My first reaction after reading the letter was to scoff at how insultingly ridiculous it was. I was cordially invited as a welcome guest, yet I had to jump through hoops? And rescue my lilim? And to top it off, this Xhinn had sent not one but two gigantic Mouths, destroying an entire town in the process, only to allow me to just… leave after having finally captured me?
All that and I’m supposed to believe I can just take off Scot-free, huh? What a crock.
I was half tempted to walk out the door anyway just out of spite, but I had zero intention of leaving behind an ‘unendingly disappointed’ Goddess, thank you very much. After having met a couple of these sister-deities, I was quite certain it would be about as healthy in the long-term as jumping into a vat of acid.
The only things that helped mollify me, even a little, were the two words She had underlined: implicit and unavoidable. If I understood Her meaning correctly, She was saying She had to make me jump through these hoops. Doing otherwise would violate her nature.
That thought set the gears to spinning in my mind. Both of the goddesses I had met thus far had mentioned, if only in passing, the Purpose. And while neither had been willing to elaborate on it, words held certain restrictions on their meanings, whether they were explained or not.
This Purpose could be some sort of general, unifying reason for the Goddesses to exist or even for the world itself. Or it could mean different things to different deities, like defining—and thus limiting—their individual spheres of influence. I could have been wrong, but the latter at least seemed to line up with what this Xhinn had been trying to say.
Though, how I was supposed to make use of that information eluded me for the moment.
In the meantime, I had a decision to make—namely, which direction to go first. There were multiple hallways, doors, stairs and floors I could look into just from my vantage on the entry rug.
“Okay, Donum,” I muttered to myself, “let’s take this a step at a time.”
From the note, I had a few goals to achieve before attempting to find and gain access to the solarium.
What even is a solarium anyway? I mean, I had read enough to form a sort of nebulous mental picture, but I had never been in one. As far as I knew, it was one of those rooms with no other purpose than for rich people to show off the view of their carefully manicured gardens. The type of room with nothing important in it save lots of over-sized couches, coffee tables, and an excessive number of windows.
In short, gamer kryptonite.
To me, the perfect room would be a carefully climate-controlled, underground bunker. With a mini-fridge. And a fireman’s pole. Although, I did have girlfriends of a sort now, so I might need to make a few concessions.
Hmm… maybe a waterslide entryway? Ohh… that would be epic!
Silly distractions aside, the note had made it clear that even getting into this solarium was going to be its own challenge. And in formal wear, no less. I had to assume there would be a few sets lying around for me to discover somewhere, otherwise She would not have bothered mentioning it.
But first and foremost, I would need to rescue the lilim. Whatever I was supposed to make of this mansion, it was a part of the Dungeon, so I had little doubt that despite the genteel decor, it would end up being a twisted funhouse of death. And without the lilim by my side, I felt exposed and vulnerable. The only hint I had available to me toward that end were the pair of finial-statues installed at the bottom landings of the staircases, so I decided to start there.
Each of the bronze sculptures were quite splendidly made and a perfect likeness to their respective muse, but they were otherwise unadorned. There were no handy poems or inscriptions to clue me in to where the two of them might be stowed away. So the only thing I could figure was that each lilim was located somewhere up their specifically marked staircase.
For practical reasons, I decided to attempt finding Arx first. She was the more experienced Dungeoneer and a Scout-type besides. Plus, her little humming trick might be handy for navigating the area.
So with that in mind, I headed toward the right-hand staircase. However, the instant I set foot on the first step, I heard a distinct click and a dart fired out out of the newel post straight through my left kneecap.
I froze there for several seconds as a long, drawn out wheeze of pain escaped my lungs. “Fuhhh-huh-huh-king biiiiiitch…”
*****
Healing my knee was not difficult. The dart had shot clean through, and I was an experienced enough healer not to waste any unnecessary Life Energy. However, the injury had served as a useful, if unwelcome, lesson.
Unless I found some food—or got one of my lilim back—I would have absolutely no means of regenerating my pool. So the more traps I fell victim to, the more and more starved I would become. Meaning, there were only so many traps I could afford to endure.
Assuming they remained less than fatal.
