by Phil Tucker
Instead, I continued on to the next tower top, and slipped up beside the door to take a good listen. Nothing from within except perhaps the play of wind through the narrow windows. I ducked my head around and peered inside: pretty dark, but after a moment my eyes adjusted to the gloom and I made out the contours of an empty chamber. Nothing moved, nothing made any sound, so I stepped inside to examine things more closely.
The floor was littered with rusted blades and dented armor, most of it splotched black with dried blood. A horrendous fight must have taken place here. A hole larger than me gaped in the far side of the tower where something akin to a magic cannonball must have burst inside. The far wall of the tower bulged out as if the projectile had nearly gone through it as well.
A stairwell descended to the next level, and I was about to take it when a column of shadow moved with a leathery rustle.
I nearly yelled. Instead, I jumped back against the wall, my newly intuitive stealth helping me avoid kicking metal debris. I stared at the long shadow, trying to make it out.
Slowly, its features resolved themselves. A huge bat, nearly as tall as I was, suspended upside down with its black wings wrapped about itself.
I remained frozen. It had stirred but not awoken. How had I missed seeing it? Some magical or monstrous property? If so, that meant it would be a wicked predator at night, swooping in unseen. And at that size? It wouldn’t be hunting moths.
I licked my dry lips. What to do? I loathed the idea of killing an animal while it slept, but even from where I stood I could make out the massive fangs that emerged from its foxlike muzzle.
What would be best: killing it while it slept and feeling guilty, or trying to fight it at night by waving my dagger in the air in the hopes of scoring a fleeting hit as it attacked me?
I hardened my resolve. First, it wasn’t a real animal, just a creation of Euphoria. Second, it was clearly a monster, and would have to be dealt with sooner or later. This was my opportunity to take care of it now, on my terms. As a hardened gamer, I knew what I had to do.
I crept with exceptional care along the wall, and as I drew close I finally smelled it: a warm, musky smell, with hints of cinnamon. It smelled nice, actually, which kind of threw me off. I was used to monsters smelling like rotten meat or mold.
I inched forward and positioned myself behind it and to the left. That way I’d be able to reach across its throat with my right hand and slit it with one pull. I took a measured breath. I’d have one shot. I was counting on Backstab, but I’d need to take extra precautions.
Adrenaline Surge hit me like a flash flood roaring down a slot canyon, filling me not only with physical might but also with renewed confidence in what I was doing. I made a mental note to consider that later: did it have a secret effect on my mental stats?
I gripped my blade tight. Took a deep breath. Reached across the bat’s neck. Its long muzzle was tucked up, making my angle of attack narrow. One last breath, and then I stabbed in as hard as I could and yanked.
Adrenaline Surge made all the difference, for the bat’s hide was as tough as a leather couch. The point of my dagger struck true, sank in an inch or so, and then I ripped it free in a welter of blood.
The room exploded into chaos as the monstrous bat flapped its wings with a high-pitched keen, falling to the ground and thrashing around. I leapt back, right into the stairwell that curved down to the next floor, and ducked out of the way. No sense in taking a random buffet or blow.
The bat hissed and gurgled and flapped for what seemed like ages until finally it went still. My XP chime sounded in the resultant silence, and I slowly stood to peer back into the room. The bat lay on its back, one massive wing rising up the wall, the other half furled by its side.
I found that I didn’t want to stare at it. As necessary as the attack had been, I still felt dirty for killing a sleeping animal. Sleeping monster, I corrected myself. I shrugged my shoulders, cleaned my blade on my thigh, and tried to put the thought aside. In an attempt to cheer myself up, I opened my character sheet.
You have gained 35 experience (25 for killing a dire bat, 10 for your first assassination). You have 42 unused XP. Your total XP is 247.
You have learned new skills. Backstab (II)
My first official assassination. That did and didn’t make me feel better. Apparently, that kind of kill was sanctioned by my character class – obviously – but that didn’t assuage the unfairness of it. I rubbed at my jaw as I made my way down the stairwell to the next floor. I’d have to work on reconciling myself to life as a darkblade.
The stairs opened onto another chamber that took up the entire width of the tower. Faint bars of light filtered in through the arrow slit windows, barely enough to make out anything in the gloom, so I focused my thoughts and cast my Light spell.
In my mind’s eye gold light coalesced in my palm, grew extra bright, then broke free and floated up to become a radiant ball. Interesting. Powered by my own life force? My innate magic? Either way, it filled the chamber with a cool, eggshell-white glow, banishing the shadows and revealing the contents.
A metal spoke in the middle of the chamber rose from floor to ceiling, dozens of short rods of different lengths extruding from its body. It turned slowly with a subtle grinding sound, as if some sand had drifted into its works.
What the heck?
I fell into a crouch as I considered it. How was this part of the tower’s defenses? The floor was bare and clean, almost as if it had been swept. The walls, however, were scored with deep, blackened gashes, as if the stones had been slashed at by a blade so hot it could cut inches into the rock. Horizontal slashes, most of them a yard long or so, all at different heights.
