We Start At the End

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"Shup." She mumbled. Making someone shut up was very hard when you barely could even say the words. Rose stretched her body a bit and drank some water, which did help her brain to turn on properly. "Why does everyone say I don't make sense in the morning? I speak perfectly fine." She argued after her mind had woken up completely. At that point she actually tried to hear if she talked weird, but there was nothing. Once again she had missed it. No one would critique themselves when they were dead tired though, so she probably wouldn't have a chance to ever figure out that people were telling the truth.

"If I tried to hide something, I would use any means necessary with the things I already owned or could get my hands on. Maybe that was the best thing they could find." She proposed an answer to his little door dilemma as she stood up and walked towards Claude.

"Perhaps they believed the shit people said about curses and wanted to lock something in there. Scared people can do crazy stuff to get away from what fuels their fears. It doesn't take much for people to believe the unbelievable." She shrugged her shoulders.
 
"It's so strange though." Claude remarked. "Look around you, these ruins are ancient, yet this?"

He tapped his knuckles against the iron, it was thicker than he thought, and he hated to think that there really was something so dangerous behind that it was worth covering so carefully, or hastily judging by the work of it. His blade was smooth, a diamond compared to the work in front of him.

"The metal isn't even, it's not properly cooled, they just left it here." He explained. "Who would do that, why? I don't understand."

He sighed. There wasn't a thing he could do about it right there, not without the right tools, if they even existed. Again, he traced his hand along the edges and tried to see where it was weakest. Everywhere was strong though, reinforced by the metal which didn't belong.

"It's not the same time period. The ruins suggest many hundred, thousand years ago. This metal would have been hard to work with, non?"​
 
"How many explorers do you think have been down here? It must be hundreds of them, many probably died before they could get out." Rose started, not finding it very interesting to try and understand it.

"Maybe someone just saw the chance to hide the dead bodies of people they had murdered in there, but they became paranoid and just in case they made sure that no one could even get to see the bodies." She proposed an explanation.

"Or there might have been something that scared them which they locked up behind the doors. Once again, paranoia could have made them take extreme safety measures and they made sure the door wouldn't be opened for a long time." Even if it was non of those explanations, it didn't matter much. The door was closed and could probably not be opened with what they had with them at the moment.

"But if you are that curious, why don't we just come back here once we've found our way out and can get the tools for it? It's not like we won't be able to return." She sighed, thinking at least that would make him give up the impossible door for now.
 
"How many explorers do you think have been down here? It must be hundreds of them, many probably died before they could get out." Rose started, not finding it very interesting to try and understand it.

"Maybe someone just saw the chance to hide the dead bodies of people they had murdered in there, but they became paranoid and just in case they made sure that no one could even get to see the bodies." She proposed an explanation.

"Or there might have been something that scared them which they locked up behind the doors. Once again, paranoia could have made them take extreme safety measures and they made sure the door wouldn't be opened for a long time." Even if it was non of those explanations, it didn't matter much. The door was closed and could probably not be opened with what they had with them at the moment.

"But if you are that curious, why don't we just come back here once we've found our way out and can get the tools for it? It's not like we won't be able to return." She sighed, thinking at least that would make him give up the impossible door for now.
 
"Fine, fine." Claude dismissed the door aloud, but he just didn't want to let it go.

He took a step back with his hands on his hips. This was his last look at the door, one last scrutinizing look before he had to turn away and pick another door to go down. Rose must not have been nearly as interested in the mystery behind the metal door as he was. All the same, there would always be more time to explore it. There'd always be time for this place, seeing as it had enough gold for the both of them to rule England.

God Save the Queen...from my horde of gold.

Claude shook his head of black hair and made sure he had all his packs up and ready. He unsheathed his knife and gave it a good cleaning before eyeing his little Rose.

"Are we still going right, then?" He teased. "Then we best go, before you fall asleep again." Claude tapped her chin up with his fingers with a wide smirk set on his face.
​
 
"I do hope that treasure gives you money enough to buy a new tongue, cause you might not get to keep yours for much longer." She warned him with an equally big smirk. "Let's go before your door fetish acts up again." She then said as she turned from him to pick up her own bag.

While she had her flawless and useless door choosing system from the day before, she did not use it. Instead she just took a random door, walking ahead of Claude for once. The door to the right was easily opened. Maybe a bit too easy.

