CHAPTER 242: KEY AND BAIT

The procession resumed its march, drawn by the momentum of the stone creature. Each step of the giant made the ground vibrate, sending an echo into Maggie’s ribcage. She could no longer hear her own heartbeat: it had synced with the dull rhythm of this mountain clearing the way.

At first, no one dared to speak. The silence wasn’t a tacit agreement, but a shared fear. The memory of the blow struck against the beast, that fist which had turned a threat into pure nothingness, still hung in the air like invisible ash.

Zirel was the first to crack. He had moved closer, not too much, but enough for Maggie to feel his nervous breath on her neck. His voice was low, falsely restrained.

"Do you think you can control it?"

Maggie didn’t answer right away. Her instinct screamed at her to tell him to piss off, but she knew one wrong word could trigger a storm. She finally spat out, in a sharp tone:

"I mostly think it controls me as much as I control it."

She hadn’t planned to say that. It had just come out. But deep down, it was the naked truth.

Zirel gave a soft, scoffing laugh, a sound with more bile than humor.

"So you’re just a key, not the master. Good news... a key can be broken."

Maggie turned her head, planting her eyes in his. She didn’t need words. Her look said: "Try it, asshole."

Zirel looked away, but she knew he hadn’t let go of the idea.

Behind them, Inès stumbled on a pebble, her hands clenched around her talisman. Maggie caught her trembling murmur:

"Thank you... thank you..."

Not for her, obviously. For the colossus. For this chance to traverse the tunnels without being torn apart at every turn. Inès saw the stone mountain as an angel, a blessing. Maggie was almost jealous of that naivety. She herself saw only a noose around her neck.

Armin was still clutching his wounded shoulder. He advanced in silence, his face tense, each step a torture he refused to admit. Maggie caught his clenched jaw, his sweaty brow. Not a word of complaint. She respected him for that. More than she would have thought.

And then Elisa. She advanced unflinchingly, even weakened. Her gaze wasn’t fixed on the colossus, but on Maggie. As if she were dissecting not the creature, but the bond. It gave Maggie chills. Elisa wasn’t coveting, praying, or doubting: she was analyzing. And that, perhaps, was worse.

"Do you feel anything?" Elisa asked suddenly, without raising her voice.

"What?"

"The link. Do you feel if it thinks? If it reacts to your emotions?"

Maggie pressed her lips together. She didn’t want to answer. But silence would have been an admission.

"I feel nothing. No thought, no emotion. Just... a direction. As if it always knows where to be. And that I have to follow."

Elisa nodded slowly, without comment. But Maggie saw her eye gleam, as if a piece of her puzzle had just snapped into place.

The tension rose a notch. Each person revealed themselves in this wake: Zirel, the snake looking for a weakness. Inès, the sheep seeing a miracle. Armin, the man standing despite the pain. Elisa, the she-wolf calculating in the shadows.

And her, Maggie... she felt like a rope stretched taut between them and the colossus. A rope that could snap at any moment.

Ahead, the giant stopped dead. The glow in its helm relit, pale and icy. Maggie clenched her fists, ready for the worst.

They were not alone in these tunnels.

-----

Elisa stepped forward without a word. Her steps were slow but assured, and this time, surprisingly, the stone colossus didn’t stir. No raised arm to bar the way, no brandished fist to forbid access. It remained frozen, as if awaiting Maggie’s invisible order. She understood then: it was up to her to decide if it should intervene. And because she hadn’t reacted, it let her pass.

The young Elf stopped a few meters ahead, at the edge of a dark crevice that swallowed the light of their torches. She raised her hand, then placed it on the ground slowly, like a priestess beginning an ancient rite. Then, everything shifted.

An emerald light burst from her, first timid, then overwhelming. Her silhouette was covered in a supernatural glow, her short blond hair stood on end as if charged with electricity, and her golden eyes shone with such intensity they seemed to pierce the rock around them. Maggie was left speechless. She had seen Elisa use her talents before, but never like this. Here, she was no longer a travel companion: she resembled a fragment of a fallen star in the mud.

At the contact of her palm, the ground vibrated. Powerful waves of energy propagated outward, circular, expanding from her like rings on the surface of a lake. But these waves weren’t just centrifugal: they returned immediately to Elisa, bouncing back as if space itself refused to let them escape. A hypnotic back-and-forth, like an inverted breath of the stone.

Maggie felt her own ribcage tighten under the rhythm of these pulsations. Each returning wave made her legs tremble. And in that reflux, she perceived something else: a shiver from the darkness, a foreign response to Elisa’s call.

The young Elf turned her head slightly towards them. Her eyes still shone with pure gold, but worry was clearly written in them. She nodded, almost imperceptibly, and that gesture was enough to freeze Maggie to the bone.

