by Deck Davis
Rolley gave a blackened thumbs up, Etta nodded, while Barnard stared at the floor, lost in thought.
Tripp just hoped he’d given them a little faith that they’d chosen the right captain.
With that thought, he led by example, opening the door they’d first used to enter the room and stepping through it.
CHAPTER 20
They emerged into a tomb. A tomb that glittered with gold from the decorative walls all around them. One that had a chandelier hanging above with crystal droplets sparkling in the light. It was a tomb, nonetheless.
There was a sarcophagus directly ahead of them, fastened against a wall beside an oval, metal door.
The worst sight was on the ground. A dozen corpses rested on the velvet-carpeted floor. This was why Tripp thought of this as a tomb and not the palatial room it really was.
“Only the true king can lead the way,” said Rolley. He pointed to the east wall. It was made of plaster with gold trimmings and a mural of a battle scene painted on it. Above that beautiful painting, words were written in blood.
Only the true king can lead the way. Lay the rightful king to rest. Choosing wrongly will make a mess.
“A dozen corpses and one empty sarcophagus,” said Tripp. “Looks like we need to decide which of these corpses is the true king and then put him in the sarcophagus.”
Etta kneeled beside a corpse and prodded it. Nothing happened. “Choosing wrongly will make a mess. Given that we’re in the Tower of Windborne, I’m guessing choosing the wrong king will raise a bunch of zombies. Am I right?”
Rolley shrugged. “Sounds pretty on the money to me. Let me check we’re clear of traps.”
As the rogue inched his way around the room, the rest of them stayed still.
“Decide in your heads which of these guys you think is the king. Don’t say it out loud until we’re all decided. We’ll do this by consensus,” said Tripp.
Barnard, sensing a way he might be of value, smiled. “Got it.”
Tripp studied the corpses. They were in no particular pattern, nor was there any indication about their cause of death. There seemed to be a mix of people; a servant in black and white attire, a bunch of noblemen and women in frocks and suits.
Finally, there was a man dressed in finery with a red cape tied around his neck and a crown on his head. Near him was a beggar in clothes that looked rife with disease.
Rolley completed his circuit of the room. “We’re clear,” he told them.
Tripp glanced from person to person. “Are we all ready?”
“Yep.”
“Think so,” said Etta.
Barnard stroked his goatee. “I believe I am.”
Tripp crossed his arms, feeling a little self-conscious. He wouldn’t say he was stupid, but he had always been good with his hands rather than his brains. But he was the captain of this party, it seemed, so it was proper that he went first.
“The way I see it, there’s only one choice for the king; the beggar.”
“What?” said Rolley, incredulous. “What about the guy wearing a damn crown?”
“It’s a little on-the-nose. Look closer at him. Underneath his cape. His shirt is bright yellow and full of buttons, and he has ten handkerchiefs stuffed into his pocket. He’s a jester dressed as a king.”
“Ah, good spot,” said Barnard. There was an edge to his tone that Tripp took to mean he was unhappy Tripp had been the one to notice.
“Fine,” said Rolley. “But why the guy in the flea-ridden shirt?”
“Because there’s always a moral to this kind of thing. All the rest of the guys are nobles, yeah? And there’s only one beggar. I'm thinking the moral is, the true king is the man who doesn’t judge his life by his riches. Something like that.”
Etta had nodded along to everything Tripp said. “I can see that. It makes a weird kind of sense.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Rolley. He looked to Barnard. Tripp noticed that Rolley did this a lot. Whenever they had to debate something, he looked to his friend before giving an opinion.
Barnard noticed his cue. “Tripp might be right. Of course, there’s a middle ground; one of the nobles may well be the true king. There could be more to this narrative than we suspect. Perhaps if we searched a corpse, we would find an old copy of a family tree proving this person is the rightful king. Or, I could be reading too much into this. When in doubt, go with the simplest answer.”
“That the beggar is the real king?” asked Rolley.
“I'm still uncertain, but it’s as good a guess as any.”
Rolley shrugged, and he held up his ruined hands. “You guys will have to drag him into the sarcophagus, I’m afraid.”
Tripp held up his hand. “One second. We know that if we get this wrong, the rest of them will rise up as zombies. I might be paranoid, but I don’t think that will go well for us. Luckily, we can end the fight before it even begins.”
“How?” asked Etta.
“Cut the heads off all of them but the beggar.”
“What?”
“If we sever their heads, they can’t attack us.”
“That’s sufficiently disgusting, disturbing, and practical in equal measures. The Tower of Windborne trifecta. Well done, Tripp, for making me question my morals in a game I originally started playing to kill time.”
“He’s also right,” said Rolley. “It makes perfect sense. You guys better get to it.”
Tripp took out a dagger for himself and gave one to Barnard. He accepted it with the air of a man who’d just been handed an open Petri dish of Ebola. Etta produced her own, hooked blade.
“I’ll have to take a supervisory role for this, on account of my hands,” said Rolley. “You guys have fun, though.”
