“Yeah, keep it up, rabbit,” Crash said. “I’m about to call you lunch. There’s no food stands in the dungeon, you know.” As he stood, he raised his new sword up high and called out, “Sacred Spiral!” A glowing ring of light surrounded him, shards that looked like thorns spiraling around the ring. After a moment, the glow faded, like most long-term buff spells and abilities. “There, ready to kick some ass.”
“I wouldn’t worry about the food too much. I’m sure we’ll be fine,” I said as I looked through my display tabs, just to make sure everything was in order. My stamina was holding at around 85 percent. Besides, being in a virtual world meant we didn’t actually have to eat three meals a day — it didn’t seem to take that much to maintain. It probably just felt like we should eat more often than we had to.
Which kind of sucked, because I really could’ve gone for a nice steak right about now. Or even one of Janno’s fine chicken dinners.
“Okay, so where to next?” I said as I stretched out in front of the fire, feeling the warmth sink into me. “Got any more thoughts about where your sister might have gone?”
Nova sighed and looked down at the ground. “Probably not fire. Other than that, I have no idea.”
“Hold on. I bet all these areas start with a puzzle room,” I said. “Why don’t we just check out behind the doors and see if any of them are already solved? Then maybe we can figure out where Terra went.”
Nova shook her head. “The puzzles reset if you don’t finish the area, so whichever one it is would’ve gone back to default by now.”
“I’ve got it. The water level,” Crash said. “You said she’s an experienced gamer, right? Everybody does the water level first to get it over with, because they seriously suck.”
I nodded along as he spoke. “Yeah, nobody likes the water level. We might as well go for it,” I said. “Anybody object?”
“Not me,” George said as he hopped toward Nova and plopped himself in her lap. “But can we just hang here for a few minutes? I’m not up to full charge yet, and I need to get me some scratch.”
Nova laughed and started rubbing his fur. “You are just the cutest thing,” she crooned.
“Fine. Five minutes,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “But we need to keep moving as fast as possible, so don’t even try to slack off.”
George didn’t reply. He was busy soaking up the love.
15
The door to the water area opened onto a four-walled, fully tiled chamber with a wooden trap door in the middle of the floor and large, open pipes sticking out from each wall, about a foot off the floor. There were no buttons or levers or other openings I could see.
“Don’t close the door yet,” I said as I stepped into the chamber first, headed for the trap door. “I want to see if I can get this open.”
I knelt by the trap door and grabbed for the ring pull, but my fingers encountered nothing but a smooth surface. Even the wood didn’t have any texture. It felt just like the tiles surrounding it, which was really weird because it looked completely real and three-dimensional, even from right on top of it.
“No dice, huh?” Crash said from behind me. The rest of them had come into the chamber, but the door was still open. “Is it locked, or what?”
“It’s not even there. I think it’s an illusion,” I said as I straightened and looked more closely around the room. “Maybe there’s a key, or a scroll or something. Check the tiles and see if any of them are loose, I guess? I’ll try to use lock picking.”
George hopped over and sniffed at the trap door that wasn’t really there. “I’m not seeing a lock, boss. What are you going to pick?”
“Can’t hurt to try, right?” I said as I pulled up my trade skills tab and selected lock picking.
“You cannot use lock picking unless there is a lock,” Elizabeth informed me, being pleasantly unhelpful. “There are no locks within your range.”
“Thanks,” I muttered, moving my focus off the HUD. “Anybody find anything?”
Crash straightened from inspecting the floor. “Nothing loose down here,” he said.
“The walls seem solid, too,” Nova said as she ran a hand along the tiles next to the entrance. “I mean, I haven’t checked every single tile yet.”
“Maybe we should. At least the ones we can reach,” I said, heading toward the far wall. “Unfortunately, we’re probably not going to find anything until we close the door.”
“Yeah, and then we’ll have to find it while something tries to kill us,” Crash said as he inspected the tiles on the left wall. “But it looks like the only way.”
