Before Rieren left, she had one more thing to take care of. Atelen was looking out anxiously, as though he had been half-expecting Rieren to run off without saying goodbye. She decided to hide the fact that she had nearly done it too.
“Father,” she said, but before she could go on, Batcat growled low in its throat and jumped straight at her. She cradled her hands so it could land in the crook. “I must leave soon.”
“I was fearing that. Must you go already? You have had no time to rest.”
“It has been at least a few hours, father.”
Atelen sighed. “I wish I could come with you. But… I do not think I have made much progress in my class. And I certainly have not cultivated.”
That was a little concerning. Unfortunately, she didn’t have the time to run through all his skills, his many options, and all else about his class with him. Worse, there was no Avalien nearby to simply ask to help her father. There was no one else she truly trusted here.
It also made her concerned about the guardsman. Rieren hadn’t seen him in the chamber, and she wasn’t sure who to ask.
“Please stay back and speak to the others about progressing, if you can,” she said. “I just… I need to find out what happened to Elder Olg. But I do not wish for anything to happen to you.”
Atelen froze. Then he smiled, patting Rieren’s shoulder with his big hand. “You worry too much, daughter. I will be alright. There are many here who will help and protect not just me, but all of us here. Rest assured and go forth where you need. All I hope is that you will hold to the same caution that you counsel me to keep.”
“I only wish the Sect was taking a greater hand in helping you progress.”
“They seem, unfortunately, to be busy enough as it is…”
Rieren frowned. Priorities had understandably shifted with the destruction of Lionshard mountain. But considering the casualties they had suffered, their best bet at replenishing their ranks lay in all the refugees. Maybe she would need to remind the leadership about it.
She also couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something else her father was neglecting to mention, but she really did have no time to puzzle it all out. They needed to leave.
“Then farewell, father,” she said. She tried to hand over Batcat, but the winged kitten clutched her arm and hissed up at her in affront. “Do you really wish to come with me, cat?”
The winged kitten had proven more than enough that it could take care of itself, but Rieren couldn’t shake the nagging worry that it would still be a distraction. The dungeon held great potential to throw up absolute chaos in their paths, and she didn’t want to have to be concerned for the cat while trying to survive.
“I am not abandoning you, Batcat,” she said. “But I am heading into danger once more.”
“Take it with you,” Atelen said.
Rieren looked up with a little scowl. “Why must you always take its side?”
“It is a mere cat, Rieren.”
A Spirit Beast cat that could collect and recreate memories, but Rieren didn’t say that. Instead, she plopped Batcat upon her head and said a final farewell to Atelen before heading out.
Amalyse nodded as she arrived, while Folend looked a little impatient, though he didn’t say anything.
“Ready?” Amalyse asked.
Rieren nodded. “Let us proceed.”
They journeyed on in silence for a while. As they went through the tunnel, Rieren could almost feel the questions threatening to burst out of Amalyse. She was likely desperate to know everything the Elder had asked Rieren, though she was holding herself back since they were still in public.
Folend didn’t look particularly interested. In fact, he was avoiding looking at Rieren altogether—and Amalyse for that matter—as though happy to pretend they weren’t even there. She still wasn’t sure what exactly was going on with him.
Rieren did her best to ignore them both. She was beginning to recognize this stretch of the dungeon. Up ahead, they were about to come across a rather interesting area.
“Do you hear that?” Amalyse asked.
Rieren did, especially when she poured a bit of Essence into her ears. Strange, rhythmic grinding noises were coming from the distance. And then there were some yells. Rieren understood the grinding noise, but the more human sounds confused her.
“The next section of the dungeon involves a special puzzle that we must navigate,” Rieren said.
“Special puzzle?” Amalyse asked. “And you’re telling us only now?”
“It is nothing of great consequence, especially since there are more than one of us.”
“No… no, I think there’s only one of each of us… please don’t tell me we will have to fight our reflections or something like that.”
“Nothing so dramatic. I only meant that we are in a group instead of trying to traverse it alone. That will help tremendously.”
“You know you can state it plainly, right, Rieren?”
