by Andrew Rowe
That sounded a little risky for my tastes, but if it worked…
Patrick and Vanniv put up their Walls of Fire.
“End Turn.” Sera declared.
[Player 2’s Turn.]
The enemy skeletons and barghensi moved up, just as expected. I tensed, but no shots were fired.
[Player 1’s Turn.]
“Patrick, move to B2. Then, Wall of Fire on A5 and B5.”
“Got it!” Patrick moved and cast his wall, blocking off the last couple skeletons on that side of the board.
“Vanniv…” Sera started.
“Fire wall from H2 to H4?” He gestured at the squares expectantly.
‘Quite right. It seems you’ve been paying attention during our games after all.”
“Anything to please you, mistress.” He gave a little mock bow, then waved a hand. A brilliant wall of flame moved to block off most of one of our remaining sides, leaving only a single square gap — and that gap was too far away for anyone to reach in one round.
“Aaaaand…End Turn.”
[Player 2’s Turn.]
I felt my shoulders tighten. I did not like the idea of waiting with skeletons this close to us, especially as obscured as they were by flames.
But those skeletons were a lot less intimidating the moment they began to step into the fire.
[Player 2’s Skeleton has been eliminated.]
That message repeated as more than half the skeletons walked into the fire wall.
Then, to my surprise, another series of actions that were even less explicable happened.
[Player 2’s Skeleton Archer has been eliminated.]
The archers were walking into the walls, too. There was…no reason for that. They could have simply waited on the other side of the fire walls for the duration to expire in a couple more turns.
Either the other player was very, very bad at Crowns, or simply very forgiving.
I counted myself grateful either way, although I quickly reminded myself that this was just the first room of the first floor of the spire. If we had run into a similar puzzle on a later floor it could have been much messier.
And we weren’t done. Not quite yet, at least.
[Player 1’s Turn.]
“Okay. First set of walls go down after the next enemy turn,” Sera noted. “At that point, we will have a brief window of vulnerability, depending on where their archers and the barghensi end up. Current plan is to bombard then when the walls go down and end the game, but if there are too many, we’ll refresh the walls and fall back instead. Patrick, back to your starting position.”
“Got it!”
“End turn.”
This was…absurdly nerve wracking for something where I had literally nothing to do. I gripped the hilt of Selys-Lyann tightly, but didn’t draw it. I couldn’t even know if I could use it safely in the match.
[Player 2’s Turn.]
A series of messages sounded as skeletons continued to advance toward us, burning and vanishing inside the walls.
[Player 2’s Skeleton has been eliminated.]
[Player 2’s Skeleton Archer has been eliminated.]
And then…
[Player 1’s Turn.]
The first walls of fire dropped, just as planned. They’d done their job, though — only two archers, one normal skeleton, and the bhargensi remained.
“Okay, looks good.” Sera nodded. “Patrick, move to F4.”
“That close?” I asked.
“It’s fine.” Sera waved a hand dismissively. “We’ve got them this turn.”
Patrick inched his way to the square, only about ten feet from the barghensi — a much more dangerous opponent than the mere skeletons. He looked nervous, but held himself tall regardless. “Uh…now what?”
“Cast Inferno on G6 and H6.”
“Oh! Got it.” Patrick waved a hand, conjuring a conflagration that enveloped the two designated squares — obliterating one of the two remaining skeletal archers and burning the barghensi. The latter was damaged, but remained in the game.
“Vanniv, move to G4, then Inferno the remaining skeleton and archer.”
“Gladly!” He stepped up, cast an inferno on I5 and I6, and obliterated the two units there.
Then only the barghensi remained.
“Mara, it’s time for your ultimate technique.”
Mara sauntered up to G5, right in front of the barghensi, and pulled back her arm. A bright wave of power flashed over her arm, then she jumped into the air and….
“Star Descends from Sky!”
She punched the barghensi out of existence.
[All of Player 2’s Units have been eliminated.]