For the first time in his life, Tripp set about cutting the heads off corpses so they couldn’t reanimate and attack him.
It was here that he learned a valuable life lesson. Your first decapitation was always the hardest.
With its trademarked brand of realism, Soulboxe made the severing of a head a grisly process. Tripp had to really wedge his dagger into the first corpse’s neck, and his stomach churned when the blade met with gristle and bone. It was only by repeating in his head, it’s only a game, it’s only a game that he got through it.
Soon there was a row of four heads placed against the wall, two for Tripp, two for Etta. Barnard hadn’t moved.
“Come on Barny,” said Rolley. “This is only Soulboxe. It won’t be so bad.”
Barnard eyed the mess of coagulated blood on the floor. “I can’t. I'm sorry, I just can’t.”
Tripp, working up a sweat, chose to ignore how annoyed it made him that Barnard wouldn’t help. He was an empathetic guy, and he tried to employ that empathy now. He forced himself to understand why Barnard might not want to butcher a corpse.
Soon, with aching biceps and sweat-drenched armpits, he cut the last head off. Now they had eleven decapitated heads lined up against the wall, their eyes glassy, faces smeared with blood.
“Can you at least turn them around?” said Barnard. “So they’re not looking at us?”
Etta evidently couldn’t summon the same empathy as Tripp. “Not looking at us? Jesus, you just can’t help, can you? Tripp and I are really trying, and you haven’t done a thing.”
“I…uh...” began Barnard, and he looked to Rolley for support, but Rolley seemed to be aware of how Etta and Tripp were feeling. “You could have at least done one, Barny.”
That did it for the dice mage. His face paled, and his eyes looked like a puppy just rebuked for chewing a slipper.
Tripp decided it was time for the captain to move things on. No use bickering. “Help me lift the beggar.”
He and Etta dragged the beggar’s corpse to the sarcophagus, heaved him inside, and then shut the door.
And then they waited.
And waited.
Finally, a ream of golden text etched into the air in the middle of the room. The handwriting was the same as whe
n they’d been shown the tower rules.
You have chosen, my friends. You have chosen your true king.
And yet you have chosen wrongly. You see, sometimes that which is most obvious, has a reason for being so.
The true king was the man dressed like a king. Obviously.
“Damn it!” said Rolley. “I knew we should have gone with the king guy.”
“At least the corpses can’t attack us,” said Tripp.
For choosing the wrong path, you must face the consequences. Now, my friends, you will have to face my army of undead. Rise, my lovely corpses. Rise and attack!
Oh. You cut off their heads. Very clever. Clap clap, well done. I suppose you have solved the room, though you did so with the grace of ham-fisted butcher.
“That’s it?” said Etta. “We did it?”
Tripp nodded. “Appears so.”
The golden text grew larger now, writing itself in the air in great spirals.
ROOM 1 CLEAR!
You are a step closer to learning the true purpose of the tower. You will receive gifts, my adventurers. The first is this.
EE.
“EE?” said Rolley.
Barnard, recovering himself a little, said, “The phrase we need to uncover. Remember?”
In answer, the golden words changed.
The true purpose of the tower is to:
_ E _ _ _ _ _ _ E _ _E _ _ _
“At least that’s something, I guess,” said Rolley.
The door beside the sarcophagus made a clicking sound now. It unlocked and then swung open, bathing the room in a yellow light.
Together, Etta, Barnard, and Rolley stepped through it.
Tripp hung back a minute. Using his deconstructor mallet, he pounded one of the corpse’s arms until it turned into dust.
Item received:
Undead Essence x1
He was about to start on the second arm when the room door began to shut. Sensing that getting trapped in there alone would be a bad idea, Tripp followed his party.
CHAPTER 21
An artificial intelligence, one classified as a real intelligence, can never die. When a man breathes for the last time, his cognitive function ends and he ceases to be all that he once was. He lives in the memories of his loved ones, perhaps of his enemies, but it is not true life.
An artificial intelligence can be shut down, yes, but that isn’t death. They can always be powered up, resurrected. They resume their old identities, thinking their old thoughts.
In this way, they never truly die. So, what happens to the AI while they are shut down? And what allows them to come back at the press of a button? Technology, yes, but there might be another word for it. This could be what passes for a soul.
Webber Rudges: Thinker, Philosopher, Genius, Good-looking guy, author of this article
They stepped out into a wider room. It was oval-shaped and filled with flowers that formed a sea of greens, yellows, and pinks on the floor and walls. From somewhere unseen a harp played a soft lullaby. Tripp took a deep breath, feeling that the air was fresher in here.
There were four alcoves, two on either side of them, that led to passageways. Tripp couldn’t see what waited at the end of them.
“Anyone else level up from the scourges?” asked Etta.
Tripp shook his head. “Not this time.”
“Nope,” said Barnard.
“I did,” said Rolley. “Even though you guys have done most of the fighting so far. Way to go, party experience sharing. Thanks, by the way.”
