by Shawn Kass
“I agree, but what about the other stuff?” asked Anna. “I mean, what is the bloody crown thing supposed to mean?”
“I don’t know,” admitted Kat, “But I’m guessing it’s not pleasant.”
“Okay, so how do we avoid it?” asked Sherri. “Something tells me the Tower isn’t going to give us too many attempts at trying this.”
After taking a second to reread the riddle, Sam tilted his head back and tried to think about its meaning. He knew there was something about it which seemed familiar, something with the water buckets and the number four, but he couldn’t get the thought of the picture of Jesus from Sunday school wearing the crown of thorns out of his head. The image had always disturbed him, and even as a child, he thought it was wrong for the church to expose kids to that type of cruel and brutal imagery, but it was exactly that type of thinking which led him to the truth of their situation.
With his head tilted back and his eyes unfocusedly staring at the ceiling, Sam caught sight of a reflected glint deep inside one of the holes. Concentrating on it, Sam cautiously moved an inch or two forward so that he was directly beneath it and finally understood what he was looking at. Backing away slowly, he aligned himself beneath the next hole and saw that it had the same thing in it. Then, taking a breath, he looked down to the floor and realized that all of those holes were probably set up the same way. The room was a death trap.
Seeing his face turn ghostly white, Anna asked, “What is it? Did you figure something out?”
“Yeah,” admitted Sam in a hoarse whisper. “I know what will happen if we fail.”
“What is it?” demanded Kat.
Pointing up, Sam said, “Each of these holes has a metal spike in it. I’m betting if we fail, it will drop down and impale us right through our heads.” Then pointing down, he added, “And the same thing goes for the floor. If we don’t get this right, a spike will shoot up from the floor.”
Repeating the words from the riddle, Kat said, “Bloody crown and pin you down.”
“Exactly.”
“So what about the door?”
Looking over at the buckets, Sam said, “I think it means we need use this three gallon and five gallon bucket to get exactly four gallons of water somehow and place it over there on that slab.”
“Okay, that sounds easy enough,” commented Sherri. “Where’s the test? You said there would be some sort of test or puzzle in here.”
Nodding, Sam said, “The test is that the buckets don’t have any markings on them. We have to figure out how to get exactly four gallons without any way to measure it out. Too much or too little and we die.”
“What if you stand on my shield, would that keep you safe?” offered the knight.
“I don’t think so,” confessed Sam. “Think about what happened to Sherri’s staff. The spikes would probably just pierce right through it or lift me off the ground and squish me against the ceiling. Either way I’m dead, right?” Then continuing his thought aloud, he added, “And what about the rest of you? Something tells me this is an all or nothing event. If we fail, I’m betting every hole will get triggered at the same time.”
Swallowing, the knight unconsciously pulled his shield in a bit closer and said, “You’re probably right.”
“Can’t we just fill each of them halfway?” asked Anna. “I mean half of five is two and a half and half of three is one and a half so together that makes four, right?”
“Mathematically, yes,” admitted Sam, “But how are we going to know where the halfway mark is? The buckets are tapered, and without any way to measure them, we can’t determine what volume is exactly two and a half or one and a half gallons.”
“This is impossible,” said Mace. “I told you I did not like tests.”
“No one does,” agreed Sam, “But this one is doable.”
“You know how?” asked Anna and Kat simultaneously.
“Not exactly,” began Sam. Unable to explain to them what a movie was, he said, “I saw someone do something like this once, I just have to remember how they did it.” Then after a moment he added, “It had something to do with pouring the water back and forth between the two buckets, and I think they refilled it once, too.”
“Well, you can’t get four gallons in the small bucket, so does that mean you put it all in the bigger one, or are you splitting it between the two?” asked Hugo.
Remembering the movie a little more clearly, Sam answered, “The guy I saw put it all in one bucket, so I think that’s what we have to do as well. Otherwise the weight of the second bucket could throw off the scale.”
“Okay, so how do we do it?” asked Kat.
Holding up a finger as he tried to remember the details of the movie, Sam said, “Give me a second. Let me talk this out.” Then walking over to the buckets, he pointed to each of them as he talked and said, “What if we fill up the smaller one which holds three gallons and pour it into the larger one which holds five? Then we fill it up again and repeat the process.”
“It won’t all fit,” answered one of the mages.
“I know. That’s the point. We’ll only get two more gallons in the big bucket and that will leave us with one gallon left in the smaller one. From there, we can just dump the big one back into the pool.”
“Seems like a waste,” said Mace.
“It’s not,” said Sam. “Just go with me here. Once the big bucket is completely empty, we do the same thing again. We dump the remaining gallon of water from the small bucket into the larger one, and then refill the three gallon bucket one more time and dump it into the big bucket with the leftover gallon. Together that one and the new three will make four.”
Shaking his head as if he was disgusted with the problem, Mace said, “Sounds like a lot of work just to get some water.”
“It is,” agreed Sam, “But we have to be precise if we want to get out of here alive.” As he lifted the smaller bucket from the scale there was an audible click, and Sam flinched backwards thinking the trap had been sprung.
