The room stands silent while I linger at the bottom of the stairs. I watch the other groups throughout the chamber ascend the stairways in their individual slices of the room. Some race upward, not caring for the injured among them that crawl up the stairway behind. Others linger like I do, watching the groups ascend ahead of us, taking in the atmosphere and eerie stillness.
Macille and Dovik are together in one of the last chambers in the room, almost on the opposite side from me. Walking to the center, I can so clearly see them through the transparent wall of mana between us, but no sound can pass from one to another. We spend a good five minutes trying to communicate something, trying to say anything; most of the time I spend attempting to hold back tears. I have been keeping thoughts of Macille distant, not wanting to think about him or what lies his brother might have told him about me. There is no spite or anger in the man’s eyes as he looks back through the barrier to me, just confusion and sadness.
We try anything we can think of to speak with one another. I even call out to the Passage administrators, asking them to pull down the walls at least for a moment. Nothing.
Twelve walkways of spiraling stairs have already risen back into the ceiling, sealing so perfectly with the whiteness above that it is impossible to notice they were ever there. Dovik points upward, making sure that I catch the gesture. When I nod to him, both men retreat toward their staircase, ascending into the ceiling above while I hesitate at the bottom of my own. For all I know, we might all be reunited if I simply climb the stairs leading up into the unknown. Then again, a nagging feeling in the back of my head tells me that would be too simple.
When Macille and Dovik’s stairway has finally retreated into the ceiling, I look around the room once more. My foot rests on the bottom of my staircase’s platform, my whole body ready to race upward at the slightest show of the stairway retreating.
“Will you let down the barriers now!?” I call into the air, unsure if the people from the Willian Guild are even listening. My words bounce off the magic barrier enclosing me, sparking a tinny sound that makes my voice sound so much smaller.
“Why do you desire that?” A voice, masculine, slightly familiar, booms through the room. The force of the voice seems to rattle the walls erected throughout the room, the only thing that I have seen thus far capable of even forcing them to flex.
“I want to disenchant the monsters,” I call back, trying to project a confidence I don’t feel. It is one thing to try and order around two strangers, even if one is from the nobility. They do not know who I am, and for all they know I might be an important person as well; I doubt they suspect me of being a simple farm girl with no money or real backing. Whoever speaks for the Willian Guild is different. They know who I am and how little I matter.
“For what purpose?” the voice asks.
I squint up at the ceiling where I think the voice comes from. What an idiotic question. “To win this contest,” I state simply. “What other purpose is there?”
A pause follows. I stand, my toes on the first of the marble steps leading up. After a full minute of waiting, the voice comes again. “The Willian Guild has no need to offer you such a boon. It is not in our nature to advantage one individual over another. You say that you wish to use these monster corpses to win this contest, why should I allow this?”
It is difficult to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. Tits and honey, all that I have seen from the Willian Guild is their inclination to advantage one individual over another. “They left this behind, and that is why you should allow me to take the corpses with me. I have traveled with adventurers tasked with killing monsters well before this contest even started. The adventurers that I know would be sick if they saw all of these bodies being wasted, the magic within them left to rot on the floor like the runoff from a drain. If they do not wish to use these things for themselves, then allow me to use them.”
“The Willian Guild is not an adventurer’s league. We do not solely make our measure by our ability to slay monsters and to pull magic from the bodies of these ephemeral creatures. The slaying of monsters is an important aspect of being a fully realized magician, but our concerns span a larger scope. We do not hold to the same traditions and values as an adventurer might.”
“Then give me what I have rightfully killed,” I say, gesturing around at the room. With the aid of Galea, counting the corpses that lay around the space is simple. “I personally killed two-hundred sixty-three of these monsters, but all of their bodies languish below. In this room, there are only one-hundred thirty-five corpses of stickers. Should I not be rewarded for dispatching this number? Is it my fault that they all died so far away from where I can retrieve them?”
A bark of laughter booming around the room sets my hair standing on end. There is a force inside the sound, something that I know could crush me just as simply as I might an ant. “Yes, Ms. Devardem, I would indeed say that it is your own fault. Perhaps you should endeavor to be more judicious in your application of fire in the future.” Silence follows the words, so long that I almost speak, but stop myself when the voice reappears, its sound making the magic walls throughout the room quake. “I will take a bit of pity on you, given that you are the only one to even ask for such a reward.” At the proclamation, the walls throughout the room continue vibrate, their frequency pushing a whine through the air that sounds as if the tower will collapse around me. Then, as if they were made of glass, each of the fourteen walls throughout the chamber shatter into sharp motes of mana that melt into the air.
