Chapter 31: Briefing

Sakura / Landar

Sakura

Witch Edna eventually stopped cackling, and the crowd of young teens eventually calmed. As it turned out having a half mad cackling woman nearly as powerful as the sovereign of the entire region cackling happily, was not conducive to a calm student body. I doubt she realizes just how much she affected us with that cackling.

No, she knows. King said, annoyed. She just thought it was funny.

That . . . that would fit, actually.

“Everyone, get in your groups. One of the guards will be assigned to each group, and will explain to you what you should expect to see on the entrance level to the dungeon. I mean tower. It is a dungeon, but the fact it's in the shape of a tower throws me off every time. So strange . . .” She said the last bit as if to herself. “I’ll be around to each of you just before it is your turn to enter and test your mettle against the threats of the ‘tower’.”

It didn’t take long for the guard to arrive at our group. He was tall, and wiery. But his armor was filled with power that seemed to amplify his aura. And in some ways contain its effects to the immediate area around him.

“I am Junior Knight Maxiumus of his grace's house guard. It is a pleasure to meet all of you. Now, do you have questions? Or would you prefer me to give you the general rundown that all new recruits into the house guard get before they try the tower. I have been instructed,” he gave Edna a werry look from across the room. “To only do one of the two. Answer your questions or provide you a general briefing. Your choice.”

I turned to my team, and we began to discuss what was ahead of us and the best path forward.

***

Landar

“Careful lad,” Gragon said. “The elders like to ask this kind of question, just to trip you up.”

“I think I got it, don’t worry.” I reassured my dwarven friend before turning back to the knight. “I’ll ask you some questions, if you don’t mind.” I smirked and the short, bulky man smiled.

“Go ahead then kid. Ask away.”

“What did you learn in your initial training?” The knight grinned from ear to ear, then slowly shook his head.

“I knew one of you would ask that. Glaring loophole if there ever was one. Alright, I'll give you the basics but nothing more than that, and let you figure out what to ask about after. Fair?” I nodded in agreement. “Alright. There are over one hundred levels to the Silver Tower. Each level is harder than the last. The Silver Tower is a genus loci, meaning it's a dungeon. And dungeons are great for training, and gaining resources. But its goal in the process is to get you to use up as much mana and stamina, and spill as much of your own blood and sweat and tears in there as possible.”

He pointed to his head and tapped his temple for a moment. “Theoretically the smart ones will try not to kill you, but some of them get a thirst for murder for some reason. So you have to be watchful for that if you ever encounter one in the wild. The Silver Tower thankfully, is a large, powerful, and smart spirit. It will do everything in its power to put you in as much danger as possible. Traps, monsters it controls, monsters it summons, spirits that it's contracted with, and the like. It’ll throw it all at you in an effort to push you to your limits and maybe a bit beyond them.”

“So it's going to try and kill us?” Tosh asked, sounding concerned. And honestly, who could blame him? I was starting to get a bit concerned as well.

“Not so much. The tower is excellent at striking a balance between pushing you, and avoiding murdering you out right.”

“Oh well that’s great. What have you gotten me into, lad?”

I rolled my eyes as the knight continued. “The upper levels of the tower are considered the ‘true’ levels. There are one hundred of them. Below the main floor however, here in the basement? They’re considered training levels. They won’t scale to your strength, wit, and wisdom like the true floors will. These are set to a given difficulty.”

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“And we’re going in at level zero. Right?”

“Oh no. You’d almost certainly all die at level zero.” The knight said happily. “No, you’re going to negative level fifty. That’s the door over there.” He pointed to where the witch had entered. “Edna uses it as a safe place to put her study. No ones going to bother her in there. Oh, uh. That's the end of the information I think I can give you and stay fair to the others. Just uh . . . if you find a room that has Edna written on the door, stay out of it. It's hers.”

“Rodrick,” Edna announced. “Your group is going first. Please, follow me.” The brick of a kid I had seen earlier in my enchantment fundamentals class was followed by several other students and a woman who carried a staff and looked suspiciously like a druid. When I caught sight of her pointed, tall ears my eyes must have gone wide, as Gragon noticed.

The double doors leading into the dungeon were shut firmly before Gragon spoke “Aye, you spotted the knife ear too.” He said in a quiet tone. “She’s from a good clan though, friendly like. Though she doesn't look much like it.”

“Rodrick is from a northern county.” Tosh explained. “Right across the border you all share with my home. His family has strong ties to the elves of the evergreen winter woods that straddle your duchy and mine.”

