by A. J. Markam
The Druid pumped yellow swirls of energy into the elf, and she began to cough up mouthfuls of sand.
“Ugh… god that’s nasty,” she said as she spat.
“Thank you,” Hodin said to me gratefully.
“Thank Meera. She’s the one who did it.”
Hodin looked a little puzzled. After all, most players didn’t go around thanking NPCs. But Meera wasn’t just any NPC, of that I was sure.
“Thank you,” the dwarf said to her.
“You are welcome,” she said, then turned to me. “I did well?”
“You did great,” I said. “You saved us all. Thank you.”
She beamed like a proud little girl who had just gotten an A+ on her test.
The elf stood up shakily. “Yeah, thank you. And as for you, Warlock – ”
Everybody in the group tensed up, waiting for her to be a total bitch.
But instead the elf gave a grudging half-smile. “That was absolutely the right call. You guys couldn’t have gone on without a healer.”
Hodin and his teammates relaxed.
“Of course, it would have been nice if you’d said ‘ladies first’ instead of saving yourself,” the elf smirked, “but whatever.”
I grinned. “Maybe next time I will, if you’re nicer to me.”
She chuckled and shook her head. “Don’t hold your breath.”
I laughed, and the entire group joined in. All the tension was gone.
“Shall we?” Hodin said, and led the way down the next corridor.
20
The narrow stone pathway didn’t lead to a courtyard this time. Instead it stopped at the base of a 60-foot-tall pyramid, with a rough-hewn doorway constructed in the side.
“Go through it or over it?” Hodin asked.
“Meera, check it out for us,” I said.
Meera took flight – and immediately slammed into an invisible barrier along the side of the pyramid. She tried flying straight up and hit another one just eight feet above our heads.
“I can’t,” she exclaimed.
“They boxed us in,” the gnome griped. “There’s no way to go but through.”
“Then let’s get going,” Hodin said as he stepped into the dark passageway.
We followed him about thirty feet into a dark chamber, lit only by torches on the walls. As soon as we were all through the doorway, a stone slab slammed down into place, trapping us in the chamber. It was do or die from here on out.
The ceiling was high and sloped. In front of us was a floor made of sandstone with individual tiles about two feet square laid out in a grid. The chessboard pattern was at least a hundred feet long and wide, and stretched out into the shadows.
Curiously, each stone had a single letter of the alphabet carved into it. A, D, M, Y, Q, S, T, N, and more – but all the letters appeared at random.
Something about the setup seemed familiar, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.
“What’s with the letters?” the gnome asked suspiciously.
“Maybe she’ll tell us,” the elf said and pointed.
Across the room, a female figure walked out from a pitch-black doorway and stood on a stone outcropping 15 feet above the floor. She wore a blood-red sleeveless dress that showed off her hourglass figure. Straight black hair fell down around her shoulders in a Cleopatra bob, and golden jewelry sparkled around her neck. She was fairly attractive – if you discounted the fact that she was dead. Her skin was grey and withered like the Ghouls, although her face still retained enough beauty to not be too repulsive.
Her ID tag read ‘Mesatrinoxubic.’
“What, was ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ not long enough?” the gnome asked out loudly.
“Meesa think Mesa got too long a name!” the Druid squeaked in a truly annoying voice.
“Ugh,” I muttered good-naturedly. “-1 for the Jar-Jar imitation.”
I checked out Mesatrinoxubic’s hit points and frowned. “Something’s wrong here, guys. She’s only got 200,000 hit points. After 500 for the Sphinx, 700 for the worm, and 1.5 million for the Sarlacc pit, she shouldn’t be just 200K.”
“Maybe the game’s taking it easy on us for once,” the Druid suggested.
“If you believe that, I’ve got some waterfront property in that last mini-boss courtyard to sell you,” the gnome said.
“Fools, you have disturbed my sleep,” the withered queen called out. “Now prepare to join me in eternal slumber.”
From a hole under the woman’s stone balcony, dozens of giant scarabs skittered across the stones towards us, their gold and green carapaces glittering in the torchlight.
“No big deal,” Hodin said as he stepped forward across the stones. “Just more bugs.”
I moved to restrain him.
“Wait – ” I said, but I wasn’t fast enough.
He got across the first two tiles, but the third broke away under his feet, sending him hurtling down out of sight.
We heard him scream, followed by an “UNH!” and a sound like somebody punching an icepick through a tin can.
“HODIN!” the entire group yelled at once.
I dashed over the tiles the dwarf had safely crossed and looked down into the hole, only to be met with a ghastly sight.
Hodin’s body was impaled on one of dozens of four-foot-long spikes jutting up from the floor. The force of his fall had caused the steel spike to punch right through his armor and up out of his chest, suspending him midair on his back.
Even worse, hundreds of cobras slithered between the spikes, their twisting bodies thick as a black carpet.
Hodin looked up at me in agony.
“…ouch…” he managed to joke, though it came out as more of a groan.
“Jaxos, heal him!” I shouted.
“I can’t – he’s not in my line of sight!” the Druid yelled.
“Then get over here, but don’t step on any other tiles but these two until we figure out which ones are safe!”
