by KJ Harlow
“Cist. Ferros. Where are your other men?”
“You banished them last time, remember? They can’t come back now.”
The large statue ground her index finger into her chin, sand and rock falling off. “Hmm. I don’t remember.” She brought her feline head to within a few feet of the Lightblades. “Anyway, what brings you back?”
“The same reason as the last few times,” Cist answered.
“Oh,” she said, leaning back and crossing her arms. “You want to find your ‘king’.” She lifted her hands and made the talking marks. Cal did not expect that.
“You could save us the trouble you know.” Cist said, staring up at the status. “You could just, you know…”
She shook her head, more sand and stone chips falling to the tiled floor. “Nuh-uh. Not happening. I don’t make the rules.”
“You do make the rules, though,” Cist implored. “It’s not like you have a boss.”
The gargantuan reverse-sphinx pursed her lion lips and rubbed her chin, a dull grinding sound filling the room.
“What’s a boss?”
Cist dropped his arms in frustration. “Never mind.”
“Do you want to hear the riddle again then?” She glanced across at Kai and wrinkled her nose.
“Might as well.”
She shimmied on her bottom and straightened her back up against the wall. She folded her hands together in her lap and closed her eyes. Her voice lost its playfulness and boomed deep in Cal’s bones with a melodic timbre:
“In the middle of the labyrinth I reside,
Never to see the light of day.
As the spawn of forbidden union, I hide
under Crete, my ire at bay.”
The Lightblades mouthed the final line while staring at her.
“You have three tries. If by the third try you cannot give me the correct answer, you will be transported back to the beginning of the Catacombs.”
“You told us you were going to give us a clue next time.”
“I didn’t say that,” Mea said, narrowing her cat eyes. “Do not put words in my mouth.”
Cist turned back to Cal and Kai. “That’s the riddle. We’ve researched and researched but have been unable to find any information about it. It’s in Common Tongue, but there is a word that is either of the ancients or a different language entirely.”
“Let me guess: ‘day’?” Cal said. A smile was creeping over his face.
“Yes, but you could have figured that out from the context,” Ferros said, his arms crossed.
“You don’t have days in Terrafaytum because you have no sun.”
“Wait,” Kai said, stepping around the orc to look at him. “This isn’t something from your Earth, is it?”
“What’s ‘sun’?” Cist asked, eyebrows furrowed.
“I’ll explain later,” Cal said, waving his hand dismissively. “It’s no wonder you guys couldn’t answer the riddle. How do you answer a riddle that’s not even from your world?”
It’s that admin, C. It could have only been her. She might not only play a role in policing the game, but she might have also had a say in its development.
“And Crete. Is there a place called Crete somewhere in Terrafaytum?” He passed over Kai who was shaking his head. “Cist? Ferros?”
They stared at him non-plussed. “Being a Lightblade doesn’t really afford you the luxury of travelling the lands,” Cist said. “But from the limited geography we know, there isn’t a place called Crete in Terrafaytum.”
Cal was getting more excited. His mind was racing. “Crete was a city in ancient… Greece. Yes, Greece I think it was…” he continued talking to himself as the other three men stared at him curiously.
“Mea?” She looked like she had been having a cat nap. She opened one eyelid a crack, sand falling onto her arm. “Could you recite the riddle for me again?”
She did so, Cal repeating each line to commit it to memory. As he did that, he trawled through dusty archives in his brain, sorting through old history lessons that had been corrupted by video games and pornography. He started thinking of every mythical creature he knew, seeing if it fit the story.
He laughed and shook his head, drawing concerned glances from the others. C was a genius, putting Mea here and encoding her with a riddle that made no sense to NPCs. The other players, all fighting for the Urath, would have had no desire to come down here. Fairshade would most certainly have become a rotter by now. Maybe he had.
“The answer is Centaur.”
Mea shook her head slowly. “Wrong.”
Cal frowned. He mouthed the lines again, doing more mental searching. “Manticore, no wait I mean…”
“Wrong.”
