“How’re we going to divvy this up?” the Druid asked.
“Since Ian’s angel got us the treasure without having to fight 200 Ghouls, he should get first choice,” Hodin said.
The elf glared at Hodin. “You’re just saying that because of what I said.”
The dwarf shrugged. “Anybody got a problem with my plan?”
“No,” the Druid said.
“I got the treasure, too,” the gnome protested.
“Anybody from our group could have gotten the treasure,” Hodin pointed out. “Only the angel could have gotten us across without having to fight.”
“Fine,” the gnome relented.
“Whatever,” the elf grumbled.
I wasn’t about to say ‘no’ to first pick. “Thanks.”
Since I couldn’t wear it, the plate armor was worthless to me beyond its resale value. I couldn’t use the dagger effectively, either, so that was out. The only choice was between the wand and the necklace.
The wand could have given me a boost over my scepter’s stats – 10 more intellect, 10 more stamina, and 5 more critical strike, plus I would have been able to sell the scepter, maybe for a pretty penny. But my current necklace only gave me +3 Intellect. Switching it out would give me a whopping +37 more Intellect, plus an extra 20 Stamina. And more Intellect equaled more mana.
“I’ll take the necklace,” I said, sweeping it up off the sand and swapping it out with my much weaker Necklace of Bartok, which I dropped in my bag.
“Aw,” the Druid said.
“Shit,” the elf hissed.
That let me know I’d made exactly the right choice.
The others divvied up the loot according to their abilities. The gnome got the dagger, which he was pleased about. The Druid got the wand, and Hodin paid the elf a piece of gold to get both pieces of armor, plus he gave her his old gloves and boots which she could resell for another 20 silver each.
Everybody was happy – or at least the guys all were. The elf was about as happy as she was going to get.
“Alright… back to the beginning and go left?” Hodin asked.
The gnome was about to say something, but the Druid held up one finger. “DON’T, or I swear to God you’re not getting another heal for the rest of the dungeon.”
“Man,” the gnome muttered.
We went back to the graveyard and headed in the one direction we hadn’t taken.
When we got to the end of the corridor, we found another large space – although this wasn’t an open courtyard. It was a series of alcoves and walkways that looked like MC Escher had sketched the blueprint. There were winding stairways that led up to ramps that turned into arches that curled back around into tunnels.
“O-kaaaay…” Hodin said as we stared at the bewildering architecture. “Anybody got any preferences?”
“Whatever you do, don’t go left,” the gnome snickered. “It’s NEVER left.”
“HEY!” the Druid barked.
We set off together into the maze and found that it was infested with sand trolls. This time they weren’t just Warriors, either; there were Mages and Hunters, which meant magic attacks and arrows flying at us from out of nowhere. It took us 30 minutes of advancing, hitting dead ends, backtracking, and trying new routes until we finally cleared the place of trolls and wound up on the other side of MC Escher-land.
On the plus side, I got over 70 silver, a few healing potions, and a couple of archery bows I could sell for 3 silver each.
On the other side of the maze was an open courtyard and a female troll in black robes. An ID tag above her name said she was Kartha the Sand Witch.
Cue the jokes.
“Why not Kartha the Hoagie?” the gnome called out.
“Or Kartha the Burrito?” the Druid laughed.
“Or Kartha the Philly Cheese Steak?” the gnome said.
“SILENCE, FOOLS!” Kartha shrieked. “You have earned my wrath and will not leave this place alive!”
“CHILL, BITCH!” Stig shouted, earning another laugh from the group. “TELL THAT BITCH TO CHILL!”
Kartha had a few nasty tricks we hadn’t seen yet. Like sending dust devils after you that blasted you with grit and felt like they were peeling off your skin. Or summoning giant hands made of sand that pummeled you into the ground. Or giant sand golems that couldn’t be hurt, merely temporarily dispersed.
But we all knew the first rule of dungeons: if at all possible, ignore the minions and always go after the boss.