“You’ve got to move first!”
He was right – there wasn’t enough room on the tile for two of us at the same time.
Just as I was about to move, five cobras reared up around Hodin and savagely buried their fangs in his face.
I stumbled away from the nightmarish image and retreated so that Jaxos could take my place.
The Druid looked down in the hole and flinched in horror, but started spewing yellow energy down into the darkness.
The only problem was, the scarabs had reached us.
Even though the elf and I did our damnedest to stop them, the bugs swarmed Jaxos. He tried swatting them off to no avail. As they crawled up his body, he screamed and stumbled backwards in horror.
“NO, DON’T MOVE!” I yelled.
Jaxos got about two tiles away before one broke under his feet and he went plummeting down. His scream cut short by a meaty CHUNK as his body hit a spike.
“Shit!” I yelled, and tried to think.
We were wasting time with the minions and traps when we could be attacking the boss.
But how to get at her, when she was 15 feet over our heads?
Of course.
“Meera, kill that bitch!” I yelled.
Meera launched herself into the air, her fiery sword illuminating the darkness –
The dead queen raised her arms, and red blasts of lightning shot out and zapped Meera midflight.
The angel screamed and fell, crashed into the floor, and disappeared as two tiles fell away beneath her body and she tumbled into darkness.
“MEERA, NO!” I screamed.
I prayed that goddamn Warlock trainer had sold me a good collar, otherwise I was going back to his shop and redeeming my guarantee by cutting off his fucking head.
“We’re sitting ducks out here!” the gnome yelled as the scarabs reached us. “I’m going for it!”
“No, wait, you’ll just fall in!”
The gnome got lucky. Five tiles held until he fell through.
“Shit, this
is going to be a wipe,” the elf cursed through gritted teeth as she blasted the scarabs.
She was right. It was just me, her, and Stig now – and we were about to be overwhelmed by a dozen monstrous scarabs.
Stig was the first to go. He foolishly started running away, tripped one of the breakaway tiles, and fell screaming into the abyss.
The elf died next. The scarabs covered her until I could only see a few flashes of her orange robes.
I ignored the bugs and fired Soul Suck right at Mesatrinoxubic. Even as the scarabs dragged me down with their weight and began stabbing me with their razor-sharp mandibles, I still kept shooting off the spell.
But the amount of Health I sapped away from her wasn’t enough to counteract the damage being dealt to me.
Seconds later, everything went black and I woke up in the graveyard.
Hodin and his crew were standing there waiting for me amongst the tombstones.
“Well, that was unpleasant,” the dwarf remarked drily.
“Understatement of the year,” the elf said.
“Come on, let’s go kick some undead Egyptian ass!” the gnome snarled.
“Hold on,” I said. “Let me get my guys back.”
I clicked Stig’s icon on my action bar. A poof of black smoke and my imp appeared next to me, perched on a tombstone like a particularly ugly raven.
I held my breath as I clicked the other icon – and exhaled in relief as a whirlwind of fire appeared and then dissipated, leaving Meera standing unharmed in front of me.
Although she looked pretty terrified.
“By the All-Father!” she shrieked, and looked down at her arms and hands in shock. “That was horrible!”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “Dying sucks.”
“All right, let’s go!” the gnome insisted.
“Wait,” Hodin said. “I got bit about ten times by cobras before I died, so I’ve got a -100 poison debuff.”
“I got bit, like, six times,” the Druid said.
“Me too,” the gnome groused.
“Let’s sit it out for five minutes while we recover,” Hodin suggested.
“Good idea,” I agreed. “Meanwhile we can try to figure out what the hell to do once we get back there. Any ideas about the tiles?”
“Actually,” the elf spoke up, “it reminded me of that scene in Last Crusade where Harrison Ford has to spell out ‘Jehovah.’ Remember that?”
That’s why the tiles had seemed so familiar. The game programmers had cribbed directly from the third Indiana Jones movie!
“Nice,” I said with real admiration. “So we’re probably safe as long as we stick to letters that are in her name. Which is probably why it’s so damn long.”
“Makes sense,” Hodin admitted.
“So just stick to the right tiles and we should be fine, right?” the gnome asked.
“Hopefully.”
We waited out the five minutes until everyone’s hit points recovered, then set out into the maze once more. We passed MC Escher Village and entered the first long corridor.
“You think the Sphinx’ll leave us alone since we already answered her first question?” the gnome asked.
Giant wings flapped above us, and then the Sphinx landed just 20 feet away.
“Guess not,” the gnome said glumly.
“Mortals,” the Sphinx said, “answer my riddle correctly and pass unmolested. Answer incorrectly and die.
“The one who makes it always sells it.
“The one who buys it never uses it.
“The one who uses it never knows he’s using it.
“You have one minute to answer my riddle.”
The countdown started.
“Well, shit,” the gnome muttered. “…LSD?”
“What?!” the elf yelled. “Why the hell would they make a riddle about LSD in OtherWorld?!”
“I’m just thinking outside the box!”
“It doesn’t even work – people who buy LSD use it!”
“…a blowjob?” the gnome asked hesitantly.
