(Strive 2:3)

The podium sank into the ground after El downloaded the same skill, but the text remained hovering in my udjat-eye.

You’ve unlocked a new utility technique: Examine

Energy consumption: None

I pulled my sign language cheat sheet from my inventory and looked up the letters. E consisted of curled fingers with the thumb held below; X was a crooked pointer finger. Those two letters comprised the activation command. My ring glowed white in confirmation as I formed the shapes, and my contact lit up with a simple statement.

A bar countertop.

I realized my finger had landed on the bar at random, and I retried the sign, pointing at El instead.

El Bandito, a raccoon who has partaken of the fruit of the Tree of Street Smarts.

Next, I Examined myself. This time, I got more information.

Xavier Shaw, a human. Your strength is Nada, your magic is Zilch, and your dexterity is Pathetic.

I winced. Feels a bit personal, the way it’s phrased.

The only other things in the room with interesting descriptions were the sweets and sodas on the bartop. Apparently, the red candy was a Steel Tendon Pill, the green was a Quickening Breath Pill, and blue was the mysteriously named Dendritic Lightning Pill. They were the same kind of hard candies that had been in the vending machine outside, and they each seemed to give a boost to different attributes. The soda cans with flowers on them were Minor Elixirs of Replenishment.

Since there were two of each item, I pocketed a red, green, and blue pill, as well as a soda. For starters, I popped the Steel Tendon Pill in my mouth.

At first, it tasted like a regular cinnamon-flavored hard candy, but like the green candy from the vending machine, the feeling soon spread through my whole body, only this one was supernaturally hot. Fire burned everything from my tongue to my toes until my organs seemed to be roasting in an oven. Sweat began to pour out of me. Am I dying? Food poisoning? God, that would be a dumb way to go.

You feel strong!

As suddenly as it’d begun, it was over, and my muscles felt intensely sore, like after a hard workout. I turned my arm over. Was its shape more defined than it’d been a second ago, or was that just my imagination? Even after that, my strength was still Nada, which was odd.

“El, you gotta try these.” I looked over at the raccoon, and she had shoved all three pills into her mouth and was washing them down with the soda. “...although I’m not sure all at once is a good idea…”

El sprayed liquid and all three pills bounced out of her mouth, rolling and leaving three different colored streaks on the fine Persian rug. She coughed and sputtered. “What the fuck,” she said. “You trying to kill me?”

I sighed and glanced at the inscribed number three on the wall by the stairway that seemed to indicate the way to the next floor. My stomach growled. “I guess we should be moving on soon anyhow. The tenth floor’s a good ways off, and we can’t live off candies and soda, even if they're magic.”

A small chest with a coin slot hung from the bannister, and I Examined it with my new ability.

Deposit box for floor two tokens. Floor two tokens may not be used after this point.

I dropped one of my remaining coins into the box. When it didn't reward me for doing so, I decided to keep the rest. It wasn’t like I was short on space or anything, with my dimensional inventory system. All I was carrying so far was those few coins, a pellet gun, and an ornamental plunger that was now slightly slimy.

If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

My calves burned as we climbed the stairs until they opened up onto a dimness that I initially thought was a cave. But the smell that hit me a second later was unmistakable, the homely scent of old paper and binding glue.

----------------------------------------

(Strive 3:1)

It was a library.

Shelves of books towered over us in hexagonal formation, stretching up into the darkness. Intermittent reading lamps perched high above, casting long shadows all around. It looked like the place kept going in every direction, and I caught glimpses of maze-like passages through gaps in the stacks.

I brushed off a dusty book and opened it. The contents seemed to be complete gibberish, random words strung together for hundreds of pages. The second book was the same, and the third as well. My Examine command unhelpfully told me all three were strange books.

El wasn't interested in reading, so we moved on, passing through a space between the shelves to emerge in another hexagonal chamber. The books here were nonsense as well, and we kept walking.

After about ten minutes of strolling and perusing, I found a book that seemed like it’d been disturbed recently. It was slightly pulled out of its row, like someone hadn’t put it back properly. I retrieved it and read the first few words, but it was the same gibberish as all the others.

“Goddammit.” I threw it on the ground. Closing my eyes, I tilted my head toward the ceiling. “I’m stuck.”

A feeling of foolishness immediately came over me. This wasn’t an escape room with some employee watching the camera feed to make sure we had a good time. Our destiny was in our own hands.

“El,” I said, “stop eating that book.”

“Fine. It wasn't any good anyway. Too gluey.”

As we entered the next chamber, a bitten and torn volume lay discarded on the ground, and it finally clicked.

“Lost Woods,” I murmured.

“What’s that?” El was rooting around in the shelves for something more to her taste.

“It’s not that every direction looks the same,” I said excitedly. “They are the same, because no matter where we go, we end up in this room. At least, I think that’s what’s happening. Stay here.”

I walked in one direction through the stacks as straight as I could, and soon enough, I entered an identical room with a raccoon lounging on a shelf.

“Who the hell are you?” asked the raccoon.

“Not funny, El.”

She sighed and flopped onto her stomach. “Such a killjoy. So what do we do now?”

I rubbed my chin. “If I remember correctly, there should be a sequence of directions that gets us out of here. Maybe it’s in one of these books? A code?” I paled as I realized how daunting that would be. There were hundreds, if not thousands of books surrounding us, and the directions could be ciphered in a million different ways.

“Why not try the directions from the previous floor?” El asked lazily.

“Maybe. But there are six exits here, and the previous code only had four orthogonal directions.”

“Ortho-who?”

“Compass points. Plus…” I turned in a circle. “I’m not sure how we would decide which exit corresponds with which direction.”

“Hey,” said El.

“What?”

“Cut it out with the nerd shit and listen. Something's there.”

El was right. There were fluttering sounds coming from somewhere high up, and occasionally I’d spot flickers of shadow, if only for a second.

I cursed and readied my pellet gun, but I hadn’t practiced hitting a flying target. El had no offensive abilities to speak of. She couldn’t prestidigitate an enemy to death.

Too late. In a flurry of wings, they were on us, big bat-like creatures buffeting us with their weight.

“It’s a flying book!” cried El with a hint of panic. “Do something!”

I peeled one off my face to see that El was right. We were being mobbed by a bunch of floating grimoires, flapping their covers like wings, with their pages hanging underneath. One dive-bombed my arm, giving me the mother of all paper cuts. It really fucking stung. Another was latched onto my leg, opening and closing like a crocodile’s mouth. That one didn’t really hurt, but it was kind of annoying.

I managed to remember how to perform the Examine command and signed at the one on my leg.

Bookbat, an annoying but unthreatening enemy. Knowledge just wants to be free!

Followed by another line that made my heart leap:

Its knowledge could be your ticket out of here.

The thing was too close for me to shoot with my pellet gun, so I dropped it and pulled out my plunger. I stuck it on the bookbat fastened to my leg and pulled, popping it off of myself. It chomped at me impotently from arm's length.

Lifting the book-on-a-stick, I bashed it again and again on the nearest shelf. Scraps of torn paper flew into the air, but I didn't stop until it went limp. Breathing heavily, I looked up.

The other bookbats were hovering a safe distance overhead. The thickest of them made a clapping sound with its covers, and the whole flock turned and flapped away, searching for easier prey.

“That’s funny,” said El, sniffing the bashed up bookbat corpse. “I never took you for an anti-intellectual.”