Hodin flew at Kartha in a rage, the gnome Rogue sliced and diced her, and Meera slashed away with her flaming sword. Stig, the elf, and I hit her with long-range attacks. The Druid kept us alive throughout all the sand golems and dust devils.
Kartha folded after about three minutes, and we got another round of fairly nice rewards, though not as nice as the ones earlier. I scored a trinket that gave me +15 Haste, which meant I could cast my spells marginally faster: 2.2 seconds for a Darkbolt instead of 2.5, and similar for Darkfire and Doomsday. It may not seem like much, but when you’re up against 10 enemies at once, it can add up.
We left the Sand Witch’s courtyard (although the jokes about burgers and combos and bags of chips lasted another several minutes) and entered a narrow corridor that stretched for over a hundred feet. I checked my map and saw that, yes, we had finally left the first stage of mazes and courtyards and were advancing into a completely different area.
We got about 80 feet down the corridor when something huge fluttered down from the top of the walls and landed gracefully on the sandstone floor in front of us.
It was a giant Sphinx, about five times larger than the other one. The body was closer in size to an elephant, though it still looked like a lion. The wingspan probably would have equaled a Gulfstream jet’s if it had unfurled them all the way. And the female head was disturbingly oversized, like that of a giant.
Worst of all, the thing had 500,000 hit points.
“That is much larger than the other one,” Meera said fearfully.
“You think that’s ‘Mother’?” Hodin asked.
“That’s a mother, alright,” the Druid whispered.
“If it’s not Mother and there’s something bigger…” I said, then trailed off. I didn’t have to finish the sentence; everyone understood how utterly fucked we would be.
“Mortals,” the Sphinx boomed in an unearthly voice, “answer my riddle correctly and pass unmolested. Answer incorrectly and die.”
“I really, really don’t wanna be molested by that thing,” the gnome whispered.
“It’d wear you on the tip of its dick like a hat,” the Druid said.
“It’s a girl, dumbass.”
“Oh yeah… then I guess you’d be just about the right size for a butt plug.”
“Shhhh!” the elf hissed as the Sphinx began to speak.
“What does man love more than life,
“Fear more than death or mortal strife.
“What the poor have, the rich require,
“And what contented men desire.
“What the miser spends and the spendthrift saves,
“And all men carry to their graves?
“You have one minute to answer my riddle,” the Sphinx announced.
A countdown timer started over the creature’s head: 1:00, 0:59, 0:58…
“What does man love more than life?” Hodin asked.
“Sex?” the gnome asked.
“People don’t fear sex,” the Druid pointed out. “Well, not usually.”
“Power?” the elf said.
“Poor people don’t have power,” Hodin said.
As they talked frantically amongst themselves, I ran through the final words of the riddle.
What a miser spends…
What a spendthrift saves…
What all men carry to their –
“Nothing,” I said aloud.
Everybody looked at me.
“The answer is ‘nothing,’” I said. “People fear nothing more than dea
th. Poor people have nothing, the rich require nothing, and you carry nothing to the grave.”
“Is this your answer?” the Sphinx asked.
“Sounds good to me,” Hodin said.
“Yeah,” the elf admitted. “Go for it.”
“The answer is ‘nothing,’” I said loudly.
The Sphinx bowed her head. “You have answered correctly. You may pass.”
Then it leapt up into the air with a flap of its giant wings and disappeared over the sandstone walls.
“Thank God we didn’t have to fight it,” Hodin muttered as we moved on down the corridor.
I couldn’t help but wonder what kind of loot the Sphinx would have dropped if we’d fought and killed it. I would definitely get a chance to find out if I did the dungeon another 20 or 30 times. If it asked different riddles every time, there was no way I would be able to guess all of them.
The corridor opened up into another gigantic courtyard, twice as big as any we’d encountered so far. But just like last time, there was no sign of anything alive – and there wasn’t a fountain this time.
“Uh oh,” the Druid mumbled.
“Meera, fly across and put your foot down every 20 feet or so,” I ordered.
She took off through the air. Every 20 feet she would descend and stomp the ground, then soar up into the air again.
