He walked up to the tongue-shaped drawbridge and it opened of its own accord, a foul stench licking their skin as it slithered from within. “I’ll keep us as high up as I can. The residents of lower town are not to be trifled with. They will rape us, torture us, and kill us if they get the chance.”
“Then I’m glad we’re entering the beltline,” Philiastra commented, testing the drawbridge as she added her weight to it.
“Oh, they’ll still rape us, torture us, and kill us, they just won’t desecrate our bodies afterwards.”
“Remind me why I volunteered for this quest again?” Erolina asked, drawing her sword and shield.
As they stepped inside, their eyes adjusted to the sprawling madness within. Staircases along the walls, upside down bridges on the ceiling, doors on the floor, and vertical hallways leading straight up. Chunks of roughly hewn stone floated about, lazily spinning through the air. The place was maddeningly quiet, only the clacks of bumping stone, and the sounds of their own hearts beating inside their chests.
The drawbridge closed behind them with a loud clack, making Agaprei jump.
“This is madness,” Philiastra noted, watching as a trail of alchemic energy flowed down a wall of stone like rain on glass. “This doesn’t follow any alchemic principals of design. Why would anyone build a place like this?”
“A million madmen with nothing but time on their hands,” Storgen commented, kneeling down and placing his hand against the stone floor before closing his eyes.
Erolina took out a large spool of wire and began tying one end to the chain of the portcullis.
“What are you doing?” Storgen asked.
“So we can find our way back, of course.”
Storgen chuckled darkly. “We can’t go back the way we came. It’s already gone.”
“What are you talking about? It’s not gone, its right there.”
“See for yourself.”
Erolina pulled the release lever on the counterweight, and the drawbridge fell open again. On the other side was a wall of glass-like crystal.
“What the trell?”
Philiastra and Agaprei looked at one another nervously.
Erolina cracked her knuckles. “Pah, this is no obstacle.”
Planting her feet, she punched the wall of crystal and it shattered, revealing another vast hall beyond, as maddening as the first. Black tar oozed up through cracks in the stone, rising up into slithering tentacles, each one tipped with a baleful red eye.
Erolina froze in place. “Impossible.”
“You ever heard of the Labyrinth of Glass in Garralos?” Storgen asked, sliding his hand along the floor. “Well, this is its rich as sin demonic cousin, ten times as big and decidedly less friendly.”
“We could fill a trilogy with just how screwed we are.”
Storgen opened his eyes. “It’s warmer over here, this way.”
He stepped up to a door on the floor and flung it open. Beneath was a barren aqueduct, filled with a river of slithering black serpents.
Storgen lit his torch and jumped down in, the snakes hissing and retreating from the flame. He hunkered down and forced his way, waving the torch to force the mass of reptiles farther and farther back down the tight passage.
The three girls looked at each other in concern.
“Ladies first.”
One by one, they jumped down in, and followed.
One of the more fearless snakes struck at Storgen, but he caught it by the neck and smashed it against the wall, crushing its skull.
“Want some?” he asked, taking a bite.
“Ewww, no!”
“When you’re in the tower you eat what you can get,” he explained, slurping down his mouthful. “They’re actually not that bad.”
Erolina stuck out her tongue. “I am so glad I never kissed you.”
“I regret that I did,” Agaprei and Philiastra said in unison. Realizing what the other just said, they glared at one another.
Storgen led them up through a trap door, to the base of an ornate winding staircase, thick blankets of cobwebs hanging everywhere, like veiled curtains. Bones littered the steps, and as Storgen parted the webs, he struggled to find footing amid the dusty skulls.
“This is new.”
“New? I thought you knew your way through here.”
“It’s been ten years, it’s not like this place stays completely the same.”
As they made their way up, something stirred silently amid the webs.
“I don’t like this,” Philiastra commented as she looked around. “Something feels wrong.”
“I’ve never felt anything like this,” Erolina commented. “The murderous intent, it’s coming from everywhere, I can’t sense just a single source. It permeates everything. It’s no wonder Storgen learned to feel the black breath.”
Storgen held up his torch to ignite a particularly thick blanket of webs. “Try to stay calm.”
Suddenly, blood red eyes opened right in front of him, and he realized he was staring straight at a white face.
A gigantic white spider slammed into Storgen, knocking him back hard against the stairs. He held it back as best he could, his hands grasping the thick hairs on the sides of its face as enormous fangs snapped out at him, hungrily dripping venom.
Erolina sliced a leg clean off, Philiastra fired an arrow into its midsection, and Agaprei stabbed the thing right in the center of its clustered eyes.
The spider squealed in pain. Storgen got his feet up underneath it and rolled it off of him, the insect falling with a shriek into the darkness below.
Storgen sat up, and tore his shirt off, the fabric sizzling where droplets of venom had landed on it.
“Blast it, Storge. When a girl says something is wrong that means something is wrong!”
“Well, what does it mean when a girl says she’s fine?”
“You idiot! When a girl says that, that means something is wrong.”
Storgen shook his head. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
At the top of the stairs, they crossed a rickety rope bridge, the cavern above dotted with glowing green eyes winking in the darkness, the cavern below rushing faintly with watery rapids.
