by Kevin Murphy
“My man,” Roth said, holding up his right hand for a high five, which Dakkon reflexively slapped.
“Think you can make some industrial-strength ice steps to get us up there?” Roth asked.
“Not a chance,” Dakkon said, shaking his head. “We’ll need to find another way.”
“Shhh. Quiet down you two,” said Mina, grabbing their attention by looking back toward the forest. “Look, guys, I get it. I’m insanely curious about the sky castle, too. I’d just like to be a little better informed before we try something hairbrained with my cloak to get up there. I’m going to need a break to do a little research.”
“Ooh, good idea, Mina,” said Roth. “We can use the cloak.”
“That’s not the point I’m trying to make—” Mina began to say, oblivious to the volume of her own voice.
“Either way,” Cline interjected, “we can’t stay here. There’s something big prowling around behind us, so I suggest we head toward that tower—immediately.”
“Nowhere else to go,” Melee said with a shrug. “Unless you can fly.”
“I’m still working on that one,” Dakkon said. He paused and took a few extra steps away from the cliff-side before adding, “Just not at the moment.”
The group cautiously made their way around the cliff’s upper lip which overlooked the valley below, though they didn’t hear any more stirring from within the forest. When Cline shared his thoughts—that the things inside probably preferred hunting in the dark—everyone’s feet got moving a little bit faster to ensure that they could make it to the tower before dusk.
When they arrived at the base of the tower it seemed even stranger than they could have guessed from afar. Though all of the stone was stained dark and aged, they could see its base was made of weathered marble and another unfamiliar, vaguely-purple stone. Grand—though filthy—rounded steps led up to a cracked archway. Behind the arch, lay the first room—a giant box with no slits, windows, or ornamentation aside from oddly-bending, tube-like stone pillars to its sides. These pillars jutted up out from over the edge of the cliff and layered themselves against the outside walls of the tower’s ground level. If it was some sort of support system, it was the weirdest that Dakkon had ever seen.
After the first sectioned chamber, a walkway—partially covered by bands of aged white stone—led over the edge of the cliff then spiraled upward around the tower to another room of similar, blocky dimensions to the first one. The pattern repeated four more times, then ended by connecting to the center spire of the tower itself.
“Do we go inside?” asked Roth. “It certainly doesn’t look like anyone’s been home for a while.”
“That, or no one’s tidied up,” said Melee.
The edifice gave Dakkon a vague sense of foreboding, but he wrote that off merely as worry about its dubious architecture—as though he were about to try climbing a mysteriously acquired ladder ripe with the telltale signs of destabilizing rot. The bulk of the central pillar, which clearly should’ve been imbedded in the ground below, only started half-way up the tower. Below the central pillar’s bulk, though, there was a stone spiral that wound downward beneath it like a sort of stone helix. It looked as if the relatively thin walkway upward and the single stone helix supported everything, making the tower unrealistically top-heavy. He knew some sort of magic was at play. If it had ever managed to stand in its current state, adding the party’s weight shouldn’t make much of a difference. “Yeah, let’s check it out.”
“Let’s head up the steps and take a pause,” Mina suggested. “I need to find out what I can about flying castles.”
The party ascended the grimy stone steps. As their line of sight crested the top, they could see beyond the archway. A vestibule contained a large stone door devoid of any decoration. Above the door, there was a single word chiseled in the stone. The word ‘path’ had been inscribed in their language. Once inside the vestibule, they noticed that to the door’s left, there was a carved relief of a man hard-at-work shoveling what appeared to be a river. When they’d seen the relief, the party looked to Mina, expectantly.
“What?” Mina asked as she planted herself on the ground and began summoning her media console to scour the net. “I don’t know what it is. You guys look it up.”