Nothing happened the first time or the second.
But the third got a reaction.
The ground shifted beneath her and a monster erupted from the sand. This was no scaled-down version of Frank Herbert’s worms; this was a full-on 1:1 replica, big around as a giant sequoia.
“MEERA, GET OUT OF THERE!” I screamed as the sandworm burst up into the air and opened its three jaws, each one as big as a pickup truck’s flatbed.
Its roar was like a slowed-down T. Rex’s out of Jurassic Park, and it shook the air around us like an explosion.
Meera cut hard right and zoomed back over to us as the worm rose up 30 feet into the air, then crashed down on the sand like a breaching whale.
“DON’T LEAD IT BACK HERE!” the gnome screamed in panic.
“Keep circling in the air!” I yelled at her. “Keep it away from us until we figure out what to do!”
Meera immediately began to fly in a spiral around the courtyard. The worm reared up again and tried to catch her, though it wasn’t having any luck. She was just too fast for something that bulky.
I selected the creature to get a readout on its stats. The ID tag over its head said Ixos the Sand God, and it had 700,000 hit points.
“Great,” I muttered. “How do you want to handle this?”
“Maybe we can get it to swallow Brak again and he can cut it apart from the inside,” the Druid joked.
“Maybe you can kiss my little white ass,” the gnome shot back.
“The ranged DD’s can stay back and hit it from a distance,” Hodin said. (By ‘ranged DD’s’ he meant me and the elf.) Then he looked at the Druid. “Same with you, Jaxos. Me and Brak’ll go in and do what we can to keep it away from you guys.”
“Sometimes I hate being a Rogue,” the gnome sighed, and whoosh went invisible.
“I’ll have Meera try to tank for you guys from the air,” I said. “If she can pull its aggro, maybe you’ll have a chance on the ground.”
“Sounds good. Let’s go!” Hodin yelled, and darted out over the sand towards the giant worm.
“Meera!” I yelled. “Try to harass it from the air – fly by and stick it with your sword – but don’t get yourself killed!”
The strategy proved amazingly effective. Every time the worm would start to go after Hodin or Brak, Meera would swoop in and slash the worm with her flaming sword. It would lunge after her, but it was never fast enough to catch her.
Meanwhile, Stig, the elf, and I all hit it as hard as possible. In the end it started firing glops of acid at us, but we were far enough away that we could dodge them easily enough. The monster clipped Meera a couple of times with its acid spray. She screamed in agony, but I healed her with Self-Sacrifice as fast as I could.
Ten minutes later, the worm crashed down onto the sand, dead. The BOOM! that reverberated through the courtyard was like somebody had felled a giant redwood.
“That wasn’t so bad,” the Druid remarked.
Suddenly the sand around the worm began to slowly cave in, sifting in towards the center of the courtyard. The monstrous carcass slowly slid into the sinkhole, which was growing in size by the second.
“You just had to say something, didn’t you?” the elf snapped.
“Shit – RUN FOR IT!” Hodin yelled at us.
Stig, the elf, the Druid, and I all sprinted for the sides of the courtyard and ran along the walls. Hodin and Brak were already more than halfway across – but they were also closer to the sinkhole, and were having trouble as the slope became steeper and the sand fell away faster.
“Meera, save them!” I yelled.
The angel swooped down, hooked Brak’s leather armor, and lifted him into the air. She spun him like a discus and flung him 50 feet away, where he crashed into the sand and tumbled head over ass. But at least he was outside the funnel of the sandy ‘black hole.’
Hodin wasn’t doing nearly as well. He was losing ground, sliding down into the funnel –
And then we saw what was causing the ground to cave in.
A monstrous, gaping mouth exactly like the Sarlacc pit in Return of the Jedi began to take shape. It was a series of concentric circles of dusty flesh, with dozens of log-sized teeth arranged like the minute hands of a clock. Sand cascaded down into its mouth like waterfalls, and we watched the dead sandworm tumble into its gullet.
The ID tag said ‘Vaxos, God of Ixos.’