“What are we waiting for, then?” George said. “Somebody close the door already.”
Nova grabbed her staff and held it out. “Hold on, I have an idea,” Nova said. “Detect Invisible.”
The end of the staff glowed a deep, vibrant blue, and the light swelled and burst, filling the entire chamber. Everything looked exactly the same, except it was blue now.
“Still not seeing anything,” Crash said with a sigh. “I guess we’d better bring on the deadly whatever.”
I held a hand up and turned in a slow circle, looking closely at the walls, and then up. That’s when I noticed something on the ceiling, at least twenty feet above us. “Right there,” I said as I pointed to it. “There’s a trap door on the ceiling. The one down here must be a mirror.”
“Great,” George said as he craned his head up. “I don’t know about you guys, but I can’t jump that high. Anybody know how to fly?”
Nova flicked her staff, and the blue light turned off. “There’s only one way to get up there,” she said. “And we won’t find out what it is until we close the door.”
“Yeah. Well, at least we know where we’re going,” I said as I moved toward the entrance. “Let’s get this puzzle started.”
I pushed the door shut. The instant the latch clicked into place, the door vanished into more tiles and there was an ominous groaning, gurgling sound. Then thick jets of freezing cold water started spraying from all four of the pipes at the same time.
One of them hit George directly and smashed him against the opposite wall.
“Shit!” I rushed over and grabbed him, picking him up as he coughed and spluttered. The water in the chamber was already ankle-deep and rising fast. “You okay, George?” I said.
“I am not a happy bunny,” he said as he shook his ears, spraying water droplets everywhere. “Uh. Don’t put me down, okay? Rabbits aren’t exactly champion swimmers.”
Nova shivered and stared at the rising water level. “So, we just have to float to the top and open the trap door, right?” she said, lifting a dripping foot clear.
“Yeah, if we survive that long,” Crash said as his gaze unfocused and he looked at his display. “Don’t know about you guys, but I’m losing health already.”
I checked my stats and saw that my health had dropped by two percent as the water surged up past my knees. “Okay, we’d better cast whatever we can to slow the damage down,” I said as I lifted George up to my shoulders. “You stay there. I don’t want to know what happens when you get soaked.”
“He probably starts reproducing more obnoxious rabbits, like a gremlin,” Crash muttered as he scanned his inventory. “Let’s not feed him after midnight. Okay, I’ve got … nothing. Except for Decrease Weight. Maybe that’ll help us swim better?”
“Yeah, it might. But I leveled Decrease Weight, so let me cast that one,” I said, and hit everyone with the level 2 spell one at a time.
“I can do Water Resist and Elemental Resistance,” Nova said as she snapped back from focusing on her HUD. “The Elemental Resistance buff protects against natural elements too, and they’ll stack.”
As she cast buffs around, the freezing water surged toward my waist and I held back a howl as my family jewels tried to crawl back home. “Guh, this sucks,” I said to no one in particular.
“Tell me about it,” Crash said through clenched teeth, wiggling around in a way that co
nfirmed his nuts had just taken a frigid bath, too. “Okay, I can probably hit up Elemental Resistance again to get a better stack bonus.”
“Anybody got a turn-up-the-furnace buff?” George murmured as he huddled damply against my neck, shivering. “My fur coat’s not doing me a lot of good here.”
The water level surged again, this time lifting my feet from the floor. Nova was already floating on the surface, shivering as she treaded water. “Oh, God, I hope this doesn’t take long,” she said in a shaking voice. “I think my feet are already numb.”
“Yeah, same here.” Crash bobbed on the surface, moving his arms slowly to stay up.
I kicked my legs and used one arm to maintain my position, keeping the other free to grab George if I needed to. “It looks like we’re going pretty fast,” I said as I watched the wall across from me. The water was crystal clear, but everything beneath it was too distorted to tell how far we’d risen. It was easier to judge by looking at how quickly the water level covered the tiles.