Looking up and down and to the sides she tried to see if there was some kind of obvious trap. "They're getting lacier the deeper we get." Rose commented and pointed towards the ceiling that was filled with holes. "They didn't even care to hide the activation mechanism." She looked down on the obvious rope on the ground. Of course people would get more careless once they got so far down, but it still seemed a bit suspicious to make it so easy. "If that's not a decoy of course..." She mumbled. What if something more invincible would activate the trap.

"Maybe it's the floor... What do you think Claude?"
 
"Oh, mon amour." Claude fanned his forehead, turning back dramatically to reach out for the door he'd left behind. Fetish was a little strong, but, it certainly described the situation well enough.

He was past her, examining the floor from the opposite side. His hand was over his mouth, knuckles against the skin as he thought. It really was too obvious, but, with their friend back at the door? There was a good chance someone before them had activated some of the traps already. Instead of being cautious though, he cut the rope with his wire and took a step towards Rose. Behind him a large set of spikes appeared from the ceiling and dropped down onto the space he was previously standing.

"Well look at that." He mused. "It seems we almost were impaled."

Claude took a few cautious steps forward, eyeing the walls around them for any more obvious traps.​
 
Spikes dropped from the ceiling as the rope was cut. But not from the obvious place in front of them, but from behind them. "Holy shit." Rose exclaimed as she jumped up to her feet. "Have I ever told you that you're crazy Claude?" She asked him after a few seconds of taking the scene in. She certainly had, a lot of times. "You're way too reckless."

One day he would most likely get himself killed in a trap, thinking he could be smarter than the builder. And she would probably be right there next to him, forced to go under with that fool. On the other hand, if this mission went as they hoped it would, then they wouldn't need to do this kind of stuff ever again.

"There might be something that can activate these spikes too... So, should we be extremely careful and slowly go over or make a run for it hoping they'll miss us? It's not very far to the end of the holes." Claude's behavior seemed to be contagious. It wasn't often she were suggesting such a rash thing as sprinting over a death trap, hoping the activation would be too slow to get them. But since they couldn't see any more ways for them to activate, running would be safer than walking. If they happened to activate it while walking, they would never stand a chance to get over.
 
"Oh, you would rather run now? How dangerous." He smirked and took another careful step forward.

Claude pulled Rose along with him, easily lifting her up over the spikes and pressing his foot down on various floor tiles. He wanted to see first if it was the floor or the rope which had triggered the spikes. Sure enough, the rope was merely a decoy. His foot felt the edge of a rather wobbly stone, which faltered under their combined weight.

"Ah, it is the floor then." He confirmed, smiling brilliantly at his discover. The French man set her down and pulled a knife from his belt. He didn't have anything heavier to his dismay, but he figured it might help them find the traps to come. As they walked he'd stop occasionally and take a jab at the ground. Once that grew tedious, he used his foot instead, deciding a lost foot was better than his head.

"The traps are becoming, eh, less and less?" He shrugged and put the knife back. "Perhaps they are not working?"​
 
Rose weren't too happy with having been picked up like that, but if she started to complain she knew he would tease her in one way or another. "I can walk myself, you know." She mumbled as he set her down.

"Perhaps they're old as hell and the mechanism has gotten shut. It's not that uncommon in old places. Nothing last forever." She replied the question he probably didn't expect an answer to. "But it could also be a way of making the intruders feel more secure and make more careless moves." Rose then added. There was always a chance that they were smart enough to think about how much good news, like less traps, would affect a human's mind and how it could change their actions from careful to careless.

Looking up towards the ceiling she gulped. Having one of those going down into your head couldn't be a very nice feeling. Would you even have the time to feel it before you died? She shivered and looked forward again. "Poor idiots who die like this." It sounded more insulting than actually pitiful. But it was a bit their own fault if they didn't watch out around trap filled catacombs.
 
"Hm. Let us find out if they work."

Claude eyed the ground, his feet groping for weak spots. When he found one, he'd move forward quickly, letting whatever trap he'd activated whir past him. Laughing as he went, spikes and pillars smashed their way around them, it was a game to avoid them. It was honestly quite fun, he was enjoying the danger all around him.

"Come, mon petit Rose," He cooed, holding out his hand as he stepped on the next trap. It clanked loudly, jamming in place before awkwardly jutting out and cutting through the side of his hand. Claude gasped, but didn't cry out, he was used to pain of all kinds and this was simply another scrape he could handle. He stopped his little game of trap finding and examined the blood trickling out off the side of his left hand. "Ah, how careless of me."