Seeing nothing happen, Mace gave a short grunt as he shrugged his shoulders and then reached for the smaller bucket and walked towards the water. After dipping it into the pool to fill it, he returned to the scale and began to tilt the small bucket towards the bigger one.
Rushing forward, Sam yelled, “Wait!” which almost scared Mace into spilling the whole container.
“What?”
“We can’t just pour the water in while the bucket is still on the scale. It will read it as being too light and trigger the spikes.” Then, after pulling the larger bucket over to the stone floor, he said, “Okay, now we can pour it in, carefully.”
From there, the two of them went through the steps Sam had described, making sure to completely empty and shake each bucket that was poured out so that they didn’t lose anything in the process. When they were finished, Sam stood by scale staring at the bucket for a second, mentally going through everything they had done. He was confident that his math was right, but he still wished they had a better way of measuring the water. Finally accepting that they had done everything correctly or at least the best they could under these circumstances, Sam said, “Okay, here goes nothing,” and bent down to place the large bucket gently on the scale.
For a second nothing seemed to happen, and then Sam noticed that the slab which made up the scale slowly started to sink into the ground. Hoping that this wasn’t the prelude to it triggering a switch beneath the floor which would ultimately result in their deaths, Sam held his breath while he waited. Then, just as suddenly as it had begun moving, the slab stopped and left them all a moment to question what was happening before they noticed that the pool of water nearby had begun to drain out, and the door they had come through was reopening.
“Good job, Sam,” said Anna.
“Thanks. I was little worried for a second that I had missed something.”
“Well, hopefully we’re back on track now,” said Kat.
Stepping away from the buckets, Sam walked
over to the pool and watched the water swirl away to reveal a steep staircase which led down to a short passage beneath the wall. Dropping down on all fours, he stuck his head in the space and said, “It looks like it only goes a dozen feet or so, and then it leads back up to the next room.”
“Can you see anything in the next room?” asked Kat.
“No, not from here,” admitted Sam. “All I can see is that it’s pretty dark.”
“All right,” said Kat. Then to everyone she said, “Let’s form up and get ready. It looks like this passage will only accommodate us going through one at a time, so be careful and be ready.”
It took less than a minute for everyone to find their usual place in line, probably due to the fact that they all wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and away from the potential danger of spikes impaling them from above and below. Then after a brief nod to Mace in the back, Kat disappeared down into the passage. From there, the line moved slowly but steadily as each person in the group made their way in and then called back once they were safely up on the other side. Sam had thought that they could all just follow one another in all at once, but he understood their caution after the Tower had dealt them such a difficult hand already.
Finally, once the group had all come through on the other side, they saw the passageway seal itself up, and they took a moment to look around.
The first thing they noticed was that the room was much larger than those they had seen before. In fact, it was so large that the few scant torches which they could see on the walls were incapable of adequately illuminating the space, and they were unable to see all the way to the distant end.
From the look on a few of the others’ faces, particularly those of the Reckoners, Sam could tell that they had been here before, and that they were not too keen on reentering. As if this wasn’t enough to creep Sam out, Kat called everyone’s attention and asked them to step in to hear her plan of attack.
“I had hoped that we would be able to avoid this room. That’s why we went the way we did when we came in here. Looking around, I can see that at least some of you have been through here before and know what we’re up against.” Shaking her head, she looked towards the other side before she went on with, “If it were just a single clan of us, I’d say we could make a run for it, and we would probably make it to the door on the other side, but with so many of us, that’s not going to work. We’ll end up bottlenecked trying to all squeeze through, and it will get us.” Looking back at the group, she said, “As most of you know, this thing is big, so we’re going to have to work together to bring it down. If there was another way around this room, I’d surely use it, but unfortunately, we’re blocked off now, and it seems like this is the only way.”
‘They smell scared,’ commented Tezukayoshi.
Looking down, Sam locked eyes with his familiar and asked through his mental link, ‘Do you know what this thing is?’
‘No, but if you want I can slip away and check things out.’
‘Better not,’ replied Sam with a thought. ‘We don’t want to set it off before everyone is ready.’
“Warriors and fighters, we’ll need you to tank on this creature. If you can block and absorb its attacks, then do it but make sure it doesn’t get past you. Archers and mages, we need you to attack from afar. Your goal is to kill it without hitting anyone in front of you. This thing is faster than it looks and has an incredible defense.”
Already surprised by the strange things he had seen in here, Sam wasn’t looking forward to something new which clearly most of them feared. Raising his hand, he caught Kat’s attention and asked, “What exactly is it?”
“We call it a kilopede. It’s similar to the centipedes and millipedes found in the soil but with the addition of about a couple thousand pounds or more.”
“A couple of thousand?” Sam asked with a gulp. Answering him curtly, she said, “Yeah,” and then to the rest of the group, she asked, “Now, is everyone ready?”
In answer, Sam saw everyone around him nod as they pulled out extra weapons or nocked fresh arrows in their bows to ready themselves for the attack.
“On my mark…,” breathed Kat, and then with a Valkyrie’s war cry, she screamed, “Attack!” and everyone ran forward into the room.
