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"Can't you decide?" Weft pleaded. His brother hadn't told him what to do and he didn't like it much.
After considering for a moment, Nico twirled the club at her side and let it spin out of her hand in a slow arc. When it finished clattering and rolling, the tip pointed more towards the right, so she indicated the right door.
"That way."
She followed that direction herself, only slowed down by flipping the club up with a foot to catch it.
Daaren sat up and watched her closely. Her improving mood was probably a good sign.
"In this room things will be slippery underfoot," said the voice in Weft's head. Weft adjusted his headband slightly; he was comforted to know that it was still working.
He opened the door with his characteristic attentiveness and caution. There were no untoward devices in door or doorframe, but once he'd looked in, a previously invisible nozzle in the ceiling sprayed oil down the back of his collar.
This resulted, some fraction of a second later, in one monk crouched on the opposite side of the corridor in the Cripple's Guard, billy-club raised and looking rather wild around the hair and eyes.
"What's the matter?" Nico tucked the club under her left arm and took a step towards Weft, wanting to check just what had hit him, but thought better of approaching further. She didn't know if he was just spooked, or if the stuff was something seriously nasty, but either way she didn't want to become a target for a reflexive attack.
After a moment, Weft eased out of his obviously defensive posture enough to feel around his neck with a hand.
"Just some kind of grease, I think..." He sniffed his fingers. "Fish-liver oil?"
"Good for your joints," said his brother. The artifical voice managed to sound annoyingly cheerful.
"Only if I licked it," retorted Weft to a camera.
Daaren gave Suitov a dubious look, wondering if the mage was cracking or dealing.
"Which isn't a good idea unless you're certain it's harmless, obviously," said Nico, having guessed the gist of what Weft's brother had said entirely incorrectly. Antipathy outweighted curiosity, or she might have asked.
She turned her attention to the room, standing back a bit from the door frame. The floor was divided into facets the size of children's desktops at slight angles, and rose in one smooth, steep ramp at the far side. A few obstacles, rectangular pillars and sections of wall, were scattered around the room, and, like the walls, studded with colourful, transparent spikes. Appart from those, everything gleamed with oil or more viscous grease.
Moving to the right, she noted that there was an alternative path offered: Platforms projecting from the left wall could be used as stepping stones - if jumping from one foot-wide, slippery support to the next, risking a drop that towards the end might be four metres down was your idea of a good idea.
Nico leaned to the left instead and studied the wall sections there. They were a bit lower than the top of the ramp, but well over head-hight even for considerably taller humans. She wondered what things would look like seen from the top.
After a quick glance towards the top of the door, she spun around the right side of the frame, bending her knees to keep her balance as she slid down the small ramp. That nozzle didn't hit her.
"This isn't an illusion, is it brother?"
"Not as far as I can tell," Suitov replied. He looked, in fact, faintly pleased.
Weft studied the layout and sought memories of training in a long-distant winter.
To get an overview of the layout details she wanted to know, Nico had to get closer to the other end of the room, past the spiked piece of wall running left to right. The next section of the floor she tried to cross unexpectedly tilted when she got near its end, throwing her off balance. She caught herself on a knee and an elbow, which hurt, but she really didn't want to get her hands greasy at this point.
"No, doesn't seem to be an illusion. Why do you ask?"
Daaren meanwhile checked for different views of the room. He had a guess of what Nico had in mind, and wanted to find some information she couldn't get yet.
"Well, the fire was," said Weft, noting carefully which areas moved or gave Nico the most trouble.
"Yep. Fire's more scary, though." Nico was concentrating on her progress, which distracted her to the point of talking, slowly, about something entirely different. "It's light, though. And for this clear grease stuff, you'd basically just need the oily sheen. Also light. No colour change neccessary, the floor is different from the walls and stuff, anyway."
Her progress was slow and awkward, but controlled. She stood up straight past the middle of the room and took in the details of the spiked pieces of wall. Up close, the spikes didn't look particularly sharp, though if you fell or slid against them it would certainly hurt. The biggest section was sort of an L-shape.
The voice in her ear made her flinch. "As far as I can tell, the tops of those walls are flat are not greased. I am not completely certain about the second part, though, and I can't check for any oil sprays like there was at the door." It unnerved Nico that he had apparently guessed her idea - not that she'd been trying to be sneaky, probably a mistake - and threw her in a loop of wondering just how much of the layout and setup consisted of headgames.