Four chests were awaiting them, cast in bronze and with symbols above. There was a staff, hammer, mask, and a shield with a cross inside it.
“Looks like these are ours,” said Etta. “We each get our own loot for finishing a room.”
The chests were familiar to Tripp, having completed the labyrinth in Godden’s Reach. In the labyrinth, a loot chest appeared when he completed a puzzle room. “The chests are bronze. That means there were two other solutions to the room that would have earned us silver or gold chests.”
“Where did we go wrong?”
Barnard walked over to his chest. “I suspect severing the heads was our first error. It made it safer for us, but perhaps we had to fight the zombies to earn a better reward.”
Tripp nodded. “That’d get us a silver chest. And I guess if we’d chosen the correct king, we’d have earned gold.”
“At least we made it through,” said Rolley. “Thank you, Tripp and Etta. That couldn’t have been easy.”
Barnard winced now, feeling the rebuke that his friend didn’t mention him in his thanks. Whether it was intentional or not, Tripp didn’t know.
Rolley walked over to his friend and tried to give him a pat on the back. He couldn’t straighten his hands and instead thumped him lightly with his fists. “Cheer up. Plenty more rooms to go, okay? You just need to…”
“Grow a pair,” said Etta.
Rolley smiled at his friend. “Listen, this will make you happy. I got you something.”
He reached into his inventory bag, producing a blue ring that he tried to display proudly. He couldn’t grip it properly and it fell to the floor and rolled a foot before stopping.
“It’s a ring of focus,” said Rolley. “Not the best, but as good as I could afford. It’s supposed to increase your mind stats, help you concentrate a little better.”
Barnard, bending to pick up the ring, looked touched. His cheeks reddened a little. “Rolley, I don’t know what to say. Thank you. I got you something too, but now I feel bad. I should have got something better.”
“A present is a present, Barny. Come on, don’t keep me waiting.”
Even Tripp felt the anticipation in the air as Barnard open his satchel. He heard the crunching of paper and a tinkling before Barnard finally took something out.
It was a dagger.
A nice dagger, with an ornamental handle and a blade that looked like it would cut an atom in half, with a faint red tint. It must have been artificed. As a weapon, it was a beauty.
Shame it was going to a guy who had deep-fried his hands.
“Sorry, Rolls. You can’t use it. I can’t even buy a gift properly.”
“How were you supposed to know this would happen? This is a beauty of a blade, Barny. Really, it is. When we get out of here, I’ll use it all the time. For disarming traps, slaughtering goblins, cutting steak, you name it. This’ll be my number one blade from now on. What does the red light mean?”
“Fire damage. The blade is sharp enough that it has a good attack rating. It’s boosted so that if a rogue class uses it, the damage is multiplied. As well as that, it’ll inflict fire damage every few attacks.”
Rolley put his arms around Barnard and though he couldn’t quite set his hands, he gave him a manly squeeze.
“These two are sickeningly cute,” said Etta. She turned to Tripp. “Did you get me anything?”
“Nah.”
“Me neither. Come on, let’s see our loot.”
Tripp felt nerves flicker in his stomach as he faced his bronze chest. It was always that way when you found a chest in Soulboxe. He guessed it was just the idea that anything could be in there.
A rare sword, a legendary piece of armor, something no other player had. In some ways, the anticipation of opening a chest was better than seeing what was inside.
He unlatched the clasp on the front and pulled it open. A gust of warm light shot upwards, the heat giving his cheeks a nice glow.
Loot received!
Alchemist’s Canteen
A metal canteen with elven runes carved on the front. Gives off a faint whiff of manus essence.
Scythe of the Tower Born *shaft*
An oil-black, five-feet tall wooden shaft that was once part of a legendary weapon.
Wow. He’d expected a weapon. Maybe a decent sword, or an axe or something. Perhaps a few gold coins.
But the Scythe of the Tower Born?
With a name like that, it was no common-as-mud loot
. Sure, he only had the scythe shaft right now. If he could find the blade part somewhere else in the tower, he might have a great weapon.
Just as interesting was the Alchemist’s Canteen. As exquisite as it looked with the elven marks on the front, it was empty. As an artificer, Tripp had learned to experiment in Soulboxe, because you never knew what you’d get.
He took a health potion from his inventory and uncorked it, smelling a fruity fragrance. He opened the canteen and poured the potion into it.
Potion upgraded!
Health potion transformed into Replenish potion
+75% health restoration
+25% Manus restoration
Ah, so that was what the canteen did! He was impressed with the artificery and suspected the creator was both an alchemist and an artificer.
It had taken a standard health potion and increased its potency and added a manus restoration effect, making it more useful.
“I wonder…”
Holding the empty glass vial, he poured the upgraded potion back into it.
Potion degraded!
-75% health restoration
-25% Manus restoration
“Damn it.”
“What’s up?” said Etta.
Tripp showed them the canteen and explained what it did, and how its effects only worked when the potion was inside.
“I’d hoped I could upgrade all our potions, but I guess not. They lose their boost when I pour them out of the canteen.”