by Sarah Lin
By experimenting with the other skeletons, they discovered that the ceiling wouldn't come down again right away, so they sent another skeleton past to check that there were no further traps. But when Bloodwraith called the skeleton back, the block activated again and crushed a second skeleton. Further testing revealed that it would smash down about once a minute before it went inactive.
Nervous to go under the killer ceiling, they waited for another cycle and this time Meara tossed a potion into the corridor. It didn't even need to reach the ground before it was smashed into glass shards.
"Well..." Danniah took a step forward and stared at the ceiling. "It should be deactivated for now, so I guess somebody needs to test it..."
"I will!" Izzy moved forward, first edging her feet into the area. When the ceiling didn't come down, she sprinted across the dangerous area. From the other side she waved to them.
They all rushed through the threatened zone, but the ceiling didn't come down. Meara made sure to mark the exact point where the trap began in her mind so they couldn't run into it later. Meanwhile, the others looked at the corridor ahead with grim expressions.
"This place is mad," Gharavi said. "I hope this isn't what we have to look forward to for the rest of this floor."
It didn't get better from there. The path branched several times and Meara quickly realized that though the previous floors made no logical sense as buildings, they had made sense on another level. Each had been constructed with dead ends, objectives, and mazes to add a challenge.
This floor had none of that, leaving just a chaotic mess of corridors. They went down one dead end for what felt like an hour, only to discover that it ended in a wall with no useful features. After thoroughly checking that there wasn't anything hidden, they had no choice but to turn around and head back. Below the obvious level, the deeper structure was giving her a headache.
As they moved on, they encountered both more monsters and more traps. Some were almost like normal creatures, like a frog with large antlers, while others were bizarre abominations of mixed body parts. At one point they were attacked by what appeared to be a mushroom walking on stubby little legs. They fought some sort of bear with the head of an owl... and then a giant owl with the head of a bear.
Meara was fairly sure the people who had built the dungeon had been drunk some of the time.
The thing was, many of those monsters were actually strong, unlike the lion wheel. Regardless of how stupid they looked, they wielded powerful magic and dealt serious injuries when they managed to land a blow. When she checked the boxes as Bloodwraith did, they seemed to be overall stronger than the monsters on the previous two floors, even if they weren't always effective.
Yet she didn't find herself worrying for her allies, because they had changed. Since they had been trapped in the dungeon, they had gained power and cloaked themselves in enchantments, but it was more than that. They had grown used to working as a team to fight opponents of greater strength, moving together without the need for orders.
And she was one of them, producing potions for specific purposes with only a little notice. Even though she was completely unable to participate in combat, by the rules of the boxes, she was still part of it through her connection to the others.
Though the traps kept them on their toes at all times and frayed their nerves, they actually made their task easier. Since the monsters blundered toward them aggressively, it was fairly easy to bait the monsters into traps. They spent a while in a central room that had a massive swinging blade, using it to clear the region of monsters. It wasn't as good as the dimensional barrier to the tavern, but it still injured their opponents seriously enough to neutralize their threat.
None of the corridors contained any kind of puzzles or treasure, just random dead ends. Once their path ended in a wall that had a tree struck straight through it - not growing through the stone, simply sticking through at an angle as it had been stuck there by a confused giant. They'd spent a while trying spells and force to find something, but in the end decided that it was just random.
As they continued down another corridor, the skeletons marched ahead without any traps... but Meara realized that there was something wrong about the walls. Looking back, she saw that there was a slight difference in width in the earlier part. Perhaps it was simply random, but...
But she could hear a faint grinding of stone over stone. Even before she was completely sure what she was seeing, she glanced over to Bloodwraith. "The walls..."
He looked and saw immediately. After gauging the distance forward versus back, he called out to the group. "Everyone, run! The walls are closing in!"
As if the walls sensed their movement, they began to move more rapidly, tightening the corridor around them. Their group sprinted even faster, leaving the skeletons behind, hoping they could escape the constricting corridor before it closed on them.
They did. Easily.
Meara had been afraid of a secondary trap when they got through, but there was nothing. Suddenly they were running through a normally-sized corridor again, the grinding walls behind them. They stopped and turned back, seeing the skeletons mindlessly marching after them. Even the skeletons got through before the stone walls finally ground together.
"This place..." Bloodwraith sighed heavily and they all understood exactly what he meant.
They continued on, encountering more of the same, but Meara could tell that the stress was beginning to get to her companions. She produced her unique failed potions to keep them moving and managed to come up with a stamina-boosting potion for Gharavi, but those could only go so far. Eventually they would need to find a place to rest.
Abruptly they came across a chamber that actually appeared finished, unlike the random blocks and strewn objects of the main dungeon. It was a circular chamber made of red stone, with patterns along the walls that looked like crossing swords. After they sent the skeletons ahead and found no traps, they made their way into the room.
"This might be a good place t-" Bloodwraith was interrupted as both doors slammed shut, trapping them inside. Though Meara immediately looked for the ceiling to start moving down or something to begin filling the chamber, no such threats appeared.