“You have ten minutes, Ms. Devardem. Good luck.”
My feet carry me like the wind, sprinting through the room, burning away the sticky blood littering the floor where I can’t simply jump across. I am not stupid; this is an amazing gift I have been given. There is no chance that I am going to waste it.
The stairway closing behind me shakes the room I step into. Wood, a dark red with striated grain, covers the floor and walls, the ceiling left as bare and white stone. The chill that continued to linger on the first floor of the tower is banished by the fire blazing in a hearth on one side of the room, a long table placed between me and it.
Three pairs of eyes turn in my direction as I step into the enclosure. Jess stands at a stovetop, cooking plants or roots I have never seen before on an iron skillet; the smell is heavenly. Clarice lounges on a long sofa set near the fire, her armor stripped and set on a small table in front of her. She runs an oiled cloth along the length of a vambrace, barely noting me as I enter. The only other person awake in the room, Jasper, looks up from a book that he is reading at a third table, a shoddy looking round ornament set near the stove and a small basin for water. He opens his mouth as if to greet me, but as his eyes move over me and my disheveled state, his mouth snaps shut. Jor’Mari and Samielle sleep on small cots opposite the hearth; there are seven cots in total, segregated to the far corner of the room.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Jess looks me up and down as I walk into the room, clicking her tongue. “You may want to take your boots off. Actually, please take your boots off.”
I look down, noticing the grime stuck to my boots. Despite my attempts to burn the monster blood up as I raced through the room, a slight film of the beige blood still cakes the soles of my boots, making each step feel like I am walking in mud. Not wanting to put the boots back into my inventory–I have no idea if they will make other things sticky in there–I work my way out of them, leaving them in the middle of the room. Two distinct footprints of the strange blood lingers behind me, and I can smell their acrid stench wafting up.
“What is this?” I ask, looking around at the room. “Aren’t we supposed to continue up the tower.”
Jess taps the wooden spoon in her hand on the side of her skillet a few times before setting it to the side. The smell of cooking greens and mushrooms banishes the smell of the monster blood as soon as I step into the small kitchen, and the sound of the food sizzling in the pan sets my mouth to watering. For the last few weeks, all I have eaten has been meat cooked over an open fire. It is strange how much I miss simple smell like this.
“We will keep going,” Jess says, pointing to one of the walls. There, the outline of an archway stands out amidst the wood, looking as if someone burnt the arch into the wall itself. “When we arrived, we found a note telling us that we should relax and recuperate. The door in the wall will open in eighteen hours, well a little less than that now, and we will be allowed to move on to the next challenge. There is a basin for washing around the corner there, and clean clothes to change into.”
Now that she mentions it, I notice Jess is dressed in different clothes from before. It would be more accurate to say that she is actually wearing clothes now. I don’t think that she had anything on beneath her armor before. Perhaps that is a benefit of her beautiful, scaled skin, no chafing from armor. The outfit she wears now is simple, a white linen blouse with a brown linen skirt, all unadorned, but the silver buttons give away the expensive quality of the clothing. Looking around the room again, I notice everyone seems to be wearing fine if somewhat simple clothing. A pile of everyone’s armor and sweat-soaked clothes lays piled in a corner of the room.
“That seems rather kind for the Willian Guild,” I say, stepping up to the pan and getting a good whiff of the fragrant greens. “You didn’t need to kill a monster in the washtub in order to use it?”
As I reach to pick one of the mushrooms out of the sizzling pan, a wooden spoon slaps down on my gauntleted fingers. “Not before you wash yourself. Charlene, your face and hands are covered in blood.”
Rubbing the back of my hand, I look down to see the lingering signs of dried blood staining the steel. I touch my chin, finding my fingers sticky and red when I pull them away. It takes me a moment to remember how this happened. “I was hit in the face a lot earlier.”
A snort answers my words from the sofa near the fire. I turn, spotting Clarice covering her mouth with the rag in her hand.
