by Billy Wong
"Sorry about weighing you down," a bashful Jacob gasped while he tried to catch his breath. Noticing Amber stretch a tired arm, he added, "You too, sis."
"Making women do all the work..." Rose grumbled jokingly as she clambered to her feet. "You two ready to walk yet?"
They soon nodded, but before they could take a step, a loud screech filled the air. From the nearby tunnel emerged a beast the size and shape of a horse but with a huge, over-heavy beaked head. It clumped awkwardly towards them, slobber falling from clacking jaws. Jacob backpedaled and Amber drew her sword with a cocky smirk. But as the creature lunged, Rose simply dodged the clumsy bite, wrapped her arms around its neck, and with a great twist of her hips snapped its spine. Letting the carcass sink to the ground, she remarked, "Thing stinks like pigeon poop."
Marveling at how she'd disposed of a monster several times her mass with her bare hands, Amber commented, "Damn you're strong, Mom."
"It didn't take as much strength as you'd think. It neck wasn't sturdy enough for its head in the first place. A lot of the ancients' 'experiments' are imperfect and have one easily exploitable weakness or another. But you still have to be careful. A friend of mine got hurt real bad in a place much like this. She had her side ripped open by a horn like a man's leg—on a monster no bigger than a large human."
Amber winced. "Ouch. Did she die?"
"No, she's a tough lady. You know her, I'm talking about Loreen and you've heard the story before. But she couldn't even walk for a while. None of us can afford that, except maybe you Jacob." He frowned, and Rose quickly said, "Just kidding, sorry. But I do need to teach you to swim better."
The hurt left his eyes, but he replied, "I'm not that interested in learning to swim raging rivers."
"It would help if you plan on continuing to travel with the likes of us and your father." Rose nostalgically recalled how many impossible swims and climbs she'd undertaken with Finn. If only he was here now, he'd be so proud of... well, Amber.
Not that Jacob was too bad a fighter in his own right, as he reminded her when walking down the tunnel they spotted what looked like a giant horseshoe crab with a scorpion tail. It began to scuttle towards them on too-small legs, and Rose waited to see what her children would do. Before Amber could even close, Jacob fired his crossbow into its left eye, felling it. Not exactly his parents' traditionally preferred melee, but his steadiness and ability at range were something at least.
Their upward trek through caverns brought them against many other strange, misshapen beasts which attacked them on sight, like apes with batlike wing membranes connecting their arms and sides, walking jellyfish bearing turtle shells, and cat-clawed giant canines. Rose did most of the fighting, with Amber taking an occasional slash when she failed to finish an enemy quickly enough and Jacob staying back to shoot like Rose's scholar friend Derrick had in the old days. Seeing his calmness in these battles, she supposed he wasn't so weak after all. What he did after seeing Amber run through hadn't been his usual reaction to danger, only to the possibility of facing a most painful loss. Rose had often wished she could avoid such taxing experiences herself. And though his sister didn't seem to bear him a grudge, he bowed his head guiltily whenever he saw her show a sign of lingering pain from her wound. That guilt might deter him from making such a mistake again. In any case, he could be forgiven for the one.
The trio finally made it to a smooth-walled circular room, which Rose figured to be just under the spire's base. In the center was a round orb with a slot on top. "That looks like it might fit the sword," Jacob said. "Think we should try it?"
Rose bit her lip. "That makes the most sense, but I'm wary of traps. Give me the sword, Amber, and I'll do it."
Amber hesitated a moment, then handed it over. She raised the blade, preparing to fling herself aside should she notice anything amiss, and slid it home. Instantly, a great rumbling could be heard above, and the chamber shook.
"What's going on, Mom?" Amber asked, for once sounding a tad afraid.
The shaking was unnerving, but didn't seem intended to harm them. Rose remembered how the Tower of Verveem had sunk into the ground after she activated a similar mechanism in it. "If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say something's happened to the Spire of Pental."
