[OPEN]
It hadn't occured to William to bring a torch with him into the Citadel. Because of course it hadn't. Why would it? How many times had William fought in the Citadel? Countless. And how many of those arenas had been lightless, trap-filled iron labyrinth's? After today the sum total would be sitting pretty at one. William grumbled to himself as he hoisted himself onto the ledge of this cube room and slipped through the doorway into the next. Sure he'd fought in dark arenas before, and yes he'd asked the Ai'Brone monks for a challenge, but this was frustrating even by his standards. At least he had the small mercy of having a hint of light by transforming into his war form.
He spotted the pressure panel on the floor a moment before his clawed foot came down on it. He froze immediately, slowly eyeing the plate until he was sure that he wouldn't trigger whatever it was attached to when he put his foot down. Normally he would trust his destructive enlightenment to show him the breaks and faults where the trap triggers were. In this arena though, the craftsmanship and magic of the monks made it next to impossible for him to detect the various traps in that manner. And that was just the mechanical ones. The first trap that he'd trippered had apparently been heat based.
The monks must have known that William would have no recourse but to use his war form's molten aura to light his way through their maze and had planned for him to run into the trap immediately. The moment that he'd stepped into the trapped room, the heat of his war form had started melting some wax panels that had been molded to look like the room's rusty iron walls. As the wax had melted, a series of barbed spikes had fired from behind the panel and had stabbed into William's neck and shoulder. It had hurt like hell to tear them free, but William's regenerative powers had sealed the wounds. He supposed it was a cruel form of training on the rules of the arena.
Now that he knew what to look for, William could see that this entire room was filled with a variety of pressure plates. Rather than take his chances, William cautiosly hauled himself back up over the lip of the passage that led back to the previous room. It was one of six similar passages that each room had. Every room that William had seen was the same cube shape, and the passeges between them were all located in the center of the walls, the floor, and the ceiling.
He couldnt' go back the way he'd come from, and William couldn't go through the passage to the room with all the trap plataes. That left two other wall, the ceiling, and the floor. William walked to the center of the room and looked down into the looming passage beneath him. He tried to spy what he could from the room below but the darkness was overwhelming. Sighing, he lowered himself to the ground in preparation to drop the ten feet or so down into the lower room.
Hopefully he ran into his opponent soon. He really, truly felt the need to kill someone.