[Player 1 has won the game.]
There was a brief musical chime, then then the voice sounded again.
[You have been awarded a bonus for winning without losing any units.]
[You have been awarded a bonus for winning without taking damage.]
A pair of keys appeared in the center of the room — one blue and one purple. The latter was gigantic and, perhaps more importantly, had a head shaped like a skull.
The key to the door near the entrance, I realized. We could go back and head to the next floor right away.
Sera conjured a jet of wind to bring them to her, smiling. “Not a bad start.”
***
We walked back to the door to the previous room. My nerves were still on fire. There had been no harm done to any of us, but that…almost made things worse. I didn’t like standing around with nothing to do.
I’m going to have to ask to avoid more challenges like that…or find a way to calm myself down.
Sera re-opened the door, revealing a nervous-looking Meltlake waiting for us.
The professor let out a sigh of relief when she saw our group intact. “How did it go?”
Sera quickly summed up the game.
“You did very well,” Meltlake said simply. It was tame, as far as praise went, but Sera seemed to devour it.
“T…thank you, Professor.” Was she more nervous than she’d been letting on? I supposed that it made sense, given how much was riding on her strategies.
I didn’t say anything. It probably would have just embarrassed her.
“Now, shall we choose where to go next?” Sera asked. “Oh, and Vanniv, thank you for the help. You were instrumental to our success.”
“I am always pleased to be of use to you.” He puffed himself up a bit, looking pleased. “Shall I continue to conquer this spire in your name?”
Sera let out a little snort. “I think we’ll take it from here for the moment, thank you. Need to conserve mana.”
“If you insist.” A hint of disappointment flashed across his face, but he didn’t let it show for long. “Let me know when you’re in need of me again.”
“I will. Vanniv, return.” She extended a hand in a magnanimous and unnecessary gesture, then Vanniv vanished into nothingness. I’d seen the effect dozens of times now, but I still found the idea of unsummoning a person…unsettling.
I tried to focus on the situation around us instead of my broader ideas about summoning ethics. This room had three other doors, but none of them looked to be any more locked than the previous ones had been.
“We could backtrack and head straight to the next floor,” I offered. “That’s the safest route.”
“Yeah, but then I’d probably lose my chance to try out this key.” Sera waggled the non-skull shaped key. “This is valuable practice, too. I say we hit a few more rooms before we go back.”
We discussed briefly, ultimately settling on taking a look at the other room options before deciding if we wanted to backtrack or not.
“I’ll go open the next one!” Patrick headed toward the door on the left side of the room. Mara silently moved right along with him, ready to take action if anything dangerous happened.
Patrick opened the first door, revealing a titanic room. I couldn’t even see the ceiling from my angle, but I could see some of the contents of the chamber. There
were four massive wooden pillars holding up some sort of structure, as well as several peculiar figures.
One was a gigantic golem of some kind, wearing a long dress and with strangely smooth painted skin. It was lying on its side, inert.
Another was what looked like a twenty-foot tall fuzzy monstrosity resting up against a nearby wall, with a single shoulder torn out of position and exposing…stuffing?
I blinked, noting two other similar figures on the ground, and sensing a pattern. “Are…those…children’s dolls?”
“Yeah, sure, if the kids are about the size of a god beast.” Sera mused. “…Which I suppose is possible.”
“Step back.” Meltlake instructed in a no-nonsense tone.
We stepped away from the room. Just before the door closed in our absence, I saw something moving down from the side of the structure. When it struck the ground, I felt our entire room shake.
“Insights, professor?” Sera asked as we shifted away from the door.
“We should avoid that room.” The professor explained.
I stared back at the closed door. “Yeah, let’s stay as far from possible from the giant baby.”
Sera nodded. “I do try to keep my distance from you, brother, but it’s difficult when we’re in such confined spaces in the spire. Oh, you meant the giant baby in there.”
