“The stone elf cathedral,” Kalmond muttered. He moved counter-clockwise to the next arch, and it too rippled and changed. A slightly different chamber came into view, this one with a sand-covered floor and fishnets draped across the central altar. “Sea dwarf,” Kalmond said.
As he walked around the circle of arches, each portal revealed the spawning chambers of each race.
“How do I know which one to chose?” Kalmond asked aloud. He was almost annoyed when Rock answered.
“Choose quickly,” she said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Kalmond replied. “We have time, not much, but we have enough for me to figure this out.”
“No time,” Rock said and tapped the dwarf on the shoulder.
A swarm of undead spiven elves streamed down the hill, covering it like ants on a birthday cake. Their pounding footsteps slowly rose to the level of distant thunder.
“OK,” Kalmond said, trying not to look back at the hill, but that was impossible as he ran around the circle trying to decide which arch to take. On the second lap, Rock fell in behind as Kalmond muttered aloud his thought process.
On the third lap, as they passed the archway leading to the stone elf Cathedral, Rock pushed Kalmond through. He skidded to a halt and whirled back to face the arch. A solid wall of undead elves pressed against some invisible barrier, trying to hack and stab with their swords.
“What if we chose wrong?” Kalmond asked rock with no small amount of annoyance.
“No wrong,” Rock said. “Choices just different.”
Kalmond began to feel Rock knew much more than she let on. “Are you part of this place?” he asked.
“We dillo are part of underground,” Rock said.
“No time for another mystery,” Kalmond said, looking around at the ornate chamber.
It was as if they stood in the center of the circle of arches, only inside the circle, a massive dome rose above them. The river stone archways formed the dome’s base. A series of progressively smaller arches, forming vaults, made up the support structure of the dome all the way up to the ceiling high above, where a bright white light shined like a star. The area within the vaults contained paintings of spiven elves in various aspects of doing spiven things: fighting monsters, fighting each other, eating while fighting, fighting while reading, fighting while giving speeches and generally just fighting.
“I guess that’s why they’re not around anymore,” Kalmond said, wandering out into the chamber to get a better look at the artwork.
A gridwork of reddish sandstone columns covered the entire floor beneath the dome, spaced about a single dwarven body length apart. As Kalmond maneuvered around them, they gave him an impression of incompleteness, as if something should have been topping them at some point, or something had. At twice his height, he couldn’t get a view of the column tops even by jumping as high as he could. The deep, regular grooves circling the columns from base to top also drew his curiosity. Each ring was about an arm’s length apart.
“Generally speaking, that is why they died,” a familiar reedy voice spoke directly in Kalmond’s ear.
The dwarf swung his axe where the speaker should have been and spun in a circle, cutting nothing but air.
“So sorry,” the voice said in Kalmond’s other ear. “The acoustics of the dome chambers are very strange.”
“Show yourself, Gideon,” Kalmond growled, crouching down like a linebacker.
“As you wish,” Gideon said, stepping through one of the support arches around the dome’s rim. “The spiven elves were my first AI, you know.” He stepped judiciously behind the nearest column and leaned slightly around it as he spoke.
The bald parody of Gideon that emerged resembled the spike-toothed Gideon monsters from the pit of despair, only the head was larger, balder, paler and rounder.
“You look like that old vampire from the silent movie,” Kalmond said, inching forward slowly, preparing to strike.
“Bela Lugosi?” The sound that Gideon made stopped Kalmond dead in his tracks. If he hadn’t seen the smile breaking across that mouth with way too many teeth, he wouldn’t have believed it. The Gideon of the Lesser Realm would never smile, much less laugh. “I’m grateful for the lack of reflective surfaces here, then.”
Kalmond growled and stepped forward, his axe leading the way.
“You can’t kill me here,” Gideon said. “But I can kill you. Quite easily, in fact.” With a wave of his hand, more than a hundred Gideon spawn appeared from the arches and milled about menacingly, rubbing their clawlike hands together. “I’m dying. I know I’m dying. The machine I built to use brains like AI processors is pulling my consciousness apart bit by bit, using it to model programs.”
