Chapter 96

Despite the cold. Despite the pain. Despite the desperate rush to leave this floor, I stopped, dead in my tracks, to stare. It was all I could do. Nyle and Lyn equally froze behind me, though I barely registered their presence. So great was the anomaly, or perhaps wonder, that I was viewing.

The ice walls we’d passed through had been obscuring the true identity of wait lay beyond, and only after we crossed their path did it truly become clear. The path we’d been following descended downwards, as I’d noticed. It was gradual at first, and the rest of the expanse, for a good fifteen feet, was flat around it. However, after those fifteen feet, the frozen land just… disappeared. The trail in the sloping ground led to a wooden structure that stood out against the white landscape. And past that… a massive… pit.

And that wasn’t all. The pit was massive in circumference. The three-foot tall ice walls circled around for probably two-hundred feet. And within the walls, all around, was the fifteen additional feet of flat ground, before just, the massive hole. It was obvious it wasn’t natural. Or, as natural I supposed as could exist within the Tower? Or maybe it was now that I thought about it. I remembered the goblin ‘camp’ from the first floor. It hadn’t been anywhere near this ground, but that was something Tower had made. So perhaps this giant…whatever it was, had been created by the Tower’s magic as well.

“You don’t think the portal to the next floor is down there, do you?” Nyle asked, his voice shaking, though from the cold or fear I couldn’t tell. I was interested in getting closer to the pit, but at the same time, given how slick the footing was, there was a part of me that was worried I’d slip and fall in. How deep did the pit go? From where we stood, I couldn’t see the bottom. Which just told me if I did fall, I’d die. Though how long I’d be in a free fall, before death greeted me, I had no idea. Either way, that didn’t seem like a pleasant way to go.

“Only one way to find out,” I said, looking from Nyle to Lyn. With a determined nod, we began moving, much more slowly and cautiously, towards the wooden structure. It was the only landmark we had regarding the pit, and the tracks we’d been following since we reached this floor, led directly to it.

With each step, more and more of the area was revealed to us. The pit continued deeper and deeper, the walls sheer, shimmering and reflecting the light of the area with a dark blue, crystalline glow. The ice was thick and deep, and there were dark spots noticeable in it, that contrasted greatly with the color of it. Closer still, I noticed other marks as well. The black spots were splotchy and jagged, while others, harder to make out given the bright light, were yellowed. Bones. And even still, there were entire creatures frozen deep within the ice as well. Creatures we’d not seen during our mad dash across the floor.

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Nearer still, more of the wooden structure became apparent. It was a large structure, probably a good thirty feet long and wide. Massive wooden poles grew upwards, protruding a few feet above the chasm from which the structure seemed to have sprung. Nearer still, I noticed a lever off to the side. It was made of a black material, and connected to a strange contraption that ran over the edge of the chasm. We had to near the very edge of the structure, to look straight down, to figure out the truth of what we were seeing.

“What is it?” Lyn asked as she stood beside me, looking straight down. The truth of the structure was… actually unclear. Outside of the Tower, I’d never seen anything like it. And considering Lyn and Nyle had been through the same training and life experiences as me for the past eight years, I knew they hadn’t either.

“No idea.” I said honestly, looking to Nyle. He shrugged, and motioned towards the lever.

“Guessing that does something with it.” He stated the obvious.

“No shit.” I said, and I stopped myself mid playful shove. Standing on the edge of what appeared to be a bottomless pit was not the time or place to shove your best friend. We were only a single misstep away from what was a very, very, very long fall.

There was no bottom, from what I could see. It was pure darkness below. However, the structure before us, did indeed descend down into that pit. Meaning, in theory, there was something down there. The wooden poles were not homogenous. Each was perhaps twenty feet long, and stacked on top of each other, with large, square frames like the one we were standing before, at each interval. All of those were connected to the side of the ice wall, bound and driven deep into it, from what I could see by looking straight down.

Most peculiar of all, was the metal band that ran directly down the ice wall that supported the structure. We were on the lip of a sheer cliff, and starting just a foot before my feet, heading all the way into the darkness, lined up with the center of the structure’s framework, the metal had two-foot-long protrusions, like giant teeth of a sort, every few feet or so. It was like a massive ladder, in a way.

“I’m going to pull the lever,” Nyle said as he noticed my gaze on the metal teeth. “There’s no way I’m climbing down that, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, partially lying. I had been considering if that was a possibility. Logically I knew it didn’t make much sense, but if the lever didn’t do anything, my curiosity was pulling at me, wondering just what existed at the bottom of this massive crater. “Pull the lever, and see what happens,” I said to Nyle, who was already almost to the afore mentioned object. “I can’t imagine the Portal to the next floor is down there,” I continued as he reached it, “but I also don’t want to risk missing it. There’s no doubt someone came through the Portal from the third floor and headed here… and for better or worse,” I felt myself smiling, “I want to get to the bottom of it.”

My friend’s groans were cut off prematurely when the ground started to shake violently, threatening to throw us off balance, as the metal teeth shuddered, and a low, rumbling growl, combined with a cacophony of disturbing, threatening sounds, echoed upwards from the abyss.

Nyle had pulled the lever.