Instead, a column of stone emerged from the center of the floor. When it rose to the ceiling, the stone fell away, leaving a statue of a knight made of red stone. The fighters quickly moved to surround it, ready to attack, but the statue showed no signs of becoming animated.
After a time, a window appeared in front of Bloodwraith and Meara read over his shoulder:
[Defeat me to proceed!]
"It says we need to defeat it," Bloodwraith said. "Another puzzle, then?"
"If so, there's not very much to work with." Meara examined the sword patterns along all the walls and never saw the pattern break. There was nothing in the circular chamber except the statue in the center.
Gharavi kept her distance, but examined the statue both with her eyes and her necklace. "I don't sense any direct defenses. There's strong magic, but it's an Outsider spell that I can't pull apart."
"This is weird." Danniah approached cautiously, her shield up, but wasn't attacked. She hesitantly reached out and tapped the statue with her mace, but nothing happened. "What do we do, push it over?"
"We might as well destroy it." Bloodwraith readied his sword, channeled mana into the blade, and took a swing at the statue.
His sword failed to cut, but a massive crack appeared in the center of the statue. It was reinforced by some magic that couldn't stand up to their force, so it was only a matter of time until they broke the statue. Perhaps this was another poorly designed trap.
Except a moment later, Bloodwraith collapsed.
"Bloodwraith! Are you okay?" Danniah cried out and ran to him, but he only groaned. As she rolled him over onto his back, Meara eyed the statue in case it would attack, but it stood motionless. She didn't think that it had struck back in any way - it really appeared to be just a statue by all obvious signs
.
On the ground, there was blood leaking from Bloodwraith's armor. Danniah tugged off his breastplate and gasped as she saw a terrible wound across his chest. She immediately began fumbling for a potion at her belt, but Izzy was faster, crouching next to him and biting at his injury to heal it. Bloodwraith remained unfocused and feverish, but it didn't seem like his life was in danger.
While they cared for him, Meara glanced at the wound. It looked like a cut... a cut almost exactly like the crack across the chest of the statue. When Meara looked back, she noticed Gharavi was looking at the same thing.
"It must be some sort of... reflection magic." The sorcerer folded her arms and frowned at the statue. "But it's not like anything I've ever seen before and I don't think I'd be able to pull it apart."
"So it seems whatever damage is done to it is done to the person that strikes it." Meara glanced over her shoulder and saw that though Bloodwraith's wound was better, it wasn't healing nearly as quickly as it should have. "It must put some magical force behind the wounds, too."
"That seems like the case. The question is how we destroy it..."
Danniah had taken off Bloodwraith's helmet and was wiping his forehead with a clean cloth, but she looked up to join the conversation. "There are five of us and only one of it. Can't we just destroy the statue a bit at a time between us?"
"Assuming that the statue isn't healing with him." Gharavi leaned closer to it, examining the crack, then checked Bloodwraith's injury. "It doesn't look like it. That's what I would have done, if I was designing a challenge like this, but I'm clearly not like the people who designed this place."
"Let me at least try." Danniah left Bloodwraith in Izzy's care and moved up to the statue, hefting her mace. She took a swing at the cracked area, though she sensibly didn't use her flame skill or her full strength.
A moment later she stumbled back a few steps, flailing her arms to regain her balance. After coughing and thumping her breastplate a few times, she turned back to them. "The same instant I hit the statue, it walloped me pretty hard. Did I do much to it?"
Meara and Gharavi examined the statue, but there wasn't much sign of change. Gharavi experimentally tried a weak ice spell and immediately jumped back, shards of frost covering her arm. It seemed that there was no getting around the statue's magical effect.
Meanwhile, Bloodwraith managed to sit up. Though his wound was mostly closed, he still looked unnaturally pale. He opened his mouth to give a warning, but saw that they already understood. After a while, Danniah turned back to face him.
"You feeling okay, Bloodwraith?"
"I will be fine, but I need some time to recover."
"How do you think we should destroy this statue?" Danniah put her hands on her hips and stared at it like it was an obstinate opponent. "Should we each take an injury, heal up, then repeat until it's gone?"
"No..." Bloodwraith ran his fingers along the edges of the wound and winced. "Based on how I feel, I think it will take me some time to heal. If we didn't need to get back as soon as possible, we might be able to do that, but I think it would delay us for too long. We need another solution."
There didn't seem to be any immediately obvious solution, however. The first thing Bloodwraith tried was to command his summoned skeletons against it, but the backlash blew them apart and it didn't seem like their blades did any damage.
If this was really a puzzle, it was a rather frustrating one. Meara walked around the statue thoughtfully, considering what options the designers might not have thought about. She quickly realized they had two assets that might prove useful.
Meara went to bend down beside Izzy, who was still nervously snapping at her father's injury even though it didn't do very much good. The ghoul looked up at her with a distraught expression. "I can't bite the pain anymore."
"I think it will take more than that." Meara smiled and inclined her head toward the statue. "But I think you might be able to help us get through this. Are you willing to take a risk?"
"Ya!" Izzy immediately nodded her head violently. "I don't want anyone else to get hurt!"