She could, but she didn’t need to. The answer became more than clear a few paces later as they turned a curve in the passageway. Amalyse veritably gasped as she came to a halt. Even Folend stared in awe. Rieren could only smile with familiarity.
They had come across another large chamber similar to the one with the dead Anachron. Though, this one had the making of one that had been purposefully placed by the Dungeon Core.
Well, going by the floating platforms, at least.
The chamber wasn’t as enormous as the one created by the Anachron’s fall. However, like that one, this one also had the tunnels ending with a huge gap between. The pit between sank into darkness. Even the lava falling in from cracks in the walls couldn’t illuminate the distant bottom.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
All that spanned the seemingly impassable gap was a series of circular stone platforms. Platforms that had people.
“I said come back this way,” Avalien was yelling at one of his fellow guards who had made his way onto one of the square stone slabs. “Return. Right now!”
Rieren approached him while her companions continued to stare at the obstacle they had been set by the dungeon. Avalien heard her approach. He turned, then gawked at her appearance.
“Mistress!” he said, seemingly forgetting that he had companions stuck over a bottomless fall. “You’re alive! I mean, I always knew you were alive, of course. I just—I wasn’t expecting you to pop up here.”
Rieren smiled in greeting at him. Mildly curious as she was to his story and how he had ended up here, she could listen to it later. “Have you learned how to operate the mechanism here?”
“I—yes I believe I have.” He turned around with a harried expression, as though this was a sudden inspection. “There are switches on each of the platforms, but the switches only work for a different platform, and even then, only when it is in range. As you can see…” He frowned at his companions stuck over the void. “We are having some difficulty.”
“I hope no one has fallen.”
“Thankfully, not yet.” Avalien turned back to her with an inquisitive glint in his eye. “May I ask what you are doing here, Mistress? And what held you back from joining us?”
Rieren frowned. There was a certain feeling trying to work up within her, and she couldn’t properly recognize it. Couldn’t even tell if it was positive or negative. Perhaps this was something akin to what Elder Alm had felt, about the importance of hierarchy and where one’s statements and questions lay with regards to it.
She discarded the notion, and the feeling that came with it, entirely aside. It was strange to realize that she had been subconsciously affected by the Sect and its notion of authority demanding specific behaviours, by the very system she had dismantled in her last life.
“I was being held back by a combination of pesky Anachrons and Abyssals.” She paused. “Actually, there was an Aetherian too. Uppity fellow. What of you? I am assuming the Elder sent you out to scout this way and you came across this little puzzle?”
“You are correct,” he said with no small amount of awe, probably still digesting the fact of her altercations. “Did you say puzzle?”
“Yes. There is a specific trick to overcome this barrier.”
“Let me guess,” Amalyse said from behind as she approached. “You solved this before, haven’t you?”
“Why, I thought that was obvious enough already.”
Amalyse’s eyes glinted. “Can I guess how it works though?”
Rieren blinked. She had forgotten how much Amalyse enjoyed solving puzzles of various kinds. Not surprising, considering how eager she had been at solving the mystery behind Rieren’s attacker.
“Go on,” Rieren said with a little smile.
Amalyse turned back to observe the array of platforms. They weren’t arranged evenly. Some were placed nearby, others at a significant enough distance, while yet others were placed above or below the area where most of the platforms congregated.
“I’m guessing we have to operate a specific set of platforms, going by the stated rules,” she said. “Because if we tried to move using one platform, then the one who is operating them will have to stay behind. Unless we can jump between the platforms and then keep switching between them. All worth a try, I suppose.”
Rieren nodded. “This puzzle is all about trial and error.”
“We have certainly been trialing a lot,” Avalien said. “With much error to boot.”
They began working through it. First, Avalien recalled the ones he had already sent out with his fellow guards. They had to do some hopping, just as Amalyse had stated, to get all the platforms back to their original positions closer to their end of the chamber.
It wasn’t directly at their end, though. They had to hope across some more platforms, using the switches on them to get to where most of the ones were close together.
