by Deck Davis
“I think I have it,” said Warren. “Sounds warm, but cold inside. A thousand of me can become one. It’s an eisschwarm.”
“The hell is that?” said Tripp. It didn’t sound familiar from any of the videos or online guides he’d listened to.
“They don’t have them in Godden’s Reach. It’s a kind of sentient ice cloud, if that makes sense. They made it for the Ice Shard expansion, the one that Rathburger designed.”
“Ah,” said Jon. “That makes sense.”
“What?”
“Eisschwarm. Rathburger is German-born, right? I remember reading an interview where the reporter asked the devs about any jokes they’d hidden in Soulboxe, and Rathburger said that every dev had been given the chance to name one monster whatever they wanted. Eis means ice in German, and schwarm means swarm. Literally, a swarm of ice.” Basking in their attention, Jon added, “I studied German for four years. I was nowhere near fluent and I’ve used it maybe twice in my life, but I guess some of it stuck.”
Tripp took a deep breath. “We have frorargs, sleels, and sentient ice. What about number four?”
Buoyed by the fact that even though he hadn’t guessed the riddle, he’d at least been able to educate them, Jon eyed the paper with enthusiasm. “Okay, the last one. Let’s make this a winner-takes-all.”
“I didn’t know we were competing,” said Warren.
“Err, no. Exactly. So this is the, err, first time. Winner takes all; whoever guesses it is the winner.”
Tripp hadn’t seen this competitive streak in Jon until now, but he liked it. It would come in handy in the labyrinth. He decided to encourage it.
“Fine. Don’t leave us hanging. What’s the final one?”
Jon cleared his throat. “It just says ‘you stand on me when you walk. You see me when you look up. You fear me when I form.’
So many mental cogs turned then that Tripp thought they might get thrown out of the library for making too much noise. He felt his own synapses misfire time and time again, never getting closer than a half-solution before realizing he was wrong.
“Stand on me…” mumbled Warren.
Jon was silent, his forehead more creased than an elephant’s buttocks as he tried to get the answer.
A few minutes passed until Tripp had to break the silence.
“I’ve got nothing. At first, I thought the stand on me thing was something to do with grass, but that didn’t make sense with the see me when you look up part. One of you guys…please tell me you have it.”
Warren shook his head. “I think I used up my brainpower for today. Need to recharge.”
“Jon?”
He needn’t have asked. He could see from Jon’s beetroot-red face that he’d overturned every inch of his mind to find the answer, but it had eluded him.
“Okay, let’s move on. What about the message on the wall? Please tell me it wasn’t another riddle.”
Jon adjusted the paper in front of him. “It doesn’t look like it. It says ‘speak each name and turn each key to earn your reward. All four must be done as one. Your choice of metal is your choice of fate, but no prize is earned without your nightmares coming to life.’”
“To me,” said Tripp, “that means we need to use a key for each lock, and we need to turn the keys and say the rune words at the same time. Right? And the nightmares coming to life…I don’t think I’m being pessimistic when I guess that when we unlock the runes, we’re gonna have to fight the monsters we name.”
“Which gives us a problem,” said Warren. “Four locks, but we only know three rune words, and we only have three people.”
Tripp felt frustration begin to simmer in him. “I don’t want to bring anyone else in on this. I don’t know anyone else. No offense, but I wasn’t happy joining with you guys, let alone another schmuck.”
“Unless you can artifice a robot or something, you might not have a choice.”
“Maybe I do, actually.”
“You can make a robot?”
Trip shook his head. “No. But I have Clive.”
“What good is he?” said Warren.
Tripp smiled at Clive. “Do the honors,” he said.
Clive nodded, and he stared at the book of rune language on the table. He closed his red eyes, and then the book flew at Warren, slapping him in the face.
Jon laughed. “Woah, that was brilliant! So, you can move anything?”
“To a point,” said Clive. “It is like any other skill; I have to level it. The higher the level, the heavier things I can carry. A key shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Which leaves us with one last thing; we need the fourth rune word. Think about it, guys. So far, the only thing I can say for definite is that it’ll be a creature of some kind. I’ll hit the books and see what I can find.”
“One more thing,” said Jon. “Think about the type of creatures so far. Frorargs use fire attacks. Sleels can inflict shock damage, while eisschwarms are cold. It stands to reason that whatever the fourth rune word is, it’ll be a creature that inflicts a specific type of damage.”
Warren leaned forward. “What else is there? Arcane, poison, air…”
“There are lots, but it has to fit in with the clue, too,” said Tripp.
Inspiration hit him so suddenly he felt his mind lurch like someone in the passenger seat of a car that stopped too quickly.
“Got it. You stand on me when you walk, you see me when you look up. Think about where we are.”
“Mountmend,” said Warren.
“What are the street pavements made from?”
“Stone.”
“What do you see when you look up in Mountmend?”
“Ah…Old Kimby.”
Tripp nodded. “Exactly. We’re dealing with a monster that forms out of rocks or stone. There can’t be many. Let’s hit the books, get the name, and then get ready. I have to finish room three before the next wave.”
CHAPTER 62
One more labyrinth room and one more wave. Knowing both things were drawing to their close made tension trickle through him, and not just because he worried he might fail.
It was more the idea that the worst things were usually saved for last. Whatever waited in the final room of Konrad’s labyrinth and whatever the devs had conjured up for the final night of the Blood Wave would be bigger and more nightmarish than what had come before.
Most people slept their way into a nightmare. At least Tripp could get ready for his.
Ready meant weapons, armor, and whatever artificery would get him to the end. Now, it was a case of making the most of the daylight hours. He didn’t have long to use his skills, so he needed to make his time count.
“This is going to take a hell of a lot of gold,” he told Jon and Warren. “I mean that literally; I’ll need to make keys out of gold. I also need to buy a bunch of stuff. I’d love to source it all myself, but the chef can’t go picking herbs when people are waiting for their dinner.”
“What do you need?”
“Metals and essence. Enough metal that I can afford to mess up a few times.”
“I’ll give you everything we got from the mines,” said Warren.
Items received:
Iron x8
Carbon x 4
Tin x5
Zinc x2
Copper x9
“Do you mind if I see what he just gave you?” said Jon.
“Sure.”
Tripp shared his notification with Jon, who read it and glared at his brother. “Warren…” he said, in the warning voice bestowed on big brothers the second their siblings are born.
Warren sighed. “Damn it.”
Items received:
Gemstones x2
“This is great,” said Tripp. “I could have mined all day and hit nothing but carbon and iron.”
“Jon insisted on meeting the goblins down there. We ended up having to walk halfway through the mountain, but there’s good stuff inside. The goblin guys are a riot.”
“Lizzy got a big
ger haul,” said Jon. “Pity it’s in her inventory.”
“We’ll work with what we have. Do you have anything we can sell?”
“Nope,” said Warren.
Jon nodded. “Sure. One sec.”
Items received:
Iron swords x2
Broken bronze shield
Silver crown
Bronze daggers x6
“Thanks, Jon. That’s a lot of daggers. Have you become an assassins’ guild arms dealer?”
“Daggers are the pennies of the fantasy world. They’re the loot equivalent of finding a quarter down the side of your sofa. I just pick ‘em up when I kill stuff and sell them when my inventory gets full.”
Tripp couldn’t help but notice that Warren hadn’t contributed anything, but he wasn’t going to force him. He wasn’t here to teach him to share, just to get through the labyrinth and the waves. After that, who knew? Soulboxe was a big place.
He couldn’t think beyond the here and now. If he beat the labyrinth, if he survived the last night of Blood Wave, he’d feel like he had accomplished something.
With the extra metals and loot Jon had given him, he at least had things he could sell. He checked his own inventory to see what manner of crap he’d collected so far, filtering it by the things he might be prepared to part with.
Healing Warhammer
Copper shovel
Sharpened Flagellation flail
Aside from those items, everything else he had was either a crafting tool, a crafting ingredient, or something he needed. He couldn’t sell things like his repair hammer and his Deconstructor mallet, nor would he pawn in his steel armor for a few measly golds and then walk around in his undershirt like a geriatric orc escaped from a nursing home.
Besides, he had plans for his steel armor. Big ones.
By the time Tripp had cataloged his items, Warren still hadn’t been forthcoming with anything of his own besides the metal, so it was time to go.
“I’ll head to the plaza and then the work studio. You guys entertain yourselves but be ready to go into room three before it gets dark. I want this done before the wave hits.”
“What do you need to do?” said Jon.
Tripp smiled, partly to feign looking like a guy who actually had a plan, partly because a glimmer of a strategy was there. “You’ll see. Don’t worry, I have this covered.”
He and Clive went to the plaza first, where Tripp visited a few shops. He pawned the swords and other junk items Jon had given him, and he bought a few more blank crafting cards. After turning these into Brooch of Orb Weaver Resistance cards, he then went to the crafter’s guild and sold the cards to a couple of players who were in the trading courtyard.
It was a pity, really. Tripp had visions of keeping the orb weaver card to himself and then making the brooches and selling them at a mark-up to the players who couldn’t craft things for themselves. If only there had been time.
After checking his crafting codex book for what he planned to make, and after making a list of the essences he’d need, Tripp visited the alchemy and hunting shops and flashed a little gold.
Finally, with his errands complete, he went to Konrad’s house. Before he started crafting what he and the others would need, it was time to spend the Konrad tokens he’d earned from finishing room two of the labyrinth, even if he’d only earned a lousy bronze chest.
Smoke puffed from the chimney and the aroma of frying bacon drifted from every available escape route, teasing its way through an open window and through the keyhole of the door until it met Tripp’s nose and made him feel the hungriest he’d ever been. Knowing that this was just an effect of Soulboxe’s realism and it wouldn’t last, he pushed it to the back of his mind.
He knocked on the door. Footsteps scrambled around inside, and then the door opened.
“Tripp? Thank Kimby you’ve come. Where’s Konrad?”
It was Glora, Konrad’s wife. The first time he’d seen her she’d had a pleasant smile and rosy cheeks, and it made him comfortable to be around her. Now she was pale, her eyelids baggy, her lips pursed.
This wasn’t the greeting he’d expected. “I don’t know. I came to see him,” said Tripp. “Tell me what’s happened.”
Glora rubbed her face. She took one glance into her house, where Tripp saw her sons sitting around the table, and then she closed the door. Outside, she leaned close and spoke in a hushed tone that worried him.
“He hasn’t been back for two nights now. Hells, Milo and I spent all last night searching Mountmend, even though the guards said we should lock our doors when the spider things come. We even went into Old Kimby to see if he was mining or something, but there’s no sign of him.” She grabbed his arm now. His steel armor meant he couldn’t feel it but if he could, he was sure her hands would be cold as ice. “Please tell me you’ve seen him, Tripp.”
He shook his head. He wanted to be consoling, but factual. “Not since…yesterday morning, maybe? Or the morning before that?”
Glora leaned back against the door. “Hells. You don’t think he was caught out, do you? I mean, if he sometimes goes out into the plains to gather eve-moths. You can only find them when the sun starts to set.”
“I hope not, Glora. If he did, then…” he put a cork in the thought before it could leave his mouth.
He remembered something his dad always used to tell him; when you worry about a bad thing, you feel it twice. Once with the amount you think about it, and again if the thing actually happened. Better to act rather than think.
