SpeedRunner (Tower of Babel Book 1)

by Adam Elliott

Cayden stepped into the wall of flames he had constructed, emerging from a hearth in the apprentice's quarters. By now every hand in the guild would be on their way to fight the fire, so he ought to be able to hold out here long enough for even Aaron to abandon his post to help.

  He watched his MP tick up four points at a time, the bar acting as an impromptu timer. When it went over a thousand, he would Flame Walk again and make a break for the crystal. It should work swimmingly unless...

  “Cayden!” Came Vincent's scream of unbridled rage.

  Yeah. Unless that.

  Vincent Tempes' Acid Orb hits You for 1571 Acid.

  A combination of dumb luck and Vincent being so blinded by range that he couldn't aim properly were probably the only things that saved Cayden's life. The mage's acid orb detonated twenty feet too far away, impacting a wall behind Cayden rather than striking him directly as it had no doubt been intended. Even that glancing blow had taken the majority of his HP, while the explosion of acid had utterly devastated the room.

  “Time to go.” Cayden shouted to himself, ducking into what remained of the nearby fireplace an instant before Vincent's follow up spell could seal his fate.

  He emerged from the bonfire to see the front of the mage guild explode outwards, rocks from the detonation landing as close as ten feet as the front of the building crumpled. His plan had relied on Vincent being concerned first, and angry later. Apparently, the wizard was more wrathful than he'd expected.

  It did have one advantage; no one gave a damn about him. Everyone from the General to the most common soldier was staring slack-jawed at the devastation being waged by a wizard who felt he had nothing left to lose. Not a single soldier so much as looked in his direction as he bolted from the campfire, heading for the teleportation crystal with as much speed as his petrified leg would allow.

  Another detonation rocked the guild, and this time the building itself began to sag. Either Vincent hadn't realized that he'd escaped, or he no longer cared and was willing to bring the entire building down on top of him in a fit of pique and fury. Cayden wasn't going to stick around to find out which was which.

  The teleportation crystal loomed ahead of him, a jagged thirty-foot spire of greenish-white stone that slowly pulsed with an inner energy. All he had to do was touch it and speak his destination. Some Zeni would vanish from his bag, an entirely non-diagetic nod to game mechanics over fluff, and the crystal would transport him to his destination.

  Ten feet from the crystal, his good leg turned to stone beneath him.

  Cayden struggled valiantly to keep his footing, to take just one more step, but it was not to be. He had too much momentum behind him; his balance totally shot by the sudden change in weight and center of balance. He fell hard, tumbling end over end in into the snow.

  In the end, he came up just short of the pillar. It was so close that he could just reach out and touch it with his right arm. A fact not lost to Aaron as the Sorcerer's next spell turned his arm to stone.

  The crunch of boots on snow somehow seemed louder, and more ominous, than the sound of another explosion in the guild or even the groan and crash as part of the building collapsed. He could feel the seething waves of anger radiating off his teacher just from the measured steps as he drew near.

  “Unbelievable.” Aaron growled, spitting a few words of magic to entrap Cayden's final limb in stone as the boy attempted to drag himself to the pillar. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

  Cayden pondered, then laughed, an explosion punctuating his words as he replied. “The Aristocrats?”

  Aaron stared at him, dumbfounded.

  “A really bad joke from outside the tower.” He explained, smiling wanly. “Also, thanks for giving me enough time.”

  “Time for...?” Aaron started, only to realize his mistake as Cayden spoke a single word.

  “Eos.”

  Cayden's arm was stone, the one thing he had trained for days to manipulate with ease, so long as he had the MP. Lucky for him Aaron was a talker.

  It felt as normal as moving his regular limbs as Cayden gathered them beneath him and threw himself bodily onto the pillar. He wasn't sure touching it with one of the stone limbs would be enough, which made awkwardly hugging it the best way to be sure. “Teleport: Islo!”

