A long breath hisses out between my grinning and clenched teeth. I ignore the stink of it, always try to do that, and admire the mess left on the floor that my fire still clings to. I can hardly tell that just a few moments before this pile of smoldering refuse used to be a monster, some plant-like thing with a bulbous head and ever-seeking green tendrils. That was then; now it’s just broken, green leathery skin turned a sickly yellow-brown, and faintly smelling like a fireplace. I can never really ignore the smell.
“Help here as well!”
The yell brings my attention to Samielle. He stands at the back of the room, the walls around us made of that strange and pristine white stone, our only space to maneuver a twenty-foot cube. Samielle struggles, ropes of sticky green wrapped tight around his right arm, constricting his bicep so hard it makes it look like he had two of the bulging muscles. The mace he holds in his right arm also has a length of plant-monster wrapped around it, holding it back from smashing down into the second monster that Samielle holds by the stalk or neck; there is a snapping mouth filled with odd flat teeth on the bulb, so I suppose that either would work.
One monster working to hold his arm in place while he holds the second off the ground, its rainbow-colored roots wrapping around his waist and torso, the man looks like a warrior out of some outrageous painting. It would be a shame to ruin the illustration.
A part-way charged Dragonfire Bolt slams into the bulb of the monster clinging to Samielle’s arm, exploding the upper half of the creature in a spray of purple colored gore. The tendrils wrapping around Samielle’s arm slacken, and he takes the opportunity to bring the head of his flaming mace down on the bulb of the other monster. Once, twice, three times, and the roots coiling around him fall limp to the floor, soon followed by the rest of the monster.
Samielle stumbles back as the monster falls off him, catching his balance a second later. He turns, a look of anger on his face for a moment before his eyes fall over the rest of the room. Six of the monsters lay dead on my side of the room, four on his, and I killed two of those.
“That didn’t take long,” he says, barely needing an effort to bring his breath back under control.
I kick one of the monster corpses, watching as it puffs away into glittering pink smoke. “I got rather good at killing plant monsters in the last couple of weeks,” I say. “These are all rank one anyway.”
“Seems like it,” Samielle says, hands on his hips, scanning the room. “Rank one monsters can still kill a man.”
“Speak for yourself,” I say, walking about the room, kicking corpses and watching Galea bring me windows displaying what I got from the bodies. “At this point, if it is a rank one monster that does me in, I would just about die of embarrassment.”
“Don’t figure that will be possible, with you being dead and all.”
“That makes a certain kind of sense.” I stop, my eyes landing on a particular line in one of the message windows. I reach out, my hands brushing across my inventory screen that has really started to fill out over the past few weeks, plucking a new item out of the inventory window. A rectangular slab of purple metal appears in my hand, fairly nondescript, but important. It is a key.
“Do you remember us passing any purple doors?” Samielle asks as I hold up the key.
“Down a few levels,” I say, unable to help a sigh.
“Down again,” Samielle smolders, sharing my hesitation.
We both look to the corner of the room where a neat square hole has been cut out of the floor. A ladder inside of the hole leads back down to the level we were just on previously, the same level where most of our group waits for us now. On the east wall of the room is a silver door, an embossed number three as large as a crate standing out on its door. In the north wall is another door, this one green, a two on it.
“Back down it is I suppose,” I say, motioning to the ladder.
“Maybe the others will have had more luck than we have,” Samielle says, hopefully.
My hope, small spark that it was, turns to ash as soon as I see the faces on my teammates. Two faces turn to greet me and Samielle after we finish our climb down the ladder and duck through a short passage to enter a room eerily similar to the one we were just in. Jess and Clarice look at me, the former offering a short nod before looking back at the door they are standing in front of. The door is a ruddy shade of red that I have never seen before, a large two emblazoned on its front.
“Jor’Mari and Jasper aren’t out yet?” I ask, looking at the closed door as well. “They went in before we did.”