The party took a break of sorts, but, for the first time since they’d started traveling together, no one was slacking off. While Mina searched for any clues about the flying castle, Roth, Dakkon, and Cline hunted for whatever information they could dig up on the significance of the relief before them. They searched for ‘path’ as well, to try and modify their results, but the common word failed to narrow things down. Melee sat at the archway and kept watch on the forest beyond the steps, daring something unfriendly to show up and give her an excuse to test out her newly-enhanced sword.
After about thirty minutes of searching, Mina had found nothing. Then, she requested another thirty—saying that if she had nothing by then, she’d relent that there just wasn’t any information online.
The others had experienced varying degrees of success. Cline found an old legend about a king named Kaeren, who’d spent 20 hard years alone digging a new river to revive his desperate homeland. When Kaeren finally returned home, his kingdom had been ravaged by war—the ones he cared for killed or enslaved.
The shoe fit—so, as their best lead, the others tried to find out what they could about Kaeren’s story. From what they could find, there were no records of a king named Kaeren having ever existed. Further examination revealed that the story might simply be some sort of cautionary tale.
“It sounds like sour grapes to me,” Melee said with a shrug, after listening to the others talk for a bit.
“It does, sort of,” agreed Dakkon. “If Kaeren had been leading from home instead of trying to accomplish the absurd, he might’ve been able to save his people.”
“Or at the very least, he’d have been able to be with those he loved until things got ugly,” Roth added.
“So, it’s a sort of ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions?’” suggested Cline.
“Sounds about right,” Dakkon said.
“It’s a bummer, is what it is,” said Melee.
“Maybe it’s a warning that climbing this tower is about as good of an idea as trying to dig a new river with a shovel when you could be elsewhere,” said Roth. The group sat and thought about that for a moment.
“Or, maybe it’s nothing,” proposed Mina as she looked up from her own research. “I’ve got nothing either, guys. Digging rivers may be fair game in Chronicle’s history, but there’s no forum posts, wikis, guides, or stray comments that suggest anyone has heard anything about a flying castle. To find out more, I’ll need to pore over some tomes at a library.”
“Well, we could try asking Qirim,” said Dakkon. “He’s well read in Chronicle lore, as it’s how he makes his living. He’s also the one who noticed the symbol on my map that led us here. Having said that, I’d prefer to know exactly what it is we have before we start inviting other people to take a look.”
“No way, man. Don’t tell anyone about this,” said Roth. “We’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Mina reluctantly nodded. “Yeah, as much as I’d like to know more, telling others what we’ve found could prove to be a colossally bad move. Maybe we’ll get more information by climbing this tower. I highly doubt the two aren’t connected somehow—both being out here in the middle of nowhere and zanier than all hell.”
“Well then,” said Dakkon as he got to his feet. “If we’re all in agreement, let’s get climbing.”
“That’s a massive, ancient, stone door,” said Cline while everyone else stood. “What’re the odds it’ll even open?”
Dakkon lightly pressed against the door and it swung forward easily, as if it had been waiting for his touch.
“Better than average, I’d wager,” said Roth.
They could immediately hear the sound of running water. Dakkon shot the group a nervous look.
The door had seemed to move of its own accord, but there was no reason to second guess themselves now. The party walked into the room.
[You have entered a dungeon: Tower of Trials.]
[Your group is the first to discover: Tower of Trials.]
[Experience gain is doubled within this dungeon for 24 hours.]
[The chance of finding rare loot is doubled within this dungeon for 24 hours.]
“Trials, huh?” said Roth. “Looks like we’ve found another fresh one.”
Pale-orange stone boxes were scattered about the room, illuminated only by the fading light streaming in from the doors behind them. Once the party had walked a few steps beyond the threshold, the door swiftly closed itself behind them, leaving the area in Chronicle’s interpretation of pitch black—nearly full visibility, but tinged in shades of dark blue.
“Ah, damn it,” Cline mumbled aloud. Mina let out a weary sigh.