It was the sign. The verdict.

They were truly not alone.

In the heavy silence that followed, Maggie felt the stone colossus move behind her. The grinding of its joints echoed in the tunnel like restrained thunder. This time, no orders were needed: it knew. Something was approaching, and Elisa’s echo had awakened more than just a resonance from the walls.

Zirel, though usually so quick with irony, remained silent. His gaze was fixed on the blackness stretching before them, as if watching for a particular shadow. Inès was praying under her breath, her fingers clenched around her talisman so tightly they were white. Armin said nothing, but his breathing grew heavier: despite his wound, he shifted his stance, ready to sell his life dearly.

Maggie herself took a deep breath. For a moment, she thought about retreating, screaming that this was beyond them, that it wasn’t their role. But the emerald glow on Elisa’s skin, the gold of her eyes, the immovable mass of the stone giant—it all formed a truth she could no longer ignore: they had crossed a threshold.

Something was lurking in these tunnels.

And they were going to have to confront it.

But this time, they wouldn’t confront it blindly. No. The darkness quivering around them wasn’t an obstacle that could be hammered with fists or swords until it yielded. Not a simple beast lunging out to be pulverized by the colossus. Here, they would need to identify the enemy, understand it, analyze it... and, if possible, lure it out of its nest. If it had one.

They needed a plan.

Maggie felt it as clearly as a burn on her skin. Chaos, improvisation—that had been her life until now. But in these tunnels, every step without thought risked delivering them to the fangs of whatever was hiding in the shadows.

And, against all expectation, it was Zirel who broke the silence.

He stepped forward, his features—usually pinched with envy and resentment—suddenly illuminated by an icy concentration. He wasn’t looking at Maggie, or even the colossus, but at the space around them, as if his eyes were seeking invisible flaws.

"It’s not a wandering beast," he said in a low, measured voice. "Not with this kind of..." he gestured with his chin towards Elisa, without naming her, "...resonance. It’s responding. It’s observing. It’s gauging."

Maggie raised an eyebrow. The same mouth that had threatened her moments ago, the same venomous tongue, was now speaking with a clarity that almost commanded respect.

He continued, implacable:

"If we advance in a straight line, we’ll be picked off. If we retreat, we’re dead too, they’ll have already circled behind us." He finally turned his eyes to them, a metallic glint shining in his pupils. "So there’s one option left: we force it to show itself."

Armin growled through teeth clenched in pain:

"You’re talking about using bait."

Zirel gave a thin smile, that of a player who knows his cards better than the others.

"Exactly. But not just any way. If there’s a nest, it must have limits. A safe space, a territory. We need to push it into thinking it can crush us... before it realizes we’re waiting for it."

Maggie stood still, arms crossed. Part of her wanted to laugh, to spit in his face that she would never fall for his little strategist theater. But another part—the most lucid one—saw the naked truth: he was right.

He was brilliant. And it was unbearable.

Inès, still clinging to her talisman, dared to murmur:

"And... who would be the bait?"

The silence that followed weighed like an anvil. Eyes met, hesitant, evasive. Even Elisa, haloed in her green light, said nothing.

Zirel didn’t hesitate.

"Not you, girl. Not the wounded one either. Not you either," he shot at Elisa. Then he planted his gaze in Maggie’s, as if savoring the moment. "Her."

Maggie held his eyes without flinching. She wanted to say "Go fuck yourself," but the retort stuck in her throat. Because deep down, he wasn’t wrong. She had the colossus. She alone could walk into the wolf’s mouth and had a better chance of coming out whole.

And he knew it.

"You and your mountain," he added in a calm, almost respectful voice. "You’re the only combination that can take the hit, lure the beast out. The rest of us will stay under cover, ready to spring the trap."

Maggie tasted bitterness in her mouth. To be the key, to be the tool, to be the target... again and again. And yet, this plan was the only one that resembled a chance of survival.

She inhaled, searching her gut for a spark of humor to mask the vertigo.

"So basically, I walk ahead, ring the dinner bell, and we wait for the monster to come eat me."

Zirel sketched a cold smile.

"Exactly. But this time, we get the first bite."

Maggie didn’t answer. But she knew then that the role she hated, that of bait, instrument, key... she was going to have to take it on. Not for Zirel, not for Elisa, not even for herself. But because in these tunnels, refusing was tantamount to condemning everyone.

She clenched her fists, then looked up at the colossus. The spectral glow in its helm seemed to await her decision.

"Alright," she said finally, her rough voice echoing in the cavern. "We lure the beast. But if your plan fails, Zirel... I swear I’ll come drag you by the ankles, even from the grave."

And once again, she thought she saw something other than envy or hatred in his eyes. A spark of respect.