Clarice scoffs. “Is that a boast?”
“Maybe.”
Samielle finishes his trudge, coming to stand near Jess, leaning against one white wall like he needs it for support. He frowns down at the mess of linen covering Jess’ shoulder, faint tinges of red soaking through the hasty binding. I can understand his evident worry. Despite how she treats the injury as nothing more than a splinter, three of us had been there to watch the monster slice its long, bladed forearm into the meat of her shoulder; blood had been everywhere.
“We can’t all keep going forever,” Clarice says, her dark hair pulled into a fraying knot behind her head. As if the admission reinforces her own weariness, she slides down against a wall, head lolling forward to stare at the ground.
It’s impossible for any of them to tell exactly how long we have been scraping through these rooms; none of them have a spirit dragon in their head keeping track of the time. From the moment that ladder descended from the roof in our small room, letting us up into the first of the white cubic rooms, over a hundred hours have passed.
No instruction was given on how to proceed forward, but then again, not much was needed. In that first room, there had only been a single door, steel, and with a large four pressed into the metal. Jor’Mari, Samielle, and Jess decided to wander ahead, but the moment that Jasper’s foot fully crossed the threshold, a barrier had sprung into being, cutting Clarice and I off from the other side. Monster greeted the others, nothing too powerful, and they easily dispatched them. A metal plate, green in color, was found among the corpses, and pressing it to one of the three doors in that room led to the next, that door also allowing four to enter.
So, we continued in that way, finding keys, unlocking doors, killing monsters, before repeating the cycle all over again. Our pace has not been as fast as I would have liked, but how could it? Every second that we spend waiting, I feel more and more like the other teams are racing to catch up to us or sprinting ahead.
“Purple,” I say, hefting the key in my hand. “We passed a purple door a few floors down.”
A pair of hard stares greets that news. Maybe no one in our group wants to reach the top of the tower, or whatever awaits us after this maze of blank rooms, as much as I do but the rest of my team isn’t far behind.
“Down again,” Jess mutters. “That will be three times now. I’m starting to wonder if we aren’t lower down in the tower than we started.”
“Higher,” Samielle says, catching a glare from Jess. “Four ladders higher.”
“I was being…” She looks at me. “I don’t know the word in Castinian.”
“I’m just a peasant, you should ask the noblewoman,” I reply, nodding down at Clarice.
“Facetious,” Clarice says with a shrug. “Hyperbolic works too.”
“Damnable language,” Jess says. I can’t help but agree.
A flinch sparks through our small assemblage as the door we are standing in front of shifts an inch, an echoing sound like thunder following as the stone grinds on stone. Jor’Mari stands in the open doorway a moment later, an arm around the shoulders of an exasperated Jasper, almost looking like the bigger man might rub his knuckles into the smaller man’s hair, laughing, at any moment.
Jor’Mari’s eyes fall on me, that enviable smirk gleaming on his face. “We made a mess in there,” he says, pointing a thumb over his shoulder back toward the room.
“Do I look so much like your mother that you think I need to clean up your messes?” I ask.
He squints at me. “No, can’t really say that there is a resemblance. Now, my maid Jenna, there is a certain similarity. A rural and buxom prettiness, you might say.”
I do my best not to smile as I shoulder past the man into the room, it would only encourage him to continue. Every hour away from the Stoneball field has seemed to do him good, restoring his assholish nature with remarkable ease. The sadness in his eyes isn’t gone, but it is less hard.
A mess is exactly what I find in the room. A cubic space of pure white stone greets me, the same as all the other rooms, except for the disemboweled monster lying in the center of it. The corpse resembles something like a rat, except that it has no fur, its tail is made of boney spines, it has seven eyes on the end of its long snout, and that it is the size of a cart. A stench like the sour breath of someone who has drained their week’s pay on ale wafts off the body, and I gag before I have even made it five strides into the room. Acid burns the back of my throat, and it takes a supreme effort of will to choke it back down.