His cockiness had gotten him injured, that much he could attest for. Grinning, he pointed to the spot on the floor he'd last touched and with that asshole grin he told her, "Don't step there."​
 
Rose stood still for a moment, watching the idiotic fool dancing around while traps were trying to kill him. Sure they had gotten way too slow after hundreds of years without being used, but they could still be dangerous. And just as she thought that, a spike cut his hand. Timing, she thought to herself.

She shook her head as if she was babysitting a little child. "You're a reckless idiot." She told him and started to step everywhere he hadn't, being careful so that the stones didn't move before she let her full body weight down on them.

Eventually there didn't seem to be any spike holes left, and there was nothing to be seen that could be a trap. "Seems like we're finally in a safe spot. What will come next? A pit with poisonous snakes? That's a classic right?" There had been rumors of explorers falling down into hidden holes and having been killed by trapped snakes. The question she had to that was, how the heck did the snakes survive for hundreds of years if they couldn't get out? Did the people that build the traps just hope enough mice would be foolish enough to get down there? She doubted those traps existed, though she could understand if there were holes to fall into and poisonous snakes happened to have a lair there which they could leave whenever they wished. That made more sense.
 
"I think the snakes would have died." Claude assumed. "Perhaps we are more likely to encounter, eh, spiders or scorpions?"

He wasn't sure where to lead. The hallway continued on without much of a prelude to stopping any time soon. On and on, they would have to walk, attempting to avoid the traps which would become harder to see. Claude didn't like this, didn't like it at all. He stopped and whistled once, listening to his echo continue down the dark corridor. It kept going, and going, but there was a point in which it stopped and this pleased him.

"Would you like to continue down this way then? I would like to keep my he-" Claude was interrupted by the tug of a wire on his boot and he cursed loudly, jumping back reflexively as a large wall of spikes nearly cut him in two.​
 
"Preferably scorpions then. Spiders creeps me out." Rose said, feeling her body itching just thinking about them walking all over her. Bugs in general didn't disturb her. Even cockroaches, which seemed to scare every woman on earth, was fine in her book. Spiders was a different matter though. It was something about those eight legged creatures she just hated.

Having become slightly paranoid from talk about spiders, she were too distracted looking out for them to notice Claude's careless step forward. Suddenly she heard a sound that made her jump halfway to the ceiling.

"What the heck. Do you have to activate every damn trap in here Claude?" She burst out before even having checked if he were okay. "You're going to give me a heart attack one day." She then continued with a softer, slightly more worried tone, after having taken some breaths.

"I wonder if this amount of traps is to make sure that we won't get to something really nice, or if it's a distraction to make us believe that and then walk to an empty room. I would probably build the latter just to irritate explorers." She chuckled at the end. It wouldn't be that fun if it happened to them, but she could see the humor in doing something like that as long as one were on the right end of things. "I think it's worth to try and press on, if we can find a way through this." Rose then commented. The harder the journey, the bigger the treasure, at least if the world was fair. Which it rarely was, but still. Either way she was curious for what they hid back there.
 
The end of the hall did come, and with it Claude was calmed somewhat by the feeling of progress. At the end, there were three new doors to choose from. Similar to before, one was barred shut, more hastily than the last it would have seemed. He tried to draw a mental map in his head, and figured they must have led to the same place. Both of them turned inward towards the center, their path had only taken them along the edge.

"It seems my love has returned to me." He teased in reference to his supposed door fetish. "How do you not find it strange?"

It definitely wasn't the same door, but the metal was much thinner than before. The man tried to think up a reason as to why that would be, but, nothing came to him. It was just like before. He scratched the stubble on his chin, giving up more quickly than the last time.

"We went right, there are three more doors. What do you suppose the odds of another set of three will be if we go right again?"

The second of decisions gave him time to examine his hand. It was done bleeding, but the sting was still there.​
 
Soon they came to a very similar room as to the one they had recently been in. If it weren't the exact same one. Rose weren't too sure which was true. Either way, it was slightly frustrating that they might either have gone in a circle, or had even more doors to choose from.

"Fate has apparently decided that you should start your own harem." She teased him before picking up the map and wrote down exactly how much they had felt the path turning and figured that they hadn't gone in a circle.

