"When you say flooded how deep are we talking. Is this wading through the stuff or would we be better off, I don't know, bringing a raft."

"Just wading."

"Didn't Anita get dosed by skin contact, this seems like a terrible plan."

"Some got in her mouth," says Oswald, who was there and definitely tracking what Nectar was going where that night because it was terrifying. "--Zoe did get burned by Nectar. Probably that was a. special variant. and not what's in these tunnels."

"I haven't been burned by it."

"I have no idea if what that one Mouth spat at me was Nectar. Is everything that comes out of them Nectar?"

Martin shrugs.

"So the traps aren't intended to catch people who... know they're there?"

"Right but knowing that there is a trap is not the same as knowing... what it looks like, what triggers it, how fast it goes once it's triggered, how it moves, all that stuff?"

"Like, okay. In this part you wrote 'blade drops from ceiling'. What kind of blade? Does it drop straight down, or move in an arc? What makes it drop?"

Martin SKETCHES OUT MORE TRAP INFORMATION

"Thank you, that gives me a much better idea how to avoid them."

Mordred feels that he has spent years doing crimes in broad daylight by walking in the front door and is very reluctant to set aside years of front-door-walking expertise in favor of wading through Nectar and avoiding blade traps.

He will grudgingly concede that they do in fact have reasons to not want to walk in the front door this time but like. Come on.

Oswald got away with all his crimes mostly by sitting at a desk in an out-of-the-way office doing numbers and never interacting with anyone. He for one is glad of a plan that does not involve interacting with anyone. (Not like it's much more deadly than all of their other plans, he tells himself, even though this is a much more tangible danger than usual.)

When it's time, Martin gives them a little wave and says "good luck!", like a person who is not going to have to face ANY blade traps.

OKAY. Trap filled dungeon here we come! The first thing on this list of instructions is to GO STRAIGHT. Zoe strides down the hall ahead and keeps an eye out for Maltese crosses.

The catacombs are cramped and dark and wet. A low arched ceiling traps torch smoke, and uneven stones cause flashlights to throw off weird shadows. The place smells of mud and wet rat. Many of the grave beds carved into the walls are empty or haphazardly filled now with loose bones. Still, browned bones are everywhere. Skulls stare out from the walls.

Painted plaster adornments and inset stone decorations are everywhere, making it a little difficult to identify just the right crosses and symbols necessary to follow Martin's directions.

Awesome. Wow. This was a great idea. Mordred has no regrets whatsoever.

About a hundred feet inside, they come to an intersection decorated with a Maltese cross carved from stone. This is obviously the site of the first trap, because it’s been sprung already. A rotten body lies not-quite beheaded on the ground, amid the much-older bones. A once-fine blade juts from the wall at the end of a rotted post, a snapped cord dangling from it.

Gosh. Well. That makes that easy.

Zoe leans into a side tunnel and retches. The rotten body is not just gruesome but putrid. The Knights of Malta should really take better care to maintain their traps.

He has been telling himself over and over that the scattered bones and skulls are harmless and have no way of hurting him but he sees the blade and the horrible intact body and the smell of rotten flesh hits worse than the catacombs so far. He moves backwards fast enough to slip and hit the wall. It takes him a bit to realize this body also isn't going to attack him.

(Hitting the wall is not dangerous but it is also the worst sensory experience.)

Next time Mordred is going to walk in through the front fucking door.

Not long after, they come upon a shining silver Maltese cross at a T-shaped intersection in the catacomb.

"I think we turn right here."

Okay where are the stones that might be disturbed and how avoidable are they?

Stones on the floor trigger a blade, like the first trap’s, that swings out through a gap in the mortar of the wall beneath the cross; Zoe can walk across it without triggering it but it's going to be impossible for Mordred or Oswald.

"Hmm." It looks like the blade swings out horizontally. "Well, we could all crawl below the blade, it comes out from here."

"Or you guys could stand back and I could try to trigger it. Martin said these are one-time-use deals that would need to be manually reset."

"I prefer triggering it with an object to trying to wriggle under it myself."