“What is this thing called?” I ask Galea, “so that I know to avoid them in the future.”
“It’s a Rattle Mole,” she says.
“Of course it is.”
“Having trouble in there?” I hear someone call from the other room, Samielle, I think.
“You do not want to come in here,” I call back, my voice cracking on the putrid air. There is a round of laughter from the other room.
My boots squelch through the purple blood painted across the floor. Someone, though I don’t need to guess who, ripped the monster’s intestines out, and a rope of bloody entrails lay about on the floor, continuing to leak bodily fluid. Holding my nose, I find a spot of the corpse to nudge with the toe of my boot and activate Disenchant. A flood of items, several pounds of meat that sounds unappetizing, some bones, three eyeballs, 1 gold and 16 silver coins, and something called a Putrid Mole Heart, fall into my inventory, along with what I am really after.
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I return to the group waiting outside, taking a second to wonder how Jor’Mari managed to rip the monster’s guts out without getting a spec of blood on his fine clothes, and hold up the rectangular key in my hand. “Blue.”
“Looks more cerulean to me,” Jor’Mari mutters.
“There was a blue door in that room,” Jasper pipes up.
“I saw it,” I say before letting the heavy part fall. “It has a one on it.”
That sobers the faces around me, all eyes turning to land on the metal rectangle between my fingers.
“We haven’t done a 1 room yet,” Jess says. “If the trend holds, it will be dangerous.”
“We will have to do one eventually,” Jor’Mari says. “The numbers keep getting lower the higher we go. I wonder if all the rooms on the highest level will be 1 rooms.”
“I’ve thought the same thing,” I say. I look around at the people gathered in front of me and really study them. Despite her brave face, Jess is clearly in pain from that wound in her shoulder, and exhausted from pressing on for the last few days with little break. Samielle, Clarice, and Jasper don’t even try to hide their exhaustion, two of the three leaning against a wall for support. The only one that I think really might be up to take on a room of unknown monsters by himself is Jor’Mari, and there is a greedy look in his eyes as he stares at the key.
“I’ll take this,” I say, making the key vanish back into my inventory.
His eyes flick up to me, a wounded confusion on his face like I have just snatched away his favorite toy. “You’ll what?”
“I will attempt the 1 room first. If I fail, then you can have a crack at it.” Though, if I did fail, I have no idea how they would get the key back.
He steps forward, grabbing my arm so suddenly that I fail to pull away in time. “I am the strongest,” he says. “It would be folly if it was not me taking the risk. We have no idea what might lay inside of that room.”
“We haven’t known what are in any of these rooms,” I say, shaking his hand off. “Look at yourself, you look terrible, tired.” Despite the dark flesh underneath his eyes, he looks ready to dive headlong into any challenge he can sink his teeth into. “Besides, you don’t need it.”
“Don’t need it,” he repeats. His eyes flick over me, trying to puzzle it out. Then, the light of realization dawns. “Picking fights alone for the sake of reinforcement is what fools do.”
“Call me a fool then, because I have been doing it for weeks. I’ve had to, that was the only way for me to live, and now that I have a taste of it, don’t think that I will stop any time soon. You have already reached your maximum reinforcements before you make it to rank two; I have not.” I hold up a finger, and for good measure, count off more points. “I am the least exhausted out of our entire group, I am the only one that will heal from injuries gained by fighting some unknown monster alone, and I have the most potential to outright kill whatever I find.”
His eyes roam past me, back to the room where just before there had been a giant, disemboweled beast. “Is that right?”
“As we already went over, it is a waste to send you. I would see anyone else of us go ahead of you, just so that whoever it is will come out stronger on the other side.”
He shakes his head. “Soul reinforcement is not the only way to grow stronger.”
“But it is the best way.”
“I think she’s right,” Jess says, hissing and holding her injured shoulder as she slides down to the floor against the wall. “Charlene is still fresh, and she recovers from injuries quickly.”
