Warner Papapoulos

His fist was a shining eruption of violence and he loved it.

The new armor soaked in his Mana with every expulsion, releasing it all upon command to increase the explosivity of critical attacks. A fanged dishwasher took a direct hit and flew into a pile of concussed mimics. One moment later Jorgenson’s wind descended like a blender.

After initially sticking together on the sixth floor, the two parties split. A coin flip sent Malachi’s party to the right while Warner led his people directly across the monster-infested junkyard. They went in search of the remaining pylons. He essentially lost the toss as his route was the longer one. First to the middle of the floor and then check out the furthest left before curving towards the opposite of the entrance. They needed to be thorough in their search.

The secret to this floor appeared easy so far. A challenge of courage rather than power or wisdom.

When still together the two parties had come across a sparking tower. Suspect trash was piled against the pylon and there were busts of monsters attached across it. Each head had a sweet-smelling gruel oozing from the mouths. In the darkness of each cavity was a glint of light.

“Dare” was carved cleanly atop the pylon.

After clearing the obvious mimics they were still left with the simple task of reaching their hand into the darkness. There was a magic effect that kept the insides completely dark. They would need to risk reaching in without knowing what was inside. There were volunteers, but in the end, everyone drew straws; using some scrap wires found in the debris.

Warner, being a volunteer, laughed at their silly game. He didn’t wait to stick his hand into the jaws of a stone lion. His greatest concern at the time was keeping the ooze from getting on his new shiny red armor. Which became pointless when the inside was like an overstuffed honeycomb.

Pushing in deeper as he searched caused the goo to pour out in globs rather than a trickle. The hole in the mouth was deep. Warner had to turn sidewise before his fingers finally touched anything substantial. Strangely it felt like a rubber ball to the tips of his fingers, slipping across the goo-covered surface. A deep breath and he pushed his arm in deep to grasp the ball shape. It depressed under the grip.

“Oooooooogaahh!”

A loud, deep horn sound spurted from atop the pylon. Warner jerked painfully and tried to cover his ears as the elongated sound reacted to his instinctive double clench. He pulled away with a glare as everyone looked frantically around for any charging monsters.

Still as the grave, which was freakier. The mimics were playing it quiet.

The second look around was to see if anything changed, but not even the head covered tower had altered.

He took out a hand that was coated in blue gruel and slathered the lion's head. An act as much to mark the bust as to clean himself. “Well, we know there’s nothing in this one.”

Julia had been the other volunteer so she took her turn next. The shieldmaiden circled the pylon as if searching for the perfect Jenga block to pull. Her choice eventually fell onto a statue in the shape of a goat’s head. By the scrunching on her face, it was no less gooey inside.

This time an electric shock thundered her through the air. There was a crack and the armored woman was thrust into a mountain of trash. This triggered a mimic swarm. Since a blue blade angrily cut itself free and joined the battle they quickly turned their focus on clearing the monster.

Three more people took a turn before they had a winner; two more horn blows and an extremely patient and stoic mimic that bit down on Brice’s arm.

Clarissa laughed at her fellow archer while the rest of them tried to peel the monster off. The humor of the moment wasn’t lost on any of them. Especially when the mimic refused to give up the form of a puffy-cheeked chipmunk.

The lucky winner that saved them was Anastasia. More reluctant than any of them, but wouldn’t shrink her duty. Not when it was her turn. She picked a demonic looking hound. Warner was impressed the scaredy cat had chosen the spookiest one. Even said so.

“Um, I want this over with so I am uh picked the worse one,” declared Anastasia as she blindly shoved her hand into the hole. Desperate to make this quick. “It uh might be another horn…”

When her arm began to retract without causing their ears to bleed, everyone cheered the blue mage. In the blue mage’s ooze-covered hand was a glass sphere with blue gunk filling in the runic carvings. A moment later the sparks atop the tower spurted off, confirming that they had collected their prize.

Suspecting there were more pylons to collect from, the parties split to cover more ground. Plus Warner and Malachi agreed that each party had the strength to face what the sixth floor was throwing at them on their own.

Finding the center of the floor proved to be difficult. The dimness of the lighting made seeing the outer edges impossible once they went a little way in. Combined with the fairly unremarkable and repeating hills of junk, there was no way to even tell when they were at the center. Unless there was something special about the middle of the sixth floor.

Which there wasn’t apparently.

Eventually, the straight line the party was heading took them through the center unnoticed. The angled walls appearing in the distance showed they were nearing another corner. Everyone looked for the Gate, but like the floor before, there wasn’t any sign of the gold. Only a second pylon.

Sparking like the last one, this tower had large colored bulbs lighting up at random instead of stone animal heads. It was sorta memorizing and Warner lost a few seconds watching the random pattern. A whisper of a tone played uniquely for each light.

