by Deck Davis
He also knew that the last thing a long-stay player wanted to be asked was why they were playing. He let Etta keep her motivation to herself.
“Long-stay or not, watching every tower entry is dedication,” he said.
“I want to figure a way to get in there. I have to. You ever want something with every fiber of your being? So bad that you can feel the idea of it melting in your brain and firing through your nerves like electrical waves. Then it gets into your blood and your bones and it’s all you can think about, so you can’t sleep. When you do sleep you dream about it again and again and again?”
Tripp could barely process a word of that. “I can understand that, I think.”
“I really want to get into the tower,” she said.
This was a desire he could understand. “I get it. It’s the mystery of it,” he said. “I keep trying to picture what I’ll see when I step inside and the doors close behind me.”
Etta smiled wide, revealing her giant bovine teeth and tongue. “And what’s with the monks?”
“And what happens when you reach the top?”
“Yeah, yeah, and is there a prize?”
“Or some kind of legendary rare loot?”
“Or maybe there is no top to the tower,” said Etta. “Maybe it keeps on going, going, going.”
He felt fired up now, carried along the currents of the minotaur girl’s enthusiasm. He’d tried everything he could think of to get into the tower, and it was turning from curiosity to a burning need.
“I’ll make a deal with you,” he said. “If I find a way in, I’ll tell you. You do the same for me.”
“What about when we’re in there? We share the loot?”
Tripp grinned. This cast him back to the last time he’d played Soulboxe, to a similar conversation he once had. Back then it was about a labyrinth, and he’d had the conversation with a cleric, an archer, and an overgrown elephant.
That was the last time he’d worked together with someone in Soulboxe, and it hadn’t turned out too badly. Those three were siblings. Tripp still met them in the real world, but their Soulboxe characters had been inactive.
“We’ll share whatever we find,” he told Etta. “But I get the feeling we’re tying our shoelaces when we haven’t even put on our pants. How do we get in?”
“I wish I knew. You got any bright sparks?”
“I had some ideas, and most of them sucked. There’s a code, though. I know that much. I think it’s something to do with-”
“The carvings,” said Etta.
“Great minds think alike.”
“So do adequate ones,” she answered. Tripp laughed because he used to make the same joke himself. He realized that this awkward minotaur was basically a female version of him, and he liked her a lot.
“You’re not a carpenter, by any chance?” he asked.
“Like, someone who lays carpets?”
“No, carpenters work with wood.”
“I know, I was joking. I’m a hay merchant. I drive all over the country selling hay to farmers.”
“Really? I didn’t even know that was a thing.”
Etta slapped her face. “It isn’t. Farmers make their hay from cutting grass; they don’t buy it.” She smiled at him now, showing her big gums. “I’m a glassblower.”
“Honestly?”
“No.”
“Then what do you do?”
“This is kinda my point, Tripp. I’m in Soulboxe now. Doesn’t matter what I do outside of here. I could be a barrister, a locksmith, a lighthouse keeper, and it wouldn’t mean a thing. Whatever’s going on in that dull, dull world where there’s no such thing as minotaurs and orcs, I don’t give a flying bag of crap. Right now, the only damn thing I care about is getting into that tower.”
Tripp could understand that. He was here to escape, after all. To get over his business failing, to get some R&R and reset his mind. Etta had the right attitude. While you were in Soulboxe, you didn’t think about none-Soulboxe things.
Instead, you thought about spells, barbarians, and mad monks carrying corpses from towers.
Tripp put his hand out. Etta spat on her palm and offered hers. They shook.
“Let’s find a way into this giant cock, shall we?” she said.
CHAPTER 3
Is this Soulboxe 2.0? No, you can’t call it that. We made a few changes. Got rid of a few AIs who were...uh…misbehaving, but the heart of the game is what it always was; quest, kill, explore, create.
That’s what Soulboxe is. That’s what it will always be. Only, we want to make it bigger. Better. I want people to get so immersed in Soulboxe that they forget their real lives.
I want them to get lost in our dungeons, our swamps, our snow-peaked mountains. I want them to feel the tension before a battle. To smell the sweat, to taste blood on their tongue when they take a blow to the head. To feel the fear of their enemies drip from…
Sorry, I went off a little there. What was the question again?
- Julie Ward, current head developer of Soulboxe Inc.
“I always thought it was more like a giant’s tooth than a cock,” said Tripp, as he examined the murals on the left door arch.
These formed after the man had exploded out of the tower, meaning it was time for another crazy player to find a way in.
“It’s a tower, and towers are phallic. Doesn’t matter if it’s the tower where the Eye of Sauron sits, or Isengard where Saruman waves his pecker for his orcs. They’re all phallic. Name me a tower that isn’t vaguely phallic, and you aren’t naming me a tower at all. It makes sense, really. They’re a feat of architecture, and they’re a symbol of human fertility. Nothing bad about it. Towers. Are. Phallic. No getting away from it.”
More players had gathered around the entrance to the tower now. There were so many that it was hard to move amidst the dwarfs, mages, elves, and barbarians.