The orange boxes of cut stone ranged from a half-meter to nearly two in height. There were dozens of them. Several had bowls with deep, fist-sized openings in their center which—upon further inspection—plunged down through the full length of their respective boxes and into the floor, beneath. The stone boxes without bowl tops were designed like halfpipes, many of which were bent at right-angles.
Between the variously-sized cuboids were longer, thinner stone halfpipes made of a smoothed gray stone. Each halfpipe rested on a central fulcrum and was engineered so that it could be spun around 360 degrees and pivot in almost any direction.
At the end of the room—opposite the entrance—there was another stone door, and at the room’s center there was the source of the sound which they’d heard. Water flowed downward out of the ceiling from an orange stone fountain which had been carved to look like a large stalactite. The water was caught by a large stone basin beneath it, draining down into some unknown space. There were four pivot-able gray stone halfpipes within reach.
Dakkon tried pushing on both doors before doing anything else, but he wasn’t successful at opening either one.
“So, we’re trapped, then, huh?” Roth said, sagely.
“In some sort of puzzle room, by the looks of it,” replied Mina. She pointed as she spoke. “It looks like we can dip the end of one of these swiveling gray stones into the falling water and use them as conduits to direct where the water flows."
“But there aren’t any instructions,” said Cline. “How’re we supposed to know which hole to get the water into?”
“Trial and error?” suggested Dakkon.
“What kind of puzzle locks you in a room just so you can slog through random combinations for a bit?” Roth asked skeptically.
“Yeah, that’s a fair point,” Dakkon said. “How about we take a closer look at each of the stones.”
The party did so and quickly found a detail which they’d overlooked. Each of the raised cubes with shallow basins and drain holes had a small etching near its base. They found a crown, a shovel, a house, a sword, an eye, and an hourglass. None of the other stone objects had any identifying marks as far as they could tell.
“Looks like there are six options,” said Dakkon. “I’m guessing they relate to the legend of Kaeren’s river in some way or another. Do you guys think we’re supposed to determine what he should have done—or are we supposed to know what it was that he did?”
“Assuming that’s all right, there’s no way it can be as simple as knowing what he did,” said Cline. “There’s a picture of a shovel outside the door. That’d be too easy.”
“Okay, fair, I’m with you on that,” said Dakkon. “So, what do the others represent? The crown represents that he’s a king—or, perhaps, that he should’ve been ruling.”
“Then, the house is where he should have been—or what he should’ve been protecting?” suggested Mina.
“The sword is what he should’ve been doing,” said Melee. “He should’ve fought for his people.”
“The sword could also represent the war that happened in his absence,” noted Mina.
“Okay, then the eye?” Dakkon asked.
“He should’ve kept his eyes peeled?” guessed Roth.
“Better than nothing,” said Dakkon. “Still, we should work on that one.”
“Following all of that, the hourglass might represent the time he wasted,” postulated Mina. “So then, which is it? If we’re discounting the shovel, did the creators of this puzzle value time, defense, foresight, home, or leadership?”
“Ugh, it could be any of those,” said Cline. “That doesn’t narrow it down at all. To know what they valued, first we’d need to know who built this place.”
“Well, if we have to narrow it down,” said Mina. “I say we consider dropping the eye. Foresight is something like a non-answer. Just watching things happen isn’t exactly taking action.”
“Ok, then home and time aren’t actions—can we remove them?” asked Roth.
“Hmmm,” said Dakkon. “It’s all too subjective. If the moral of the legend is supposed to be something like ‘don’t waste your time,’ then we could be in trouble.”
“Perhaps subjectivity is the point,” said Mina with a sigh. “Whoever this trial was meant for would’ve probably been raised with the legend of Kaeren. They’d know the meaning of the story.”
After a thoughtful pause, Melee was the first to speak again. “I think it’s the sword. It’s the exact opposite of what he did—but it’s also a tool, just like the shovel.”