So it should not be surprising that the next few minutes of my life were spent in trying to slide my way up the banister. I had no idea whether that was the intended method of ascending the staircase, but it was a method, and that was all that mattered. Detecting traps was not a part of my current skill set, so for the time being, I was not taking any chances.
Unfortunately, the thing had been polished to such a slick finish that were it not for the balusters underneath I would have had no purchase whatsoever. I ended up having to very carefully balance my weight atop the handrail while clamping the underside as hard as I could with my forearms. Then, using my legs, I had to slowly and oh-so-delicately push myself up.
By some miracle, I managed it without falling, though by the time I finally set foot on the second-story landing, I had to take a few minutes to rest. Even with a 10 in Toughness, my hands were quite visibly shaking from the exertion.
“Why is that?” I wondered aloud. A 10 was supposed to represent the natural maximum, and yet here I was still huffing and puffing like some amateur. Marathon runners could go for miles without stopping. All I had done was slide up a staircase.
Then again marathon runners trained specifically for running, and I definitely had a running skill. It was only barely in the double digits as I recalled, but I had one. So it could be that my climbing skill was insufficient to utilize what Toughness I had to its fullest effect.
The thought left me curious, and absently, I called, “Lady Bline, please tell me what my climbing skill is at.”
I even remembered not to request the information in the form of a question, yet still She did not answer. Hmm… still giving me the silent treatment, I see.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I offended you, okay?” I tried, hoping I could rectify the situation with a simple apology, but apparently She was not yet ready to deal with me. It would seem I still needed to give Her some time.
Hopefully, not too much. I kind of need access to this stuff.
Sighing, I returned my attention to my earlier train of thought. I was fairly certain my climbing skill should be somewhere in the single digits, so that I had needed so much endurance to use it made a degree of sense.
“Might do me some good to invest just a tad into Strength, too,” I murmured. That way, I would not have to work as hard to achieve the same effect.
Then I realized the direction my thoughts had gone, and I clicked my tongue in annoyed dismissal. I was hardly planning to delve into the wide world of professional banister-scalers. I was a mage! If anything, I could just buy a teleportation spell. Or levitation? I nodded sagely. The Telvanni might have been a bunch of pricks, but they were right about one thing: every mage worth his salt should at least know how to levitate.
Shaking out my hands, I climbed to my feet once more and took a look at my immediate surroundings. I was currently standing on a black and white rug just in front of my recent conquest. To my left, another set of stairs joined up with the other side to head up to the third story. Meanwhile, the landing curved off to my right leading to a pair of doors set roughly half a dozen paces from one another. Between them, there was a stately grandfather clock with a trio of familiar-looking crystals hanging in the lower chamber. And coincidentally, it began to strike one at about the moment I laid eyes on it.
I was suspicious of coincidence… plus, those crystals were an obvious point of interest.
So, I decided to go in for a closer look. Tentatively, I stretched a foot toward one of the large floor-tiles, taking a page out of Jax’s playbook. I had no idea whether I was being too cautious, but if there were any more traps, I would at least have my weight centered on my back foot. That way, I would not be fully committed if one of them—
Abruptly, the entire landing heaved, and I was thrown backward down the stairs. Darts shot out from all directions, occasionally missing me as I tumbled down, but by the time I finally rolled to a stop at the bottom, I was both heavily bleeding and more than a little bruised.
Gingerly, I rolled over onto my back and again stared up at the UFO-shaped chandelier. I only had enough breath left in my lungs to manage a single word, and that weakly. So I said it.
“Ow~”
*****
Like a detective at a crime-scene investigation, I examined the multitude of blood splatters staining the once-pristine marble staircase. Not every dart had hit me so there were a few gaps, but it was clear there was some kind of pattern to them. Moreover, after counting the spent ammo scattered about, there were less than half as many as there were stairs—though I could not be certain I had found them all.
With that information, my best guess was that every other step was trapped, plus I now had a fair idea as to how the dart mechanisms worked. Just touching the stair was not enough to set it off. You had to put some weight on it, and then a dart would fire from one side or the other somewhere along the plane of the step.
And now that I knew that, it was easy enough to circumvent. Gingerly, I placed my toes onto the lip of the second step and hauled myself up, being careful not to allow any part of my leg to intersect with a potential dart path. No ominous click or projectile came, so with a smile, I continued to the next. And just to test my hypothesis, I attempted the third stair.