Chapter 3
"What do you think happened to it?" Jacob asked.
"Well, hopefully, there's now a viable entrance." Rose guessed there would be more changes though, as so much shaking shouldn't be needed just for that. Doubling back to the Spire, they saw not only had a great doorway appeared on its front, but windows also opened up all over it. It had turned, she thought, into a tower.
Amber yawned. "I'm kinda tired. Should we get some sleep before going in?"
It was already nighttime, and they'd been walking, swimming, and fighting since early morning. "Sure, let's get some shut-eye. Let's eat first, though. I'm starved!"
"I just hope nothing's woken up that will have time to prepare while we rest," Jacob said.
"Probably nothing that intelligent. However monsters could definitely wander out of the spire, so we'll be taking turns on watch. I'll take the first, seeing as you two are probably more tired."
In the morning, they ate buns for breakfast and headed on to the Spire. They entered and made their way up through large rooms with high ceilings and lots of arches. More diverse, but similar in their maladaptedness, monsters like those underground opposed them. Rose wondered what they ate to survive here, but maybe they had just been awakened or "activated" with the transformation of the structure. It was harder fighting multiple foes in the wide open spaces than in the cramped tunnels before, and Amber began to take her share of wounds. She bore them with admirable calm before Rose lovingly healed them, glad they were minor enough that she could. Still traces of them remained, and her precious daughter would end this adventure with a collection of scars to be proud of.
They cleared floor after floor which proved free of magic auras, and the children started to grow discouraged that they might find nothing here beyond battle. Rose didn't share their downbeat mood yet. Her decades of exploration had honed her patience well, and besides, if there was something significant to discover, her experience told her it would likely be in either the middle or very top of the building.
But all they found after endless relatively easy battles was disappointment; not a single magical aura presented itself on the floor where the stairs ended. Whoever made the tower must have moved everything out, save for the monsters... Looking miserable by now, Jacob groaned. "What now, time to go back down empty-handed?"
"We did give travelers a new version of the Spire to see," Rose said casually. "You can't expect to always get what you want." But in truth, she too was rather irritated they'd done all this hard work for naught. Even the cut opened on her chin during a particularly hectic fight that might scar, which shouldn't matter considering how many scars she already bore, annoyed her right now.
"All that fighting was kind of fun," Amber said cheerfully. "I mean, it would've been nice if we got more out of it, but me and Jacob did get some good practice."
That would be the most optimistic possible way of looking at it. Rose sighed. "Let's go home, then. If anything, we might find what the Guardians of Salvation left behind someplace else." At the moment though, she just wanted to rest her weary muscles. They'd fought more beasts than she cared to remembered over the past two days.
"Hey Mom, the view from here's awesome, isn't it?" Jacob asked.
Rose looked in the direction of his voice and saw him sitting in a huge window, gazing over the wilderness that stretched out below. She smiled, remembering sights from even higher vantage points. The view from this floor was nice, but she imagined it would be even better from the roof if they could get up there. Wait a minute... "Kids, I think we should check out the roof before we leave."
Jacob frowned. "And how would we get there?" There seemed no stairs or other obvious pathway to the roof, which they'd seen to be a rounded dom
e.
She stuck her head out the window to look above. There wasn't anything on the curved stone to catch with a grappling hook, but... She reached outside to touch the wall to the side of the opening as Jacob stared wonderingly at her. "This thing's endured well for being centuries old, but I'd guess a pick can penetrate it just fine. I'm going to give climbing up a try."
"Mom, have you gone mad?"
She chuckled. He only questioned her out of concern, but Rose knew she could scale the sheer surface if her stout picks would stick. Retrieving the tools from her pack, she swung one into the wall, and the point dug deep. "See? It'll be okay."
"What if you put your pick into some unsteady stone, and it breaks? You'll fall..."