Storgen held up his torch and they caught hints of a vast expanse, formations dripping down from above, half formed from stalactites, half formed through craftsmanship. Arched windows and doorways hung on the stalactites, pale, gaunt faces looking out from within.
It was like looking at two mountain ranges, one growing up from below, one hanging down from above. Foul water dripped down off the hanging stalactites, while other water dripped up from the squatting stalagmites, forming stagnant pools that settled in the crags of the ceiling.
Storgen inched along a slick, stony ledge and jumped, landing atop an expansive wooden platform built around a mountainous stalagmite.
When the girls joined him, he leaned out over the edge to get a better look.
“This underground river flows from the Kyvernítis, the center of Skotádi’s domain in the beltline.”
“That’s good,” Agaprei remarked. “That means we can swim up it to the source.”
“I wouldn’t recommend it. That water is so polluted it might as well be magma.”
A whizzing arrow struck Storgen in the arm. Two more black bolts thudded into the wooden platform, and the arrows burst into flame.
Agaprei pulled free a vial and poured it on Storgen’s wound, managing to douse the flames long enough to pull it free as he screamed.
More bolts rained down, the gaunt figures from the stalactites firing from their windows. Erolina used her shield to block bolt after bolt, while Philiastra returned fire. Her arrows struck out unerringly, silencing the sources of their ambush one after another. The pale archers fell free, their bodies tumbling into the darkness below.
The fire spread and the wooden platform came apart, the four of them falling head over heels towards the river below.
Erolina managed to plunge her sword into the bri
ckworks, slowing her descent as she reached out and caught Agaprei by the heel.
Philiastra threw out a seed and at her command it grew into a mass of powerful vines, weaving themselves into a net that caught her and Storgen.
The four of them watched as the remains of the platform and scaffolding fell into the filthy river below, the putrid chemicals bursting into flame and setting the entire river alight.
“Whoa, that was close.”
Erolina threw down some of her wire, and they were able to make their way to a sewer grate. Prying it open, they waded through a few hundred meters of foulness, until they came up through a hatch into a forest of bubbling fungus.
Once he was bandaged, Storgen knelt down and pulled something out of his pocket, checking it carefully.
“Now we’re good and stuck in,” Erolina commented, watching something glassy slithering along the ceiling towards them.
“No, we’re still good,” Storgen said with relief as he stood up. “I know where we are.”
Storgen lead them through the festering garden, bubbling pools of yellow liquid rising up like geysers, spraying noxious fumes into the air. Dead white trees like skeletal fingers. The ground grew softer, until they found themselves trudging through a bog up to their knees.
“Watch it!”
Storgen jumped back as the ground before them folded like jaws, sharp rooting teeth snapping shut. It opened and closed two more times, attempting to chew, the unseen beast letting off gurgling noises of disappointment.
“You famished? Here, eat this.”
Agaprei pulled a pouch off of her belt and threw it into the hungry maw. The mud squealed and stirred, the mouth burying itself down deeper until it vanished.
“Remind me never to try your cooking.”
Storgen looked up at a cliff of black stone before them, reaching up hundreds of feet without foothold or handhold. “Hey, Phili, you think you can grow us a vine we can use to climb up there?”
“Climb? What are we, savages?”
“I dunno, you’re the one in war paint.”
Philiastra held out her hand, and the ground shook and stirred. A mighty root rose up out of the bog at an astonishing pace. It curled up beneath them, lifting them aloft as the root rose higher and higher, rushing up above the fungal forest until reaching the top of the cliff.
“Very nice, Phili.”
“Thanks, you may pat my head.”
Storgen gave her a warm pat on the head, and she relished the look on the other girls’ faces when she rubbed it in.
As the others moved on, Philiastra took the tip of the root and placed it against her forehead.
“What are you doing?” Erolina called back.
“I’m thanking the tree for her help. She is in so much pain.”
“Pain?”
“Would you want to live in such an unhealthy place?”
“I suppose not.”
Philiastra closed her eyes and ran her fingers over the sickly root. “It’s not her fault. She never asked to be grown here. I’m asking her if she would rather sleep, to ease her pain.”
Philiastra nodded, then placed a glowing hand on the wood. The root relaxed and went limp.
“What did she say?” Storgen wondered.
Philiastra shed a tear. “She said she wishes she had never been born.”
They passed through a realm of floating junk, slowly spinning as if it weighed nothing at all. Shredded bits of alchemic pumps and pistons, gear drives and steam tanks. They leapt from wreckage to wreckage in the field, the walls and ceiling lost in mist, as if this place stretched on forever.
“This is terrible,” Philiastra lamented, grabbing a floating drive shaft out of the air. “So many treasures just discarded as if they were waste.”
As her touch, the alchemic circuits came to light, but instead of the proportioned angles she had been taught, these were angular and jagged, pulsing with an ominous red glow.
Storgen jumped up and caught the floating remains of a rail car and hefted himself up. “Come on, we should not linger here.”
Philiastra could not take her eyes off what she had found. “I’ve never seen alchemic circuits like these before.”
