by Prax Venter
Jack nodded to himself, happy with this concept. This was good practice for tonight with Lex.
“Mother of Demons…” Farah whispered, cupping her chin as she considered. “I believe if I saw an Exit Orb outside the Tower, I’d… I don’t know. It sounds a bit terrifying to tell you the truth, but I’d probably slap it.” She shot him a confident smirk.
“Is Alt from one level above your world, Jack?” Haylee asked and Jack turned to see her staring at him intently.
“I don’t fully understand where he is from, but the best way I can put it is more like… another layout on the same Floor. It’s like comparing yesterday’s Floor 1 layout to today’s Floor 1 layout. Well, I suppose he’s more like Floor 50, and I’m more from a Floor 20 or so- Anyway, I’m starting to babble, and the Tower analogy doesn’t quite work. The important thing to remember is that Corruption wants to consume all of it. Everything you know, don’t know, or could imagine.”
The three of them walked in silence through the tranquil Sundrop Forest, and Jack shot a glance over his shoulder to see the shorter Bastion nodding to robo-dog Alt. He sent the tethered AI a gentle question, probing for a hint at what was going on back there.
Alt answered in his mind, but the angular metal dog kept his reflective eyes on Lex as he spoke.
“She has a very good idea that I might be able to pull off. I’ll need to process out some game world interference projections to see if it’s worth the… potential overreach. Either way, what it is shall remain a secret until tonight.”
“I’m glad you both entered our world to help us,” Haylee said, snapping Jack out of his own head.
Jack gave her a warm smile. “Me too.”
“Maybe someday we’ll find System Sana’s Exit Orb and exit this game we are playing- or learn to craft one ourselves.”
Jack almost tipped over his own feet. Haylee seemed to be far ahead of the other NPCs, and they hadn’t even really told her anything. He had accused the people of Blackmoor as treating their world as a game… Was she just smart or was there something more to her?
Before he could think of anything to say, Farah came to a stop and slapped her hand on his shoulder.
“Do you see that?”
Jack pulled his mind from the bright young woman and saw a twenty-foot boulder blocking the path forward. He and Haylee both stopped as well, and it was only moments before Lex and the metallic dog caught up.
“What is it?” Lex asked.
“I don’t know,” Jack said, “but I don’t like it. Lex, up front. Let’s take it nice and slow.”
As a group, the party of Heroes and Alt crept closer to the obstruction, and it quickly became clear that if they wanted to continue in this direction, they would have to step off the path. And that was not a valid option.
Then, Jack began to hear a woman softly weeping. He called for a stop.
“Hello?” Jack yelled out. It sounded like she was on the other side of the boulder.
“Leave me alone,” the voice called back.
He exchanged silent looks with his team.
“Why are you crying?” Lex called out, trying to see around the boulder without leaving the path.
“My true love, the Stonecutter, had come to remove what wasn’t me, but after only a few moments of unfathomable joy of becoming under his loving hands, he was abducted by bandits with black blades. Such a cruel world this is- to have awoken my mind for only eternal suffering.”
Jack focused his eyes on the rough stone itself. “Ah, I see. You are the boulder.” This was beginning to sound like another weird quest.
“No! This stone traps me, imprisons me, and only the one with the vision of me can remove what isn’t me.”
“How do we find this stonecutter and the bandits?” Lex asked.
“Will… you save him? Will you rescue my true love?” Her voice finally held a glint of hope.
“We’re here for firewood,” Farah said, crossing her arms.
“There are cords of wood piled against the wrong-rock behind. More than you all could carry is yours if my true love removes what isn’t me! I swear it.”
“There are no ways but this one,” Haylee said quietly. “We cannot leave the path you are blocking.”
“Few know this, but there are safe paths through the Sundrop Forest. I will share this with you freely! Cobalt-tinged mushrooms grow on the hidden paths of safety. Care not to crush them and they will show you the way through. I know not what lies beyond, but I know that every moment without my Stonecutter is agony.”
Jack turned and took notice of the blue-gray mushrooms he’d ignored before and saw what could be considered a loose trail leading off to the right from the boulder.
“This certainly is an unusual Floor,” Farah said.
“I heard someone very wise once say that the Tower is consistent in its unpredictability,” Alt responded, and Haylee turned to look at him.
Lex sighed. “Okay, well, I think Farah should lead us through the mushrooms.” The Bastion turned to explain herself. “You won’t be one-shot like Haylee or Alt, and Jack can deal ranged damage if we get attacked again. We should avoid melee with those wolves if at all possible. I need to stay up to Shout and to heal effectively.”
The Shadow Blade puffed out a breath, her lips flapping as she considered the plan.
“I kinda want to argue and take the lead,” Jack said, “but she makes a good point. I could double Omni Strike a whole pack before they reach us.”
Farah turned to look at Haylee for support, who only stared back with her large gray eyes.
“Fine,” she said with a wry grin. “Sacrifice the new girl, I get it.”
“Oh, stop it,” Lex said as she playfully shoved the slender Shadow Blade’s shoulder.
