Ivy was so embarrassed. She knew she shouldn’t have had that venti cold brew on the way here.

Once she was sure she was out of Ash’s earshot, she whispered, “Hey, GM, where do I find a bathroom?”

“There is a water closet at the far end of the hallway.”

“Thanks a heap!” Ivy said, hurrying past the foyer and dining room, then the kitchen, into an area where the dust lay heavier and the cobwebs thicker in the corners. At the end of the hall she found a narrow door that stood ajar into what she first thought was a broom closet, but no. Within lay a wooden bench with a hole in it. It was dark as an armpit in there.

“Oh, you’re kidding,” she said. “I have to pee in the dark?”

“Your party opted for the Ultimate Mode experience,” Hugh Jackman said.

“We did?”

“It was at the Ruby Ticket-holder’s discretion.”

She scoffed, planning to talk to Ash about that.

She peered down through the hole in the bench. Oddly it didn’t have that rancid-campground-toilet smell she was expecting. It smelled like the ocean, and she thought she caught the echo of lapping water below. Far below.

She sighed. “How do I get out of this thing?”

“Your gamesuit has a biological relief mechanism. Simply state your intention, and the gamesuit will open.”

All around her, the sound of the incoming storm got stronger. Surf roared in the distance, making her suddenly have to go worse.

“Okay then, start bio-break now please.”

Just like that, she felt the sensation of her gamesuit unzipping itself in the necessary area. What she sat on, however, felt like a plastic toilet seat, not a wooden bench. She chuckled at the notion that her disembodied ass cheeks had returned to the real world, even though the rest of her hadn’t. Fortunately this nineteenth century toilet had modern toilet paper.

When she returned to the hallway, she found it had darkened considerably, as if the storm had swallowed the rest of the natural light. But then she noticed a warm glow from around the corner of the hallway, farther away from where she’d left Ash, toward the mansion’s smaller wing.

She looked back toward where she had left him.

A minor-key chime and a blaze of glowing text appeared in the air.

SIDEQUEST - The Dweller in the Tower Investigate this unfrequented wing of Château Delacroix. Discover who or what lurks in the Tower to learn a Spell. Do you accept? Yes or No.

It was one of the cardinal game playing rules—never separate the party.

But it was just a little peek around the corner.

"Said every player character everywhere right before they died,” she admonished herself.

But it was a chance to learn a spell, which would be incredibly cool.

“Yes, I accept,” she said.

The sidequest text disappeared in flame and ash.

She stepped around the corner and found a hallway of about thirty feet leading to an open door, from which poured a welcoming glow. Someone in this dismal, old block of gloom actually had lights on.

She paused in the doorway, finding herself at the entrance of someone’s bedroom. In the center of the room stood a four-poster bed on a threadbare Persian rug. Along the stone walls, an armoire, a chest of drawers, a writing desk. On the nightstand next to the bed stood a bottle of amber liquid, a book, and an oil lamp, which burned brightly. Another lamp burned on the writing desk.

Lightning flickered in the window that faced the sea. Dark clouds churned.

“Hello?” she called. “Is someone here?”

Across the room stood a grand fireplace with a couple of logs burning for a comfortable warmth that was absent everywhere else in the house.

On both sides of the fireplaces were turrets, in which stone steps spiraled upward, clockwise, in true castle fashion, so that it was easier for right-handed defenders fighting from above, a bit of historical trivia she was proud to know herself.

She stepped farther into the room. The book on the nightstand was The Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells, a novel she’d heard of, being a sci-fi nerd, but hadn’t read. Maybe she needed to add it to her to-be-read pile. Everything in this game world was so exactingly crafted, the title of the book couldn’t be an accident. This was an island, after all. She wished she knew what the book was about.

Then a shifting series of discordant tones emanated from the two stairwells with an odd, stereo effect. The tones were pure, but they did not play well with each other. The closer she approached the stairwells, the more their dissonance grated like nails on a chalkboard.

“Hello?” she called again.

The tones stopped.

“Are you the investigator from the bank?” a mature male voice called from above, neutral, curious.

“Yes, may I come up and speak to you?” she asked.

“Of course!” The voice turned cordial.

As she climbed the steps, she heard shuffling from above, as if he were tidying. She emerged into a workshop or laboratory. Instead of bubbling tubes and beakers, however, the room was full of…tuning forks. Ranging in size from a finger up to six feet long, scores of them, all connected by a dizzying array of copper tubes and wires. Where there were no tuning forks, diagrams and equations covered the walls. The stairwell she had taken continued upward. She stepped into the laboratory and found a tall, thin man, clearly sharing ancestry with Gilbert but lacking the harsh glare and hard mouth, and there was still a touch of brown in his hair.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

He smiled warmly. “Welcome to my workshop. I am Renard Delacroix.”

“Serena Holliday. A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She curtsied.

But then a glow from one of the diagrams on the wall caught her eye, growing brighter and brighter. A circle fraught with arcane symbols leaped off the parchment amid a storm of crabbed characters and flew toward her face like a hailstorm. A hissing rush and a major chord filled her eyes.

SIDEQUEST COMPLETED - The Dweller in the Tower You have discovered who lives in this wing of Château Delacroix. In so doing, a piece of Renard Delacroix’s arcane research has lodged permanently in your mind.

She staggered, suddenly dizzy.

“Are you all right, my dear? Do you need to sit down?” Renard’s voice sounded like it came from across the cosmos.

Stability Loss. Learning to use powers from beyond the bounds of the mortal world has a detrimental effect on the human psyche. You have suffered a loss of three Stability points.

She waved the text away, hoping it would take the vertigo with it. She clutched the edge of a workbench. “Uh, I’m fine.”

More game text appeared.