They made their way to the end of a long, hexagonal tunnel that jutted out of the mist as if it had impaled itself into nothingness. Large diseased rats scattered away, hiding in cracks and holes, looking out with hungry black eyes.
Philiastra examined the runes etched into the stone as they passed. “These don’t make any sense to me. Alchemic circles are designed to draw in power, but these are all inverted, and instead of being aligned to the stars, they each point to the next circle in the series. Could this be a mass driver or something?”
She deciphered the dark runes. “Any periodic signal can be decomposed into a set of oscillating functions known as harmonics…”
“That’s talking about the fourier series,” Agaprei recognized.
“Right. It’s kind of cool that you know that, actually.”
Agaprei shrugged. “Math is a hobby of mine.”
“Me, too!”
Erolina rolled her eyes. “I’m surrounded by bookworms.”
Philiastra reached out curiously. “A seven point transition circle? What could such a design…”
“Phili, NO!”
Storgen jumped and grabbed her hand just in time. The circle powered up and released a beam of ghastly light. Storgen yanked Philiastra away from it, and instead the beam struck a crack on the opposite wall. The rat inside shrieked in agony, as it aged away to grey, its fur and flesh decomposing in mere seconds, its bones rotting away to dust.
When the light vanished, nothing but ash remained.
Philiastra looked on in fright. “What…what was that?”
“I told you, don’t touch anything.”
“A-all right. Sorry.”
They exited the tunnel into a vaulted hall filled with mist. Misshapen pillars vanished up into the fog. The air began to warm up the farther in they moved, becoming more moist, more stifling. The arches became more and more smooth, taking on the appearance of rib bones, and the walls became more and more fleshy.
The air began to move, a warm current from before them, and then from behind them. Merely a whistle at first, then later on becoming a raspy breath. Doors and antechambers became pink, gooey tunnels.
“Are we…inside something?” Agaprei asked, looking at the dripping mucus falling from the quivering flesh over bone.
“Whole segments of the tower are alive,” Storgen explained. “Even something as mundane as stone or wood becomes much more after centuries of soaking up errant alchemic energies from reckless experiments.”
“There’s nothing mundane about wood,” Philiastra said sharply.
Storgen put his finger to his lips. “Shhh.”
“No, I will not be quiet, you humans think it’s okay to use the corpses of trees to build your ugly houses, and it’s…”
Storgen covered her mouth. “I said be quiet, Phili!”
A grumbling roar ran through the corridor, silencing her protests.
Storgen looked around worriedly. “It just sensed us.”
Agaprei took a step back. “What? What just sensed us?”
From far ahead down the ribcage tunnel, something dropped down and began to move towards them with frightening speed. It sucked up the light from Storgen’s torch, appearing nothing more than a layer of shadow moving closer and closer.
“Step to the side!” Erolina commanded.
As the shadow passed them, Erolina blocked something hard with her shield and struck out, her blade biting through something fleshy as it zipped by.
Storgen hollered in pain as something tore off his sandal straps and bit deeply into his ankle.
Whatever it was reversed course and came back again. Philiastra loosed an arrow, hitting whatever it was with a wet thud.
Erolina slashed again as it passed, sharp pings ringing out where something struck her armor and shie
ld.
“I can’t see what I’m fighting!”
She swung hard and connected with something solid, a long spear-like claw breaking free and impaling itself into the wall next to Storgen.
Philiastra was thrown back, a deep cut running up her arm.
Agaprei pulled out a pouch and lit the fuse on Storgen’s torch. Throwing it into the darkness, it exploded into a shower of fire. The walls shuddered and convulsed, letting out a long, baleful moan as the ground undulated up and down, throwing them all off their feet.
Something within the shadow caught fire, turning around and heading back towards them. It was a rolling collection of organs, tusks and claws protruding like a spiked ball. It squealed as it burned, leaving a trail of green and yellow fluids behind it.
Philiastra grew three fresh arrows from her quiver and fired them all at once, but the arrows just plunged in without slowing it. Erolina charged alongside, it, digging her blade hard into it as she zipped past, but it rolled on, undisturbed.
Storgen yanked the claw out of the wall and implanted it like a pike into the flesh of the rocking floor.
The mass of organs hit the pike, impaling itself all the way through. It shrieked and squealed, intestinal fluids spraying out in a fountain as it fought to free itself.
Erolina ran up and gave three powerful slashes, cutting off large, steaming chunks. Her armor sizzling from the acid, she backed off, the ball’s flesh growing back grotesquely before her eyes.
“It’s healing too fast,” she called out, pulling off her breastplate before the acid could eat all the way through.
Philiastra fused a seed to the end of an arrow, and loosed her shot. The arrow sailed into the spraying wound, delivering the seed deep into the heart of the mass. Holding out her hand, Philiastra was bathed in fire as the wad of organs was torn apart from within, leaves, branches, and roots erupting from its vile flesh.
What was left was a mewing mass of quivering flesh, struggling vainly against the strong wood running through it, slowly blistering and burning where it sat.
Philiastra’s fire died out, and she fought to stay on her feet.
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