Each platform had two switches that could be activated. They both controlled one, single, different platform, but one made it move forward, while the other moved it backward. The longer they pressed down on the switches—which were nothing more than slightly raised stone squares that had to be stepped on—the farther the controlled platform would travel.
Until they hit the maximum range of control that Avalien had stated, of course. That fine control was going to be pivotal for them to successfully cross the chasm beneath.
Each platform was also only big enough to carry one person. Since there were no railings or anything of the sort, more people would be too dangerous. Batcat meowed a soft warning when Rieren peeked over the edge of her platform. She patted it till it was calm. No one was falling under her watch.
“Alright,” Rieren said. “Let us begin. I believe there are enough of us that we will not need to jump between platforms to keep them all moving. We will only need to find the right set, which I might be able to figure out. The pattern is diamond shaped. One must be above, one below, two on either side, and the rest of us arrayed in the middle.”
No one questioned Rieren’s knowledge as they began to arrange themselves in the exact formation she had outlined. Rieren herself took the topmost platform, jumping straight up to it thanks to her Body stat. At the bottom was Amalyse.
“Amalyse,” Rieren said. “Prepare yourself.”
While Folend, Avalien, and the guards started arraying themselves across the central platforms, Rieren tested the switches before her. She stepped onto the raised forward-facing stone slab.
Amalyse shrieked a little as her platform moved. She flushed at the undignified response. Rieren quickly pulled her foot away. There was nothing for them to hold onto on the platforms, so sudden motions would put them in danger of throwing them off the edge and down to certain death.
“I wasn’t expecting that when you warned me,” Amalyse said.
“Well, we now know that it works.” Rieren might have seen the guards flying around, but it was good to experience the proof for herself. She surveyed the rest of them, all of whom had frozen at the noise. “Now you all need to figure out which set of platforms forms a complete pattern that will allow us all to move forward together.”
While Rieren waited, the others started testing their platforms. They made sure not to press down too long on their switches, though some of the guards went a bit too far ahead than what Rieren would have been comfortable with.
Nevertheless, it was mostly working. They found connections one after the other. It was actually less trial and error than Rieren had feared. While finding the platform that could control and move hers was taking some time, they made it easier by proceeding from Amalyse’s one. Avalien jumped to the one hers controlled, and Folend jumped to the one his controlled, and so on.
When they finally completed the pattern, Rieren jerking a little when her stone platform moved a bit, they found that two of the guards hadn’t reached a platform just yet.
“Uh…” The first one stared at his friend, then at a helpless Avalien, and then at Rieren as though she held the miraculous answer. “Can we get on one of yours?”
“Too dangerous,” Rieren said.
Amalyse cleared her throat. “Not necessarily. I can use one of my skills to keep a hold of at least one of them, and we can buy some ropes from the System Shop.”
Good idea. Except, they didn’t have too many Credits to spare.
“Just destroy one of the platforms we won’t be using.,” Folend said. “Floating rocks have to give us some Credits.”
Rieren blinked. Another not terrible idea. Folend did the honours, using his broken mace to shatter a nearby a stone platform. It started to crumble and fall into the pit beneath them, but Amalyse managed to grab a few rocks with her glowing red whip. Then she sold them and acquired a rope.
“Rope,” she said. “Seventeen paces long.”
The idea was simple, as Rieren saw it, at least. She hadn’t wished to flirt with danger, but the use of ropes and ties would minimize that significantly. Especially when arranged the way she indicated.
One of the free guards joined Amalyse while the other got onto the platform hers controlled. Both guards were tied together by the rope. Amalyse’s one was also lashed to her using her red whip, while Avalien kept a tight grip on the one on his platform.
“Alright, everyone secure?” Rieren asked. She received a resounding round of silence, though one or two of them nodded at least. “Then let us begin.”
Except, just as they started moving forward as a group, with a slow pace initially, a tremendous series of shrieks erupted out of the gloom ahead of them. A moment later, heavy flapping preceded winged monsters flying in from ahead. On Rieren’s head, Batcat hissed in warning.
They were once again under the assault of Abyssals.