by David M Zahn
"You overlooked the smallest member of our party," Elaria said gesturing to Minty where he sat on his hind legs looking pleased with himself. "Your friend, Martha, came in to boast to her husband, and my friend here beat her, took the keys, and helped lock her in one of your own cages."
"Martha was always a bit of an idiot," Mrs. Jameson said. "Still, I can't believe she actually lost to a large rat."
"He's an otter," Elaria snapped. "Seriously, how hard is it to tell? He looks nothing like a rat, has a vastly different body structure, eats a different diet, and lives in a different environment."
"I can see this is a touchy subject for you," Jameson said, raising her eyebrows. "I'll give you two options to save yourselves. You can either return to your cages and wait patiently in them, or if you can find another way out of these ruins, I'll let you leave, but if you chose to continue this way, we will completely and utterly destroy you. There will be no respawn for you if you die."
What was that supposed to mean? No respawn for us if we die? Is that even possible in this world?
"Your scare tactics aren't going to work on us," I said through gritted teeth. "The jig is up, Jameson. A bunch of people who were captured were sent for respawn and are probably now filling in the town on everything you've done."
"They know nothing," she hissed. "They know less than nothing. Look at yourself. Do you really think you can take us in your condition? We've practically killed you already and that was just our front entrance."
Spitting blood out to the side, I shrugged and said, "I've gotten worse playing hockey back in Minnesota. Your traps gave me a nice tickle, though."
I was full of shit, of course, and she probably knew it by the look of me, but I wasn't about to admit the amount of pain that staircase caused me. If there was one thing I was learning about the Phoenix of Altria, it was that he was great at taking punishment and pretending that it wasn't killing him on the inside. Pretend your fine first and die later would be a good motto for him.
"Jackson, Lilith, let's go," Jameson snapped at the two young people with her. "This fool won't see reason."
"Wait, are you two Jackson Tuckett and Lilith Franklin?" Eldertits asked, voicing my thoughts.
"They are," Jameson replied, "and no, they weren't taken but are here of their own free will. These two little lovebirds have been with us from the beginning."
Casting Cure on myself, I ripped the dagger out of my stomach and fought off the urge to let loose a moan of pleasure. I refused to show any sign of weakness to these creeps.
"Here, I think this belongs to you," I said, holding the dagger by the blade and throwing it up at Jameson.
It spun over and over until somehow, miraculously, caught her right in the chest. A gasp of pain escaped her mouth, and she grabbed at the space around the knife. It should have never worked. I only tried it because I remembered seeing people throw knives in movies like that. Without question, it had to be the luckiest throw of all time. If I tried that again a thousand times I would miss every time.
"You will regret that," she spat down at me and then yelled something in a language I couldn't understand. "I gave you your chance. You brought this upon yourselves. Come Jackson, Lilith."
She marched away from the staircase with the two young adults following closely behind. They disappeared from my line of sight shortly after moving. From down below, we just didn't have much of a view of what was on the level at the top of the stairs.
"That might be the single most badass thing I've seen in this world," Eldertits said a moment later. "With your dexterity, the great gods of RNG must love your skinny white ass."
"What is RNG?" Elaria asked.
"Something that isn't important right now," Rondo replied, staring up the staircase. "We've got bigger fish to fry."
Looking up at the top of the staircase, several ghouls were shambling slowly toward us. They were all bald and naked with blue-white skin. Their eyes glowed a light blue, and where normal humans would have had mostly flat teeth, these monsters had teeth that looked to have been sharpened to a point.
"Think any of them can get it up?" Tits asked as the first one began climbing down the staircase.
"Tits," I snapped. "Not the time."
She sighed and replied with, "Fine, Graard and the guard up front with me. Rondo, you watch our backs from close range and ranged fighters toward the rear."
"What about the rest of us?" one of the villagers asked while Iasz whispered instructions to Graard.
"Hug that wall and try not to get eaten," Eldertits said, summoning her axe.
Everyone moved into motion quickly, and I found myself standing near the trapped staircase in the back with Elaria on one side of me and Iasz on the other. Tits stood up front next to the staircase with Graard to one side and the nervous-looking guardsman on the other. Rondo stood in between our two groups spinning twin daggers in his hands while he waited impatiently.
I began summoning fireballs and shooting them at the undead as they came down the stairs and even got lucky enough to set one on fire. The weird thing was that the ghouls didn't scream; they just kept up a steady moaning even before we hit them with anything.
Elaria began loosing arrows while Iasz stole my move and began blasting them with fireballs as well. As soon as the Ghouls reached striking range, Eldertits and Graard absolutely decimated them.
The guard just stood there looking like he was ready for a fight, but the two heavy hitters weren't in the mood for sharing. Rondo got even less action than the guard, and after a minute, he simply vanished his knives and stood there looking bored.
Elaria, Iasz, and I cleaned up the last couple ghouls before they even reached the meat grinder at the bottom of the stairs. All-in-all, it was the easiest fight I remembered having since I entered Everlast Online. Surely, there was something else. No way that it was going to be this easy.