“Uh. Really fast, actually,” Crash said as the steady slosh of water in the chamber increased to a churning rush. “Like, we’re gonna be submerged before we can get that door open fast.”
I glanced up to see the ceiling rushing to meet us.
“Fantastic. Nova, cast that detecting spell,” I said, just as George sneezed all over my face. “Ugh, thanks a lot. George, how long can you hold your breath?”
“Don’t know,” he said. “I never had a reason to find out.”
“Detect Invisible!” Nova called as the tip of her staff broke the water and washed everything in blue light. “Okay, I should be able to hold this long enough for you to get that door open.”
I nodded and stretched an arm out, ready to grab the ring pull as soon as it was within reach, as I used the other hand to steady George. “Everybody take a deep breath when we’re almost there,” I said and then turned to George. “You get to be the first one through the door this time, buddy. As soon as I get it open, I’m throwing you up there.
“Thanks! Great plan!” George cried. “What if there’s something on the other side that likes to eat rabbits?”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be right behind you,” I said, as much to reassure myself as him. I knew if he got caught in the surge of water, his bunny-sized lungs wouldn’t sustain him for long — and I wasn’t about to lose him. Not like this.
My reaching hand brushed the ring bolt on the hidden trap door, and I grabbed it and pulled hard. The trap door popped open, and I kept hold of the ring and boosted myself up, bringing George around by the scruff to toss him gently through the opening. I heard Crash and Nova drag in huge breaths as I scrambled up after the rabbit, glanced to make sure he was safe on some kind of ground and not being eaten, then flattened beside the water-filled trap door and grabbed the first hand that popped up.
Nova came out easily, and I suspected Crash had given her a push through. As she crawled aside, gasping and shivering, I grabbed Crash’s hand when it thrust out of the water and pulled him up. He dropped on the ground, rolled once and started coughing in harsh barks.
With everyone clear, I slammed the trap door shut in case the water kept pumping and flooded wherever we were. But for the moment, at least, we were definitely surrounded by air … which was a lot more breathable than water.
“Hey, I have a great idea. Let’s never do that again,” my shivering rabbit said as he hopped his soggy butt toward me across the damp grass we’d landed on.
“Agreed,” I said as I turned to make sure everyone was alive. Both Crash and Nova were flat on their backs, eyes closed, but definitely breathing. So, I took a look around.
This was an underground cavern, but it was vast — much bigger than the place with the columns in the Earth area. It was gloomy but not dark, about as bright as twilight. The illumination came from thousands, or maybe millions, of glowing white specks that drifted and clustered around the rock formations hanging from the roof of the cavern far above.
The grassy field we were on sloped down to the shores of a huge underground lake, its smooth black surface reflecting the pinpoints of light and making it look like an inverted, star-spangled night sky. A long wooden dock extended into the lake … and there was a ship tethered at the end of the dock. An old, rotting ship with ragged patched sails and splintering wood that looked straight out of a movie about ghost pirates.
I had a sinking feeling that we’d have to board that ship.
16
“Okay. This thing is seriously spooky,” Crash said as we stood at the end of the dock, looking at the ship.
Up close, the ship looked even more rundown and unsafe than it had from a distance. The mast was cracked, the sails were little more than rags, and there were patches of green and black slime all over the sides, the railing, and the floorboards. A splintered wooden gangplank led to the deck, giving us easy access to board. Lucky us.
“Spooky or not, that’s where we’re going,” I said as I tested the gangplank with a foot. “There’s no other way out of here, unless you feel like swimming the lake.”
George shuddered. “No, thanks. I’ve been soaked enough for today.”
We’d spent a few minutes recovering on the grass before we came down here, and I’d even managed to build a small fire with materials I still had from the Skeleton King’s siege at Silver Gables. At least everyone was dry and at full regen now, so we could face whatever happened on the ship.
With a quiet, distant-looking Nova leading the way, we walked onto the ship. I came up last, and just as I stepped onto the deck, the gangplank retracted itself. The thick rope that tied the ship to one of the dock posts unknotted and coiled onto a rusty hook on the outer wall, and the ship started to drift out onto the lake.
