(Strive 8:2)
The Pill of Bursting Star fell from my mouth as I read the error message over and over again.
Only one climber may participate in this challenge at a time.
I banged on the wall with a Hardened fist, but my aura dissipated uselessly against the cold steel. I imagined I heard Firecrackers bursting on the opposite side. Wishful thinking, most likely. I was alone, in the dark and silence. More importantly, El was by herself, and even with her abilities, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was quite defenseless.
An array of fluorescent bulbs slammed on, bringing the space into harsh focus. It was white-washed and sterile, like a laboratory’s test chamber. A slotted podium was the obvious focal point of the room. Other than that, the walls were bare except for a panel labeled #01. Two digits, I noted with dismay. If that’s the test chamber number, this could be a long trial. I slid my hand into the receptacle, and a prompt appeared on my udjat, cursor blinking.
Enter current epoch: _
My kada hand locked in the slot, and I cursed myself. Why hadn’t I looked up how to fingerspell numbers? All I could do was twiddle my fingers randomly until I was released, my vision flashing with a red message.
Incorrect answer. Dispensing level two enemy.
I yelped as a glob of slime dropped from a chute in the high ceiling and splattered on the floor. It wriggled for a moment, then lay still.
“Hm,” I said, my heart pounding. It was lucky the slime had died from the long fall. But even if it hadn’t, it was no great danger to me at this point. All the same, I’d try to get the answer right this time.
With a flicked gesture, I retrieved the fingerspelling manual from my inventory. The numerals were listed next to the letters, and in retrospect, the signs for one through five were obvious. Six to nine took a bit of practice, but when I had them memorized, I stepped back to the podium.
The nine-digit number in the corner of my eye continued to advance as I entered it, and the last digit slipped upward to 6 just as I spread my fingers, inputting five.
“Shit.”
Incorrect answer. Dispensing level three enemy.
A flurry of pages sounded from the ceiling, and I groaned. Bookbats. Bookbats that wouldn’t die to fall damage. And the level of the enemy had increased.
A few Hardened punches later, I finally entered the correct number.
Correct answer. Dispensing reward.
There was a chime, and a few candy bars fell from the ceiling onto my head. With that, the prompt changed.
Enter current epoch with digits in reverse order: _
I grinned. Here was a slight challenge. Since the epoch crept upward every second, the first digit I entered would now be the first to change, long outdated by the time I finished. But thirty seconds of leeway should do it.
Adding thirty to the current epoch of—I glanced—2418822441 gave me 2418822471, and I started entering the sequence, back to front: 1-7-4. I took my time, signing a digit every few seconds. I waited until the number in my display matched my magic number, and blitzed out the last two figures, a 4 and 2.
Chamber #01 cleared.
The wall in front of me opened with a triumphant fanfare.
Before entering the next chamber, I ripped some pages from the dead bookbat and spread them out on the floor. I pulled my plunger, dipped its tip in slime goop, and scrawled on the paper: LEARN ASL NUMBERS & PICK FUTURE NUMBER!!! The acid left charred holes, but the sentences were still relatively legible.
I grimaced and wiped my hands on my bathrobe. Hopefully that was clear enough for El and whoever came after.
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Chamber #02 held three doors. Above each was an icon: a music note, a paintbrush, and a skull. The last one was already open, while the first two were shut tight, even after I tried to force them with Harden.
When I activated my Aetherphone, though, the first door beeped and slid open, revealing not the entrance to the next room, but a ten-foot-tall Glass Golem that stormed toward me.
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I disabled the whining instrument and brought up my shielding aura, just in time to block the golem’s strike with an outstretched forearm. The impact reverberated through my bones like a gong. I counterattacked, but my Hardened fist bounced off uselessly.
Why would the door with a music note lead to a combat encounter? I thought as I tanked another jarring slam from the golem. Did they mess up? It felt like this should’ve been the one behind the third door, the one with the skull.
While I was thinking, I’d disregarded my aura and it winked out. My stomach dropped for a second before the golem swung into me, knocking me clear across the room.
I saw blurred rainbows as the golem advanced, light prisming through its body and refracting onto the walls. With a desperate burst of energy, I rolled away from its immense fist as it struck the metal floor hard.