I rolled my eyes. “That was a weak jab, even by the standards of your usual ones.”
“Well, not all of my abilities can be quite as prodigious as my Crowns-playing. Shall we check the next room?”
We moved to the door that was directly across from where we’d entered. Once again, Patrick opened it.
Inside was a small room with a single blue treasure chest in the center. The box itself was huge; nearly neck-height and about six feet wide. There were absolutely no monsters or obvious traps. Somehow, I think that terrified me even more than the giant baby room.
No, I’m lying. The giant baby room was still worse. Still, treasure on its own was incredibly suspicious. There were no other obvious doors within that room, so it seemed like that particular path terminated there.
“Same color as her key,” Mara noted. “The non-skully one, that is. Maybe it’s our bonus prize?”
“Could be. Seems a bit…obvious, though.” Sera turned to Meltlake. “Odds that’s just a box?”
“Not quite zero, but it’s probably not a traditional mimic, either. Too obvious. It’s possible it’s a trap, but only for people who don’t have the proper key…which you might actually have earned.”
Sera frowned. “I suppose that’s possible. I was thinking of the skull key as the bonus key, but if that was the default and my key was the extra one…hm. Might be worth just levitating the key over to the box from here?”
“I think that would be largely safe,” Meltlake replied, “But perhaps it would be wise to check the other room first.”
There were a series of nods at that. We headed to the final new door, with Patrick opening it as usual.
A monster hurled itself through the door the moment that Patrick opened it.
The beast was something like a tiger, but with large, bird-like wings and huge, knife-like claws extending from its fingers. I felt an instant of panic as it lunged for Patrick. My hand went to my sword, but I wasn’t fast enough to do anything.
As it turned out, I didn’t have to. Patrick swept his right hand across his body and a gust of wind followed his gesture, blasting the winged tiger across the room and into a nearby wall. It didn’t impact particularly hard, but it still looked dazed.
Patrick splayed his hands out to the sides, staring at the creature with a hard look. “Easy, there, friend. We’re not here to hurt you.”
The beast landed on the ground and raised its head, its muscles tensing as if preparing to leap. It let out a low growl, then licked its lips, turned its head to scan the people present, and took a step back toward the wall.
I stayed my sword hand for the moment. If Patrick wanted to talk, I’d let him.
Mara surged across the room, landing in front of Patrick. Her aura blade was gone; she’d dismissed it, presumably deliberately. That didn’t stop her from taking a defensive posture, though.
“Wall.” Sera waved toward the doorway. A wall of ice manifested in the door, freezing the entrance to the next chamber shut a moment before a second monster slammed into it. Through the ice, I couldn’t quite make it out, but it looked more like some kind of boar.
Good catch, I noted mentally. I’d been so distracted by the first monster that a second would have caught me off guard.
Meltlake watched the doorway warily, bracing her arms on top of her long cane. Based on the way her shoulders were set, I suspected she was having difficulty restraining herself from attacking. I appreciated that she was giving us a chance to handle things without her intervention.
Sera took a few steps closer as the winged tiger began to back away from our group, seemingly searching for a way out. “Easy, there. We’re not here to hurt you. I’m a Summoner. Can you talk?”
The creature turned its head toward Sera, growling. “Summoner. I have no business with you.”
I blinked, briefly startled. I knew about plenty of smart animal-like monsters — pegasai, unicorns, gryphons, all that — but most of them didn’t talk. I didn’t quite recognize this one, but it did seem similar to another monster I was more familiar with.
Fortunately, I wasn’t the monster expert. Without missing a beat, Mara stepped forward. “I’ve got a riddle for you, if you’d like.”
The creature immediately swiveled toward Mara, the muscles in its back tensing as if it wanted to leap, but instead, it simply narrowed its eyes. “You believe yourself worthy to feed me?”
“I’ll wager I’ve got one you haven’t ‘eard before. Don’t know if it’ll stump ya, but I think you’ll enjoy it regardless.”