"After everything else we've been through today, that was almost boring," Eldertits said, vanishing her axe.
"I'm not going to complain," I replied. "I need to take these arrows out and heal up, so I'll take an easy fight when I get one."
"It doesn't make sense, though," Rondo said. "She just spent all that time talking about how they would utterly destroy us, and then all she sends at us is a dozen low-level ghouls?"
"Maybe there were supposed to be more?" the guard suggested.
"I'll check," Eldertits said slowly walking up the stairs. Once she reached the top she turned around and said, "Nope, there's nothing else up here except a door."
"Good, give me a second. I need to pull these goddamn arrows out," I said, walking over to the staircase.
The first arrow I tried pulling out slowly, but it was hard work and seemed to hurt every little bit I tugged at it. Some of my skin healed back over the arrows when I cast that Cure spell, and it was making this difficult work. Once I finally got the first one out, I sighed with relief until I realized that I had four more to go.
"Here, let me," Elaria said coming up to me.
She quickly grabbed and ripped an arrow out of me without thinking twice about it.
"Fuck," I yelled.
"Hold still or it will hurt worse," Elaria said, taking hold of the next one.
One-by-one she removed the remaining three, and I yelped for every single one of them.
"I thought you said you'd gotten worse playing hockey," Rondo said laughing.
"Fuck you," I replied, breathing heavily. "I've never played hockey in my life. I did go see the Wild once, though."
After this, the standard notifications came for defeating the ghouls.
Congratulations you have defeated level 8 ghoul! You have earned 93 XP.
Congratulations Eldertits has defeated level 9 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 109 XP.
Congratulations Graard has defeated level 6 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 62 XP.
Congratulations Eldertits has defeated level 8 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 93 XP.
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Congratulations Eldertits has defeated level 10 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 121 XP.
Congratulations Graard has defeated level 7 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 70 XP.
Congratulations Eldertits has defeated level 6 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 62 XP.
Congratulations Graard has defeated level 6 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 62 XP.
Congratulations Eldertits has defeated level 8 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 93 XP.
Congratulations Iasz has defeated level 10 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 121 XP.
Congratulations you have defeated level 9 ghoul! You have earned 109 XP.
Congratulations Elaria has defeated level 9 ghoul! As a party member, you have earned 109 XP.
"Ryland, you ought to put on some new clothes. Those ones are ruined," Rondo said. "Then we should all heal up before continuing on. It's best to be prepared."
Looking down, I remembered that most of my clothes were destroyed getting up the trapped staircase. Accessing my inventory, I swapped out the ruined pair for a new set. I knew that buying backup clothes was going to come in handy, especially with how many sets I seemed to destroy.
"Yeah, that's a good idea," I said, standing up and starting my Cure spell.
Slowly, I went around the group and healed every member. I had to wait a couple of times for my mana to recharge, but eventually, everyone reached full health, and we all gathered around the door on the top level.
It was a simple door made out of black planks of wood and was semicircular at the top. A small black handle was mounted to it on one side, but otherwise, it was unremarkable.
I reached out to grab the handle when Rondo yelled, "Stop. It's trapped."
Chapter Seventeen: At the Altar
"Can you untrap it?" I asked somewhat stupidly.
"Maybe, but it's going to be tricky," Rondo replied, examining the door a little more closely.
"Well, you're our best hope for getting out of here," I replied, moving to lean up against one of the water-filled pillars.
For the next ten minutes, our group waited impatiently while Rondo fiddled with the door. At one point, he took his dagger out and stuck it in the keyhole. He then twisted it and quickly dove out of the way, but nothing happened.
"Damn it," Rondo muttered to himself. "It has to be the handle."
"If you figure it out today, Elaria might reward you later," Eldertits said loudly, clearly looking bored.
"I can't disable this trap," Rondo announced sounding frustrated. "I'm going to have to set it off and hope for the best."
"Why can't you disable it?" I asked, pushing myself up straight.
"It's extremely well-designed," Rondo sighed. "Everyone should move back near the staircase. I'm not sure what will happen when I do this, but I'm going to trigger it, and hopefully, it won't kill me."
"There's got to be another way," Elaria said.
"There's not," Rondo said firmly. "I can tell that it's triggered when the handle is turned, but I'm not sure what will happen. I'll stand off to the side near the wall and turn it, and hopefully, whatever it does will only affect the area directly in front of the door."
"Alright, do it, but don't get yourself killed," I said, moving back toward the staircase.
Elaria looked like she wanted to argue, but in the end, she followed the rest of the group away from the doorway. Rondo hugged the wall on the left side of the door and reaching awkwardly to the side, turned the handle.
The door slowly opened inward revealing a dark hallway beyond, and for a moment, I thought nothing was going to happen. Then Rondo, as if he were being pulled by a black hole, was pulled upwards toward the ceiling above. Surprised, he clutched at the handle of the door while his feet were pulled above his head. At the same moment, small droplets of water began appearing on the floor and were sucked up to the ceiling where they started coalescing into a larger body of water.
"Rondo," Elaria yelled and started to run forward toward him.
