man whispers harshly, “And we aren’t safe here, so let’s go,” he pulls at Marcille to no avail.
“No.”
“NO?” Chilchuck narrows his eyes at her, agitated, “What do you mean NO?”
Marcille stands her ground, “I mean no. Not until you tell me what’s freaking you out so bad that we’re actively moving away from our friends.”
“Look, I-” The Half-foot huffs, rubbing the bridge of his nose and looking so weary that Marcille almost drops it. Almost. “There’s a party that stays around here who we do not want to cross paths with. Trust me.”
The elf stares at Chilchuck, eyebrow raised, “oh what, are they going to ask us about our personal lives?” She rolls her eyes.
Chilchuck scoffs and turns, walking away, “Listen, if you want to sit here and wait to get captured and thrown in a cage to be killed for entertainment, or used as bait,” He crosses his arms defensively “Then I won’t stop you, but you sure as hell won’t make it out of here without me.”
Marcille pales, “Chilchuck, did- have you…” Chilchuck stiffens, Marcille sighs deciding for once not to push, “ok… ok, lead the way.”
Still stiff but less visibly tense, Chilchuck continues forward, trusting his companion to follow.
They trek forward for what feels like hours, Chilchuck in the lead, walking as if he intimately knows the way out of these tunnels. Marcille tries not to think about what that could mean for the smallest party member.
At least they don’t have to worry about getting lost. Their journey would be quick if not for Chilchuck stopping frequently to ensure no traps or people were lurking around corners.
Marcille thinks Chilchuck’s being overly cautious, as their path looks completely abandoned.
After a good chunk of time has passed of seeing no people, Chilchuck begins to relax, shoulders slumping, turning corners with less hesitance.
Unfortunately for the duo, that’s exactly what leads to Marcilles staff catching on a hanging snare trigger hidden by a turn in their path.
Marcille shrieks as her insistent grasp on Ambrosia pulls her up along with it. Both mage and staff are tangled into the snare fully.
The elf is left swinging painfully by the weight of her arm, the thin wire biting into her flesh.
Chilchuck, who was frantically scrabbling at the wall next to the trap trying to find the mechanism to disarm his party member, comes to a complete stop in his movements.
He perks up and glances behind him, down the long hallway, before tensing up and resuming his attempts to free Marcille with new vigor, muttering frantically.
“Shitshitshitfuck- they need their bait alive so there has to be a release mechanism there has to unless- oh shit, unless this is a trap they use for food. Nope, no, they wouldn’t use a snare mechanism this small for any of the monsters around here this has to be meant for half-foots holyshit they’re going to get me again-.”
Marcille tries wriggling her arm out of the wire but succeeded in nothing but more stinging pain, felt strongly despite the growing numbness of her limb.
Marcille stops her struggling when she notices that below her Chilchuck seems to be working himself into a genuine panic, maybe she should’ve been listening harder to his rant so at the very least she could figure out what triggered his fear.
By now, the Half-foot has his arm shoved almost entirely into a loosened brick opening next to the hanging elf and her staff. By now all that’s making it out of his mouth is profanity, most of which Marcille doesn’t recognize as common speech.
Considering the last time Chilchuck swore in his native tongue was when Laios almost got half his party killed by the Red Dragon, they were fucked.