“I wasn’t aware that I asked your opinion,” Jor’Mari snaps at her.
Samielle takes a threatening step toward him. “Watch your mouth.”
Jor’Mari’s hands clench into fists at his side as he stares at Samielle. Sam is a good head and a half taller, and wider to boot, but there is no fear in Jor’Mari as he stands off with the man. A second passes before Jor’Mari lets out a sigh and steps away. He rubs at his eyes with a hand. “Sorry, maybe I am tired.” He looks around at the rest of the group. “Are we a voting kind of group or the not-voting kind?”
Clarice shrugs. “Voting never got anything important done, according to my mother. Red’s the leader, at least I thought so, figure what she says goes until we find ourselves out of this little tower.”
“You know where I stand,” Jess says.
“I agree with Jess,” Samielle adds, though no one really thought he would do anything else.
“And you?” Jor’Mari asks, turning to Jasper.
The man looks between the two of us, his mouth working on unspoken words. Eventually, after a suffocatingly awkward silence, he finds something to say. “I am not good at making decisions.”
“Well then,” I say, holding up the blue key. “Since I already have the key, I figure that I will be the one to use it. I suggest that the rest of you take this opportunity to rest.”
“Finally,” Clarice says, knocking her head back against the wall. “If this is what being a peasant is like, I would make a terrible one.”
“Yes, hundred-hour workdays are common for us.” She looks up at me, obviously uncertain as to whether or not I am joking.
“Just be careful,” Jor’Mari tells me before I can turn to leave. His hand twitches at his side, like he wants to reach out for me, but can’t bring himself to do it.
“Would you?” I ask.
“No,” he says, pasting on that smirk of his. “But I am me.”
I shake my head, retreating back into the room. The smell hits me like a hammer in the face just a few steps in, and my hand slaps down over my nose, but all that does is trap the smell inside my head. It takes all of my willpower not to cough and splutter, that would probably be a bad impression to leave the others of me. Imagine if I die in the next room, and all of their final thoughts of me are about how I swaggered cocky into the room and immediately vomited.
The thought sobers me a bit, not the vomiting but the death. I step up to the door of blue steel, turning the key over and over in my hand, trying to concentrate on all of the times I have almost died recently. It is strangely difficult to do. At the bottom of this tower someone hit me so hard that I flew through mist and crashed into an inexplicable forge room. If I had landed just a little bit worse, that by itself might have been the end for me. I can recall the pain, even the fear of that stranger straddling me and hitting me in the face over and over again is not too far off, but thinking that I would actually die, I can’t seem to conjure that.
Even when I think back about my encounter deep beneath that dungeons, being run through by a spear and tossed off a ledge, that fear of death is so far away, so far behind the pain and the anger that I felt. I know that I could have died, probably should have, but I can’t feel it despite the knowing.
One point sticks out in my mind, bawling, crying for my parents, for anyone to help me, feeling my blood turn to fire and knowing that the end was coming. I remember the fear now, the fear that those two put into me, nothing since comes close. Anger bubbles up in my chest, choking me, making every beat of my heart come painful, feeling like someone has a grip on it. Like a tiny point of metal deep in my guts, so cold that not even the anger can reach it, I find that fear, that knowing that I am about to die, that knowing of how small and weak I am.
I breathe out, focusing on that spot, that ball of horrible emotion. My fingers brush across the surface of the door, the cold metal tingling my nerves. I know in my head that whatever is behind this door might be the last thing I encounter in life, but despite the knowing, I can’t really believe it. That is why I need the fear, I need to know that I have it, I am afraid that without it I might do something stupid, and this time, the fates won’t grant me another chance.
Maybe Jor’Mari is right, and I am being reckless. If I forget myself, he is the obvious choice to take the risks. I ignore my doubts and touch the metal key to the door. Best not to let doubt make my decisions.