“How do we stop it?” Kalmond asked, pausing more from Gideon’s statement than the massing threat.
“I don’t know,” Gideon replied.
“How can you not know?”
“Because the machine I built has emergent properties. It’s like raising a child only to discover you have no idea who she is as an adult.”
“This is too weird,” Kalmond said.
“It’s doing the same thing to you,” Gideon said. “And I wish I could stop it. I always liked you.” Kalmond cocked his head, producing another chuckle from the powerful CEO.
“I didn’t think you knew who I was,” Kalmond said.
“Of course I do. I make it my business to know the name of everyone who works at the Plexcorp main campus.”
“But that’s more than 5,000 people…” Kalmond replied.
“Do you forget who I am?”
“One of the smartest men in the world,” Kalmond replied. “And also one of the dumbest. What were you thinking? Using human minds as computers. It’s not right. They’re people.”
“This is why I like you,” Gideon said. “Honest to a fault. I didn’t think they’d still be human once...separated from the body. Now that I live with their pain, I am ashamed. I’m not sadistic, and I’m also human.” The Gideon spawn backed through the arches and disappeared with the wave of the master’s hand. “But while this is the part of me that likes you, there are other parts above ground that do not, to say the least.”
“I know,” Kalmond replied. “Believe me, I know. But why are you here?”
“I thought killing you in the pit of despair would set you free, let the Realm release you. But it has other plans. I’m not sure why, but it wants to consume everything you create, for good and for bad. So you must let it. There is no other way. The spiven metal here is special. It comes from some of the original code. My code. If you bring it to the blacksmith, I think that will add the code to the rest of the Circles and balance out the system.”
“You think?” Kalmond asked, wide eyed.
Gideon sighed. “The system is now too complex for any single human mind to understand, even mine.”
“Uh huh,” Kalmond said, blood rushing to his face, making his skin feel tight. “This might be the lovey-dovey part of you, Gideon, but you’re still an asshole, and you suck for putting me in this position. When I finally do save your ass and your life’s work, you’re gonna owe me more than you can pay.”
“I understand,” Gideon said.
Kalmond smiled, walked up to Gideon, then punched him squarely in his hooked nose.
“This is boring,” Kalmond said. “On with the quest!” Kalmond bellowed, raising his axe in the air as Gideon stumbled through the nearest archway dripping blood on the floor.
Chapter 25
Not knowing how else to proceed, Kalmond simply walked out between the columns towards the opposite end of the chamber. Somewhere near the middle, sudden motion pulled his eyes downward. The deep reddish swirl patterns of the tile beneath his feet expanded and began to rotate, their regular patterns merging into ever larger swirls.
“Huh,” Kalmond said, staring down in fascination. Then the floor between the columns began to ripple and wave. “That’s trippy.”
A moving lump rocked Kalmond back, nearly t
oppling him. Only hard contact with a column kept him upright. The impact cost him 20 HP—not much, but it was enough to annoy him. He followed the wave as it ran between the columns, then stopped to form a jiggling lump that grew up from the suddenly lumpy floor.
“Not this again,” Kalmond groaned, expecting something to emerge from the stretching, straining surface. Instead, the lump continued to stretch, revealing more circular patterns that stood out in relief. “You gotta be kidding me!” Kalmond exclaimed, as a tentacle revealed itself, rising nearly to the column top.
Another tentacle sprouted from the floor to his right, this one forming rapidly. Kalmond ducked and the slimy appendage slapped against the column. Yet another tentacle formed between his legs and tried to wrap itself around him. As he dodged, his feet splashed, then sank as the floor dropped leaving liquid in its place. To keep from taking a swim, the dwarf launched himself at a column and clung to it, fingers clawing at the grooves.
“Shit,” Kalmond grunted, pulling himself up the column. “Now I understand the grooves.”
A tentacle tried to wrap itself around his shoulder and yank him down, but a massive pull with both strong dwarf arms brought him to the top of the column, where he stood above a swirling sea of blood-red tentacles.