Farah’s grin deepened and moved toward the edge of the path where the blue mushrooms started growing. With a quick tentative tap, she tested the ground beyond. The forest did not immediately strike her down, so she took a deep breath and took one long step into the trees.
Untouched, she turned back to give a quick nod and they all began following the advice of the sad stone woman trapped within the boulder.
- 5 -
A tightness in Jack’s chest like ropes squeezing his lungs began to loosen as the last of their party stepped beyond the Sundrop tree line. The sparse mushroom path had led them to a rushing brown river with a span of lush grass running along either bank. To Jack’s right was a dead-end where the pines leaned out over the river. To his left was an open stretch of dirt that led to a shattered wooden bridge.
“Only one way to go,” he said and led the group against the current. It reminded him of drainage trenches overflowing with rainwater after a heavy overnight storm. The vividly green grass stood out in sharp contrast to the muddy river making him believe the banks were much higher than normal- if there was a normal in this temporary virtual space that made up Floor 40.
“A man,” Farah said, and Jack followed her outstretched finger to see movement by the bridge. As they continuously drew closer, Jack could see he wore blue overalls, a thick black mustache, and was tapping a tiny wooden hammer amidst the stones and splintered wood of the ruined bridge. The path wound along the river past the broken crossing, and Jack wondered how big this strange layout was.
The older man in the blue overalls stood with his back to the group but turned to face the party as they approached. He was unsettling in that he looked normal. No animal parts or bizarre face. Just a darker-skinned guy with a few nails in his pocket and a hammer.
“Fine day,” he said in a gruff quiet voice, and Jack struggled to catch his words over the rushing current. “Terrible storm last night.”
“Uh sure,” Jack said, still not believing he was conversing with creatures within the Tower about the weather. “Have you seen any bandits come this way? Maybe a stonecutter was with them?”
The old carpenter wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and turned his brown eyes up to the sky as he conte
mplated.
“Can’t say I have.”
Lex jumped in next. “Do you know where some bandits might have a camp around the area?”
“Course I do,” the frighteningly normal man said. “The Black Knife Bandits operate out of the old manor abandoned in Brown Bog Wood. You fix’n to clean them out?”
“We are,” Jack said.
The carpenter waved his hammer around weakly and then hitched his thumb over his shoulder toward the jagged span of truncated bridge.
“You sure aren’t- no how. Not for a while. This here crossing is the only way over the bucking beast of a river for days in either direction. It’ll take me even longer to put back what was taken by the storm… unless…”
“Unless what?” Jack said, more fascinated than annoyed at this Floor’s complexity.
“The tales tell that the Hammer of Yog currently lies in the Lichweed Tomb. If you bring that legendary artifact to me, I could rebuild this bridge with one whack.”
“A single whack?” Farah repeated as she looked out over the mostly missing bridge.
“I bet this tomb is just up the river,” Jack said pointing down the path that ran alongside the rushing water.
“You’d win that bet.” The man in the blue overalls shrugged. “Either way, I better get back to work.” He turned from the group and began hammering his small mallet on a piece of splintered wood. It was so unsettlingly ineffective that Jack’s eyes lingered on the useless motions.
“We doing this or heading back to shank Grandma now?” Farah asked, snapping him back into the moment.
Jack shook his head as he let the carpenter get back to his repetitive tapping. When the group was a good few yards away, the crashing water around the bridge’s broken wreckage faded behind them.
“Okay,” Jack began as he put one foot in front of the other. “Do I have this right? We are looking for a tomb that has a hammer to fix a bridge. Then we can reach an abandoned manor to rescue a kidnapped stonecutter. We bring him back to free the boulder woman to finally get some wood for Connie Crocker back there.”
“It is convoluted, isn’t it?” Robo-dog Alt said.
“Connie Crocker?” Lex asked, turning to face him with a small smile.
“She was a spokeswoman for baking products. She starred in a lot of commercials for pre-made pie crusts and stuff.” Jack looked over his shoulder to the metal dog taking up the rear. “You have a Connie Crocker too?”
“Yes. It seems as if our universes share that one point of data.”
Jack saw Haylee cast her gray eyes down on Alt. “What does it mean to star in a commercial?”
Alt considered for a few steps before answering. “It’s called an advertisement. Imagine if there were twenty inns within the walls of Blackmoor Cove. If someone stood out on the dock and spoke rehearsed lines, as if they were putting on a performance, they could encourage visitors to spend their coin in one establishment instead of another. This actor would require coin to do this all day, but it can be considerably effective.”
“I see,” she said. “My father would love this idea.”
Farah dismissed the notion with a wave of her hand. “Sounds like a horrible waste of time that could be used fighting, gathering, or crafting. You know, actual work?”
No one had anything to add, so they continued along the river in silence, and Jack’s mind wandered to what Lex was going to suggest- now that it had been established that it was a secret, he was itching to know.
“Jack,” she said pulling his attention instantly, “I understand the concept of a performance meant to invoke an emotion or call to action, but why do you both call it star in a performance? It sounds like something beautiful.”
“Hmm, I don’t know. It’s just an expression. The lead role or main character in a performance is called the star of the show.”
“There are so many stars, though. When you look up, you see a whole night sky filled with performers.”