“Hmmm, the problem is that we can stretch every symbol’s meaning until it’s the opposite of the shovel,” observed Mina. “The hourglass is a tool, too.”
“Well, my first guess would have to be the house,” said Dakkon. “Kaeren should’ve been at home. He could’ve done everything else while at home—fought, used his time effectively, worked hard, ruled, and watched his borders. It’s the only one that encompasses all of the others.”
“Well… I see where you’re coming from,” said Mina. “But, technically they each can encompass all of the others. The crown orchestrates the others; the sword takes time, a smithy, hard work, and someone to receive it; a house needs its masters, builders, and defenders. They all fit… all except for the eye. It’s the outlier.”
“I thought you wanted to drop foresight as a choice?” said Cline.
“I don’t know,” said Mina. “Right now, I’m leaning toward Dakkon’s pick. It seems to check the most boxes. It could be the moral, it could be the outlier, it could be what Kaeren left behind—and it could be the answer.”
The group deliberated for a while longer before finally deciding to cast votes. There was no way to know for certain. They seemed to be missing important pieces of information that were crucial to solving the puzzle.
“House,” said Dakkon.
“House,” said Mina.
“Sword,” said Melee.
“Hourglass,” said Roth.
Cline hesitated. Then, he said, “House.”
“Well then,” said Dakkon. “Let’s get to it, though I kind of feel like we’re in over our heads.”
Melee grumbled, upset that she’d been outvoted, but she’d stick to the group’s decision. Being in the minority didn’t seem to bother Roth at all.
“You think we can just use your wrist wraps to fill up the right one so that we don’t have to fiddle around with these conduits?” Roth asked Dakkon.
“I’m not so sure that’s the best idea,” Dakkon said. “Since they’re calling this a tower of trials, I suspect we should try to play by the rules as much as possible. We have no idea how a pass or fail might be determined.”
Roth nodded his understanding, then the group set to work.
The group took their time setting up the path for water to travel. Aside from swiveling stone conduits into position, they found that there was no proper path for water to flow from the source to the ‘house’ basin. To make it work, they’d first need to detach one of the halfpipes for another route and set it between two of the non-bas
in cubes. While there had been no new fulcrum to set the halfpipe on, there were indentations in the stone where they could securely insert the displaced halfpipe, which the group decided was a good sign. That seemed to indicate that they were on the right track.
Once they’d moved the halfpipe, they’d created a finished path. From the waterfall ran gray halfpipe to a bend-block, to another halfpipe, to a straight block, to the halfpipe which they had placed—connecting to another bend-block—then, after one last halfpipe, finally, to the orange block with a hole in the basin and a small house etched into its base. The whole pathway resulted in one, long, gradual slope—which the party took as another good sign. It was the pathway of piping that took the most travel time, so it took a lot more work than the others. Clearly designed so it would work—and like a building’s foundation—the house-etched basin block was the lowest among all of them.
With everything in place, Dakkon positioned the first halfpipe below the flowing water and aligned the pipe with the first orange block. Water flowed down the path without leaking, taking the two bends as it went. When the water reached the house basin, water smoothly flowed inside.
For a tense moment, nothing happened. Then, there was a loud, sliding *click*. Next, the party could hear the sound of water rapidly filling a container just before the basin overflowed, spilling onto the floor.
“Cut the flow, Dakkon,” called Roth.
Dakkon pivoted the first gray halfpipe downward into the waterfall which would eventually cut off the flow, but there was still quite a bit of water traveling to the overfilled basin. Then, Dakkon noticed that the basin he was standing beside—the main basin which the water had been pouring down and into before—was beginning to overflow as well.
“Ooooh no,” Dakkon wailed. “Guys! We’ve got a problem!”
Everyone’s eyes darted to Dakkon and they could see the rush of water splashing into the large basin and running down its sides. They all dropped what they were doing to quickly see what could be done.
“Looks like we chose wrong!” yelled Roth over the loud splashing. “How do we fix it!”