"You have a different relationship with injuries than the rest of us. Come over here and let's try."
As they all clustered around the statue, Meara took Danniah's mace and gave it to Izzy. She swung at one of the legs and created a serious crack in it, but her leg immediately snapped, dropping her onto her side. Though she wasn't in any pain, Danniah still rushed to help her. Izzy pulled herself up, her leg slowly regenerating, and frowned.
"I didn't think I hit it that hard."
"You didn't." Gharavi was right next to the statue, examining it carefully. "I think it reacts especially strongly against force. That might not be the way to go."
"I can keep hitting it, though! I can get a new body!"
Meara smiled and shook her head. "No, I have a better idea." She reached into her cloak and pulled out a potion that she hadn't made in quite some time. "Try this."
Izzy took the hissing acid curiously and almost took a sip before Meara shook her head. Instead, she had Izzy pour the acid onto one of the statues legs. It immediately began hissing into the stone, destroying it slowly but steadily. Though Izzy started to fall over, Danniah caught her before she could.
As the acid ate away at the statue, similar damage appeared on Izzy's body. She wasn't in any pain, but stared down at her leg in consternation. Meara gave her one potion to drink and poured another directly on the damaged area, reducing the acid damage. Keeping it at bay, Izzy was able to pour two more bottles of acid onto the leg.
After so long of just hissing, there was a loud crack. Meara felt a moment of shock as she turned to see the statue fall over, but it fell heavily onto the ground without any magical effect. Izzy winced, but then just peered curiously at the fallen statue.
Soon after, the statue shattered into dust. After checking that Izzy was still okay, Meara looked in the remains and saw that there was a metal plate gleaming within. So the statue was "defeated" now.
When Izzy tried to jump up to go get the plate, she immediately fell over, forgetting her damaged leg. She tested it with a frown on her face and drank another potion, but it didn't seem to help. While Gharavi went to collect the metal plate, Izzy hopped on one leg over to Bloodwraith.
"Da... my leg feels weird. It's not getting better like normal. I don't think even eating will help it."
"That's the statue's magic." Bloodwraith examined her leg for a time, then smiled up at her. "But the magic is localized in the specific flesh of your leg, which you don't really need."
"Oh! Good idea, Da!" With that, Izzy drew one of her knives and hacked off her damaged leg, prompting Danniah to blanch and turn away. Meara kept watching as Izzy dropped down onto Bloodwraith's lap and urged him to feed her the bodies of monsters they'd defeated as she waited for her leg to regenerate.
Meara couldn't help but move closer and smirk. "Look at you, urging your daughter to cut off her own leg and then feeding her corpses. Truly, you are the greatest father in a thousand kingdoms."
Bloodwraith rolled his eyes at her and was about to respond, but Izzy spoke up first. "Yup! Da is great!" With that, she went back to tearing into her corpses. Meara just raised her hands and admitted defeat.
While they had been talking, Gharavi had tested the metal plate in the doors and discovered that they worked like the others in the dungeon. She raised the stone barriers again, as it was obvious that they needed a rest. Since that was a good enough strategy, Meara began setting up their usual camping equipment.
Hopefully this floor couldn't find some way to ruin sleep.
Chapter 20
Though his injury still ached, it had been feeling progressively better ever since the statue had been destroyed. As such, Bloodwraith was determined to exert his mental strength over his weak fleshly body and not waste any time. If they were stuck here for a little while, then the question was what other necessary activity could be moved into that time to use it effectively.
The strange monsters of the third floor had been worth slightly over 175,000 EXP total. That was valuable, but the more important reward might have been the enormous variety of things they left behind. In addition to food for Izzy, many of them had useful components filled with magic. Now that they were resting, he and Gharavi went through them to test their options.
Meanwhile, the others had their own tasks. Izzy was regrowing her leg, Danniah was training as usual, and Meara said that she needed more time to come to grips with this place. She had helped them reshape the Frozen Breastplate for Danniah and develop the basics of a potential new greatsword for him before leaving, but they had left that aside because Bloodwraith thought they needed to practice more enchanting first.
"Are you ready?" Sitting across from him, Gharavi held his gauntlets together in her hands. "I can cast the spell, but I need you to include the component."
"If it works as easily as the test knives, I can do it." Bloodwraith still made sure to get a better grip on the spiky carapace they'd taken from some ill-conceived armored snail. "Just tell me when."
"Now."
As Gharavi performed the enchanting ritual, Bloodwraith pushed the carapace into the edges of the spell. He tried to suspend all his knowledge of magic and just move as the boxes wanted, utilizing his crafting skill regardless of any logic or reason.
The carapace was absorbed into the spell, so he pulled his hand back. All he could do now was wait, so he nervously brought up the boxes for his gauntlets.
[Gauntlets of the Tyrant
Armor: 7
Might +1, Quickness +1
Durability: 39/50
Rarity: Rare
NOTE: This item is part of a unique set.]
Before his eyes, the words began to blur and shift. They were incomprehensible as Gharavi reached the height of the spell, then the enchantment held and sank deep into the metal. When it faded, the gauntlets in her hands now read differently: