by R J Triveri
“Come on, River,” Dante said with a smile. “One down, more to go!”
“Right,” she said with a slight grin finding its way to her face.
“Yeah!” Nyx cheered. “Next stop, floor two!”
“Just don’t get yourselves hurt on the way down,” Allen warned. “All hands and feet inside the radius of the portal at all times. I can’t reattach limbs if they get sheared off in a teleporting pinch.”
Dante looked at him, concerned, but shook it off. “You’re making that up.”
Allen’s face broke into a smile, the first, real smile he had worn within the party. “Maybe I am. Maybe I’m not. Either way, I don’t suggest making me waste integrity on ya if I don’t have to,” he warned as he took out healing salves one at a time and drew them across his torso.
Recovery - Allen Lee: 80% Integrity Remaining
Recovery - Allen Lee: 100% Integrity Remaining
Satisfied with his recovery, he stepped into the portal and turned to the others. “Ya coming?”
While the three approached cautiously, Nyx took full advantage of her dexterity and bounded in next to the older man. “Last one in buys dinner!”
It might have been a joke, but none of the remaining three wanted to know how much the others could buff themselves before getting sick and tripped over each other to get to the portal.
Chapter Thirty-One: Smoke and Mirrors
The Dungeon of Glass - Level Two
The current time is 12:34pm. The dungeon will end at 4:00pm.
Your party has three hours and twenty-six minutes left until ejection.
SIFS chat disabled. Streaming still in progress.
As the portal planted them firmly on a new floor and the lights finally died down around them, a new room came into view. Like the first, it was outlined in polished blue stone and rose to a dome around the group. Large enough to be called an arena, there was nothing else to see. There were no signs under them as a clue and nothing to give them any sign of what was to happen but a ring of torches to light the room.
“Now what?” River asked but didn’t get a chance to ask anyone to detect. To her surprise, Dante crossed his arms, shook himself off, and voiced his displeasure.
“Nope! I am not doing this again!”
The other four looked at him with confused looks as he flipped up a screen to his personal notes, read a moment, and closed the window again.
“Dante?” Mac asked, slightly concerned. “You okay?”
“Not that I doubt you, Dante, but you did take a decent hit in the last room,” River pointed out, trying to make sense of him.
“No, you don’t get it. I know this one,” he said, breaking off from the group and walking towards the center.
“What?” Nyx asked curiously. “It’s just a room. We haven’t even seen the challenge.”
He shook his head and finished his walk to the center. Where he stood, a small hole was dug into the floor. Using his hands as emphasis, he explained it simply. “This is the challenge.” As if making his point for him, the lights slowly began to flicker as each of the torches along the edges went out one by one. “When the lights finish going out, this will start to spew a glowing smoke, and we’ll have to fight our shadows and smoke minions.”
Another torch went out as River joined him near the edge of the hole. “So how do we win?”
He grinned and leaned down. Holding his hand over the opening, he waited for another set of torches to go out. “Like this. Hydros.” Sedai’s hair bristled but didn’t balk as water began to collect in his open palm.
Skill cost extracted - Familiar skill: Rebuff triggered! Dante Rior: 73% Integrity Remaining
Channeling has been activated.
Sedai - Rank up! Familiar Rank 2 Achieved. Please consult your familiar menu to assign her skill points or activate the auto-assign feature.
He tried not to let his excitement break his concentration as he held the spell back longer and longer. Dante let his integrity channel into it until the spell skill reached the edges of the hole. Each moment he waited, another set of torches went out.
“Dante…” Nyx started as she joined the two. “Not that I don’t enjoy staring, but what are you doing.”
“Saving us almost an hour or more of risking our lives,” he answered as he released the water with the flickering of the final light. A torrent of water extinguished the growing heat below it. A billow of steam erupted from the hole and soon the steam billow was replaced with the light they had seen earlier on the floor above. “The exit, ladies and gentlemen.”
“How did you…” Allen asked, a little more than surprised at the fact that Dante’s plan worked.
“That’s why the information here isn’t ever accurate. It’s a rogue dungeon,” Dante explained. When the others’ eyes didn’t light with recognition, he sighed. “After the first floor, or maybe even including it, everything changes. Sure, it looked like the first floor, but some traps and trick rooms are standards that these dungeons rotate. This room was just like the one I helped with in Pyra’s Keep a few weeks back.”
“Interesting,” River said with a bit of surprise. “I know you’ve done stuff without me, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
With a slight laugh in his voice, Dante couldn't help the grin crossing his face as he replied. “I do have a life outside of you. Always have, always will.”
Nyx followed behind, taking his shoulder as an arm rest as she grinned at River. “Yeah, he’s a big boy.”
“Speaking of…” Dante said, opening his windows and swapping to Sedai’s status. “Someone grew up a little.”
Nyx pulled back, not wanting to distract him, and the familiar took the chance and sat proudly on his shoulder. Though she was light as a cloud, she still took up space and stared at the screen with him as the others waited around patiently. It was the first time he had bothered opening a true skill tree up rather than just using the preassigned auto arrangement based on his activities, but he needed to know what he was in for. For the first time, he was able to look at his familiar’s unlocked skill tree.
Surprisingly, Sedai didn’t have a single tree. She had four separate skill trees, two directly related to his classes called Support and Damage, and two of her own, Assist and Resist. Noticing the caster tree was flashing, he opened it and examined his options. Her passive Rebuff was already active, and he had a single new point to assign to her branching windows. The familiar watched him intently as his finger passed over her first four skills: Mutation, Multi-Element, Fusion, and Rebuff Two. Each branched further down the tree to new, locked skills, and from his research, he knew that to get the best skills, he had to commit to one of the four.
Well, I’d rather not risk death as often… Dante thought to himself as his choice was basically made for him.
With that, he touched Rebuff Two and was granted a short message:
Rebuff - Rank Two: Sedai will be able to assist more often with her Rebuff skill. This point will upgrade Rebuff from two uses before cooldown to four. This will reduce the strain of the casting from 50 to 60 percent. Cooldown time is also reduced from 2:00 to 1:30.
Warning - Each applied rank cannot be refunded after confirmation. Each confirmed rank will also allow the familiar more autonomy to make decisions on skill use. Please treat your familiar kindly.
That won’t be a problem, Dante said to himself as he confirmed the skill point. At his confirmation, Sedai glowed a soft blue, yipped happily, and licked the side of his face from her position on his shoulder. “Did I make the right choice then?” A soft yip confirmed his suspicions as River continued to stare him down. “River?”
She shook her head as if wiping away a memory from the whiteboard of her mind. “Sorry. Spaced out a bit.” Her eyes rested on Nyx for just a moment before she smiled her favorite, dangerous smile again. “Just remember what I said earlier, Dante.”
“Right,” he confirmed, but the fear that wasn’t in his voice just wasn’t enough for River as Al
len and Mac took the first steps into the portal of light. Dante and Nyx followed suit as River held back for just a moment. Her eyes were fixed on Nyx, the way she walked, the way she kept close to Dante…
Maybe I am paranoid, she thought to herself before joining the group in the light and being swallowed towards the next level.
Chapter Thirty-Two: Reflection's Challenge
The Dungeon of Glass - Level Three - Boss Chambers
The current time is 12:44pm. The dungeon will end at 4:00pm.
Your party has three hours and sixteen minutes left until ejection.
SIFS chat disabled. Streaming still in progress.
With no more fanfare than before, the group flashed onto the next floor. As before, the room was a giant blue arena of stone; however, each member of the group was separated by large, opaque, blue glass walls. The party had been split and was put into their own chamber, sealed from one another as they looked past the blue glass into the new floor.
“Now what?” Dante questioned, getting slightly more annoyed by the moment.
“No idea,” Nyx answered as she put a hand against the front of her cell. At least they weren’t completely isolated from each other. “Maybe it’s mad you cheated?”
“I didn’t cheat,” Dante defended. “It’s not my fault I knew what was going to happen.”
“Besides, it’s not like it matters now,” River added. “It’s probably just another puzzle.”
“Being trapped is always a puzzle,” Nyx chirped as a screen appeared in front of her.
Soon, a softly blinking screen made from the same materials as the walls had found its way to each of the trapped party members. Each said the same thing:
Party Assignment:
Dante Rior - Seeker: Rank 20
River Hexi - Blade Dancer: Rank 20
Allen Lee - Life Mage: Rank 20
Mac Null - Talon Guard: Rank 20
Nyx Inerro - Rogue-Errant: Rank 20
“Hey! Touch the front, guys!” Nyx called out. As they did, she tried to touch her name and was greeted with a rather loud, negative buzz and the message:
Please select a different assignment.
She wasn’t the only one as they all recoiled at the noise.
River groaned as the puzzle started putting her nerves into broken puzzle pieces. “Can this be over already? I’m getting a little tired of this. I just want to break something!”
“Maybe we’re choosing partners?” Dante suggested, noticing that his name was underlined on his screen while the others weren’t.
“I call Dante!” Nyx half joked as she moved to click on his name with the sole purpose of annoying their leader.
“Hey!” the woman nearly exploded, but the damage was done and both names were starting to glow in a soft blue hue.
“Sorry,” Dante called over to his usual partner as his screen vanished a moment later with Nyx’s.
“Nyx, two glass cannons don’t belong as partners!” Mac chided as he picked his usual partner. Just as before, the two screens vanished after flashing the same colors as the last two had.
She huffed slightly in annoyance but said nothing as River took control of the conversation. “So, what? I’m fighting alone?”
She didn’t have to wait long to know the answer for that question.
Party Assignment complete!
Your party alignment has changed.
Private Chat and Party Chat have been disabled.
Game Masters have been assigned:
River Hexi - Blade Dancer: Rank 20
Reflection - Floor Boss: Rank 33
Her eyes almost bulged from their sockets as the last assignment came into view. “Guys?”
But she was too late. They all vanished in her distracted moment out of their cages and onto the far side of the room together. Dante was banging his hand against the wall and trying to voice something to her, but speaking seemed to be useless at this distance. With no other options, River sighed and did what everyone else had. She touched the symbols of the Wild One’s name. Her finger barely had time to register that the screen had vanished before words rang out in her head.
Reflection => River Hexi: Oh? So, you’ll be my opponent today? Hello!
If that wasn’t enough to disjoint her from reality, the sudden, soul-jerking sensation of a low-quality teleport was. Sitting in a new room of blue crystal and a long, white landscape of a table, River sat across from something she’d never have seen under normal circumstances, a crystalline-skinned version of herself dressed in a long, white quartz dress of fractals that hung in all the right places. She would have given the other a whistle of appreciation, but hesitated as the mimicking Wild One smiled and waved from her sitting position across the table with a childlike innocence.
“You know…” The woman’s voice showed just how true her opponent’s name was. Much like River’s own voice, Reflection’s was simple, almost musical in its intonation, but there was a key difference. Hers was almost a wind-chime rather than simply melodic. Musical without meaning to be, it continued in the silence that was River’s introduction. “It’s nice to say hello when someone greets you, River.”
“Hello,” River said weakly as she looked around her, trying to get some sort of bearing. After no more information was forthcoming, she sighed. “Look, I have no idea what’s going on here.”
“That’s too bad,” Reflection answered happily as she stretched as easily as a lazy cat rising out of a long-gone sun beam. “Well, allow me to give you the run down. You can call me Reflection, and this is my dungeon. The end of my dungeon to be exact, and my boss floor is a game of strategy, River.”
That wasn’t what she wanted to hear. “Great…”
“Isn’t it?” Reflection said through nearly pursed lips. “Now, as I was saying. This will be a game of strategy for us and of combat for them. Your team can operate as normal between our turns while we control the hazards. They won’t even notice when we stop time to take our turns once they’ve moved so far. I will try to kill them while you try to help them with what’s at your disposal. Sounds easy, right?”
Looking across at the glass woman, she could only shake her head. There was no screen, no new items had been deposited in her inventory, and no other directions at the moment. Keeping all that in her head, she answered simply. “Not in the least.”
“No.” Reflection grinned again. “No, it isn’t. As you can imagine, this sort of challenge wasn’t meant for…” She hesitated for just a moment. “Someone like you.” The words made River glower, but the boss took no notice. “On the other hand, your Seeker friend would have been perfect for this, wouldn’t he?”
Of course, he would have, but that’s the point, isn’t it? “He’s just as good down there,” River defended. “I trust him.”
“Oh, I’m sure he will be.” Reflection grinned. “But does he trust you with the team’s tactics all on your own?”
The scowl on River’s face said more than her words. “Shut up.”
River’s scowl was mirrored in Reflection, but there was no irritation, only the pleasure of seeing River cut by her simple words. “Seeing as you are new to the challenge, I’ll give you a few pointers. Touch the table to bring up the Real-Time Strategy interface for the battle. Now, all you have to do is touch the item and then touch the field to place it. A quick touch will instantly place the item. The longer that you hold onto it, the longer it takes to crash down. Then, for every treasure they open, you’ll get more tools. Anyways, you’ll win if they reach the other side, press the switch, and destroy the Glass Guardian.”
“And we lose if we die?”
“See! You’re not as dumb as they say!” Reflection cheered as a joyful grin cracked along her face.
“What about us?” River asked, looking over the other. “What happens to us?”
“If you win, I’ll let you go with them. What’s the saying humans use? No harm, no foul?”
Apparently, you don't know how well I can hold a grudge,
River thought to herself as she continued to stare down the other. “And if we lose?”
“Oh, they’ll die a terrible death at my… well, they’re your hands, aren’t they? Either way, I’ll kill them and absorb their data while you watch. I can assure you that it won’t be pretty either.” As her words finished, the glassy grin on Reflection’s face grew larger than should have been possible on a human. With a Cheshire smile, Reflection finished her thought with a hint of deep-seated violence as her voice got lower. “Only then, after you’ve watched them die will I rip your data apart, absorb your core data, take your form, and leave this place as per the rules.” Her glowing smile and chipper attitude returned a moment later. “Sounds good, right?”
Reaching for her weapon, she found herself wanting as her weapon stayed put and a message flashed to life:
Combat is disabled in the Tactics Room.
“Great…”
As the smile returned to what would be normal on River’s face, the voice was far too happy in announcing, “Let’s get started!” At a tap of Reflection’s fingers, the table lit up like a game grid, populated with features, and lastly five figures appeared on the board, four human, and one… that wasn’t so much. With everything coming to life, so too did River’s screen of commands and items.
“Oh, fuck.”
***
Meanwhile, the touch of the table brought the remaining four to life in a bizarre environment of blue stone trees with moss for leaves and soil sprouting patches of mossy grass. Throughout it all, the same green moss from before seeped from any place that the bricks, wall and otherwise, would have naturally had their mortar. In front of them, there was nothing to really be seen. It was just a large plain of moss, trees, and brick. No sun, no moon, and no true thing that could really be called a sky. The group recovered enough to take stock, and one thing was blatantly clear.
“Where’s River?” he frantically asked as he scanned the area around them.