“So, smash or no smash?” said Warner to start up the theorizing. “Fun as that might be, seems too fancy for that to be the solution.”

“It’s definitely a puzzle, so let’s not break our tools to solve it,” frowned Jorgenson.

Their healer tilted his back and forth like a collie before breathing out loudly. “Ahh! I wish Molly was still with us! One look and I bet she’d have solved this damn thing.”

The storm mage punched Conor in the arm with an audible smack. Concerned eyes turned to Warner shyly, while occasionally flicking a glare back to her hissing victim. Everyone else was silent, staring too hard at the colored lights.

He only sighed. “Yeah, she had the smarts, but we’re not without our own. Just gotta collect the clues.”

Everyone moved closer to inspect the pylon. There was a sorta junkyard Christmas vibe to it. Colored lights flashed and music of a sort was in the air. Except, the sequence was off somehow. It was to Warner as if there were too many things going off at times or out of beat.

There was a red one in particular that kept catching his attention. Blinking on its own rhythm and had a flat tone, not at all in key with the others. He waited a bit to make sure, but every time the tune repeated the red one was standing out to him. His hand reached out, curious to see if there was a way to interact with the bulb.

Perhaps adjusting the lights is the key… do I turn it? Can I take it out?

The surface was smooth like the glass it seemed to be, or was for a moment. Under his touch, the texture changed to a wet lollipop.

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His hand was stuck.

Trying to pull his limb free set the bulb to jiggling and stretching. The flat tone began, rising to draw everyone’s attention before undulating into an animal scream.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” cried Warner as panic induced him to pull frantically to be free. There was a sound of a suction cup giving and he fell backwards. The red bulb attached to his hand deformed slowly to reveal itself to be a tongue-like protrusion of a mimic. Jagged teeth appeared, shifting forward as the monster slowly swallowed itself to get closer.

His party turned at the alarm, but seemed uncertain how to help. He felt their Mana come to life as they got into each other’s way.

It was on him.

Warner took a deep breath and tried not to worry about the malformed thing folding itself to eat his hand. Mana stirred. Igniting his aura into an orange glow. He directed it to pool around his stuck hand. His normal explosions might hurt the mimic enough, but there was something else the brawler had been working on. The new armor’s support allowed greater focus.

He thought of fire.

The Mana around his hand burst into flames. Smoke and sizzling filled the air.

A second later the burning mimic dropped to the ground as the adhesion was destroyed. It tried to crawl away, still aflame. Warner grinned at his flame-covered fist and slammed down on the monster with the great relish of revenge.

Looking back at his party, the pugilist said, “Well looks like we have another mimic problem.”

Which they immediately decided to clear up. Scratching their brains any further was pointless when who knew how many of the bulbs were false. The party formation and plan were simple. Jorgenson and Brice began firing low energy bolts at range, enough to jostle the mimics to react without breaking the real lights. No one wanted to make the puzzle harder.

Standing in front of them was, of course, Elena and Zachariah. Spear and ax ready to halt every enraged monster. The party rotated slowly around the pylon to test each bulb for fakes. About a third were revealed to be hidden monsters.

Without the false lights, the tone and color flashes were easier to note. The pattern was much clearer. It was now noticeable that there was a significant pause that had been covered up before. Touching the bulbs was key after all. When touched they activated, glowing brighter and ringing louder. Those discoveries led to the obvious idea of repeating the pattern themselves in the pause.

Three people had to work together to complete the sequence in time and at the correct beat. It wasn't as simple as remembering the order, the song had to be correct too. Warner, Conor, and Brice were the activators while Jorgenson clapped them a beat to follow.

It took a few tries, but they nailed the sequence. Which triggered a rush of mimics. Their victory turned into a messy battle as the monsters dived at them from every direction.

The song apparently attracted them.

Instead of the sparking turning off and a glass sphere appearing, a new pattern started.

Twice more they had to work out the proper order and beat. Each time the sequence got more complicated and called more mimics. When the final monster began to turn to dust, the top of the pylon went out and a little door opened up to reveal the runic ball.

They collected it and began heading right along the walls. In the case of there being no Gate on the opposite side of the door, the plan was still to circle back to the entrance. Once together both parties would share their information and formulate the next step.

Warner thought it would be fun if they could solve this floor in a day and hoped the opportunity would present itself. Being able to taunt Molly and other party leaders with the achievement would be awesome fun.

The sixth floor turned out not to be a square at all, instead, it was a hexagram. Warner’s party came across a corner far too soon and checked in with Malachi’s party with the speaking stones. Between the two of them, they were able to correlate that there were six corners and each had a pylon. Not counting the one they did together, each party had one glass sphere in hand. Three more were up for grabs.