Tripp didn’t have time for this. He barely had time to craft what they’d need for the labyrinth, and he wanted the labyrinth complete before the wave hit. No good him hiding in Old Kimby while the rest of Godden’s Reach battled the orb weavers.
He liked Konrad, but he had to think in terms of necessity. Did he need him?
The answer had to be yes. He needed to spend the Konrad tokens, because they must have been useful. Otherwise, Konrad was nothing but a gateway into the quest, since other than give Tripp artificer goggles, a few pieces of advice, and access to the mines, work studio, and labyrinth, the dwarf hadn’t helped much.
It was a gamble that Tripp would have to make. Gamble the time it took to find Konrad versus the prospect of the reward his Konrad tokens would bring.
“I’ll go look for him,” he said. “Where does he go to find eve-moths?”
“Do you have a map?”
Tripp cast his map in front of Glora. She pointed at an area just east of Mountmend. “There’s a marsh here, and that’s where the eves gather when they come out.”
“Are the moths dangerous?”
“Well…”
“Stupid question, right? I’m going either way, so you might as well tell me everything I’ll need to know.”
“They’re big, put it that way. But they aren’t hostile. Some people are just scared of how they look.”
It occurred to Tripp that it didn’t matter how big they were; it was still daylight, so they wouldn’t be out. The problem was that if he found Konrad in the marshes, then it meant he’d been there at least a night and a half. If something had happened to force him to stay there so long, in a place so close to town, then it wasn’t something he wanted to think about.
“I’ll be back with Konrad,” he said. “And the guards were right, Glora. When it gets dark, lock your doors.”
He walked back through Mountmend, the frustration building in him. Every step was like the ticking of a clock, and he didn’t have time for this diversion.
It was midday. Assuming he could finish his crafting in three or four hours, that would leave an hour or two to solve the final room and then get out in time to fight the wave.
There was no margin for all the crap that was bound to be flung at him by Boxe, even without going to look for Konrad. If he spent time searching for the dwarf he was eating into his crafting time, and the less time he spent crafting, the smaller their chances of solving room three became.
Leaving Ko
nrad wasn’t very heroic, but heroism had a cost. When he’d charged in to help the woman with the muggers, he hadn’t thought about that. Without his intervention, all she would have lost was her handbag. She’d be shaken, but she would have gotten over it.
Tripp had almost lost everything. By rushing in, he’d weighed his whole future against being a hero. Or, had he weighed it at all? No, he hadn’t even considered the cost against the benefit.
He would do that now. By helping Konrad, by trying to be a hero, he might be throwing away everything he’d worked for in Soulboxe.
Heroism had its place, but a person had to decide what they were giving up. Blind heroism wasn’t heroic; it was stupid. Sometimes, a person just had to look out for themselves. Tripp was never going to risk himself for anyone else ever again.
Did that make him a bad person? Depended on who was the judge. One thing he knew was that almost everyone had tunnel vision. When they looked at the future, they saw themselves; how their lives would be, not anyone else’s. And that was the way it should be.
When Tripp had intervened with the muggers, he’d lost his eyesight and messed up his arm. The woman had visited him once, left some flowers, and she hadn’t been back before he got into the pod. A bunch of flowers was all his eyesight was worth in terms of the impact on her life, and she’d already moved on.
He didn’t blame her; she wasn’t beholden to him forever just because he helped her. But Tripp hadn’t put himself first, he hadn’t weighed up what it was going to cost him.
He opened his message screen and started composing one to Jon, only to remember that it was pointless. He was going to tell Jon to look for Konrad at the marshes, but knowing Boxe, the actual message Jon received would be something like ‘Hey Jon! Go to a place filled with monsters and charge in without thinking.’
He checked his map, and he saw that Warren and Jon were in the human town, an hour away.
“Damn it,” he said, and Clive swiveled to face him. “I either spend the afternoon looking for Konrad and then miss my chance to solve the room, or I leave Konrad in whatever the hell kind of trouble he’s in.”
