Seeing the defeated forms of the other team slumped in the center of the room, I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. Not defeated in the literal, 'beat em' up' sense, but just mentally run down. "Miles Renaldi and company I take it?" I said with a wince. "I take it you DID get our message?" It was nice to know that the wish had gotten past the defenses here, because it meant we had at least one way out.

The leader chuckled. "Oh we got it. Not that it meant much in here. We've been stuck here since the day we landed. Lucky we stocked up on food and other necessities." He gave my cousin a cheerful wave. "Nice to see you Natalie. Shame about the circumstances."

Nodding to my friends, I walked about halfway to where they were seated and sat down. We looked over the place first, but I didn't see any attackers to worry about. "You've been here since the first day?" I tried hard not to think about how shitty that must have been.

He nodded. "Not that we can tell you how long that is. The first day we kept track of the time but..." He shrugged. "It was making it worse, you know? So we stopped checking. The rest of our time has been spent trying to get the hell out of this place. The doors sealed behind us like they did with you. My girlfriend, Sierra, is an Enchanter, and she's been working on trying to decipher the enchantments on the floors to open them back up, but it's slow going."

The red haired girl with blue eyes sitting next to him nodded. She'd had them closed when we entered, seemingly meditating, but I was guessing she was leaning into Focus, and had probably long since memorized the flooring. "The enchantment in this place is...complicated. The floor IS enchanted, but the enchantments aren't just linear two dimensional constructs."

"I noticed." I said with a sigh. "They're part of a three dimensional structure. Not just the enchantments we see, but a larger construct based on where in the sky the islands are hanging. I'm guessing you have to take all that into account with any changes you make?"

She sighed. "It's worse than that. Every rune IS part of the whole, but they're also tied into vertically aligned enchantments strung along the length of the tower." She pointed at a square of sapphire. "This isn't just part of the enchantments next to it, it's ALSO part of an enchantment tied into the corresponding tile in the floor above us, and one to the side, and they're all interlocked like that. I don't know who made this place, but they were a GENIUS."

"Well, we can help you look for a way out." I said with a reassuring smile. "And if not...well, we have other means of departure we can all use." Hell, with Nat here even I had a way out. But that was ignoring the obvious. We might be stuck, sure, but if wishes could get us out, they could get us UNSTUCK. We could just wish for the doors to open back up or something.

Frowning, she shook her head. "I'm not sure what means you're talking about, but most of the options I can think of would trigger the tower's defenses. There actually IS a way to open the doors, but my issue is that it's tied to some sort of super monster construct waiting to attack us if I do. It's peak of F-rank, and I don't think we can take it."

Ah, so she'd been looking for a back door before triggering the defenses and killing them all. That was definitely a problem, but since this place was only at base Impact value it was less of one than one might expect.

"We might be able to help." I said slowly. "How do you know it's peak F-rank? Have you seen it in person? Is there some kind of script for it in the Enchantment?" Depending on where it was we might be able to look it over. If we could just kill the thing without using up our wishes that would be a better use of our time. We could always escape with wishes later if we needed to, but I admit to being fascinated by the idea of more spellbound.

"There's a script." She said, pointing to a segment of flooring. When I looked blankly at it she sighed. "Right, none of you can see the spell constructs stringing these places together. It's a gargoyle, big and scary. Peak F-rank and it comes out of the doorways."

I wished we had Benny with us. His Focus specialization would have been useful here. Sadly that wasn't the case. I sighed and considered our options. "If I tell you we can take it and get you out of here, would you believe me?"

"Well." Said Miles with amusement. "You have a bear the size of a bus behind you, so yeah, probably. Plus Nat is far too cautious to travel unprotected. Since her guards aren't around, I have to assume one or more of you is competent. That's not even getting into the fact that most of you seem to have more Impact than we do. I'm guessing you used some of the Moonglow Dew? Speaking of, what was up with the message? You didn't exactly tell us much."

Stolen story; please report.

So I filled him in. I told him how we got here, how we'd been taken in by Ladrigan, how we'd run into Gabriel, how we'd decided to help them out with the temple. How we'd found out about Suvaya, and on and on. I filled them in on everything we knew, and by the time I was done, Miles was wincing in sympathy. "So." I said finally. "We have people to find, and we have to get back on a timetable. I'm not up for staying here too long, but we can still do a cursory search and be back in time for the switch. You up for finishing this?"