Once they were a good twenty feet in the room, everyone began to spread out as they advanced. Sam heard what sounded like rustling coming from the darkness at the far end of the room. Concentrating on the sound, he stepped a bit closer and listened, trying to figure out what it was that he was hearing until he realized that it wasn’t so much a rustling as it was a myriad of hundreds, if not thousands, of short little legs hitting the stone floor. The sound of the kilopede’s advance grew steadily until finally it surged out of the inky darkness, appearing as a massive writhing wall made up of an incomprehensible mass standing over forty feet high.
As it squirmed across the floor and made its way fully into the light, Sam took note of the ten foot long antennae which protruded from its eyeless head along with the four foot long pinchers which dripped with what looked like poisonous venom. Opening and closing them several times in quick succession, the creature seemed to making sure that the pinchers were ready to feed its giant three foot wide mouth which was just behind them. To make matters worse, the mouth looked like it supported at least a thousand tiny needlelike teeth which spiraled around and around towards the back of its throat. When it finally came within a couple dozen feet of the front line, the kilopede twisted sideways and ran parallel to the group, letting its segmented exoskeleton glisten in the torchlight, the sight of which reminded Sam of the treads on a massive Sherman tank.
Standing next to Sam, Tezukayoshi projected a thought through a combination of pictures and words which Sam interpreted to mean, ‘If we get too close, it could simply roll over on us and kill us all.’
It wasn’t the most pleasant imagery for Sam to receive, but it gave him the opportunity to return his familiar’s words back to him from earlier. “Then you’re just going to have to be quicker then it, lizard.”
Before Tezukayoshi could reply, the battle cry, “For glory!” rang out from Mace and the rest of the armored knights and barbarians in the group, accompanied by the sound of their weapons and shields clashing against the side of the massive insect.
As the front line continued their assault, Sam saw to his right and left, archers and mages, Anna included, standing side by side with their bows ready and magical staffs glowing with untold power. Then, on Kat’s command, they fired off their first volley. The arrows shafts struck their target and buried themselves so deep that only half their length remained visible, but the creature didn’t seem to pay them any attention. The magical spells, however, did more than capture its attention. With their various colors of elemental power, they each struck the creature’s body, leaving everything from scorch marks to patches of ice where they hit.
Unwilling to stay put and take the abuse being heaped upon it, the kilopede reared its head up and surged forward, crushing at least one man’s leg beneath its body as it passed. From there, the massive insect circled its way around the room building up speed and then charged towards the group. Most of the front line was able to dodge out of its way, but the man with the crushed leg was now sent flying backwards until he crashed into one of the mages who was too busy concentrating on spellcasting to get out of the way. From there, the two of them remained motionless, and Sherri ran over and began using her healing magic. As she did so, Sam heard her begin to chant some sort of spell that made her hands glow yellow.
Looking back at the kilopede, Sam saw that it had stopped once again and that the marks he had seen before caused by the magic and handheld weapons were beginning to fade. Shaking his head, Sam knew that taking it down in a frontal assault like this would end up costing the group both energy and hit points they couldn’t spare as well as time Raven didn’t have. Racking his brains, Sam thought through the boss battles of past video games he had played and tried to co
me up with another approach. There were very few games which made fights so brutal a player couldn’t kill a creature. He just had to figure out what the trick was for this one and exploit it.
Sifting through his most memorable encounters from Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Dark Souls, Sam couldn’t find anything more comparable than sandworms. In that case, all he had to do was repeatedly hit with something it was vulnerable to, like water, and the fight was over. The problem was, Sam had no idea what this thing’s weaknesses were, and he didn’t have any water to try. From what he had seen, swords made little impact, magic only seemed to piss it off, and the arrows simply stuck in its exoskeleton like a pincushion. What they had to do was get past that hard shell and start tearing away at the meat behind the exoskeleton.
As the rest of the front line forces cautiously began to reapproach the kilopede, Sam was reminded of an old movie he had seen on the sci-fi channel back home. In the movie, the people called forth massive sandworms and used them to attack their enemies. Considering how they did it, Sam came up with an idea and decided it was worth a shot.
Darting over to Kat and the rest of the archers before they could fire off their next volley of arrows, Sam quickly explained his plan. The look on Kat’s face when he had finished was skeptical to say the least, but since it still meant that their arrows would be landing in the monster, she reluctantly agreed and wished him luck. It was, after all, his life that he would be risking in this experiment. They had no intention of getting near the kilopede.
Speaking to Tezukyoshi, Sam said aloud, “Stay here and protect Anna and the rest of them,” before he turned and jogged off towards the front line.
As he reached the halfway point between the two forces, he heard the lizard’s telepathic reply, ‘Bring me back something yummy,’ and he couldn’t help but smile.
The frontal assault group had already began their second round of attacks by the time Sam reached them, and so it was impossible to call them off over the sounds of their swords and spears striking the kilopede’s flank. Instead, he traversed down the line until found a spot where no one was standing and pointed to it. Then backing up a few paces, he watched as the archers drew back their bows and fired, this time one after another instead of the group volley they had done on their first strike.