The metal of the door ripples like the surface of a pond as I touch the key to it. Stone grinds somewhere above the door. A loud bang follows the first shift of the door, then it is pulled up and away into the stone, leaving a short corridor in front of me, a second identical door just ahead. Touching the key to the second door causes the first to fall back to the stone, bathing me in total darkness for a moment before the one in front rises up, displaying the room that I step into.
White, perfectly symmetrical walls, form a box around me, the smooth surface of worked stone making a smacking sound as I walk through in my heavy boots. To the north are two doors set into the wall, a red four and a black one. The room is identical to all the previous with one notable exception. The floor on the left half of the room is gone, replaced by a two-inch drop and a calm surface of water. Seeing no evident monsters around me, I creep toward the placid pond that takes up half the room, already knowing what I will find.
Brayfish
The monster swims in lazy circles inside the water, easily the largest fish that I have ever seen, almost as long as a horse. Its scales are a glittering indigo that somehow blend with the water, its face coming to a long point, several sharp teeth pressing into the flesh around its mouth. Among the glittering scales are a few that glow a faint green, leaving a trail of smoke through the water behind the monster so subtle that I might have missed it if I weren’t looking so closely at it. Obviously, this thing is going to have some magic to it.
“Why did it have to be a water monster?” My eyes continue to track the fish as it swims lazy circles in the water below, not seeming to be aware of me up on the ledge above it.
“Fire affixed mana typically has a poor match against the various water affixed manas,” Galea informs me. A window appears in front of her, a perfect replica of the enchanter’s glossary, the interaction between fire and water affixed mana made bold and standing out on the window.
“Does it now?”
She looks between me and the window, squinting, trying to find the point of my apparent confusion. “Yes…it does.”
“What would I do without you,” I say, looking away from the dragon and back toward my latest obstacle.
“Likely, you would have died.”
I puff a breath. The last big fish monster that I fought was a mud catfish that my fire was completely inadequate in dealing with. My staff falls into my hand, and I touch it to the Bane Crystal a moment later, turning the fire burning in its cage to green. A gout of green flame pours out of the tip of the staff, sizzling the surface of the water, disturbing it, but failing to even make it an inch down. The monster further down continues its swim, oblivious to the fire burning at the top of the pond, or maybe it just knows that I am no danger to it.
“Tits and Honey,” I swear, sticking the Bane Crystal and my staff back into my inventory. “They had to make it this.”
If we were out in the wild, I would likely just avoid this monster all together. That might not be very honorable of me, one of a magician’s primary jobs is to kill monsters after all, but that doesn’t mean that I have to take stupid fights. I briefly wonder if it might be a good idea for me to turn back to the group, pass this room off to Jor’Mari, let that man deal with this. He would smirk and crow about how he told me he was the right one to take these kinds of chances, and three hells, he is probably right. It is not so much the idea of him mocking me with his rightness that stops me from turning back as much as the knowledge that if I give this over to him, I won’t get anything out of it.
The chance is mine. Did I not promise that I was going to take every chance possible when I found myself inexplicably still alive at the bottom of that cliff? Did I not swear to get strong, so that I could smoosh the faces of Coriander and Kendon into the mud beneath my boot? In that light, there is no way that I can turn my back on something as simple as an incredibly deadly and huge fish with rows of sharp teeth.
It still feels a bit strange to me, feeling all of my armor and my boots vanish into my inventory at the same time. My bare feet fall an inch, slapping onto the white stone, and I curl my toes, relishing their freedom. I stand over the pool in the lightest clothes that I have, the idea of this beast biting down on my naked chest or stomach too much to make me go completely without layers into the pool. I scan through my inventory, finding the most appropriate weapon for the occasion, a spear that I picked up on the first floor of the tower–it had been a nightmare to get all of the sticker blood off of it.
“Well,” I say, staring down into the water, “best to get on with it.”