“Actually,” Jack said as he held up a single finger, “the sun is a really close star and has a major role up there in the sky, that is when it isn’t trying to kill us.”
“The sun is a star…” Haylee whispered behind them. “I like that.”
A break in the tree line ahead became a half-buried stone arch that led into the earth. Two time-worn lions made of marble poked out of the half-excavated dirt to either side of the opening.
Torches lit the crumbling sandstone brick that seemed moments away from rupturing and burying them, but Jack didn’t believe the Tower would wipe them out so abruptly- despite its unpredictability. As they moved through the relatively short corridor, Jack was forced to recall the day he found a metal doorway jutting from a cave wall- the doorway that tied him to a talking spaceship, dumped him in Blackmoor, and put right in front of the short leather-clad woman creeping ahead in front of him.
They quickly came to a circular opening in the floor that aligned perfectly with a cluster of massive boulders above letting in sunbeams that swam with glittering motes of dust.
Jack looked down and saw another, wider brick floor below partially illuminated by the streaming beams of light.
“I sense a fight coming,” Jack said, squatting down near the edge to get a better look.
Farah crossed her long arms. “Well, I’m not going first this time.”
“I am,” Lex said as she approached the ladder. Jack gave her a quick nod and pulled out his sword, ready to blast anything that approached her from the pit below.
The Bastion took it one wooden rung at a time and then hopped the last few feet of what had to be a twenty-foot drop.
She checked her surroundings, the sunlight from above bathing her blonde hair and pointed ears in a golden halo but turned up to face them shortly.
“It’s safe,” she called up quietly.
Jack went next and saw that the round chamber was lined with recessed alcoves containing piles of rotting bones. He tried to keep an eye out for movement, expecting the skeletons to snap together and shamble out of their resting place as he moved down the ladder. When he joined Lex at the bottom, he noticed a small hole torn through one of the walls and several pickaxes and shovels scattered around it.
Alt’s metal dog form was well rounded in combat, and Jack didn’t want to waste his one shot at changing him on this Floor just for the ladder, but it turned out to be a non-issue. Despite looking ridiculous, the robotic dog’s paws gracefully navigated the creaking rungs, and everyone made it one layer deeper into the quiet tomb.
“I’ll go through first,” Lex said as she squatted down to peek through the excavated hole. Jack gave her another sharp nod.
“I’ll be watching your butt.”
The petite Bastion kissed his cheek before she moved her shield into her inventory and began crawling through the jagged stone bricks. It was a short tunnel, and Lex was back on her feet in moments. He knew she could take the most hits, and instantly heal herself or turn invulnerable with her Aether Tone ability, but Jack still hated sending her to scout danger so often.
“Clear,” she whispered back through the hole.
When Jack stood on the other side, the first thing he noticed were the throbbing orange crystals that lined the stone brick walls, spilling a warm muted glow over the wide corridor.
“Everything is so smooth. Glossy,” he whispered as he took in this new area. “It’s as if this was built yesterday.”
Once the entire party was through, they moved forward again, searching for the magic bridge-building hammer. The tomb had many branching passages, yet all ways but one were blocked with stone and dirt that had collapsed through the pristine complex around them.
After only a few minutes, the corridor led them to an enormous, dimly lit chamber. Ahead and at the back of the vast area was clearly the object they were here to find. The Hammer of Yog had the head of a hammer, but its shaft was as long as a staff, and the whole thing shined with a grand radiance as it hovered on a raised platform.
Th
e group crept slowly into the chamber as each and every one of them were experienced enough to know that this was probably a trap, or even a Boss room.
Immediately to either side of the entrance was a flight of polished stone stairs leading up to raised sections tucked against the back corners of this square temple-like area. Jack searched them both and found more of the glowing orange crystals on narrow black stands, but the place was still devoid of monsters.
As they moved forward toward their goal, Jack noticed a 50-yard brass circle that took up most of the floor with large illegible letters embossed on its surface.
“Can anyone read that?” he asked quietly as they all crossed onto the reflective disk.
Before he got an answer, a metal-on-stone rasping sound echoed through the chamber, and they all spun to see the way back currently being cut off by thick bars. Then rumbling ahead pulled Jack’s attention as he drew his sword, and he saw the stairs leading up to the legendary glowing hammer slide down into the ground, making it much harder to reach.
“Not good,” Farah said as they all started moving backward toward the barred exit. They each moved to surround Haylee and faced outward- ready for anything.
By the growling, almost-human noises echoing from every corner of this chamber, Jack knew they were about to be swarmed by zombies.
Movement from the shadows to the right of the hammer caught his eye first as two sprinting monsters with dry, flapping flesh or wisps of ancient clothing trailed behind their movements and he lifted his sword to blast one with his Mining Laser. The moment he did, he caught Haylee’s Light Ray drawing a bright-white line toward the other side.
Jack fired off his ranged ability directly after.
Restless Walker -250 | HP 540/790
Restless Walker -152 | HP 638/790
It would be wonderful if he could hit all four of these undead creatures rushing them with his Omni Strike, but the place was so big that he could only see one group of two at a time.
“Behind!” Alt called out. “Both sides!”