“Hmpf.” The monster briefly tensed again, seeming to evaluate something, then shifted into a sitting position. And, in a much more conventionally cat-like fashion, reached up to lick one of its own knife-like claws. “Very well, then. Amuse me, if you would. But I will require more than one riddle if you wish to be permitted to stay.”
“Of course, great one.” Mara bowed her head. “Will you permit us a few moments to discuss the best riddles to offer you, then?”
“Pah. You offer food and then withdraw it?”
“No, no. Merely wanted to give you the best offerings, is all. I’ll give you one now, then talk to my friends while you think about it?”
“I can give you a few moments.”
While they talked, Sera was inching her way over toward me. She leaned over to whisper. “Tiger-sphinx. Very smart. Very temperamental.”
“It eats riddles instead of giving them out like a traditional sphinx?” I asked.
“It does both. If you can both stump it and defeat its own riddles, it will offer you something. In this case, probably clues for the rest of the area.”
Mara came over to us. “Any of you have somethin’ you feel like startin’ us off with?”
I shook my head. “I can come up with something, but you’ll need to give me a bit. I’m no riddle expert.”
“Same.” Sera frowned. “I’ve got a few options, do you want to discuss—”
“It has been a few moments. You may tell me a riddle now.” The tiger sphinx made a “come hither” gesture with a paw.
Apparently the “few moments” were very literal. That wasn’t much time to talk.
Mara took on a thoughtful expression, then walked back over to present her first offering. “Right, right. Here you go. I run, but cannot walk. I sing, but cannot talk. I have no arms, but I have hands—”
The tiger-sphinx groaned. “A clock. A better effort than some, but if you wish to feed me, you must do better.”
Mara just smiled. “Well, I s’pose it’d be your turn, then, now wouldn’t it?”
“Hmpf. You have not yet warranted my own questioning. Give me a tru
e meal before you seek scraps of your own.”
“Of course, beggin’ your forgiveness. Just a moment, then, while we have a little chat, yeah?” Mara bowed her head, then slowly backed away, nudging Patrick to do the same. She never took her eyes off the tiger-sphinx. Taking that as a strategy, I tried to do the same as I moved closer to Patrick and Mara. Eventually, we were all facing toward the sphinx, but standing close to each other and toward the opposite side of the room.
“Can we really discuss this without the tiger-sphinx just overhearing us?” I asked my friends quietly.
“No,” the tiger-sphinx replied to my whispered question. “Not if I wish to listen. I will nap now. We will begin when I wake.”
The cat unceremoniously laid down on the ground, closing its eyes. I blinked at the sudden change, then glanced to my companions. “Are they really…?”
“Sleeping?” Sera narrowed her eyes. “I think so. Or, at least, we should play along either way. Come on. Riddles. Mara, I take it you gave an easy one as bait?”
“Right you are, Miss Cadence. I have some better ones. We’ll each want to have one good one — we all need to make a personal exchange unless we want to be considered ‘prey’.”
“How much of a concern would that be?” I asked. “How strong are these things?”
Mara shrugged. “Probably not that dangerous to us, if I’m bein’ honest. They can get powerful, but at this floor? Not a concern. It’s more about just bein’ nice and gettin’ some clues.”
“Sounds good.” I nodded to her, thinking. Riddles weren’t really my strength, but I did know a few. “Do we all have to stump them?”
“Him, I think. And no, I think only one of us will need to. The rest of us just have to be at least mildly entertaining. And we do want to answer his riddles correctly, either alone or as a team.”
We spent the next few minutes discussing options, playing riddles against each other, until we made some choices. I kept casting glances toward the ice wall to see if the other monster would break through, but it seemed to get bored and stop trying after a minute or so.
Then, after just a few minutes of riddle discussion, the tiger-sphinx opened its jaws in a surprisingly humanlike yawn, blinked, and turned toward us. “You may feed me now.”