She was stopped a second later by Eldertits grabbing a hold of her wrist.
"Let go," Elaria snapped at the other elf.
"If you go over there now, you won't be able to help him," Eldertits said firmly. "You'll just be sucked up into the ceiling like that water and be drowned. If he can hold onto that handle long enough, we might have a chance to save him before he drowns, but we have to wait for the reverse gravity spell near the floor to wear off."
The water began appearing faster and faster and bizarrely looked like a rainstorm in reverse. The ceiling near the door, which was about twenty feet above the floor, started looking like a swimming pool.
Meanwhile, poor Rondo held on with one hand for dear life. On his face, he had a look of grim determination, but the muscles in his arm had a different idea. His grip loosened, and his hold on the handle slipped. He fell upward into the pool with one arm still outstretched and a look of confusion on his face.
His head actually stayed above, or below depending on how you looked at it, the surface for another minute, but he was quickly submerged. I saw he was able to breathe a couple more times by jumping. His jumps were stunted as if the gravity on the ceiling was much stronger than it was on the floor, but at least he was still breathing.
"God damn it, Tits," Elaria yelled. "Let me go, he's going to die."
"Wait, it won't be long now," Eldertits said watching the water still pour upward. "As soon as it stops raining, it should be safe for us to approach."
Another thirty seconds passed, and blessedly, the rain broke. The last few droplets only went about a third of the way up toward the ceiling before they faltered and fell back down to the ground with a splash.
"Now," Eldertits said, releasing Elaria who ran over to stand beneath where Rondo was standing upside down on the ceiling, submerged in about seven or eight feet of water.
"Tits, pick me up. I can't reach him by myself."
The rest of us moved quickly over to where Elaria was standing, and Tits knelt down and wrapped her arms around the ranger's legs.
"Once you're about halfway to the ceiling, it's going to start pulling you in that direction," Eldertits said. "Get a firm grip on Rondo, then let me know, and we will pull you both back down. Don't let go of him. I won't let go of you."
"Just hold me up," Elaria snapped, and Tits obliged her.
I could tell instantly when she reached the halfway point, because she began sliding upward, and Eldertits had to squeeze her legs a little tighter and changed the direction she was exerting her muscles.
Reaching up, Elaria's hands disappeared in the water where they met the outstretched arm of Rondo a moment later. Elaria fumbled at him but was having a hard time reaching him.
"Let me go higher," Elaria said. "Just hold me by my ankles."
"I can't get a good grip at your ankles," Eldertits replied. "You might slip out of my grasp and drown."
"If you don't do it now, Rondo is going to die," Elaria snapped back at her.
Following Elaria's instructions, Eldertits slid her grip down to Elaria's ankles, and I could instantly see that it was much shakier than the grip had been when it was higher up on her legs. Elaria surged upwards and grasped Rondo's arm with both of her hands.
"Now pull us down," Elaria yelled. "I've got him."
Eldertits tried to pull down, but her grip on the other elf was tenuous at best, and Elaria shook in midair while Eldertits tried to pull her down.
"Now, Tits," Elaria yelled again.
"I'm trying," Eldertits said, sounding frustrated. "I can't get a grip. I need help over here, or I'm going to lose her. Grab her legs and pull. Quickly."
Moving quickly, I reached up and grabbed one of Elaria's legs and began pulling. The guard grabbed the other leg, and together, the three of us made enough progress for Rondo's head to break the surface of the water, and I heard the rogue take desperate erratic breaths followed by a fit of coughing.
We knew
we'd finally won the battle when Graard came over and wrapped his large arms around Elaria's legs and Eldertits and ripped the ranger downward. She came down with a jerk and landed on top of us, followed by Rondo.
We were soaked, sprawled out on the floor, and I was currently being crushed, but at least all of us were still alive. I might not be for much longer if this group didn't get off of me though.
"Please, move," I wheezed, feeling something hard digging into my kidney.
Slowly, people rolled off of the pile until I could finally breathe again. Standing up, I surveyed the scene and found that while Rondo looked a little haggard from his ordeal, he only lost about half of his hit points. I quickly charged Cure and cast it on him, bringing him back up near full health.
"Thanks," he muttered, wiping water off his face. "I thought I was getting sent for respawn for sure."
"You've got to admire their creativity," Eldertits said, looking up at the ceiling. "Honestly, that might be the coolest trap I've run across yet."
"How can you say that?" Elaria asked angrily. "These people are despicable, and that trap almost killed Rondo."
"It's fine, Elaria," Rondo said smiling. "I get what she means. It takes an exceptionally twisted mind to come up with a way to kill someone like that."
"Must take a twisted mind to appreciate the work of another," Elaria said, folding her arms and scowling at the other elf.
"It's a good thing you caught that, Rondo, or all of us would be..." I trailed off, looking at the ceiling.
"What's important is that no one died, and the path forward is now open," Rondo said. "I'm ready to move forward whenever y'all are."
"I hate to ask this," I said, "but you're the only one who seems to be able to detect traps. Would you lead us?"