  A column of blue light enveloped him, warding off a bold of lightning that had streaked towards him from Aaron's outstretched hand. They couldn't touch him now, even though the teleport would take a few seconds to get fully underway.

  “Cayden, you will never be able to find her." Aaron growled. "You've done all this damage to save one person, and in doing so, you've failed another."

  The thought had occurred to him, but he replied by shaking his head in protest. “I don't accept that. I'll find The White Knight with or without your help.”

  Aaron shouted something at him, perhaps some final jab, but it was lost in the sudden roar and glow of the teleportation.

  The teleportation network in Babel was not instantaneous. It took between three to eight seconds from when someone left their starting until they reached their destination. The delay between any two points was always the same, but there didn't appear to be much rhyme or reason as to why some teleportations took longer than others. Physical distance didn't appear to factor in, nor did the size of the crystal or the settlement where the crystal resided. Truly one of life's little mysteries.

  For the majority of people, however, the trip did appear to be over in an instant. One second they were here, the next, there. For the majority of people.

  A small subsection of people reacted oddly to teleportation in select instances. Players on grand quests were the most susceptible, several having spoken publicly about hallucinations or visions related to their quests. A more limited number told of similar experiences from their very first teleport, of eldritch landscapes and terrible creatures. Cayden had assumed that some were made up tales, but there was no denying the reality that some people left their experiences changed. He knew of at least one case where a player emerged catatonic and only spoke months later of having experienced a hundred lifetimes in the few seconds he had traveled from the first floor to the second.

  Needless to say, Cayden had always been a little uncomfortable about the idea using teleporters in general. Doubly so since he'd accepted his grand quest.

  It also meant he wasn't surprised to find himself deposited somewhere other than his intended destination.

  “This isn't where I parked my car." Cayden murmured, staring ahead at his reflection. He knew this place. For weeks now he'd dreamt of it when he slept and daydreamed about it when he was awake. He couldn't see her in the reflection across from him, but he knew that she was standing just an inch away, her back to his.

  Why had the game brought him here? To punish him? He wanted to call up his display with a snap of his fingers, to see if his grand quest had been stamped as a failure, but it felt wrong to break the silence in such a crude manner. He'd meant what he said to Aaron, that he wasn't going to give up just because he'd broken the quest line. He couldn't count the number of games where he'd abused sequence breaks to do quests out of order or skip parts entirely. Why should this one be any different.

  She wasn't speaking. As the seconds passed by he realized that she wasn't going to. Perhaps he'd been brought here to explain himself? “I couldn't let her die.” He started. “Not because of me.”

  No, that wasn't right either. It wasn't just that he was responsible. He'd jumped in to save Immolatus, and that fight didn't have a damn thing to do with him. It was more than responsibility, it was a part of him.

  He'd played so many games where the hero threw himself in to save the innocent. It was a culture Cayden had been steeped in since he was a child. The good guys don't kill, and they save everyone they can save. Because they are good guys. And he was a good guy, or at least, that was the way he thought of himself.

  Was he just going to keep doing this? Keep risking his life for others until one day
he stuck his neck out too far?

  “It's just...” He started, tilting his head back ever so slightly. He hadn't realized it before, but the room didn't have a ceiling at all. The mirrors around him extended up perhaps a dozen feet, then just sort of faded off into nothingness. There was darkness above him, darkness and starlight. A wonderous chorus of foreign stars twinkled and glimmered above him. It was without a doubt the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

  “I want to save everyone." He explained at last. "I wanted to save Tellah as a child; I cried watching my Dad fail to save Aeris."

  Silence followed his word while desperation began to fill him. Was she that angry? Would she just keep him here, a punishment for making a promise that he'd so quickly failed to keep?

  “Nothing has changed. I will get Sarah back. And I will save you. I promi-”

  He'd turned his head as he spoke, hoping to catch even a fleeting glimpse of her reaction to her words. But instead of beauty, he saw terror. It was not the girl of his dreams, but the man.