We continued bickering for the entire minute, but the counter ran down without us guessing the answer.
“Your time has elapsed,” the Sphinx said. “You have not guessed correctly. Prepare to die.”
“What, you’re not even going to tell us the answer?!” the gnome fumed. “Bitch!”
The Sphinx’s mouth opened wide, and rows of serrated teeth pushed out of her gums like a great white shark’s.
“Ohhhhh shit,” the Druid muttered.
“BITCH, CHILL!” Stig yelled.
“Probably not the best thing to say right now, bud,” I said as I cast my first Doomsday.
The battle raged hard and vicious. The Sphinx mauled us with both her jaws and teeth, and would occasionally fly over our heads to attack us from the other side.
Most of us died multiple times, but not all at once, so it was relatively simple for the remaining four members of the group to stay alive until the fifth showed up again from the graveyard. If it was Stig or Meera who got killed, I just summoned them again on the spot.
The elf and I gave our own lives several times to make sure that the Druid healer stayed alive. If he went down, the rest of the group wouldn’t last long.
Ten minutes after we started, we finally brought the Sphinx down for good. Her corpse plugged up the whole damn corridor and we had to crawl over her to get past.
But hey – I got a handful of Sphinx wing feathers worth two silver apiece.
Whoop de doo.
The Sarlacc pit was still alive – but once the entire courtyard had disappeared down its gullet, a series of walkways were revealed. They were carved into the stone walls and had been hidden ten feet under the sand. Using them, we were able to cross the entire expanse without a single problem from the giant mouth fifty feet below.
Then it was back into the pyramid.
The tiles had been reset and the floor was solid. Mesatrinoxubic and her scarabs were nowhere to be seen – yet.
As soon as we entered the room, the giant stone door slammed down, trapping us inside.
I found the nearest tile with an ‘M,’ held my breath, and stepped onto it.
It held.
I tried the same thing with a C, a T, and an X.
None of them budged.
“Yeah!” I whooped in triumph. “Stick to the letters in her name and you won’t have a problem!”
The undead pharaoh-ess came out of her shadowy alcove.
“Fools, you have disturbed my sleep. Now prepare to join me in eternal slumber.”
“Hit her!” I yelled, and the group attacked. Hodin threw his hammer like Mjolnir and slammed her upside the head, then grabbed the weapon as it flew back to his hand. Brak crossed the room leaping from tile to tile. He got stopped by the scarabs when they appeared, but the elf and I helped keep him alive. Meera kept to the ground and torched bug after bug with her sword.
I was feeling pretty good. None of us had died yet and the scarabs were nearly dead. Now we would see what else Mesa had up her sleeve.
Turned out it was a bunch of sand.
A trapdoor in the ceiling slid open and sand began pouring in by the truckload.
“What the hell?!” I exclaimed.
The sand quickly formed a giant dune in the center of the floor. I was thinking about how we could maybe run up the dune and attack the queen when another slab opened in the ceiling… then another.
Sand spilled out across the floor, covering every single stone. Any of the scarabs left were buried alive. Within another ten seconds, we were up to our waists in it. Brak and Stig had to scramble to stay high enough to breathe.
“Watch it – she’s going to do something sneaky, I just know it!” I yelled.
And she did.
She walked out of the room.
Mesatrinoxubic retreated into her shadowy doorway, and a giant stone slab slammed down into place behind her, sealing us inside the chamber – which was rapidly filling up.
“What the hell?” I asked, shocked. Bosses didn’t just run away from a fight to let you drown in sand!
…normally.
“Get up there!” Hodin ordered. “We’ve got to get through that door!”
As soon as the sand got high enough – which was only a few seconds later – we scrambled up onto the rock outcropping and started attacking the stone slab.
Nothing had any effect. Not Hodin’s hammer, not my Darkbolts, not any of the elf Mage’s fire attacks.
Then the sand covered the rock outcropping.
We crawled up the growing dunes, trying to keep from being buried, but our breathing space was rapidly running out.
The torches snuffed out one by one as the sand covered them, and the chamber was thrown into darkness.
“NO!” the dwarf roared in frustration.
Sand closed around my body, fixing me in place.
Then it filled my mouth.
I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t see, and I couldn’t move.
My Breathing Bar ran down, just like I was underwater, and my hit points began to drop rapidly.
Seconds later I was dead.
I awoke in the graveyard alone, but every other member of the party appeared soon after. Well, except for Stig and Meera, whom I summoned in flashes of fire and smoke.
“What the hell do we do now?” the Druid asked in frustration.
“There has to be a trick to it,” I said. “We just have to go back and do it over again until we figure it out.”
And so we did.
Through MC Escher-land.
Over the dead Sphinx.
Past the Sarlacc.
Into the pyramid.
Same damn thing all over again.
“Fools, you have disturbed my sleep. Now prepare to join me in eternal slumber.”
Scarabs.
The chamber began to flood.
This time, though, the stream of sand crashed down on the Druid’s head. The big bear stumbled backwards, and immediately crashed through one of the tiles and was gone.
SHIT!
With our healer dead, we were going to wipe for sure.
Except… the sand started pouring down through the open hole he’d fallen through.