This was a puzzle. Some kind of trap room. But what was it doing here? Lotharia’s warning came back to me. The castle was slowly devolving into a raid area. Perhaps this revolving column was a new addition. Something to challenge ruin-exploring adventurers. Either way, I’d have to get past it if I wanted to keep going down.
I studied the rods that extended out from the column’s surface. They were plain, about a foot in length, but their circular ends had been painted in different colors. Greens, blues, yellows and reds.
One thing I’d learned over my years of gaming was to not rush trap rooms if there was no need. So I settled down to think this one through. Examine every facet. I’m embarrassed to admit it took me five minutes to realize that the horizontal slashes in the wall lined up with the rods.
Huh. So something activated them, causing them to shoot beams of rock-melting energy. That wouldn’t be good.
Through painfully slow process of elimination I tried to match up the different colored tips to the slashes on the wall. I quickly connected crimson with the deepest gashes. Yellows clearly lined up with their own set of cuts, too. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure if the greens lined up with any, and was pretty sure the blues didn’t. But was I willing to bet my life on it? Try to sneak through the room, only crossing before green and blue rods?
Nope.
I dismissed my Light spell and Shadow Stepped across the room into the opposite stairwell. I ducked down out of sight immediately, but no slashes of fire split the air. My XP chime sounded. Surprised, I opened it up.
You have gained 5 experience (5 for evading but not defeating the tower trap). You have 47 unused XP. Your total XP is 252.
Rats. Almost enough for a spell. I just needed a bunch of rats to push me over and I could get Ebon Tendrils. For a second I was tempted to try and solve the trap room, but the depth of those slashes in the rock convinced me to keep going. I could always come back with Lotharia for her opinion.
Down to the next floor.
This one was lit by a faint blue radiance, the kind of light you might see if you shone a flashlight through a thick curtain of clear ice. It stemmed from a translucent cylinder that filled the center of the room, its interior
rippled but not opaque. I’d never actually gulped before, but the sight of the cylinder’s interior made me do so.
It had to be some kind of time-stop effect. But only one person had been completely contained by the cylinder. A half-dozen others had been partially caught, and those parts of them had been perfectly preserved. The parts of them that had remained outside...
Disgusting.
They hadn’t rotted off but rather it looked like something or someone had harvested the flesh that had remained free. Thus within the cylinder I could see legs, arms, parts of torsos, even two shoulders complete with necks and heads. The rest of their bodies were missing. Just rotted stumps, cut clean as if by cleavers.
Were those two men with their heads in the time-stop still alive in some sense? If so, they’d die horrifically the moment the spell ended.
Shuddering, I peered past the victims at the edge toward the man in the cylinder’s center. He was a young black guy, late teens perhaps, and clad in a combination of chain and plate armor. He was frozen in the act of yelling his defiance, an arm outstretched to shield his face, probably from the incoming timebomb that he’d seen hurled his way.
He looked so alive. Eyes narrowed in anger and defiance. As if at any moment he could have snapped out of his trance and finished his yell.
“Damn,” I whispered. “Whoever you are, I’m sorry.”
I was about to turn my scrutiny to the rest of the room outside the cylinder when I saw something lying on the floor before the armored youth. An intricate little sphere of blue enmeshed in silver wire.
I activated Detect Magic. The time-stop cylinder was blindingly bright, and for a moment I had to shut my eyes, dazzled by its power. By slow degrees however I was able to squint at the cylinder through my fingers, then drop my hand altogether.
Fascinating. The closest comparison I could come up with was those drawings of the earth’s magnetic poles, where the north and south pole were connected by continuous lines that bulged out around the planet. In this case, the lines were a soft, robin-egg blue, and energy was pulsing out of the top of that magic apple, circulating around the cylinder, then feeding back into the apple’s base.
Huh. If I could destroy the apple, or dispel its magic, I’d free the prisoner. But it was protected by its own effect. Out of curiosity, I picked up a pebble with Mage Hand and flung it at the cylinder.
The pebble hit the cylinder’s exterior without a sound and stopped, half embedded. So much for that.
“Sorry, buddy,” I said to the young knight. “Wish I could help you.”
I forced myself to look away. The rest of the room had been scavenged pretty thoroughly; a heap of trash had been swept up into one corner, while the rest of the floor was bare. Giving the cylinder a wide berth, I walked around to the next stairwell and made my way down.
I emerged onto the ground floor chamber, and someone – or something – had converted it into a den. Old sheets and blankets had been stretched out to form a small tent-warren, so that I couldn’t make out the actual floor. The broad doorway leading out into the bailey was blocked by numerous stout timbers jammed between it and the floor, while a largish gap in the wall led out onto the berm that hugged the castle wall just within the ravine.
As I crept down the stairs, I heard voices raised in argument. Three troglodytic humanoids, squat and small, clambered in through the gap, sacks over their shoulders.
“Ain’t worth it, I tell ya. How many of us are left now?” This was the smallest one, his skin the lightest green, his head hairless and his ears massive.
“Seventeen,” said his plump companion with beatific confidence.
“You always say ‘seventeen’,” snarled the little guy. “You don’t even know what that means!”
“Seventeen,” repeated the plump goblin with obvious wicked delight.