Excitingly, his party was better set up to grab two more since the battlemage’s party would have to rush across the floor to get to the last corner first. Warner announced this to his party and a competitive humor shined in their eyes. Just the motivation everyone needed to haul ass.

He set a fast, but safe pace.

Through the junkyard scenery, they jogged, blasting and slashing on the run. Only a few mimics got triggered by their passing. Ambushes were eliminated with extreme prejudice as they searched for telltale signs of sparks.

The next pylon they found was a bewildering Rube Goldberg machine. Things spun, twirled, and shifted all about. Metal spheres ran through a gambit of rails that interacted with devices of all sorts. There were several rail systems that all interconnected and affected each other. Colored handles showed that there was also a manual aspect needed from them in the design.

That took some time to study.

Watching and tracing the different routes that the spheres followed. Warner wished he had paper and pen, but bringing any into the floors never occurred to him. Fighting had always played more of a role and carrying too much got in the way.

He made a note to fix that for the future.

It took about an hour to dissect the contraption by splitting up the memorization. Four people took the routes themselves and two focused on what each handle did. Together they had a grip on how everything worked. The hardest part was then what was supposed to be done to solve the puzzle. There was nothing obvious. Even clearing out a couple of mimics didn’t make anything apparent.

The goal only revealed itself when they began to play around. Testing every possible way a route could be affected. It was a group effort since each path could cause big changes to another. The spheres dropped from the top together, but could end up anywhere before the reset. Telling them apart was particularly difficult.

One such run resulted in the metal sphere disappearing for a moment. There was a click that briefly turned off the electricity coming out of one prong above. Excitedly they identified a hidden socket the sphere could land in, but had to be activated by another sphere’s passing at the right time.

From there it was simply a matter of getting that timing down and finding the other sockets.

After another hour of experimentation and Warner collected another runic ball. His party gleefully watched him announce to Malachi that they were heading to the last pylon.

The response was celebratory, but the pugilist definitely heard Clarissa curse in the background, which was simply delicious.

Another rush and bash and the party found the next pylon.

This last puzzle was full of mimics and almost impossible to pre-cleanse it. Surrounding the pylon was a pit filled with random metal blocks like Legos. There were dozens of variations in there, from the number stuck together to the shape of the formations. On the pylon itself there were four screens that showed different configurations. Each listed what pieces needed to be used to make them within a time limit. Simultaneously as well.

Baby mimics infested the pit, waiting to bite off fingers as they dug for the needed pieces. It was a frantic affair as the timer depleted and everyone tried to test pieces before grasping them. Stabbing and even a torrent from Jorgenson proved ineffective at more than scouring the top layer.

Conor had quite the workout from all the bites and acid burns everyone received from solving the puzzle.

The second Warner claimed the last sphere, a rumble rocked the floor. The sound of shifting machinery reached them from the direction of the center. Malachi’s party had heard the same, but had eyes on the change. They had been on their way back to the entrance when a tower rose out of the junk and connected to the ceiling above.

On one side there were sockets for the glass balls. They surrounded a golden door.

Both parties met up at the tower. It looked like a cement pillar holding up the ceiling. As Malachi and Warner walked up together, he said “You know this has been so easy, I’m almost expecting this to be a trap.”

“I know the feeling, it's unnerving me too,” laughed the battlemage. “I’m hoping this is more a testament to Valerie’s talent or The Pit being nice after the crabs.”

Warner laughed at that. “Right, The Pit pulling punches. I’d more easily believe we’re just awesome.”

“We have been picking up pace, so let’s have faith,” smiled Malachi.

“That I’m happy to bet on.”

They pushed in the last spheres together and jumped back despite their conclusion. The runes and glass glowed before the sockets disappeared with them. Then the door opened with no additional fanfare. Within was a corkscrew staircase going upwards, made of unadorned steel.

Atop was another victory hall, as Warner had begun to think of them. It had the expected T shape and murals on the wall. These ones depicted treasure hoards.

Nothing jumped out at them so they went to take a look at the next floor before calling it a day. He felt a twinge of embarrassment when both Malachi and Julia pulled out something to write down Xaiver’s words.

The ghostly old man made his appearance. His speech began with the usual congratulations before diving into the origins of the floor. It had been a mimic menagerie to study their intelligence and unique biology. Somewhat interestingly, the monster had been created at least four separate times for various reasons, but it was almost impossible to tell the different lineages apart. Pretty pointless too apparently.

In the end, the message was summed up as all knowledge had power and use. Even things learned from weirdo monsters that liked to pretend to be inanimate objects.

As they looked at the next floor, Warner grinned at Malachi. “Man, I can't wait to brag about clearing a floor on our own!”

The leader of the Sixty grinned back, “Yeah, that envy is going to be great.”