"Suitov could have done it easily," Weft remarked. Of course Suitov wasn't really involved with all this. Weft had the impression the mage-lord's opinion would be much the same as Nico's, if much more subtly expressed. He realised he didn't want to tell Suitov about this assignment at all.
Which was strange, because there was nothing to be ashamed of here; at least Weft didn't think there was, never mind that an outsider was trying to convince him differently. He wished she wouldn't.
"Wouldn't've done it quite like that," Suitov said absent-mindedly. He was on his feet as usual, toying with a lever that did nothing important, and generally not doing anything interesting. Outwardly.
Then again, and although this showed deplorably little respect for the format of the show, Iceheart had felt no need to narrate to the cameras everything he'd tried so far to probe, confuse, disable or destroy the building's magic-heavy security. And he had tried plenty. It felt like the intellectual equivalent of attacking a castle with a cork-gun, which wasn't anything out of the ordinary for Suitov to attempt, albeit usually for... different stakes.
Far out of his league as he was, he'd stumbled across one or two interesting things that merited further attention. Certain systems seemed to have been designed for manual or semi-manual operation and not to have been fully decommissioned after replacement by automatics. In addition, nobody seemed to have noticed his probing. Of that much he could be tentatively confident. What he did not have yet was any clue to the physical location of the maze and its inhabitants.
When he got his hands on that wretched monk he'd have him flogged! Or, well, definitely speak sharply to him. Very sharply. Weft would probably have preferred the beating.
That's still an option after you've finished with him, sent Basaltine darkly. Any progress?
You'll know when I know, Suitov responded.
I'll be damned if I give up.
Nico shifted her weight several times before taking off her shoes. To avoid getting grease on her feet, she stood on her shoes while tying together the laces. It was all rather slow and awkward. Her socks went into her pockets, and she used to "spikes" as handholds. She hooked one foot through the laces to pull the shoes from the ground, and hung them over her shoulder before starting to climb in earnest.
Removing his weirdly-thick-soled trainers would have been a sensible option, or it would if Weft hadn't been instructed not to mess around with his clothing without good reason. Besides, standing on them would have obscured the brand logo and the sponsors wouldn't like that.
Weft finished studying the foot-wide projections fixed to the left wall. He seemed to prefer that route to the funhouse floor ahead. His usual 'shoes' would have allowed him to curl his toes around the edge of the platform. He didn't think that counted as a 'good reason', though, because it looked whiny and ungrateful. He'd be relying mostly on momentum. He leapt.
The drop, which became over four metres at the highest point even disregarding the spikes, didn't concern him. Once you'd been held by the neck over the side of a hotel and then let go, heights had to be pretty impressive to induce vertigo.
Of course, it remained to be seen if even Weft's preternatural balance would be enough in this case. The grease really was awfully greasy.
For that reason, Nico was glad that the top of the obstacle was indeed free of the stuff. It was L-shaped and should be suitable for a run-up and jump to the platform with the exit, if there were no additional surprises.
She glanced up into blinding spotlights, so gave up on spotting any possible additional oil sprays from the ceiling, and squinted at Weft for something to do until the purple blotches faded again.
Changing direction was, predictably, the main problem. That and the footwear, whose treads were more pretty than functional. In any event, dignity and grace weren't an option.
A few steps from the end Weft's momentum gave out, and he ended up hanging from the platform by his feet. He sighed, let go and, with a midair twist that mystified even the slow-motion replay, landed on his feet.
Suitov said "Not your fault. You're being set up to fail."
Weft heard "You fail."
He looked up to Nico. By way of conversation, he said "That way's as hard as it looks."
She shrugged slowly. "At least it's not a bad surprise, then." Her smile slipped a bit at the thought that she might just have jinxed something. She tried to shake that off. "Neat trick, by the way."
She walked along the top of the wall, and at the end thre her shoes over to the side of the landing that was her goal. There, committed now.
"Sorry ma'a... oh. I mean thank you. I keep forgetting aliens can't all do it."
Weft picked his way over to the spiked wall and prepared to follow Nico's course.
"Want a hand up?" She really didn't think he'd need the help, just wanted to be a bit less abrasive.
Weft would have accepted it, but he ended up hoisting himself mostly by his arms, except for a few times when he managed to wedge a spike underneath the laces of his sneakers, which was of limited help in pushing himself up. He wasn't sure how he could manage the next part without removing them.
"I once was in the hands of a gangster who liked to spray his enemies with tar and make them fight to the death," he said. It was an attempt to be friendly. Perhaps not a well-thought-through attempt.
Nico stopped her barely-started runup at that mental image. "Inside a ring of torches?"