“Cal, stop.” Cist’s hand grasped his shoulder. “Slow down. Breathe.” Cal relaxed and took a deep breath, letting the air out over 10 seconds.
“You clearly know something we don’t. We can’t afford for you to be barred from answering these riddles. There is no hurry. Please, take your time.”
Cal nodded and took another slow breath. Cist was right. Just like that, he had burnt through two of the three attempts. One more and they would be kicked back out to the beginning.
Manticore…
The moment the name left his mouth, he knew it was wrong. He meant something else, something that sounded similar. He could visualize the beast. His memory of the story was fuzzy, but he was 75% sure that it was the right creature. 75% wasn’t good enough though. He was either 100% right or 100% wrong.
He mouthed the name of the creature he had on his mind, careful so that Mea couldn’t hear it. She was watching him, her eyes now wide open, sandy-brown pupils dilated.
Cal looked up at Mea.
“Cal.” Cist had taken half a step towards him.
“It’s OK,” Cal said, swallowing. “I got this.”
He turned back towards the gigantic half cat.
“Minotaur. The answer is Minotaur.”
Mea stared at him not moving a muscle. It looked like the craft that had animated her had suddenly vanished from her being.
For 30 seconds, none of the little men moved.
“Did I–”
“Correct.”
Cal snapped his head back towards the statue. It had come back to life, blinking several times. “Apologies. No one was meant to know the answer to that. I had just about filed the correct response away in a cache to help me save some memory.”
Cal laughed out loud, relieved booms that echoed around the room. He turned back to three gobsmacked individuals. “Don’t worry about that, she’s talking my language.”
Cal turned back to Mea just in time to see her shimmying again, except this time she was moving to the side. The fighters watched her inch herself (in feet measurements) to her right. A large, arching doorway became visible above her left shoulder.
Screeches, wails, cries and roars filled the room and the four fighters instinctively brought their hands to their ears. Souls spanning a monochromatic spectrum streamed out from the crack of a space behind Mea. They were long and translucent, with jagged holes for eyes and a long, gaping slash across their diaphanous beings that looked like a mouth. Thousands – nay, tens of thousands – streamed out. Cist, Ferros, Cal and Kai watched them streak over the top of them and out the doorway they came through.
And suddenly, all was silent again.
“What just happened?” Kai asked.
“I… I might have opened Pandora’s Box,” Cal murmured. He looked up at Mea who gave him a knowing look.
“Be careful inside there,” she said in a gravelly yet feminine voice. You have to defeat one more foe before you are to claim that which is yours.
The party walked past Mea: Cist first, Ferros next, Cal after him and Kai last. Kai pounced into fight mode when he saw something fly at him from the corner of his eye. Mea withdrew her finger with a reproachful look again.
“Kai.” Cal had turned around, a smile on his face. “She just wants to pet you.”
Kai st
ared at him despairingly then looked up at Mea. She was pouting. He sighed, sheathed his lance then stood there, crossing his arms. The large stone guardian smiled, moved her pinky finger down and rubbed Kai’s cheek as gently as she could.
“This is uncharted territory.” Ferros closed the map from his navigation and looked ahead. They had been walking for 10 minutes or so through the dark hallway. It was as wide as the room Mea had been in but infinitely longer. Pillars similar to the two that were in Mea’s Guardian’s room stood in solemn rows either side of them. Torches burned in brackets high up along these pillars, their green flames bathing the surroundings in an eerie glow.
“Halt.” Cist threw his arm out. He gestured forward. A being shrouded in darkness stood ahead of them. It looked like it had its head down. Just beyond it was another arched door, but a lot smaller than the one they had come through.
“Examine.” Cal squinted, but nothing came up. “We need to get closer.”
The four of them slowed their pace and fanned out, occupying the space between the pillars while moving forward. 20 yards way and Cal tried his skill again. His eyes flew open.
“Shit.” He drew his axe.
