(Strive 7:1)
Half of the sky above was the deep blackness of space. The other half was dominated by an enormous yellow gas giant. I felt small as the two of us floated weightless alongside the golden thread.
“Maybe Death’s mad you ate his apple,” I suggested to El, tossing a second floor token to propel myself in the opposite direction. “The fruit of street smarts or whatever.”
“Of course it’s my fault,” El said, taking a soda can from her inventory and doing the same. She was drifting ahead faster than me, and I tossed two more coins to keep up.
“That’s not what I meant,” I sighed as my golden tokens flew off into the void. “I guess for now, all we can do is keep climbing—”
Gravity reasserted itself and we landed, or fell, in my case, onto a ring about ten feet wide that swept around the planet in a graceful arc.
I didn’t know much about astronomy, but I didn’t think this was how things were supposed to work. There was air, for one thing. And gravity was pointing the wrong way. And we hadn’t exploded into goo from vacuum pressure. Also, for some reason, there was a piped-in odor of burnt steak, which made El’s nose crinkle in distaste.
The darkness of space was dotted by bright specks. Unlike true stars, they shifted and swam around one another in chaotic patterns. We stood mesmerized by the display, but it wasn’t long before our first enemy, a certain group of stars, descended from the sky and touched down on the ring facing us. Together, they looked like a squiggly fish hook.
Scorpio, an animated constellation.
As the cluster of stars landed, the space between them seemed to flesh out with interconnections of light. Sets of scuttling legs shot out from the sides. I could clearly make out a scorpion shape now, stinger and all. It let out an eerie synthetic growl, like a first-generation Pokemon.
I glanced at El and cast Harden, stepping forward.
The insectoid skittered towards us, its stars burning white-hot trails in the air. Hologram-like lines connected the stars which acted like joints. I wasn’t sure if they were solid or not, but I hoped they were, so I could hit them.
Bang! El cast a Firecracker at the creature, but it flipped sideways dexterously and continued closing the distance. It’d reach me in a few seconds, before El could get off another attack.
But I’d miscalculated, still shaken by our brush with Death, and my Harden winked out before it got to me. I was bowled over by the constellation, and then jabbed by several scuttling legs in passing for good measure.
“It’s solid,” I groaned. “Don’t let it touch you. Burns too.”
“No shit,” cried El.
As I pushed myself off the ground, I saw the monster trying to use its long stinger to stab El, who was weaving in between its legs. Whenever the stinger stabbed the ground, it sizzled and smoked like quenching metal.
The raccoon was more nimble, but she was flagging with exhaustion. She couldn't run forever, and she couldn't cast and avoid the thrusts at the same time.
“A little help here!” El cried as she ducked another swipe.
I stalked up behind the star scorpion and shaped my right hand into the Harden command as my kada ring glowed crimson. My body tensed, and I leaped forward with my hand outstretched.
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My intention had been to grab the scorpion by its tail and yeet it into space a la Bowser from Mario 64, but that wasn’t what ended up happening. Instead, my spell-augmented hand crushed its tail like an empty beer can. The monster screeched and arched its body in pain. It wriggled frantically until the tail came off in my hand, and the rest of it scurried away into the night sky, back to being a regular constellation. Minus a couple stars.
I turned to El and grinned, holding the disembodied tail. “You’re welcome.”
The raccoon pointed behind me. “Let’s not gloat yet.”
Before we were through, we fought Leo the Lion, Capricorn the sea-goat, and Libra, a floating set of scales, none of which were too challenging once I’d gotten in the flow again. They each dropped a Pill of Bursting Star, which looked suspiciously like a Starburst fruit chew. A few fights and a brief trek on the planetary ring later, we spied a dinky little rocket.
“Not so bad,” I said as we boarded and took off, shuttling toward the next floor.
I watched meditatively as stars blurred past outside, then flinched as a living constellation thwacked against the window. There were no controls on the inside of the ship, just two cushioned seats. It brought to mind our floating journey across the wasteland from that terrible schoolhouse. Since then, it’d been one floor after another, with barely room to breathe. And then the brush with Death and the First Sender.
Hilbert had said that the instanced levels, the ones where we were isolated, only went up to the ninth floor, and we’d meet other climbers afterwards. That prospect sent a different kind of fear bubbling up inside me.
I twisted my fingers, gathering scarlet energy around a clenched fist. It was beyond pathetic to be worried about that old anxiety at this point. How could it be worse than Death?
No, a knowing voice said in my head. They’re different fears. In many ways, you’re still the scared kid on the first day of school, eating lunch alone in a bathroom stall.
But what else could I do? Even if the banter with El was fun, I still needed human companionship. Friends. Romance. I wondered idly what the dating scene was like in a magic tower of death. Better than Tinder, probably.
Shadows passed overhead, interrupting my reverie. An enormous hangar bay opened and swallowed the ship, which docked automatically with a lurching motion. As our door irised open, arrows embedded in the floor lit up, pointing along a gangway to our next gauntlet.
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(Strive 8:1)
We proceeded to the face of an enormous wall, the bottom of which exposed a hand-shaped slot. When I inserted my kada, my display came to life.
Enter password: _____
“Password,” I said.
Nothing happened.
I pressed my hand into a fist, and the prompt rapidly filled up with the letter A.
Enter password: AAAAA.
Password denied.
“They want us to enter a password manually,” I said. “Five characters.”
“Probably find it there.” El pointed.
There was a passage to one side of the wall, dark enough that I had to activate Lux to see more closely. Concerning growls and flickering lights emerged from it. It did seem like the tower intended for us to go that way, but as I pressed my kada’s light forward, my eye was caught by a carving messily scratched into the metal: the single word EPOCH. I hurried back to the password slot.
Enter password: EPOCH.
Password accepted.
With a celebratory chime, the wall split apart into two halves, creating a passage. At the same time, a large number flicked up to the corner of my display. It was in the low—I counted the digits—two billions, and advanced by one every second. Was it a timer? I knew there were roughly thirty million seconds in a year, so doing the math quickly in my head, it must’ve been counting up from something like seventy years ago, which would be the 1950’s. Very strange.
Stranger still was the fact that the answer had just been right there for the taking. Maybe the instanced tower levels were reused, and whatever process scrubbed them had missed a hint left by a good Samaritan? The chicken scratch felt more organic than something the tower would generate. There was a hastiness about it, and I felt a bit guilty that I hadn’t left any clues for those after me.
“Hello? Earth to Spaceman Shaw?” said El, waving at me.
I packed my thoughts for later and stepped forward. Turning around, I was about to make a snarky comment to El when the wall slammed shut behind me and an error flashed red in my eye.
Only one climber may participate in this challenge at a time.