Sure enough, once enough of my weight was pressing down on it, a dart fired away. And thanks to my caution, it missed me completely.
I chuckled darkly. “Donum, you clever boy.” Never mind that I had figured it out in potentially the hardest way possible.
In any case, I managed the rest of the stairs with little fanfare, and sure enough, they were perfectly safe as long as you knew which to avoid. But now that I was on the landing once again, I was back in unfamiliar and extremely dangerous territory.
The landing looked exactly as I had left it, with no sign that it had flung me off. The clock was still in exactly the same spot, and the rug lacked so much as a wrinkle to indicate the earlier fiasco.
Probably nailed down.
It was 1:47 by that point. The fall, healing session, and subsequent investigation had taken more time than I thought. But what was I supposed to do now? Whatever trap was at play here had triggered with only a slight brush with my foot, so I could not brute-force it like I had done with the steps.
Well… I could probably figure it out through trial-and-error, but I would starve myself to death in the process. There had to be a clue around here somewhere, otherwise this trap would not even begin to be fair. And the Dungeon was always fair.
Unless the clue is hidden somewhere else, and I’m not supposed to be here yet. That was a distinct possibility with these open-ended puzzle-trap situations. My decision to go up this particular set of stairs first had been somewhat arbitrary, after all.
I frowned at the thought. I had tried my hand at a few of those old puzzle games like Riven and Kings Quest. I could usually get pretty far, but eventually I would get frustrated and have to look up a solution. The answer would always be some horseshit you would never think of in a million years… like the outline of this one cave entrance happened to look kind of like a frog if you squinted from one specific and otherwise not-at-all interesting vantage point, and of course that meant you needed to input the symbol from that one room with the squeaky wheel—which also somewhat sounded like a frog croaking—into the nearby rock face.
I was still salty about it, too.
Whatever. I would give this area one last attempt before trying somewhere else.
Carefully, I scanned the immediate vicinity in as much detail as I could muster. The walls, the ceiling, the newel posts, all of them seemed quite mundane. The only thing that stood out—and consequently drew my eyes again and again—was that grandfather clock. But I also did not dare move any closer at the moment. Thus far, the rug was the only known safe ground.
So like an eleven-year-old forbidden from leaving his room, I used the handrail to lean as close as I could without leaving the carpet.
Much like the rest of the furnishings, the clock was baroque in design. The housing was a lovely, dark-stained wood with an abundance of fanciful carvings running up and down the edges. The interior was lined with white marble to match the banister I had earlier climbed, and as I had previously noted, the lower portion housed some sort of swinging pendulum with a trio of blue crystals hanging above it at irregular heights.
Normally, old-school grandfather clocks of this type would have some counterweights installed in the lower chamber. I had no idea how it all worked internally, but if you forgot to periodically wind it—which would raise those weights inside the chamber—the clock would eventually stop.
The crystals appeared to be serving as the weights. That had to be significant. How so escaped me for the moment, so I dismissed them for later.
As far as the clock-face itself, again there seemed to be a lot going on with it. There were various gears and whirly bits visible beneath the hands, and there were some elaborate decorations or perhaps writing along the sides. However, it was too small to make much sense of from the rug.
But I could see the numbers just fine. Each of them shined in gold to make them more visible against the silver backplate with the exception of the 12. That number was made of the same marble as the lining and, to set it off, it had been framed by the shape of a simplistic black diamond.
Interesting.
The seemingly trivial little detail made me take a second look at the floor. The tiles were set diagonal to the wall—a diamond-pattern. And some of them were black.
Righting myself again, I then squatted to take a closer look. Besides the black ones, there were quite a few colors to the floor pattern, however while complex, it was all in grayscale, so it remained tasteful. Other than that, I noted that each tile seemed equal in size and perhaps large enough to rest a single foot upon without touching the grout.
There was definitely something afoot here—forgiving the pun—but I could not see any obvious mechanisms. It just looked like a regular, if elaborate, set of floor tiles.
So then, how to make sense of this? Why draw my attention to the floor tiles with a clock?