  Cayden stumbled away in sudden alarm. He hadn't even realized that his limbs were clear of petrification until that moment. There was no time to consider why, not while he was fleeing that terrible visage.

  Even in the dream, the sight of the man had been fuzzy, out of place. But the time he'd woken he remembered him as more of a shape than a person, and he could not recall anything he'd seen under the hood in his final moments.

  He remembered now. The near featureless gray mask, with two thin slits, cut open for the eyes. It was carved poorly out of rough stone, an almost prehistoric look to the shape of it as it, and its owner bore down upon him. A thing of terror so ancient it had gone unremembered by man.

  The curved silver in his right hand was dripping red, but it was only the sight of his own blood that alerted Cayden to the wound. When had he done that. How had he done that? You couldn't be wounded like that, not in Babel.

  The man pressed on as Cayden shrunk back. There was no hurry in his steps, just a slow, methodical patience. Cayden couldn't run, he wouldn't fight. This was already over.

  “Why?” Cayden gasped. The pain was more than he could bare. More than he'd ever felt in the dream. It was hard to stand, and he fell against the wall for support.

  “Because I must.” The man replied. Then he shrugged. “Because I can.”

  Cayden could feel his body beginning to weaken. Such a slender wound, yet the shock from it was like nothing he'd ever felt.

  “To think you were the one to find her." For the first time, there was something other than cold detachment in the man's voice. "You don't deserve her. You don't even deserve to live."

  Cayden closed his eyes, the final moments of the dream flooding his mind. So much of it was the same, but that hadn't been him. Despite the horror filling him, he wasn't just going to lay down and give up.

  “Well, I'm not going to die." He yelled in defiance. "You want to try and change that? Be my guest."

  His resistance looked to be the last straw. Calm aloofness gave way to tension in the man's shoulders as he stalked forward, knife in hand. If Cayden wouldn't just lay down and die, then he'd put him down himself.

  Silver streaked, and words were spoken. A blinding flash accompanied both as the man's knife impacted Cayden's magic. Evon Mati. Mirror Shield. It had been one of the first spells Cayden had concocted, a magic that reflected a single damaging attack on its user provided that attack didn't exceed the damage resistance of the shield itself. An all or nothing defensive spell.

  It didn't work here. Or, at least, it didn't work the way it was supposed to, or the way it was intended. Cayden had thought to use the magic to startle the man, to give him room to staunch his wound and draw his arms and armor. Instead, the silver and magic appeared to feed on one another, detonating away from Cayden in a way that shattered every mirror on the far side of the room, vaporized the dagger and killed the man outright.

  Behind the mirror was a stone wall. A familiar stone wall. As more and more of the mirror crumpled away, it revealed a room Cayden knew all too well, a bedroom that had been his home for weeks now.

  Had been, because the last he'd seen of it the room, along with the entire floor had been obliterated by spellfire.

  “Certainly unorthodox." Aaron said behind him, lifting a hand and paralyzing Cayden with a word to keep him from lashing out. "But an unorthodox pass is still a pass."

  Quest Complete: Learning to Walk

  You have Earned 35,000 XP

  Chapter Thirty

  Cayden frowned as he looked through well-lit windows into the Inn of the Dizzy Sheep. Even from his place lurking in the shadows just across the street, it was evident that the two men lingering the bar were waiting for him. They looked like muscle, their shaved heads and severe expressions almost the cliche definition of 'hired goons.' Their equipped armor and weapons made them stand out like a sore thumb amidst the dwindling crowd of the establishment, while at the same time marking them as some variant of warrior, probably somewhere between level 10-15.

  He was initially surprised that they sent players of such a low level to collect him. Then again, it made some sense, the last any of his pursuers had seen him, he'd been no higher than level seven.

  Cayden checked the timer on his display. Four in the morning. He ought to be more tired.

