A’Ferun had to wipe water from his eyes to check the soul tracker. the arcs the pointer swept were much wider, but the light was steady. N’kieran still lived. He refused to consider any other interpretation.
He opened his mouth to speak, but choked on his words. Clearing his throat and the swallowing, he asked the scholars, “Do you know what that devise is around the gem she’s reaching for?”
Ep’hram jumped over the pit for a closer view of the illusion that had replaced the door. After a bit of study, he said, “There are mana shunts throughout the design of the frame. if you want to give us a few days to study the image —.”
“We don’t have that time right now,” A’Ferun cut in.
“Then all i can tell you is the gem, as it’s pictured, is something with far more mana that its size should allow. Seeing as we are now within a dungeon, I am willing to hazard a guess that it is a dungeon core that has somehow been bound to a ship, though the how eludes me,” the elf answered.
Corbent stroked the gills on the side of his neck much as a human might smooth their beard. “That would fit with how impervious the hull of this ship is.” Looking to A’Ferun, he asked, “Sa’desh, it is not known to me: was the Lady desh Idahl a mystic of any sort?”
“The lady never manifested, but always showed a great potential,” A’Ferun answered.
“Some potential only manifests under grave duress,” Corbent mused, his gaze on the hand depicted reaching for the gem.
Ep’hram stepped back over the pit trap to make room for the others. He flicked a warning glance at the healer as he did so. If Corbent noticed, he gave no sign of it, but he also shut up.
“Shall we press on, Lord?” Kinser asked, deliberately not looking at A’Ferun.
A’Ferun nodded. “Yes.”
Kinser once more took the scout’s lead, passing through the side of the image where the pirate stood.
“Dires!” he quickly called out, and A’Ferun charged into battle, sparing the image of his light one last yearning glance as he passed through the illusion, too.
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The two dire rats in the room put up a decent fight, and their lunging tactics prevented there being room for the mages to do more than stick their heads through the hologram to direct some slowing spells at Prime and Aide’s defenders.
Kinser needed some love from the healer afterward, having been caught by a swipe when one of the dire rats had made an unexpected upward lunge. The muscle was barely sliced, but there was no telling what toxins might have been on the rat’s claws.
The obvious door in this room was a combination lock door that used buttons. Those buttons were hidden in a seemingly random pattern that was actually a reflection of the brighter stars in the sky around N’kieran’s birth constellation. The Narrative power of the zodiacs and astrology was so powerful, Prime would have been surprised to not find some hint of it in a Story World. That N’kieran was born under the constellation of the Virtuous Maiden was just PLOT shenanigans at work.
At first, A’Ferun left solving the puzzle door to the scholars, settling himself into a guard position for his recovering boundsman. Corbent had opted to use a slower healing spell because of the confusion the other three mages were debating at the puzzle door. Slower healings were easier on a body.
Thanks to that delay, Kinser had a chance to use his skills to search the room. He found two secret doors. The mages paused to watch as he opened the first. He found a hidden treasure chest, a small thing the size of a merchant’s traveling jewelry case. In it were three mana stones. The elf was torn between examining the loot and the puzzle door, but at A’Ferun’s, “Take it,” he pocketed the chest and returned to the door.
Opening the second secret door triggered an ice trap, which managed to inflict a bit of frostbite on Kinser’s off hand forearm as he covered his face from the blast of chill. A’Ferun helped by jerking him away from the blast, as well.
Once Corbent treated his new wounds, Kinser set about dismantling the trap while Ep’hram hovered over his shoulder and watched. That netted them two chill stones and another mana stone. Perhaps because of his close brush with the trap, Kinser missed the secret door that lay just beyond it. The door simply led to an alternate, trapped passageway with the chance at another treasure chest.
Looking a bit embarrassed, probably for getting hit by another trap, but also intrigued, Kinser reported, “I’ve never seen these kinds of traps before, Lord.”
A’Ferun nodded, his gaze hooded with some brooding thoughts, no doubt.
Prime, watching one, experienced the odd sense of being both sympathetic for the man’s pain and proud of her partner’s crafting.
A’Ferun’s Halo must have felt they were going to be stuck without intervention. A tingle running through the ambient mana revealed it activating, and A’Ferun’s gaze was drawn to the puzzle door. He drifted closer and mused aloud, “Don’t those buttons look a bit like the stars the soothsayers draw on their sky charts?” Then he appeared struck by his own question. With sure fingers, he pushed in the buttons that corresponded to the stars in the Virtuous Maiden constellation, and the door unlatched.
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Kinser once again led the way. He found the trapped passageway’s hidden door, but as it only opened from the other side — unlike the door that led into the next room — he was unable to do anything about it. That, at least, spared him from finding the heat trap on the door, though he did miss out on the possibility of acquiring two heat stones for dismantling that trap.
They didn’t waste more than a moment confirming they couldn’t do much about the secret door, and entered the last encounter room on their way to the dungeon’s core.
Two more dire rats awaited them, with six spike rats ranged behind them.
Kinser ducked out of the way of the spikes launched at him, rolling to the right. A’Ferun stepped into the room to the left, and the green robed mage managed to be at the fore front of the mage line this time. Her casting used more verbal and material components than the elf’s somatic finger seals. She tossed out a handful of seeds as small as grains of sand toward the far end of the room while she muttered under her breath, and then pushed out a wave of mana that caused the seeds to erupt in wild growth. They tangled around the smaller rats, wrenching many of their necks and spines, and in one case tearing a poor little stunned spike rat in half. The three that survived turned the the new terrain to their advantage, hiding in the cover of the brambles while they regenerated their spikes.