Hmm… the black is on the twelve. My gut reaction was that the black tiles would be safe if the clock read twelve. But it was… I glanced up to double-check… almost two. That seemed to be saying I would need a different color.
Well, if we’re using a clock, then I’d assume there must be twelve colors to pick from. So I began counting them out. It was not so easy, as most of them were quite similar in hue and no individual tile was set orthogonally to its closest chromatic-neighbor, but eventually I arrived at a total of seven: black, white, and five different shades of gray.
I frowned. Shit. Seven? That can’t be right.
So I counted them again. There were definitely seven.
I sighed and sat down cross-legged to think. Was I just grasping at straws here? It could have been just a simple coincidence. The clock had clearly been chosen and placed there to match with the decor, so it made sense for it to have similar design features. Those crystals were obviously important, though.
Hmm… ordinarily, you’d think there should be twelve to match with the clock. Or at least some multiple like six or three.
For a few minutes, I sat staring at the pendulum swinging back and forth. Black on twelve. Black on twelve…
I glanced back at the floor. Black, a bunch of different grays… then white. I quirked an eyebrow before shifting my gaze back. If it were me, I would think white should go on the six. White is the opposite of black. Six opposes the twelve. Makes sense.
…and then five others.
Now that I was staring directly at the clock face, the solution came to me in a snap. I had been thinking about it in the wrong way. Of course, there would be seven colors. To get from 12 to 6 might take six hours, but in order to represent that information, you needed seven different symbols. The six for each new hour plus one to represent the one you started on.
And if I were to arrange the shades of gray into a gradient from black to white… and then back again, I had all twelve digits accounted for. Of course, there might be other variations, but this was the one that made the most sense to me.
Confident now that I had figured it out, I stood and stretched a foot to the nearest off-black tile. But then I froze and glanced at the clock. Seconds later, the clock struck two.
I tutted. Close one. Slightly more hesitant now, I shifted my foot over to the nearest off-off-black. Then I did a quick scan to make sure I was actually picking the off-off-black and not the mid-gray.
Dammit… why couldn’t this have been a rainbow design?
*****
Awkwardly standing in front of the grandfather clock—my stance was a little unsteady owing to the tile positions—I was able to examine it in more detail.
The three crystals were inaccessible for the moment. There was a glass panel over the front of the pendulum and weight mechanism which was secured with one of those Dungeon-specific, triangular locks. Naturally, the Key was absent.
I did give a passing thought toward smashing it open, but the heaviest thing I had on me was my knife. The shield I had recently purchased had unfortunately gone missing during the flood incident.
I shook my head. Most wizards could not even use a shield, and here I was, perfectly able yet I kept misplacing them like pencils. If I did not know better, I would have thought the universe was conspiring against me.
Okay, gonna need to find the Key to this thing, I guess. What was one more item for the list?
As for the rest, the only other relevant detail I could see was a set of three sentences which had been inscribed in concentric circles around the edge of the clock face. It took me a moment to make sense of them. Their orientations were not at all what you would expect from that kind of setup. Instead of being centered, each of the lines was rotated in seemingly random directions.
However, after a moment, I had it.
Jump for glee: Blues in three, As hanging weight.
One of six, One of seven, One of eight.
First find a Key. Left to see, Right to mate.
I sighed. “Oh, great. We’re back to riddles, are we?”
Still, it could have been a lot worse. Obviously, the ‘blues in three as hanging weight’ had to refer to the crystals in this clock. And I did need a Key to open the thing. So that all made sense.
The middle line though? My first instinct was to check for differences between the three crystals, but they seemed identical from what I could tell. They were all cut into six-sided prisms, slightly more than a hand in length, and hanging as though glued to some sort of facet by a brass chain. So that was no help.
The rest of the riddle was pretty nebulous. Obviously, I was looking for one of my mates—Jax occasionally referred to me as hers—and there were a pair of doors on either side of me. So it could have been referring to that. But… see? See what?
“I’m left to sea, alright.”
I chuckled at myself before shaking my head. It would appear that was all I was getting from the clock.
“Well, I’m mainly looking for Arx right now, so… let’s check out the right side,” I muttered aloud, and putting action to words, I carefully toed my way over, keeping to the two o’clock tile.