Over four hundred feet maybe, if she couldn't catch herself. That would hurt more than a bit, but Rose thought she'd survive—she had taken drops of several hundred feet before with nothing more serious than some broken bones, and at least the ground below was dirt and not solid rock or paved... Still, she didn't plan on trying it. "We'll just tie a rope around me like normal people do. But you two better hold on if I fall!"
Amber nodded. "We'll take care of you."
When she was satisfied with the rope around her armored waist, Rose began her ascent, her strong arms carrying her easily up the wall. Nonetheless, she became surprised at how long the climb was, and realized a lot more of the tower rested above the last floor than she'd imagined—at least a good fifty feet. About ten feet from the base of the roof dome, she felt a powerful pressure on her mind, urging her to turn back.
A protective barrier erected by the spire's creators, she was sure. It might have repelled another living creature, or even rendered them senseless to fall to their doom. Rose didn't know, but for her, it proved only a small struggle to push herself onward, her will ignoring the spell's effects as readily as she once had an archmage's death spell. She'd always been as resistant to magical attack as physical injury—and just about everything else, for that matter.
Once she'd adjusted to the feeling of unease the magic field put in her, Rose resumed her quick pace upward, and was soon just below the rim of the roof. But when she tried to drive her pick into that rounded surface, it glanced off without making so much as a scratch, and she realized it was made of sterner material or actively enchanted for strength—maybe both. Beginning to chant a detection spell to find out, she stared in shock when a gargantuan beast, from seemingly out of nowhere, landed with surprising lightness to crouch on top of the dome. Its wingspan was such, it covered the fort-wide rooftop in shadow.
What the hell, a guardian left by the Guardians of Salvation? It certainly didn't look like a force of good, but more a stereotypical depiction of a demon magnified many times over, a hulking dull red humanoid with long sickle claws on every limb, curved horns jutting from the sides of its head, and leathery wings on its back. Even crouching it was at least twenty feet tall, and sported four rather than two great arms rippling with bunched muscles.
Rose would normally have little qualms about engaging even this large a monster in battle, but right now she was all but helpless dangling by her picks from the smooth wall. She desperately tried to speak to the beast. "Who are you, and what are you doing here?" It wasn't as if she hadn't met any talkative giant creatures before...
Its answer couldn't have surprised her less. "Woman," a deep, ominous voice said from its fanged abyss of a maw, "I've come to destroy you."
That wasn't good. What happened to not being able to judge a book by its cover? Why big monsters always had to go and live up to her bad expectations, she didn't know, and now wasn't the time to try and figure it out. Instead, she let go of one of her picks and drew her sword while hanging from the other. Disadvantaged though she might be, she wasn't about to go down without a fight. But before she could do anything more a fist smashed into her back with such force it knocked her through the wall she'd been climbing, and she fell into darkness.
#
"What the hell was that shaking?" Jacob cried as the floor shuddered like from a small earthquake, accompanied by a loud crash from above. "Mom?!"
Amber said, "You look out the window and see what's going on. I'll hold the rope."
Though he worried she might not be able to handle whatever happened with the rope alone, he didn't argue in his haste to check on their mother. His heart nearly jumped out of his chest when he looked, and it took him a second to collect his thoughts. "Sis, there's a gigantic demon-looking monster on the roof, and a big hole in the wall below it."
"What about Mom?"
His mouth went dry as he replied, "I didn't see any sign of her." Was she in that hole in the wall? Was she even alive? "You've got to go help her, that thing is huge!"
Her face looked bewildered as she came slowly to the window, still holding onto the rope, to see. Upon laying eyes on the creature, she whispered, "It's so big..."
Why didn't she go to their mom's aid? Yes, it was big and scary, but they had to do something! But Jacob realized that he too wasn't moving at all, both of them frozen in shock and terror. What could they do against such a titan? Now the thing was bending over to look into the hole it'd made, probably with his mother's body. Please let her be all right...