Huh – so even sand gods had their own gods in this game.
1.5 million hit points.
There was no way in hell we could take that thing. Our only chance was to outrun it.
Hodin made the mistake of looking over his shoulder. As soon as he saw what he was running from, he doubled his efforts to scramble up the slope, but just ended up slipping down twice as fast.
“HELP!” he screamed.
Meera swooped in and grabbed him under his arms. With his plate armor he was considerably heavier, but after a few seconds of straining and flapping her wings, she was able to lift him a few feet above the ground and fly him to safety beyond the sinkhole’s ‘event horizon.’
That just left the rest of us.
We were halfway across the courtyard when the sand began to shift under our feet. Just a little at first, but then more and more, faster and faster.
Stig was far ahead of us, since he could scamper on all fours like a dog. But the rest of us were lagging severely behind.
Ever tried jogging on the beach 50 feet from the ocean where the sand’s all loose?
Now add in a desert version of Charybdis sucking all that loose sand down at a 45 degree angle and you’ll know what we were dealing with.
Meera came soaring back towards us. I held up one hand and she grabbed it and hauled me up into the air.
“You’re LEAVING us?!” the elf shrieked.
I SHOULD, that’s for sure…
“I’ll send her back for you!” I yelled.
Meera dropped me off with Brak and Hodin just as Stig came running up.
“Thanks, Meera – go save the Druid first!” I yelled.
The angel wheeled back through the air towards the other two.
Hodin winced. “Therasia’s not going to like that.”
“The healer’s indispensable if we want to continue,” I pointed out. “The Fire Mage isn’t.”
“I didn’t say it was the wrong call. I just said she’s not going to like it.”
Too fuckin’ bad, I thought, but kept that to myself.
We watched with bated breath as Meera struggled to carry the bearlike Druid. Even with plate armor, Hodin was a dwarf and a lot lighter. Jaxos was so big and heavy that the best Meera could do was c
ounteract some of his weight so it was easier for him to climb up the shifting sand dune.
“HELP!” the elf screamed. She was slipping backwards down the slope.
“Shit, she’s not going to make it,” Hodin said, his voice tense.
“She’ll make it,” I said, though I wasn’t so sure.
The elf fell flat on her face and began sliding faster.
“PLEASE HELP ME!” she wailed, her voice panicked.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Hodin murmured, and moved like he was about to go out after her –
I grabbed his arm. “Don’t be stupid. There’s nothing you can do. You’ll just get sucked in, too. She can respawn and come join us.”
“But then she’s got to face down the Sphinx and this thing again – alone.”
Oh. I hadn’t thought about that.
As soon as the Druid was out beyond the worst of the funnel, I yelled at Meera, “DROP HIM AND SAVE THE ELF!”
Meera let go of the big-ass bear and wheeled sharply back over the cascading sands.
“PLEASE – PLEASE HELP ME!” the elf screamed in terror.
I realized I had balled my hands into fists and was clutching them so hard that my fingernails were cutting into my palms.
I knew intellectually that the elf would just respawn if she died, but it still sucked. Watching someone die without being able to help them made me feel helpless. Knowing it was a video game didn’t make it any better. It seemed so real that you couldn’t separate out the game from reality.
And if it was that scary to me, I couldn’t imagine how terrifying it was for the elf.
Her screaming suddenly stopped.
My heart skipped a beat as Meera dipped below the edge of the sand cascade, beyond what we could see.
We all held our breath.
One second passed.
Two seconds.
Three… four…
And then Meera flew up over the sand, a limp body cradled in her arms, sand spilling from the elf’s robes as they sped away from the sinkhole.
“YEAH!” I yelled.
“YES!” Hodin shouted.
“WOO-HOO!” the gnome screamed.
“HELL YEAH!” the Druid roared.
Meera alighted next to us and gently lowered Therasia to the ground. The elf’s health bar was a sliver of red, nothing more. Apparently she had been on death’s doorway when Meera grabbed her at the very last second.
Pengantar Psikologi Klinis Page 19