“Squid,” Rock declared casually from the plinth to his left. “Blood squid.”
“Sure,” Kalmond said. “Blood squid.” He made a slow turn on his plinth, and now he could see the top of the columns, each just wide enough for his dwarven feet.
The pattern stood out immediately. The top of Kalmond’s column was white, as was every other for several squares around. He counted ten column tops to the closest of squares that were black. The black column tops formed another square pattern.
“Damn it,” Kalmond groaned. “I have to jump.” Not wanting to waste more time, he grit his teeth, squatted down to his hams and did just that.
As he flew over the space between columns, a group of thin tentacles whipped up and clipped the soles of his boots. Kalmond landed squarely on the next platform, leaned slightly over and extended both middle fingers to the blood squid below who appeared as blurred shadows just beneath the rippling water.
He crouched and jumped again. Eight more squares, then seven, then all the way down to one, he jumped, landing each perfectly. At the last square, before he reached the black pattern, three squids pushed their bodies up from the water, their massive black eyes just above the surface. They bobbed there, treading water with their tentacles and the floppy spearheads atop their conical bodies waved like stunted bloody flags.
“Fuck you guys,” Kalmond said and jumped.
As soon as his feet hit the black-colored plinth, the murals inside the arches changed to a bright aquamarine color that turned the space into an aquarium. He braced himself for a rush of water, but none came.
“Whew,” he said, as rock jumped up to the neighboring square. She fixed him with her beady eyes, blinking occasionally. “Don’t get too excited,” Kalmond said sarcastically.
“Dwarf not smart. Rock don’t get excited. I tell you this already.”
Kalmond chuckled and put fists to hips. He opened his mouth to banter, but a flash of motion tripped his words. A massive, black shadow passed across one archway and continued around the dome.
“Oh, I don’t like that,” Kalmond groaned. He hopped to the next square, hoping to get started on whatever it was he was supposed to do without understanding just what that thing was. “I hate puzzles,” he groaned between leaps.
He thought that jumping on every black square might do something, but he was getting tired. He paused to drink a rejuvenation potion, and the last few gulps dripped down his chin when a massive black eye took up the entire archway to his right.
The chamber echoed with a splash as a massive gray tentacle burst from the adjacent arch and reached for Kalmond with shocking speed. He jumped again, and the tentacle missed him. But on its return journey, one of the suckers on its underside grabbed Rock with a slimy slap and carried her away. Rock was already hacking at the tentacle as it wrapped around her and pulled her into the water outside the dome that seemed held back by some invisible magical membrane.
“No!” Kalmond screamed, and on reflex, took out his crossbow. He waited for the beast in the water to reappear, but that didn’t happen. “Come back, you bastard!” Kalmond screamed and fired off a bolt into the arch where the eye appeared. The missile just went ploot as it passed into the sea, then floated down harmlessly.
For a moment, he considered jumping over to the arches, but a quick estimation told him the distance from the last column to the wall was too great. He’d have to dive into the water. Even if he survived a swim, there was nothing on which to climb back up to the arches.
“Damn it!” Kalmond screamed again. There was nothing left to do. Rock was lost. He continued jumping around the black square. When he got to the first corner, the shadow came again. This time, he was ready with cloudsplitter.
The eye appeared for a moment in the arch directly ahead; then the tentacle shot out from the right. Kalmond jumped in place, but the tentacle paused, instead of drawing back quickly. When Kalmond came down, he landed on the rubbery surface.
“Shit!” he screamed, and let fall cloudsplitter. The axe blade easily sank into flesh. The hit scored a critical, evidenced by a sheet of static electricity that coated the appendage like fur. The limb spasmed from the electric jolt, sending Kalmond high into the air.
In an instant, he was rising up, then upside down and heading back down towards the water. A wet ripping sound issued forth from somewhere behind him or beside him. Kalmond couldn’t tell from where the sound came, focused as he was on what he believed to be certain death. Something hard and heavy slammed into him. The force of impact carried him back in line with the next plinth that he hit with his belly, producing an oomph that drove the air from his lungs. He lay across the platform like a slaughtered deer over a butcher block.