“Enough!” This was the third goblinoid. She wore what looked like a beaver skin over her head and draped down her back like a cloak, and had painted her face bone white with little black lines to indicate skull teeth over her lips. “We’ve brought back loot and food and more loot time and again, ain’t we? Quit yer yapping, Dribbler. We got a good thing going.”
“All I’m saying,” said Dribbler, dropping his sack as soon as he made the interior of the tower, “is that this ain’t workin’ in the long run! Where’s Hootie got to?”
“Dead,” said the plump goblin.
“And Licky-lick?”
“Eaten by the night terror.”
“And Snot-Boogie?”
“Snot-Boogie,” said the plump goblin sadly, as if pained by the memory.
“And Red Bean?”
“Also eaten by the night terror.”
“And—”
“Yes, yes,” snapped the female, leaping down off the last ledge to land next to Dribbler. “We’ve lost ‘em pretty good. Don’t mean we’re gonna all get lost. And look!” She opened her sack and pulled out a glittering dagger that looked like a shard of ice. “Lookit!”
“Oooh,” said both Dribbler and his plump companion.
“Mine,” said the female, jamming it into her belt beside numerous pouches. The blade cut the leather easily, and her belt and pouches fell to the floor around her ankles.
This cracked the other two goblins up to the point that Dribbler fell on the floor while the plump goblin clutched his belly and squeezed his eyes shut, crying.
I took a step back up out of view. Goblins. More monsters. Should I attack and kill them? They were walking treasure troves of XP. And that dagger had looked nice. Could I take them? Even if I could, was it right to kill them just for the XP?
Dang it. These kinds of questions had never plagued me in Golden Dawn. There, goblins had simply screamed and attacked on sight, or wandered around their little camps looking lost and confused till you attacked, at which point they switched into murder mode.
But here? Dribbler? Snot-Boogie? Expressing concerns and humor? They seemed all too real. I stared down at my dagger. I couldn’t just kill them. That’d be murder.
They were apparently going about making lunch. Dribbler was telling Barfo – that had to be the fat one – how to light a fire. Barfo was ignoring him altogether, and would only reply with ‘seventeen’ on occasion, much to Dribbler’s fury.
I rubbed a knuckle into my temple. These guys were cute. Funny. They had freaking personality. God damnit.
Well, how was I going to get out, then? The windows were too narrow. The only exits were the goblins’ blocked door or heading back up to the wall above and trying to find another way down.
“Oi,” said the female goblin, staring right at me from the base of the steps, eyes wide. “Who are you?”
“Ah,” I said, rising to my feet. “Um.”
“Intruder!” she screeched, and ducked back out of sight into the main room. “Human in the tower! Murder and anarchy! Death and blood!”
“What?” Dribbler sounded taken aback. “Here, like here-here?”
“On the steps!”
“Should we run away?” That was Barfo’s slow, cautious voice.
“Run away? This is our den, our castle, our queendom!” The female knocked something over with a crash. “Shhh! He can hear everything we say. Shh!”
I stood there, nerves taut, not sure whether to laugh or run. “Hello?”
Dribbler screamed, and more crashing ensued. Sounded like he’d run into something.
“He’s casting a spell!” yelled the female. “Cover your ears or he’ll turn us into toads!”
There was a tense, expectant silence.
“Um, I’m not casting a spell,” I called out. “I don’t want to hurt you. If I did, I could have slit your throats already.” I slammed the base of my palm into my forehead. Damnit!
“See? He wants our blood!” The female was working herself up. “He wants to bathe in
it!”
“He does?” Barfo sounded confused. “Why’s that, Kreekit? That wouldn’t make him clean.”
“‘Cause that’s what humans do.” Kreekit sounded furious and very excited. “They bathe in it and blow bubbles and it makes them want more, more and more till they become demons!”
“Ohhh,” said Dribbler and Barfo in unison.
“That where demons come from, then?” Dribbler sounded curious.
“Some of them,” said Kreekit. “Some of them, oh yes.”
“I don’t want to become a demon,” I called out. “Or bathe in your blood! I, ah, just want to get out of the tower.”
“Get out of the tower, he says!” Kreekit’s scorn could have etched metal. “With all our loot, I bet. Our hard-earned loot—”
“Scavenged,” said Dribbler.
“Our scavenged loot. No! He doesn’t get our loot, and he doesn’t get our blood!”
“I’m keeping my blood,” said Barfo sullenly.
There was another pause. The ball was in my court.
“Um.” Not a very authoritative start. Something they’d said earlier caught my mind. “Can I ask a question? What’s this night terror that got some of your friends?”
I heard hissed whispers as if they were conferring, then Kreekit’s voice. “Why’s you want to know?”
“Well, I might have some good news for you.”
“I like good news,” said Barfo.
“It’s a giant flying demon,” said Dribbler excitedly. “He swoops down on you in the middle of the night if yer out taking a pisser or mooning around watching the stars—”
“Not that we do that anymore,” said Barfo.
“No, no, of course not, goes without saying,” said Dribbler. “He’s the goblin-bane, the… the… what’s another good name for ‘im?”
“The sun of death,” said Barfo solemnly.