  It was crazy to think of everything that had transpired in such a short period. The message from Sarah, the planning, and preparation for the rescue, to say nothing of the Trial that Aaron and Vincent had put him through.

  It had been all in his head; he knew that now. The pin Aaron had given him when he'd first arrived had been prepared by Vincent years in advance, the vessel for a unique and powerful illusion. Phantasmagoria.

  The spell, able to be triggered by a mere thought by either elan, trapped the user in their mind. There it confronted them with dangerous situations concocted from their internal baggage. It wasn't designed to kill, but to test character and resolve by forcing the subject into what should be unwinnable battles.

  It was why Aaron and Vincent had always been behind him the very moment he began to think he had a fighting chance. The vision had permitted him to gain an advantage here or there, to build him up to greater falls in the hope that the falls would break him. It had broken most; he'd been told after the fact. A dozen elan captives had died screaming to the spell while Vincent had perfected it, as had an unnamed player who had willingly volunteered as a test subject with the promise of riches for success.

  Despite his initial bemusement, Aaron had been overjoyed at Cayden's success. He'd triggered the spell at Cayden's demand, expecting full well that his young pupil would meet the fate of every test subject before him. Instead, both mages had watched as Cayden scrapped and struggled his way towards victory, albeit a somewhat pyrrhic one.

  Vincent, understandably, was less pleased with the result. With the test completed, they had no reason to insist Cayden remain in Axfell, and the wizard was quite insistent that he leave sooner rather than later. And that he not return unless necessary. And that under no circumstances would he be permitted back into in the library.

  Cayden couldn't entirely blame him, even if it meant waking Iwamatsu up in the middle of the night to obtain the parchment his plan required. The old man had been irate to find Cayden knocking at his door, but after a few words and a study of Cayden's serious expression, he had permitted him entry into the workshop just long enough to ink the most crucial components.

  He double checked the rolled up paper and the dagger next to it, touching the small of his back where the two were tucked into the waistband of his trousers. Not exactly a clever hiding place, but with high-level invisibility and aversion spells cast upon them by Silver, it didn't have to be. These mooks wouldn't come near the items, and if the enemy caster located them once he'd made it inside, well, he could work around that.

  What he couldn't hide was his mirror and equipment. If they had any sense at all, they'd demand his
mirror when he turned himself over. He could make a copy, but just by looking at his menu they could tell whether or not he had done so, and on what floor it was located. Even if he hid it with the same spells that concealed the scroll, they weren't likely to take him to their hideout if they knew he had a backup on the same floor.

  Across the street, the men were beginning to look impatient. That didn't bode well. Bored he could handle, but angry could cause problems. He snapped his fingers, opening his display one final time to be sure he had everything in order:

  Name: Cayden

  Gender: Male

  Bloodline: Agares-Tabbris

  Class: Guardian 7, Runemagi 7

  Experience: 99,238

  Next Level: 105,000

  Strength: 18

  Dexterity: 27

  Vitality: 28

  Energy: 36

  Stat Points Remaining: 0

  Mastery Points Remaining: 0

  Max HP: 1860

  HP Recovery: 5.6/Second

  Max MP: 335

  MP Recovery: 7.2/Second

  Max TP: 1210

  TP Recovery: 7.3/Second

  Despite everything that had happened to derail his well-laid plans since he'd first arrived, there was a certain satisfaction to seeing himself at level fourteen. It might not be the way he'd intended, but he was making progress. Hopefully even faster progress, once this was all said and done.

  He clicked on Runemagi, opening up a further menu to display the last available skill on the list. Level eight and ten were still grayed out and unlisted, but level six had given him access to an important new skill.

  Feed the Soul

  Type: Stance (Self, Concentration)

  Skill Level: Novice Level 1

  Effect: 400% MP recovery per second.

  Cost: 50 HP. 50 TP. 2.5 HP per second. 2.5 TP per second. Negates normal Regen.