“I’ll make sure that none of these beasts have at this food before you finish, but you really do need to wash. When was the last time that you bathed?” Jess asks, stirring her pan again.
“I swam through a river,” I say, a bit sheepishly. Backing away, I ask, “Where are the new clothes?”
“There is a wardrobe near the water basin,” Jasper pipes up, obviously trying to seem helpful. The man turns away with a blush as soon as I look his way.
“You won’t try and take a peek, will you?” I ask, finding the clever bend in the room I didn’t notice before. Something about how the grain in the wall blends into the small hallway that turns around a corner makes it hard to notice.
“I most certainly will not,” Jasper sputters, still not looking at me.
Behind the bend a warm tub of fresh water and a small wardrobe awaits me. Just as Jess had said, clean and fresh clothes lay within the wardrobe. The soak that I have in the tub, scrubbing off the dirt and grime that has stuck to my body over the last few weeks is the best bath that I have ever taken. As soon as the blood and dirt washes off my skin to mix into the water, it seems to vanish, the water staying a pure crystal in color. The warm water is so relaxing that I continue to soak for a long while, feeling the tension of the last few weeks leech out of me into the water. The worst of it is all the ick that I squeeze out of my hair. The strands of dark orange are far finer than I have had my whole life, but it takes considerable effort to work free the dirt and cloying grime. Perhaps there was a benefit to my nest of curly hair before.
The clothes in the wardrobe are miraculously in my size: Two sets of undergarments, a black linen blouse and a red one, a white linen skirt, and finally a set of tan breeches. I dress, finding the crimson blouse fairly flattering and the breeches a bit of a squeeze to get into, making sure to store all of the other clothes in my inventory before leaving the wash area. To my disappointment, the guild didn’t see fit to fit me with new shoes or socks. I suppose that means that I will need to give my boots and greaves a good wash.
I notice Jasper’s eyes widen as I come back around the corner, the man standing from his chair, and only realizing that he has done so after a second. I can’t help but smile at his befuddlement. The obvious compliment is deeply appreciated; I don’t think that I have ever made a man do that before, but it also goes to show just how horrid I had looked before. I must have been a sight.
Two wooden bowls sit on the counter near Jess as she cleans the pan she used to cook in. She looks me up and down as I return. “Much better. Would you like to eat?”
“I am starving actually,” I say. As I take one of the bowls and a wooden fork, ready to head to the long oaken table no one is occupying, I leave two paper wrapped packages on the counter near the stove. “Try cooking this later.”
“What is it?” Jess asks, picking up her own bowl.
“Sticker meat. I thought that it might be tasty,” I say. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jasper blanch at the mention.
Jess weighs one of the parcels in her hand and turns it over, sniffing the paper. “It might do,” she says, tossing it back onto the counter. “Come. We should eat.”
As we sit at the table, digging into the meal Jess prepared, my heart leaves this competition for the first time in weeks, my mind pulled back to my childhood, eating fried greens around the kitchen table with my parents. The savory smell, the salty taste of the well-seasoned mushrooms, all of it makes me want to cry. A pressure wells in my chest, but no tears fall as I scrape fork against bowl, trying to pick up every last morsel. It isn’t that I stop the tears, but that none come, even as I let go. There is an ache in my heart that I can’t quite place, and sitting here in this small room, chewing on the end of my wooden fork, I feel like there is something I have lost.
A hand falls on top of my own, and I look across the table to see unreserved sympathy on Jess’ face. I smile, but it doesn’t feel real to me. “This was really good.”
“I’m glad you liked it,” she says, rubbing her thumb across the back of my hand for a moment before pulling away. “It has been an age before I had a proper place to prepare a meal.”
“It is nice,” I agree, looking around the small room, my eyes eventually landing on the two dozing in the corner. “I can’t help but feel like things will turn bad soon.”
“I know what you mean,” Jess agrees. “Everything I have been through in this competition makes me want to doubt any feeling of safety. Luckily, the guild has also seen fit to let us know what we will be doing next.” Jess hands a sheet of parchment to me.
I read over the words on the page, noting that a three lines of text have been written in several different languages down the page. I can only read the most basic and see that it does mention that there will be an eighteen-hour rest period before the next part of the tower trial begins. The next line leaves me confused.
Setting aside the paper, I look to Jess. “What in the world is Stoneball?”