The two dire rats, however, were too big for the reduction in clear floor space to help them, and Kinser definitely faired worse by being shoved in close to his opponent. A’Ferun, on the the other hand, quickly killed his rat and moved to flank Kinser’s. That dire rat died just as quickly as the one A’Ferun faced off against.
The first of the spike rats to regenerate its spikes popped up long enough to fling them at A’Ferun, who was closest to it. One got in a lucky hit that drew a scratch along his cheek and just under his ear.
The green mage then made a hauling motion and ripped the mana she had put into the seeds back out. They withered into a fine dust that coated the remaining rats and slowed them. Muscle-Head looked like he wanted to stomp on them, but he had enough sense not to risk getting one of their spines piercing his boot’s sole. Kinser’s daggers snicked through the air, impaling two of them, and A’Ferun flicked the third up into the air and sliced it nearly in half through its tender belly, batting the corpse against the wall.
«Gruesome, but it did negate the risk of dulling his blade on the floor boards,» Prime said, mildly repulsed by the casual carnage inflicted upon her last set of defenders. She hadn’t even another snake to hide in the passageway. Now, all that remained between their core room and Muscle-Head’s party were two puzzle doors, two pit traps, and two hidden doors, the last of those trapped with a four mana stone heat trap.
These two doors were both the sliced up picture puzzle kind. The first Prime had imbued with an image of their core super imposed over N’kieran’s chest with a radiant burst leaving her in a nova of pristine space. On the edges, tumultuous waves curled out and in, a few hints of sea creatures caught up in the tsunami sized waves.
A’Ferun and Kinser both swallowed at the revealed hologram, though Kinser’s eyes were quite round and his color a bit pale. A’Ferun’s knuckles turned white where he gripped his sword and his expression fierce. If his eyes were suspiciously glittery in the green mage’s light, Prime could have rolled her eyes at him, but the emotion seemed far more genuine than she had ever seen from him while stuck in N’kieran’s Role.
«Do you think this Branch might let A’Ferun be less of a caricature of the Male Lead?» Prime asked Aide.
Aide took a moment before responding. Their skepticism clear in their tone, they said, «Maybe? It does feel like there’s something different in this Branch of the PLOT, but the major theme of the world is Romance, and he’s still the Male Lead.»
«The Lead, or a Lead?» Prime asked. That was an important distinction in a Story World. There were many individual stories playing out under the direction of the world’s PLOT, but few PLOTs — especially in Romance Story Worlds — were set up to sustain multiple simultaneous primary Leads. Successive, sure, but once a Lead’s main story arc was done, their Halos nearly all retired into favored Supporting Role Halos.
«Good catch! He is a Lead now, no longer the Lead. The PLOT must be reconfiguring his story arc.
Kinser used his trap prod to trigger the two pit traps, and it was time for the last puzzle door.
For this image, Prime had N’kieran sitting in a cultivation pose inside the crystal of their core, with a krait curled up like a supporting stand around the base of the gem, its head laid in N’kieran’s lap and her hand resting upon its head. A veritable sea of eyes peered out at the viewers, the only hint of the wharf rats. Her other hand was held palm up at shoulder height, and over her palm floated a plethora of stylized faces rendered at such a small scale and back lit that it would take close examination to realize they were faces in the first place. A serene smile traced her lips, her eyes closed as if she were dreaming pleasant dreams.
A’Ferun frowned at the image and didn’t take anywhere near so long as with the others before he was ready to move beyond it.
On the other side of the hologram there should have been the boss room, but because Prime hadn’t expanded out the tunnels yet, it was instead a branching corridor of very short hallways. A’Ferun tried to use his soul tracker to figure out which way to go. That didn’t work out so well; it was swinging through such wide arcs it might as well have been spinning all about.
The matu said something, his posture soothing, and A’Ferun took in a calming breath and nodded.
«Oh, shoot! No more defenders means no more ears on the floor!» Prime grumped.
A’Ferun gazed at the tracker for another moment, and then pointed to the right.
Kinser made a circuit of the not-quite-a-room, first finding the hidden door that led to just another treasure chest — this one part of the floor, but holding three each of the chill, heat, and mana stones. On the second pass, Kinser moved slower, and his detection skill revealed the other hidden door in the room.
Like the first, the treasure chest was part of the floor, only this time A’Ferun and the elf mage started arguing and Kinser stuck around long enough to spot the door hidden behind the chest.
A look of respect took over his face, quickly replaced by alarm. The scout shooed the rest of his party away and assembled several trap prods into one long prod, which he then used to tap the latch release plate for the last door.
Heat *fwooshed* out of the trap, leaving a fine dust of char floating down to the floor.
It took Kinser about a full minute to work his nerve up enough to approach. Dismantling the trap was a lot easier. The single heat stone in it had crumbled during the activation of the trap, and the mana stones were dim. It would be a while before they recharged.
But that left A’Ferun and his party to move into the core room, where his soul tracker was spinning in circles.
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This is what the floor looks like in its unfinished state.
[https://i.imgur.com/ZfmERa3.jpg]