It was then that the sensory side of Soulboxe hit Tripp’s nose at full force. He smelled sweat from armpits that had gone days without a wash, and the stench from their leather armor.
A dwarf player tried to jostle Tripp out of the way, but he held firm. This was easy because, as an orc, he was pretty hard to shift. He might have leveled his crafting abilities more than his combat, but he was still a big guy. His steel armor added to that, making the dwarf’s attempts futile.
Tripp was proud of his steel armor. When he’d first found it, he’d been a Soulboxe newbie with no skills. The steel armor was just that; a basic set of metal armor good for deflecting the odd blade or arrow.
In his first stint in Soulboxe he had developed his skills, learning how to make weapons and armor. He then earned the artificery skill, which let him blend magic into his creations.
He’d leveled up his armorer skill, which allowed him to create swords and breastplates. Pretty much all the trinkets of offense and defense a good Soulboxe player needed.
Next, he’d earned the artificery skill, practicing it until he could add magical effects to his items. There was no limit on what he could make – that was the beauty of Soulboxe. All he needed was a healthy imagination, a good work ethic, and to find the right materials.
Combining his artificery and armorer skills, he’d turned his steel armor into a thing of beauty. It used to be a standard set of armor that any old critter would drop as loot. The sort of thing that advanced players would pick up, inspect for a second, and then toss away.
Now, after weaving spindles of magic into the metal, his steel armorer was a source of pride. The magic he’d woven into it made it special.
See, Tripp used to own a warhammer that would heal him whenever he hit people with it. Using his artificery skill he’d extracted the essence from the hammer, and he’d blended it into his steel armor.
Now, whenever he took damage on his armor, the magic in his steel would automatically heal him a little.
A minor magical effect when compared to some of the stuff in Soulboxe, but he was proud of it. As well as that, giving his ste
el armor a magical effect had made it not a common item, but rare, and now it had a name.
Tripp’s Suit of Defenseweave.
But that wasn’t all.
Tripp also owned a weapon that was lovingly named the Flagellation Flail. This tool of destruction looked like a regular flail, but it was also magic. By hitting himself with it, making him look like a madman , the damage he caused himself would store in the flail. It then allowed him to unleash attacks way beyond his level.
He thought of his suit of Defenseweave and his flagellation flail as his equalizers. By focusing on his crafting abilities he’d neglected his combat ones. Despite looking like an orc, he wasn't great when it came to killing and beheading. Mainly all the wondrously violent things in Soulboxe.
His suit let him take damage that should have killed him, since it healed him when someone attacked. His flail allowed him to take down creatures beyond his level. It was a good balance.
That was the wonder of artificery; allowing an orc to do things he really, really shouldn’t be allowed to.
Right now, it added to his bulk and meant the pesky dwarf couldn’t jostle him out of the way of the tower entrance. So, Tripp stayed where he was and he examined the carvings surrounding the door. He tried to find a pattern in them.
He needed to be quick. Every time someone figured out the secret to getting in, the tower changed. Then, slowly as if being carved with great care by invisible masons, images would appear in the stone.
It was always a rush as the players tried to work out how to get in. There were only dozens of people there for the first day. As word of the tower spread, hundreds of players gathered in the Bone Plains. They were all desperate to enter the monolith.
Deals were made. Players would figure out the clue, and then they’d sell access to others. It seemed that four players could enter at any one time. More practical players took their guildmates in with them. Each player complemented the others’ skills so they had the best chance at surviving.
Greedier players braved the tower alone, sick at the thought of sharing any loot. They arrogantly believed they could conquer it alone.
When the new carvings appeared, the mood around the plains changed. The tension crackled. Everyone wanted to be the one to decode the symbols and carvings that changed upon each new entry.
Tripp had gotten close the last time. He thought he’d almost figured it out, but a warlock, half-gnome, red wizard, and troll-assassin beat him to it. He had to watch in frustration as they entered the tower and the symbols eroded.
He wouldn’t miss it this time. He’d come back to Soulboxe to relax, but he’d found himself wrapped up in the mystery of the tower.
And he loved every second of it. He had to get in. The tower wouldn’t be here forever, and he wouldn’t miss his chance.
So now he knelt by the doorway and he studied and stared and he willed his mind to click into gear.
At first, he felt like an archaeologist who’d stumbled upon an Egyptian tomb. He was puzzled at the series of seemingly random pictures chipped into the stone.
The most noticeable thing was that the doors themselves had changed. Where before they had been two oval-shaped doors made from iron, now they were a barricade of steel vines. They were knitted so tightly together that it was impossible to either see what was beyond.
Tripp heard a cry, and he saw the crowd around him suddenly part.
A barbarian ran through the mass of players, sword held high, and he shouted a word that Tripp didn’t understand. Blood-red light gleamed all along his blade, and as he reached the doors, he struck them with all his might.
There was a blinding flash of light. When sword struck steel the clang was deafening, like an explosion in his earshot.
The sound rang in Tripp’s mind. It was so loud that he couldn’t even think, so loud that it sent him into a daze. He stumbled away from the door with the chime of bells in his head, cursing the level of realism in Soulboxe.