The door was made of some unidentifiable, long-grained wood which was varnished in a dark cherry and featured a complimentary dark brass latch-handle. Otherwise, it was not particularly significant-looking—just a regular door in a regular house.
Naturally, I assumed it would rip my arm off if I so much as touched it. So, while standing as far away as I possibly could, I unsheathed my knife and gave the handle a gentle tap. I waited and, when no response came, I tapped it a little harder, causing the handle to jiggle ever-so-slightly.
Nothing happened. Which was fortunate. My cautionary approach would have done jack-all to prevent anything but a pit trap directly in front of the door, but I was short on both skill and resources. At that point, I would have loved to have a ten-foot pole.
Hell, I would have taken a ten-inch knife! Mine was barely eight including the handle.
Just have to make do.
Steeling my nerves, I slowly pressed down on the latch with about the same expectation as a man attempting to pet a rattlesnake. However, to my surprise, the door simply clicked and began to gently swing inward on well-oiled hinges.
“Huh. Guess not everything around here is trapped, after all.”
In hindsight, that would have been a bit much. The whole point of a good trap is take you unexpectedly. And as Syndrome so eloquently put it, if everything is a trap, then nothing is. Paraphrasing, of course.
Unfortunately, the other side of the door led to pitch darkness. It was not quite to the level of the void space, but it was close. The light spilling in from the entryway seemed to disperse and scatter, as though it was fighting its way through some sort of dense fog. But if so, none of it was coming through to my side of the door.
Just as an experiment, I cast Unclothe the Darkness to summon up my helpful see-in-the-dark outlines and, with their aid, I was able to make out a hallway extending forward a few paces until it abruptly turned and disappeared off toward the right.
But then I frowned. That seemed… off.
It took me a moment to figure out what was bothering me, but when I glanced to my own immediate right, I realized that the door was only about one good step away from the edge of the wall. And at least on my side, the wall wrapped around the corner to extend to wherever the entry hall led on the bottom floor. So why would a darkened room have a hallway in it that only led straight into the wall?
Some kind of chicanery, that’s what!
As unsurprising as that revelation was, it did help click together a piece of the puzzle. Obviously, if this way was not only dark but led to… some kind of shenanigans, then it made sense for there to be something to help me ‘see.’
I nodded. It seemed a reasonable enough conclusion. And despite not needing a flashlight, I had a feeling I was going to need more than the simple ability to see in the dark.
Besides, it could not hurt to at least take a peek into the other door before making a commitment. So I carefully made my way over to the other side, wobbling slightly from having to keep to the correct tiles, before again giving the second door handle a few experimental taps with my knife. As before, there was no reaction.
Good. No traps again.
Smiling, I grabbed the latch and twisted.
Abruptly, the door jerked back as though sucked open by a great wind, and as off-balance as I was, I might as well have been at the mercy of a judo champion. In that brief moment of weightlessness, I had just enough time to note that not only was it far too bright, but my inevitable meeting with the ground was taking far too long.
And then I splashed head first into a pool of water.
More than a little shocked by this turn of events, it took me perhaps a second longer than it should have to realize I ought to be putting some effort into resurfacing. But then the bit of water I had accidentally sucked into my lungs started to announce its unwelcome presence, and I kicked upward, coughing and sputtering.
Once I had calmed down enough to look around, I had a moment of sheer disbelief… and then panic. The mansion was gone. There were no walls. No doors. Nor even a ceiling. I was outside. It was a clear and blustery day. And somewhat more importantly, I seemed to be treading water in the middle of the ocean.
With no land in sight.
“The fuck?!”
A gust of wind was my only answer. Followed by the sound of a door slamming shut. Above me.
Startled, I turned toward the noise. The door I had just come through was still there… seemingly attached to nothing and hovering about two stories above my head. I stared at it in utter befuddlement for quite some time.
Weird though its existence was, it was still something of a relief to know it was there. It served to ground the situation. Yes, I might have just walked… fallen through a door on the second-story balcony of a messed-up trap-mansion into the middle of an ocean, but I had not been randomly teleported. This was purposeful. And I could get back.
Theoretically.
“Now, if only I could figure out how to dolphin-jump my ass up there, I’d be in business. And who the hell just installs a door leading to a random spot the middle of the sea with no warn—oh, dammit all!” Disgusted, I let the back of my head tip into the water as I groaned my frustration into the sky. “’Left to see.’ Ugh… It was a pun!”