#
The second thing Rose realized was that the Spire of Pental had floors above the highest they'd reached by stair, for she lay in one of them now. The first, of course, was that the direct hit from her enemy's boulder hand had cracked ribs and possibly a vertebrate or two. Though she hoped that wasn't the case, such pain lanced through her back it wouldn't surprise her. Little light was present in the windowless room, except the dim sun coming in through her entry point. Now the visage of her attacker filled that opening, throwing her largely into darkness again. Huge claws reached in at her and she cast one of the strongest spells she'd ever used, launching a roaring hammer of flame into the demonic face. Again she could see clearly as it reared away, all four hands clutching at its smoking head.
Rose held no illusions that the battle was over, having learned many times that such monsters didn't die nor give up easily. She climbed the pile of rubble below the hole, looked out to spot the creature tottering precariously on the curved roof while it screamed. She blasted it with a powerful lightning bolt which blackened one of its hands on the way to striking it in the face again. It toppled forward and plummeted towards the earth, thrashing weakly. As it fell past, Rose heard Amber yell happily, "Go Mom!" She smiled, glad she had the strength to protect her children.
Grabbing futilely at the spire with mammoth claws, the thing finally stopped its fall with strong flaps of its wings. It turned its head upward to roar at Rose and streaked back towards her, spit a stream of cold which nearly froze her solid as icy air engulfed her. She resisted long enough to drop a great fireball down at her opponent, warming herself while attacking at the same time. With surprising agility, it dodged. But it didn't dodge her as she jumped down after her magical projectile to land atop its shoulder, plunging her giant broadsword Thorn into its neck. She figured her children must think her crazy witnessing this, but it was just like old times; she was playing for keeps, and would do whatever it took to win.
Unfortunately for her, her foe was every bit as determined to kill her as she was it. It slammed its massive body into the wall, crushing her against solid stone with all its weight and breaking more bones. Stunned and unable to do anything but hang on for a moment, Rose gasped excruciatingly for breath. The beast pulled away from the tower, now reaching to dislodge her with a hand. Forcing herself to move, she wrenched her blade sideways in its neck and ripped it wide open. Blood sprayed like a geyser from the gaping wound and the monster went limp, falling again towards the earth hundreds of feet below. Rose didn't look forward to the impact.
As the two of them passed by a window, she jerked her sword free and leapt for the opening, praying she'd have the strength to catch hold and pull herself inside. The effort made her wrecked body scream with agony, but she ma
naged to save herself more pain by averting the devastating drop to the ground. She dragged herself back into the tower, wondering just what her kids thought of their mom right now.
#
"That was amazing!" Amber said. "How inspiring is Mom, slaughtering that enormous monster all by herself?"
Jacob frowned as he looked down at the shattered carcass and shook his head. "She's got to be badly hurt. There's red blood spattered all over the wall she got smashed into, and its blood is green. She did get it good, though."
"She'll be fine. Like mother, like daughter." But Amber's expression was worried too, and she added, "You think we should go look for her in case she's passed out somewhere downstairs?"
"If we leave here, we might make her walk around more than she needs to looking for us. But she could be hurt bad, unable to move..." Finally he decided, "You look for her, and I'll stay in case she comes back."
Amber agreed and walked away while Jacob waited anxiously, hoping nothing too bad had happened. His worst worries were relieved when both women soon returned, his sister supporting their bloodied mother. "Mom! Are you okay?"
"Just a few broken bones. Nothing major." Then she coughed and moaned, a trickle of blood running out of her mouth.
"I think she banged up her insides pretty bad," Amber said unnecessarily. "Mom hit those walls really hard."
The thought of damaged organs scared Jacob, and he couldn't help asking too, "Can you see out of that eye?" Her left one, swollen shut.
She grinned as she forced the eye open just a tad and winked. "I'll be okay, kids. My magic might not be powerful enough to fix myself up, but I've had worse." Saying so, she snapped her dislocated left shoulder back into place, and with both arms back in working condition helped the twins wrap up her torso to steady her broken ribs.