It took a full minute for his head to clear and even then, he still heard the bells. The players around were affected, and some stood over the barbarian, who lay bruised on the ground. They fired imaginative curses at him for his stupidity.
The steel vine door, meanwhile, was unaffected, with not a single dent nor even a mark on its polish.
Tripp felt a hand on his shoulder. It was Etta, smiling wide to show bovine teeth and gums, the sunlight glinting off her curved horns.
“At least we know you can’t force the doors open,” she said.
Tripp put his fingers in his ear and waggled them, as though that would stop the dim ringing in his head.
Etta handed him a small glass vial with purple liquid in the bottom.
“It’s a potion of clarity,” she said. “It’ll stop the ringing.”
He gulped it back and the bells ceased. “Thanks.”
“No problem. What do you make of it?”
He studied the door again. There were markings on the archway above it, but he didn’t understand the words.
Nu san, nu fore. A manathight da gor
“What the hell does that mean?”
“It might mean, ‘don’t try and force the doors open, you idiots,’” said Etta. “Or maybe we better head to the library in Windborne and translate it.”
Tripp nodded. “I’ll fast travel there. Just give me a sec.”
As well as the strange writing, there were four other carvings near the door. These were chipped into the stone around it, two on either side. There was a carving of a mask, a staff, a hammer, and a shield with a cross inside it.
Below each of these carvings, part of the stone had been dug away to form a basin. The meaning of that was clear, at least - they’d need to put something in each basin.
The question was, what did they need to leave? What offering would make the tower open its doors to them?
The key was in the writing.
“We better hurry,” he said. “Meet you at the library.”
CHAPTER 4
Windborne was named after the storms that battered it endlessly. Every house and every shop was set on foundations made to withstand the harshest storms. It was a terrible place to live if you loved having good hair days.
The residents didn’t bother to paint or decorate the outside their buildings. There was no point. Whether wind, rain, or sleet, the storms loved to drag statues from ledges, and fling tiles from roofs.
To combat this, settlers of Windborne had planted a forest around the city. This dense grouping of trees took some of the sting out of the weather. They had erected forty-feet high walls to protect the residents and their homes. Every mayor won their election by promising to build the walls higher. They swore to use better materials than the last person to hold office.
This meant that you could see how the city had grown just by studying its walls. The foundations were clay, but the further up you looked, these turned to brick, to cement. They then changed to other, strange materials whose colors and smells spoke of magic. Tripp was sure there was artificery woven into each brick.
“You’ve…uh...you’ve been staring at those walls for ten minutes, orc. We’ve got a phallic symbol to enter,” said Etta.
“Sorry. I get carried away when I see stuff like that. The library is this way.”
“I was going to ask,” she said. She nodded at his head. It took him a second to register that she meant the symbols that floated above him, like every other player. “Armorer, artificery, and…don't tell me, let me guess…mining?”
“My skills? Those are my top three, yeah.”
“You know this isn’t a 1920s depression-era simulator, right? Mining? Really?”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“Nothing if you’d complimented it with something offensive. Dark magic or blood curses or some kind of swordplay.”
Tripp eyed the symbols beside Etta’s head now. There was an eye, a pair of hands with light coming from them, and a sword with a skull behind it.
; “I’m thinking you leveled the ability to see stuff. That’s a great skill, by the way. You have the wash-your-hands skill, and you learned how to stick a sword in a skull that’s already dead.”
Etta smiled. “Deific sense, hands of light, and swordplay with an undead specialty. The cornerstone of any paladin’s breakfast. You’ll get to see them someday, if you’re lucky.”
“How is it, being a paladin?”
“I’d class change if I could afford it, but they make you open a new account just to do that,” she said.
Tripp nodded. He’d read about this. “The creators of Soulboxe were obsessed with dungeons and dragons. They wanted to make a game where people would commit to role play, especially with it being in VR. If you can flit from character to character, you don’t feel any attachment to your avatar. If it’s the one you’re stuck with, then you play the role.”
“That and charging for class changes makes them more money.”
“Hey, they’ve gotta make it. Soulboxe saps more cash than you think.”
“You best friends with the company accountant or something?”
Tripp thought back to some of the chats he’d had with Lucas, co-creator of Soulboxe, over the last year. “Something like that. Anyway, they relaxed the rule a little; they let people have up to 5 class changes on their account. You’ve only got to pay if you go over that. And they have class-change Sunday every so often. Usually when a new expansion comes out.”
“Let’s just say this isn’t the first time I’ve been unhappy with a choice. You ever get that? So many choices that you know no matter which one you pick, you’re gonna regret it?”
“There must be a reason you settled on paladin, though. Why would you want to change again?”
“The oath,” said Etta. She said this and left it there, as though Tripp was supposed to know what she meant.
“Oath?”
“When you play as a paladin, you start with offensive and healing skills. That’s a great basis, but it comes with a price. You’ve gotta choose an oath to follow. You can pick from a few options, or you can create your own and see if the AI accepts it.”