He just laughed. "You know what? Fuck it. Why not. We've been stuck here for days, it only seems right we get something out of it. You sure you can take out the guardian? It might be safer just to leave."

Grinning, I hopped up and walked over to the doorway. "Sierra. What sets off the gargoyle protocol. Just the back door you found? Or is there some secondary trigger we need to watch out for." I suspected there was one, and I was pretty sure I knew what it was, since it was the first thing any rational person would try.

"The doors." She said succinctly. "If you try to break open the doors."

"Just the doors?" I asked intently. "Or the doors AND the frames." The doors were malleable and designed to change, that's how they melded into the frames, but the frames themselves were most likely the source of that particular enchantment. I was sure if they started to break SOMETHING would happen, but I wanted to know if breaking was going to set them off or if we'd be ass deep in gargoyle with just one attack.

She studied the ground in front of her. "Just the door. The frame has failsafes, but it's not actually protected in and of itself." Grinning, I pulled out my staff. I triggered Touch of Tears and Consecration of Flame. As the green cracks rolled over my staff, I reached out and touched it to the archway, the green flame spread, and I continued to move around, using State of Grace and Ripple Running to reach higher up until I'd covered every inch of the doorway in acidic poison.

"Alright." I said quickly. "This is going to do enough damage eventually to trigger the defenses, so better to do it on our terms. Randall, get up front, Abel, it's going to be moving slow because of the erosion, Jessie post up next to him and make sure he's topped up so he can throw hands. Callie, I want you to string this thing up as best you can with shadows. Avoid the green spots, it'll have places that aren't covered."

Miles chuckled. "Well, you don't mess around, do you?" Snapping his fingers, I saw a dully glowing orange metal appear in his grip. Just a tiny sample that he tossed back like a pill. Even as I watched the skin of his body change color, I knew he was using his ability.

Sierra withdrew a series of tiles, tossing them up in the air. They glowed with runes, hanging unassisted as she reached up and started rearranging them. The other eight members of their team stood up. One, a big green haired man with a thick beard, stood behind a short woman with crimson skin and horns. A devil, most likely, though I'd never seen one before.

Once we were ready, I nodded to Abel, who sent a quick jab at the door, raising an echoing boom as it made contact. The attack didn't do much to the door itself, but as soon as it landed the frame began to shift as a massive pair of hands emerged from the stone.

The huge form of the gargoyle resolved itself slowly, and Callie did as expected and started stringing every spare inch of it that wasn't glowing and acidic with containment constructs. The constructs didn't have the Might needed to hold up against something like that, not with the difference in power and specialization, but they DID have an extra point of Impact, which was enough to offset a solid amount of the gap.

Not that it would have held for long, the gargoyle finished emerging and roared, trying to get away from the containment and reacting to the pain. Before he could tear free, Randall roared and slammed a paw into the side of the monster's head. The massive bear was even more gargantuan on his back legs. The gargoyle reared back, and another fist blow, this one condensed from about a dozen punches stacked on top of each other, smashed into its head.

Spinning my staff, I stacked up a Mercy Kill and a triple stack density shift, and I stepped off the air, sailing up too high to be detected to get a better vantage point from which to attack the gargoyle. Once I got high enough, I bounced off the air again, and sent myself hammering down, with my E-ranked staff leading as I brought it smashing down into the head of the construct.

The stone split under the weight and power of my staff, which, while not a perfect equalizer, was a material much harder than the material that comprised the monster. There was a loud crack as the staff split the stone. Even as it landed, I saw giant hand constructs grip the horns and PULL.

The crack widened and I jumped free, leaving Randall to smash his paw down on the damaged head and smash it to chunks of pottery. The gargoyle fell over, dead, or at least as close as an inanimate object could get. The door behind it was revealed to have reverted to the normal wood, easily opened now, and I grinned. My team was getting the hang of punching up.

Of course, the distance was still pretty huge. The Impact helped a bit, but we were going to need to start padding our points to close the gap soon. We only had a month until we had to fight a literal goddess, and I didn't want to rely any more on petty tricks than I had to. That was why I was choosing to continue the climb. I wanted more spellbooks, and to find out who made this place. More than that, I wanted to find out more about the woman in the mosaics. After all, those black forms chasing her had reminded me an awful lot of the Night Pride.