Spell: Veil of Zorath-lin Type: Enchantment Casting Time: Five seconds Casting Requirements: Incantation, gestures Range: Self Duration: 10 Soul Points per minute Effect: Caster pierces the veil between dimensions and steps through, allowing them to walk in both worlds. Caster appears to turn invisible, and may not be detected except through magical means. Caster’s perception of the original world is skewed by the realities of the new dimension, and must make Perception checks to remain oriented. Side effects: Stepping into unknown realms weakens the caster’s mental grip on reality as they know it. The Caster suffers a loss of Stability equal to half the Soul Points spent. If the caster runs out of Stability points while behind the Veil of Zorath-lin, they are Lost in Time and Space forever.

Ivy blinked again and again and took deep breaths to steady herself. “What a weird effect,” she breathed.

When she could focus on Renard again, she found him watching her with a smile of patience and concern. “Are you well, my dear?”

She nodded. “I think so. Must have lost my breath climbing those stairs. Stupid corset.”

He nodded. “How goes your investigation? I trust you’ve met my cousin, Gilbert?”

“I have had the pleasure.”

Renard chuckled. “A more austere and humorless man has never before been given birth. But he does have his virtues as well. So you and your friends are here to investigate the purloined treasure? You don’t look like investigators.”

Ivy raised an eyebrow.

He pointed to the high, narrow window. “I saw you arrive.” Then he spotted her cybernetic steampunk arm. “My word, will you take a look at that marvelous contraption! Is that what I think it is?” he breathed.

She raised it and flexed her hand. “It is my prosthetic hand.”

“A bit more complex than a hook, I daresay. Marvelous,” he said, stepping closer.

“Thank you,” she said awkwardly, still uncomfortable with anyone complimenting her cybernetic arm.

“May I see it?”

She offered it hesitantly.

He examined it gently. “Such craftsmanship! The inventor must be legendary.”

“My mother, actually. She designed and built it.”

“Your mother is a genius.”

“That’s what they say.”

Her tone made him pause, then he gave her a sympathetic look. “May I…ask how it happened?”

Her cheeks and ears grew hot. She had told this story to almost no one except close friends, but even those were too many. “It’s such a silly story.”

“But tragic, to have been so injured while so charming and beautiful. I will not say ‘disfigured,’ because it very much suits you.”

Her cheeks grew hotter. “It was an infection. I was walking my dog one night, and he went charging into the bushes. Turned out there was a raccoon in there. A big one. I didn’t have time to think. I just grabbed the raccoon by the scruff of the neck and tried to drag them apart. I finally did, and before I could throw it over the neighbor’s fence, it tore up my forearm pretty bad. The wounds turned septic, and after eight surgeries they took off my arm.”

“Oh, my dear,” he said with genuine sympathy.

She brightened her voice. “But now I am a cyborg, so I got that going for me.”

“I am unfamiliar with that term, but such an infection might have taken your life. You are exceedingly fortunate.”

She gave him an awkward smile, then said, “So what are you working on here? Are you an inventor as well?”

“I suppose some would call me so, although my family just calls me an eccentric fool. I study resonances. The universe is made of music, did you know that? And thus, indirectly, mathematics. Are you familiar with resonance?”

“I took some science classes. I know how it works. Constructive and destructive resonance. Waves that either add to become greater than the sum of their parts or cancel each other out.”

His bushy eyebrows raised. “And as smart as your mother, it seems. You are a most intriguing young lady.”

In the real world, she’d have scoffed at such words from a man more than twice her age, but there was something genuine about him that put her at ease.

“Did you know that there is a third type of resonance? Constructive, destructive…and transformative. I’m convinced that the proper combination of waves can change the very essence of reality itself.”

“You mean, like, change the laws of physics and chemistry?”

“More like bringing them into tune with the laws of other realities.”

“Other dimensions, you mean.”

“Precisely.” His eyes gleamed. “Opening doors.”

“Well, if you succeed, I hope you can close them again.” This sounded like mad scientist kind of stuff, a rabbit hole to avoid. “Do you mind if I ask you some questions about the diamond and the investigation?”

“I am happy to assist you. I’ll confess, the loss of the diamond puts my family in a very bad way. And my research in dire jeopardy. I should like to see it returned forthwith.”

She furrowed her brow and tapped her chin. “Tell me about the diamond itself. Obviously it has intrinsic value, but surely there’s a story associated with it.”

He paused for a moment, as if reading something in the air before him, then said, “It was found by our great family patriarch, Jean-Paul Delacroix on one of his South Sea voyages. He and other members of his family came to the New World fleeing poverty and the oppression of the French monarchy. As a lad, he took ship on various vessels, including whalers, merchant ships. He worked his way up from cabin boy, and by the time he was a thirty-five he was captain of his own vessel, The Silver Twilight. From one of those voyages, he brought home the diamond. He would never reveal how he came by it. He considered it the family ‘good luck charm,’ so to speak, and so most of us think of it. He raised the family from a two-room hovel in Silver Cove to this lovely château.”

“Does the family have any enemies? Anyone who’d want to hurt you?”

Renard laughed bitterly. “Every denizen of Silver Cove for starters. They’ve been jealous of the family since this château was built, even while we were filling their pockets with prosperity. We made that town.” His voice turned bitter, then softened. “Alas it is the nature of humanity to ill-appreciate who butters their bread. But no matter. Have you any further questions? I’m running a series of experiments.”

“Not right now,” she said, “but if I do, will I find you here?”

“Yes, and if nothing else we shall see each other at dinner.”

“Dinner?”

He pointed outside. “The storm is upon us, and the tide has come in. You’ll find getting back to the mainland most unpleasant. You must accept our hospitality I’m afraid.” Something glinted in his eye, behind the veneer of cordiality, gone too quickly for her to identify.