Rose sighed loudly. "I hate labyrinths!" She stated. "I bet there soon will be six doors in every room." She mumbled and looked towards the barricaded door. "Maybe we should try to get those locked doors up instead? It doesn't seem like this mindless guessing will lead us anywhere." She proposed, but the question that would follow was, how the heck would they do that?

"How come we never have anything explosive with us when we need it?" It might not be too smart to blow the door up, as they could be in danger too. But as long as they had tunnels to hide behind and were careful, it usually weren't a problem. There was a risk for the tunnel to fall in on itself if the explosion were too big though.
 
"Oh, would you like to be included, little one?" Claude teased her, wrapping a creeping hand around his waist. and pulling her close. He did that often enough, but she'd never reciprocated the awful joking. This wasn't anything new, he didn't expect her to joke back, or even be serious.

Explosions though? Those might be a bit noisy, as well as too destructive. If they blasted through anything thin, it could leave holes which were irreparable. The doors might not even be destroyed, just the stone around them. It wasn't a terrible idea, he just worried about falling down any further and being unable to get out.

"Hm, I do not have any explosives, we would have to make them ourselves. Gunpowder, non, it is necessary?" He kept his arm wrapped jokingly around her waist, staring intently at the door as he began to scratch his beard again. "Let us continue, perhaps we may find something better."​
 
"Go hump a door or something. That might frighten them into opening." Rose said as she pushed herself away. But he was right. Gunpowder was the best thing they had at the moment, but making it explode would both be dangerous as they couldn't control it as they could normal explosives, and it might not work either way. What they had probably wasn't enough for those doors.

"Let's just take a door. We can always come back later if we can't find the treasure anywhere else." She told him and took up a coin. After having flipped it she pointed at one of the doors. "The almighty coin chose that way." She said dramatically before walking towards the door.

Rose made a nice gentleman gesture once she had opened the door and said, "ladies first."
 
"You are only calling yourself a man now." Claude shrugged and took the lead. "Perhaps it is because you don't want to have your head lopped off by a trap, non?"

He scowled, but he pressed on. What he found though was surprising. The wall just a few feet inside had a hole on it, breaking through into a hidden room. Once he peaked his head inside, he instantly regretted it. There were no traps or mechanics to be found, but the decrepit smell still pierced through his lungs. A body lay in the floor, his hands reaching out for the hole he must have created. Looking up towards the ceiling it was obvious he fell, but how far, he couldn't tell.

"Mon petit, stay back." He warned. Claude stepped inside and began to rummage through the man's pack after saying a silent prayer for him. A shame, he met his end too soon.

Inside he found an empty canteen which smelled of liquor, a small pouch which was also empty. After sniffing the top, Claude could say he'd smelled something similar before, metallic, he'd bet there was indeed gunpowder inside, but it was gone now. Probably used to make the hole. There wasn't anything useful besides a new knife, a small pistol with no bullets. He would've considered himself lucky if there had been dried food of some kind, but all Claude received were useless sacks. They could always carry more treasure, but the first objective was to actually find what they were looking for.

He climbed out from the hole and presented his prizes. Nothing.

"I have to assume our friend inside blew himself up, let us not make the same mistake." He warned. "But...perhaps..."

Claude went back inside and peered at the far wall. In the dark it was almost impossible to see, but once he brought his torch closer he was able to see that the stone wall was cracked. With a few bashes from the back of his blade, he was able to break through into a new hallway. He turned back, beaming to his companion. This could very possibly be a way inside the sealed doors.​
 
"Rather be a man than headless." Rose smirked as Claude passed her. Sometimes it was good not to follow societies norms. It was much less dangerous in their job. On the other hand, people rarely expected women to chose that kind of work. Either you became a slave to your husband or you were crazy. What a boring event-less life, Rose thought. She would never be able to stand it.

It didn't take them long to find a crack in the wall. Of course Claude decided to recklessly check it out. She was just waiting for him to loose his head. Luckily nothing happened. At first he didn't seem to find anything, but as he looked a second time something seemed to take his interest. Then he broke into the wall and opened up the way into a new tunnel.

Rose clapped her hands. "It seems like those muscles of yours finally came to some good use." She said as she walked into the room and up to the opened up crack. "Too bad that guy didn't think of it. He might have been able to find another way out." She commented, giving a pitiful look towards the skeleton.

"Oh well, one persons death, another ones treasure. That's how the saying goes, right? Let's move forward."
 
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