The other three also Examined the creature and prepared their weapons. Whether it was the smell of metal being drawn for battle or the scent of fear that emanated from Cal, the creature seemed to have roused from its slumber. It lifted its large head up and spread its legs. It took its hands off the top of its weapon, which looked like an axe had been merged with a lance. It grunted irritably, the ring piercing flapping against its nose. It left deep grooves grounding into the stone tiles with its right cloven hoof.
“So this is what a Minotaur is,” Cist murmured. Examine.
NAME: Minotaur
LVL: 80
AFF: Earth
HP: 766/766
MP: 900/900
ABILITY: Savage Hack
A mythical creature from ancient Greece. The spawn of a woman and a bull, it wields a halberd with great ferocity and can crush an army with its brute strength.
The minotaur charged with frightening speed. It skipped forward drawing its long weapon back with its muscled arms.
“Earth Wall!” Cal cast his defensive craft just as the slash came across. It clove through the gray, stone wall topped with the tile and hacked out Cal’s stomach. He looked down and blinked.
Critical Hit!
-350 Damage!
“Cal!” Kai yelled. Cist and Ferros were nowhere to be seen. The minotaur turned his attention to the werejaguar and lifted his axe high up into the air. Kai ran straight towards the minotaur just as it brought its weapon down. The pillars shuddered as axe crunched two-foot deep into the tiles, spitting up more grey stones.
Kai had slid between the beast’s legs and jumped back onto his feet. Cal was on his hands and knees, steaming innards plopping onto the tiles. Kai shoved his hand into Cal’s satchel, searched the compartments then pulled out the HP potion. He turned around. The minotaur was stomping over, axe hefted over its shoulder. There was flash at its feet and by the time it looked down, it had already crashed to the ground.
“Hurry!” Cist urged, the wire-thin Lightblade shimmering faintly in his fist.
Kai turned Cal onto his back, uncorked the HP potion, held Cal’s tusked jaw down and poured the entire thing down his throat.
The glassy look in his eyes didn’t change. The minotaur was already back on its feet. It spun around and roared at Cist and Ferros. They flung knife after knife at various points on the creature’s body. Some of the knives stuck momentarily before joining the rest of them on the ground at the minotaur’s hoofed feet.
Kai shoved his hand into the satchel again and pulled out another HP potion. He flipped off the cork and poured this one down Cal’s throat as well. The orc blinked and sat up, wincing. His torso was missing a big chunk of armour, but the dark green skin had healed over.
“Get up, now!” Kai was crouched over, Blood Lance in his left hand. Cal stumbled but got to his feet. The minotaur was swinging its weapon left and right, crunching it into the large, square pillars. Cist and Ferros were only just evading its attacks.
Cal tightened the grip on his weapon. He ran towards the minotaur’s back and leapt into the air.
“Earthquake!” The minotaur turned around and froze, blue-grey hands clutching the length of his halberd.
Cal drew his axe back and started hacking at the creature’s legs.
-8 Damage!
-7 Damage!
-9 Damage!
-8 Damage!
“A little help here,” Cal yelled. Kai jabbed and drove his Blood Lance at the creature’s fleshy lower back.
-7 Damage!
-8 Damage!
-3 Damage!
Critical Hit!
-20 Damage!
“Karst, this fiend is powerful,” Kai grunted. “Get back.”
Cal withdrew and ran back to his comrade’s side. He raised his lance and swung down.
“Fireball!”
The six-foot high flame craft hit the minotaur. After five seconds, it dissipated into the air.
-15 Damage!
Earthquake’s effects expired and the minotaur roared again, his pectoral muscles popping and straining. It charged at Cal and Kai, axe once against drawn back.
Cal was ready this time; he turned on his heel and ran for it. The blade slashed through the air, narrowly avoiding his back.
Damn it.