The impact resonated with the sound of a struck carillon bell. For a moment, the world froze, as realization dawned. I’ve got it.
Then wind from the blow blasted me like the nearby passing of a subway train. I scrambled to my feet, twisted my fingers to refresh my red aura, then continued signing until a loud whine came forth from my kada bracelet. I turned my hand, slowly tuning the pitch with a savage grin.
The glass golem made a silent roar and stomped toward me. It loomed, then drove a monstrous foot down onto me. Thankfully, my Harden still remained in effect, and I was grateful that I could stack it with the Aetherphone, something I’d forgotten to test before. That could've easily been a fatal oversight.
The golem's weight bore down on me as I rotated my wrist, seeking resonance. At a rumbling low tone somewhere between A and B-flat, I found it.
The glass pressing against me began to vibrate, even as my Hardening shield blinked a warning. I almost have it, I thought. Just a bit more. My whole body was bent double now, as I splayed my ring hand open-palmed on the golem’s glass surface, conducting acoustic energy through it. It juddered like a lawnmower on crack, but still it crushed down on me.
Without warning, the golem’s body shattered into a thousand shards. I squeezed my eyes shut as my shield winked out, and cuts lacerated every part of my body. I wanted to scream, but opening my mouth was the worst thing I could do at that point. The rain of glass seemed unending.
When I opened my eyes, my hotel bathrobe was shredded to bits. Pinkish shards of glass lay in a pool of dark blood, my blood. With clumsy, sticking fingers and fading vision, I stuffed a Health Bar from the first challenge into my mouth, then collapsed onto the bed of crushed glass, relieved at least that El wouldn’t have to go through this trial. She’d picked the paintbrush skill instead.
Chamber #02 cleared.
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I startled awake to an insistent drone like an idling jet engine. It was incredibly loud and annoying, and seemed to be coming from my own wrist. My pounding headache didn't help either.
Right, I thought groggily. That’s me. Turning off the Aetherphone, I sat up. The million little scars across my skin were already fading to white, but unfortunately, my clothes were a total loss. At this rate, I thought, shrugging off scraps that had once been a bathrobe, I might be making my debut to tower society buck-ass-naked.
My inventory was empty of clothes, but it still held a few more Health Bars and a single yellow Pill of Bursting Star. Those candy-based stat boosts were probably the only reason I’d survived that fight. I’d certainly never been launched across a room like that before. Downing my remaining pill in one swallow, I was informed that I now had a strength level of Worm and dexterity of Give Up. That made me snort. I wasn’t going to give up, at least not yet.
As I pushed myself off the floor, worry for El gnawed at me. She’d shown she was adept at puzzles; hell, the reason I had my Aetherphone ability at all was thanks to her, but it was the combat I was more concerned about now. A spellcaster without her tank was vulnerable; that was Gaming 101.
The path to the next chamber stood open, and I made my way over to it. A ghostly number #03 floated in the pitch-black room ahead. As I advanced, I spelled Lux with my kada hand, and a ball of light bloomed in my palm.
My lantern shone on a large empty space that extended into darkness. It was eerily quiet, with no sign of life. I crept forward, footsteps echoing on the metal. This would be easy enough—
The floor dropped out right in front of me, and I almost pitched forward into the abyss. I pinwheeled my arms and sat back, heart pounding. There’d been no warning, just solid ground one second and a bottomless pit the next. If my reactions hadn’t been boosted by the dexterity and Corpus aspect…
I crawled forward on my hands and knees, and stars from the previous floor winked up from dizzyingly far below. As I looked across the room, I saw more of the same, missing patches of floor that dropped to nowhere. Even as I watched, another section of floor gave way to empty space.
With no time to think, I rose to my feet and started to run. There was only a thin strip of flooring now, surrounded by pits. I vaulted over a gap just as it opened up, and a chill wind blew up from underneath. I shivered and kept moving.
My light illuminated the door at the far end of the room. The small gap before it wasn’t even as wide as the first, but as I hung in midair, my landing spot dropped as well, gaping open to swallow me whole. My hands flailed for the far edge, where the exit taunted me, now hopelessly out of reach.
This is some bullshit, I thought, as I fell headlong into the abyss.