“At least we don’t have to learn how to sail,” I said as the ship creaked gently backwards and around, making a two-point turn to head into the water. Having this thing steer itself really upped the creep factor. “Well, we’d better look around. Something’s definitely going to happen. This isn’t going to be just a nice boat ride across an underground lake.”
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to find. The main deck was spacious, probably ten feet across and twenty feet long, with steps leading up to a platform with a steering wheel at the front, and a smaller platform at the back. There were rope railings along the sides of the deck, with a dozen or so wooden barrels along one side and three stacks of cannonballs on the other. Finally, there was a hatch in the center of the deck, locked and covered with a grid of rusted iron bars.
After a few minutes of poking around, we gathered around the center hatch. The ship had picked up a bit of speed, with a steady wind somehow managing to fill the torn sails and propel it forward. “Well, I guess I’ll try to pick the lock. Maybe there’s something down there,” I said as I crouched beside the hatch and queued up the lock pick skill.
Elizabeth chimed in without prompting. “You have encountered a timed lock. This lock cannot be opened using the lock picking skill,” she said, almost sounding smug.
“Great. What good is lock picking if I can never use it?” I said with a sigh, sitting on the edge of the hatch. “Elizabeth says this is a timed lock,” I told the others. “So, I guess we’ll just wait.”
“For what?” Crash said as he plunked down across from me.
I shrugged. “No idea,” I said as I looked at Nova with concern. She hadn’t said more than two words since we escaped the puzzle room. She’d already wandered away and stood at the ropes on the cannonball side of the ship, staring out at the water and the false stars it reflected. “Hey, are you okay?” I called to her.
She turned around slowly. “I guess so,” she said as she made her way back toward the hatch. “I’m just worried about Terra. I don’t think she’s in this area, because she probably wouldn’t have been able to find that trap door. If she’d gone into that puzzle room, she would’ve …” Nova broke off with a shiver. “She doesn’t really know many spells. I’m suppos
ed to be the spell caster, and she’s the muscle. I just should’ve gone with her, that’s all.”
Nova sat down next to me, and I patted her knee awkwardly. I wasn’t so great at consolation. “Don’t blame yourself,” I said, even though I really didn’t know much about the situation. “And don’t worry. We’ll find your sister.”
“I hope so,” she whispered.
George hopped over from the opposite side of the ship, where he’d been inspecting the barrels. “What do you think is in those things?” he said as he sat on his haunches and groomed his whiskers. “They smell kinda weird.”
“Everything smells weird on this piece of crap ship,” Crash said as he stood and started pacing. “Seriously, it’s like my grandma’s moldy basement. And what are we waiting for, anyway?”
Just then, the wind died down and stopped completely. The ragged sails fell slack, and the ship drifted to a dead stop in completely still water. Fog boiled from the mirror-black surface of the lake, thick and curling, until it blocked the entire cavern from view.
“I think this is what we’re waiting for,” I said, standing slowly and taking a few steps toward the railing. “We’re probably about to get attacked by the Kraken or something.
That was when I heard a loud, metallic click, like a bolt being opened.
I whirled back, grabbed Nova’s hand and pulled her off the hatch, seconds before the iron bar door exploded up and slammed into the deck. A dripping, green-slimed skeletal arm, the bones blackened with age, shot from the hatch and grabbed the side of the wooden box opening, hauling the rest of a waterlogged skeleton behind it. The apparition clutched a rusted scimitar in its other bony hand.
“At least it’s not a sea monster,” I said as I backed away, holding a hand out. “Fire Wall!”
A line of flames rose in front of the skeleton as it clambered right into the fire — and then moved through it untouched. More of them were coming up from the hatch, two at a time now. The one I’d tried to burn rushed at Nova and me, drawing its weapon back.
Soulstone: Oblivion (World of Ruul Book 3) Page 10