The other side of the hall where the arched doorway was stopped them from going any further. Cal hooked a left around the pillar, heart in his throat. The minotaur couldn’t see him but it knew he was there. Cal jumped as it slammed its axe into the pillar, the entire structure shuddering behind him. He back against the wall, trying to get a glimpse of the creature; it wasn’t there. That meant…
He blindly ran back in the direction that he came, taking the path between pillars and wall. He craned his neck back. He had guessed right; the minotaur had chosen to ambush him from the other side of the pillar. It noticed him scampering off and roared again. A hand hooked itself between his neck and his armour.
“Cal.” Cist was perspiring but staying calm.
“I’m…” Cal paused, glancing back at the minotaur. It had moved to the pillar on the other side. Kai was playing hide and seek with it now. “We need to find a way to slay it.”
“Ferros and I don’t have the power,” the leader of the Lightblades said, shaking his head.
“That’s OK. This guy is big but he’s not unbeatable. We just have to take it turns immobilizing him before chipping away at his HP.”
Cist nodded. “I thought as much. I don’t have any other ideas–”
“Wait,” Cal said. “You have another Skill. What’s ‘Lightclone’?”
“It’s an Ability that allows me to create mana projections of myself that I can control.”
“Does it also replicate your weapon set?”
“Yes, though the weapons aren’t as strong as the real thing.”
“That can help.” Cal turned around just in time to see Kai sprinting on all fours back past them, a look of pure fear in his eyes. “We’ll stick with Plan A first. I’m going to think of something. If you have a plan, just go ahead and execute.” Cist nodded. He gestured to Ferros, who was crouched by the pillar on the other side.
Cal watched the minotaur charge after Kai, then he stepped out. “Hey!” The creature ground to a halt, turning tiles into gravel. It turned around, eyes seeing red. “Want to finish me off?” Cal didn’t know if it understood the taunt, but it seemed to get even angrier. Cal eyed Cist and Ferros who were once again hiding at pillars on either side of the mythical creature.
It charged and after pounding across several yards, tripped. Cal slammed his palm into the ground, directing his earth craft into a narrow, focused pillar of stone right beneath his head. It uppercutted him, crumbling in the process but was able to land a heavy blow in the soft part behind its chin.
-25 Damage!
The minotaur fell sideways, its eyes closed and nose crinkled in fury. Cal ran over to it, lifted his own axe and drove it down on its neck…
…only for it to bounce off the flesh, leaving a thin line where the axe had cut through the skin.
-9 Damage!
Cal continued hacking at the neck as if it were a muscle-bound log, keeping an eye on the damage count and the state of the minotaur. Its eyes flew open as Cal prepared to drive his axe down for the umpteenth time. The minotaur threw its boulder-sized fist into Cal, sending him flying through the air.
-135 Damage!
As he flew back back, he watched Kai leap over the minotaur and drive his flaming lance into the side of the creature’s head.
Critical Hit!
-40 Damage!
Cal slammed into the ground and tumbled backwards. He reoriented himself, found the satchel, shoved his hand in and pulled out another HP potion. Downing it, he threw the bottle aside. It exploded into a million, tiny pieces as he hurled himself back into the fray.
29
Fairshade
20,156th Cycle
28-Hyten
The bottom half of Ferros’ body lay crumpled against a semi-destroyed pillar. The minotaur gripped his axe with his right hand and punched the air with his left, triumphantly lofting the top half of the broken Lightblade’s body. He leered at Cist and took a bite out of Ferros’ side. Ferros’ chest cracked and caved in, ribs piercing his skin, spraying blood all over the minotaur as he crunched through the snack.
“Cist.” Cal stared at the leader of the Lightblades. “Cist!” He was mumbling to himself and rocking back and forth slightly.
Cal stood in front of the grey assassin. “Cist, we will honour Ferros. I give you my word. Right now, we have to finish off the minotaur.”
Kai had numerous cuts along his body but his eyes were as fierce as ever. Flames rolled over the Blood Lance as he pointed it at the monster.
“Hurry – I can’t keep it distracted for much longer.”
“Cist.” Cal slapped his hands onto his shoulders. He started blinking, his eyes refocusing on the orc in front of him.