I made a note to try and get to know rodrick, and the elf woman he had on his team. Got to put those old rusty networking and diplomacy skills to work, I thought to myself with a grin.

“Any more questions kids?” the knight, Sir Qwail asked annoyed we had all stopped to gawk at the leaving group.

My team had several questions, and we found some of the information useful. At the floor we were going to start at, there would most likely be very weak low level tower spawn such as goblins and the dog like kobolds. He mentioned they liked to use traps, and to trick or bind tower challengers, but wouldn’t go into more detail than that. Once we asked several questions in a row where we had hit the limit of what he was willing to tell us, we found we were as prepared as we probably would be.

“Good luck kids. You’ll do fine. And don’t worry too much,” Sir Qwail winked. “The witch is around, and we’ll prevent you from meeting anything too nasty in there. Most of the really big stuff stays up at least a few floors, just to keep out of her way.” He laughed as he walked back to his guard post along the edge of the room.

One by one the other teams were called, and led away until it was just Sakura, her brother's team, and mine.

“Good luck sister,” Rayce said with a bow, then he gave me a friendly smile and a wave before leaving to follow edna through the double doors.

“Weird to see and elf, and not try to kill it.” A black clothed swordsman from Sakura’s team said, with an air of aw. The rest of her team agreed, save Victor.

“I don’t know about your homeland Sakura,” Victor chimed in. “But along the western borderlands the elves are nearly pacifistic. Most of them refuse to do so much as defend themselves. Very few leave their homes, and those that do often only for short trips under armed guard. To see one dedicated to a young man's protection is . . . well, bloody weird i’d say.”

“I nearly died fighting a woman like her just a few months ago,” Sakura said, her voice wistful and eyes glazed over as if caught up in the memory of the fight. I had seen that stare before, soldiers telling stories of fights they never really wanted to remember. “The prince saved me. Put a lance right through her heart.”

“They staked one of our uncles, and left him alive,” One of the trio of easterners in Sakura’s group said. He wore a multi-hughed robe that was predominantly purple. “The sun burned him, desiccated his body under the heat and used healing spells to keep him alive. I . . . I saw him when we tried to launch a raid to save him. But they ambushed us. It was all we could do to put him out of his misery before we left.”

A silence fell then. And I could tell Victor looked as deeply uncomfortable as everyone else there. “That . . . I can’t imagine the level of pain you all must have gone through against a foe that would do something so evil.” He said, his face going slightly red. “But . . . I also can’t imagine the elves here doing anything even remotely like that. They must be truly different cultures. If not race, of people.”

“Perhaps,” the black clad swordsman said, his eyes hard.

I cleared my throat and everyone looked at me uncomfortably. Expectantly. You better appreciate this Victor, I thought as I dusted off my diplomacy skills earlier then I thought I'd have need of them.

“My brother in law here, Roland,” I pointed at Roland and the goofball actually waved. “Is a cleric. Which means he’s a member of a priesthood. The leader of a priesthood, another cleric, nearly killed me as a child. He wanted to take my sister, and a bunch of other kids from the slums, and use them as breeding slave stock to prevent his power from slipping away here in the capital. For years I thought he had won, and I hated him. I hated him so much that for a few years my happiest dreams were ones in which I murdered him with my bare hands.”

My team, including Roland, looked at me with concern. My brother in law put a hand on my shoulder. “Thanks. Look, in my past there were bad clerics. They abused us, used us, and sought to do that to a whole hell of a lot of other people I cared about. And some of them did get hurt. Hell, I hear my dad lost an arm.” I grinned. “He got better but . . . well that’s not the point. The point is they, clerics, holy knights, and priests did a lot of really shitty things. I even killed some of them for it. But, there are other clerics, priests, and religious people who have also helped me out a lot as well. Who honestly seek to help and to do good.”

“You’ll find bad people in any group. Just like you’ll find good ones.” The archer from Sakura’s group smiled, chiming in for the first time. “Our mother was a priestess. And she was a ray of sunshine especially on sad days.”

“That’s exactly my point. I think, I hope, that elves are like that too. You’ll find good, and bad in every group. And some groups are worse than others. Hopefully, this peaceful group of elves? Hopefully they’re like Roland here. He might be a goofball,”

“Hey,” Roland grinned and released my shoulder.

“But he’s loyal, and loves my sister with everything he has.”

A silence filled the space between the groups for a long time, as people considered what had been said.

Sakura opened her mouth to say something, but the double doors creaked open and edna emerged. “Sakura, your group is next.”