Something extremely heavy pulled on his axe. He allowed the weight to pull him just a bit further over the column to see. “Rock!” the dwarf managed to yell. The dillo hung on to the end of his axe with both hands, swinging back and forth and bumping against the column.
“I cut through from inside. Like meat tunnel,” She said in satisfied tones. Kalmond nearly lets go, he laughed so hard.
“Let go and climb up on the handholds,” Kalmond shouted.
Rock reached out and worked one of her three-fingered hands into the climbing grooves. A shadow appeared in the water below. “No!” Kalmond screamed. “Look out!”
A set of tentacles whipped out from the water and grabbed Rock, but she held on tight in a display of incredible strength. Now that the axe no longer held her up, Kalmond swapped it out for his crossbow and quickly loaded up a frenzy bolt. He took a risk lining up a shot with the squid’s body, but taking the time proved worth it. The critical hit scored 5000 HP damage, landing in the soft tissue to the right of the squid’s eye. It let go and swam off at incredible speed. Soon, the water boiled as it found a victim and attacked.
Rock and Kalmond managed to stay on the plinth by leaning out over opposite sides and linking arms. “How the hell do I get to the next—” Kalmond began, then Rock pushed, knocking him off the plinth.
Kalmond dropped, and Rock leaned down, grabbed him by the arm with blinding speed, then swung the dwarf back. As the dwarven pendulum swung forward, Rock multiplied the motion with mighty effort. Kalmond twisted his head to aim, then let go at a point on the swing that might let him reach the next square. His aim was true, but just barely. He teetered on one foot above the water, finding it impossible not to look down at the giant blood squid circling below.
As soon as he regained his balance, he squatted down again and jumped. Rock followed behind every second leap until Kalmond was one square away from the next corner. “Two corners to go!” Kalmond yelled back over his shoulder. “I’m going to hit the corner, then jump one more. You stay th
ere. I’m going to try hitting the tentacle with crossbow bolt.”
Kalmond brought out his crossbow, then jumped twice. On the second jump, he turned in a half circle until the eye showed up once again. True to form, the tentacle shot out from the arch to the right. Kalmond spent a precious moment lining up a shot, then fired. He then jumped without waiting to see if his shot was effective. The tentacle brushed against his heels as he left the square. It did not return.
Rock followed along behind as Kalmond jumped again. Sweat soaked his beard and dripped salt trails on his plate mail by the time he reached the third square. He wasted no time in jumping twice. The tentacle came again as he hopped three squares down. This time, it caught him in the right thigh as he reached the top of his jump.
The hit sent him a bit wide, and instead of landing on his feet, he landed on his chest. He lost 150 HP when his nose smashed against the stone, sending blood running down his collar as he lifted his head to haul himself up. Blood squid tentacles made an angry play for his ankles, and he managed to kick them away.
“This sucks!” Kalmond yelled, jumping as soon as he had solid footing. He needed another rejuvenation potion by the time he reached the second-to-last square.
“Are you ready, rock?” Kalmond shouted without looking back.
“Yes!” Rock shouted back.
Kalmond jumped, then jumped again. He pivoted left and right waiting for the tentacle. It did not come. Instead, with a hiss and a loud pop, a floor of rough stone appeared in the spaces between the tiles.
The dwarf turned his head to a scraping noise behind him. On the opposite side of the dome, a rectangular stone shelf slid out from one of the arches. More scraping sounds shook the floor, and by instinct, Kalmond stepped off the square that pushed upward beneath his feet.
“Damn it,” Kalmond cursed as another column rose up from the place he once stood. “I could have stayed put.”
Reluctantly, he climbed up the column and looked around. He almost fell off the platform when ropes dropped silently down from the ceiling and began swinging in a line from the column to the protruding platform all the way across the large room.
Realm of the Nine Circles: The Grind: A LitRPG Novel Page 31