I had even said it out loud!
Faintly, I heard what sounded like some giggling carried on the wind, and I narrowed my eyes. Faen. For all I knew, they might have set this whole thing up only after having heard me make the stupid joke in the first place.
“Horns of the Shepherdess… when will I learn to keep my big mouth shut?”
With a defeated sigh, I began to slowly spin, scanning the horizon for something I might have missed. There had to be more to this than making a ridiculous pun into reality. Just dumping me into the middle of the ocean with no recourse but to drown would have been pointless. Unless they thought it was ‘funny.’ But it would not have been fair, and that was important.
Sure enough, before too long I spotted a small island off in the distance. It was going to be one hell of a swim, but I could make it. I would have to.
Seleroan
Well, I hope everyone had fun with that one. A light sprinkling of puzzles and traps to start things off, eh?
And if you just can't wait to see what's on that island, come check out the Patreon to read ahead. I could always use the support.
My first reaction after reading the letter was to scoff at how insultingly ridiculous it was. I was cordially invited as a welcome guest, yet I had to jump through hoops? And rescue my lilim? And to top it off, this Xhinn had sent not one but two gigantic Mouths, destroying an entire town in the process, only to allow me to just… leave after having finally captured me?
All that and I’m supposed to believe I can just take off Scot-free, huh? What a crock.
I was half tempted to walk out the door anyway just out of spite, but I had zero intention of leaving behind an ‘unendingly disappointed’ Goddess, thank you very much. After having met a couple of these sister-deities, I was quite certain it would be about as healthy in the long-term as jumping into a vat of acid.
The only things that helped mollify me, even a little, were the two words She had underlined: implicit and unavoidable. If I understood Her meaning correctly, She was saying She had to make me jump through these hoops. Doing otherwise would violate her nature.
That thought set the gears to spinning in my mind. Both of the goddesses I had met thus far had mentioned, if only in passing, the Purpose. And while neither had been willing to elaborate on it, words held certain restrictions on their meanings, whether they were explained or not.
This Purpose could be some sort of general, unifying reason for the Goddesses to exist or even for the world itself. Or it could mean different things to different deities, like defining—and thus limiting—their individual spheres of influence. I could have been wrong, but the latter at least seemed to line up with what this Xhinn had been trying to say.
Though, how I was supposed to make use of that information eluded me for the moment.
In the meantime, I had a decision to make—namely, which direction to go first. There were multiple hallways, doors, stairs and floors I could look into just from my vantage on the entry rug.
“Okay, Donum,” I muttered to myself, “let’s take this a step at a time.”
From the note, I had a few goals to achieve before attempting to find and gain access to the solarium.
What even is a solarium anyway? I mean, I had read enough to form a sort of nebulous mental picture, but I had never been in one. As far as I knew, it was one of those rooms with no other purpose than for rich people to show off the view of their carefully manicured gardens. The type of room with nothing important in it save lots of over-sized couches, coffee tables, and an excessive number of windows.
In short, gamer kryptonite.
To me, the perfect room would be a carefully climate-controlled, underground bunker. With a mini-fridge. And a fireman’s pole. Although, I did have girlfriends of a sort now, so I might need to make a few concessions.
Hmm… maybe a waterslide entryway? Ohh… that would be epic!
Silly distractions aside, the note had made it clear that even getting into this solarium was going to be its own challenge. And in formal wear, no less. I had to assume there would be a few sets lying around for me to discover somewhere, otherwise She would not have bothered mentioning it.
But first and foremost, I would need to rescue the lilim. Whatever I was supposed to make of this mansion, it was a part of the Dungeon, so I had little doubt that despite the genteel decor, it would end up being a twisted funhouse of death. And without the lilim by my side, I felt exposed and vulnerable. The only hint I had available to me toward that end were the pair of finial-statues installed at the bottom landings of the staircases, so I decided to start there.
Each of the bronze sculptures were quite splendidly made and a perfect likeness to their respective muse, but they were otherwise unadorned. There were no handy poems or inscriptions to clue me in to where the two of them might be stowed away. So the only thing I could figure was that each lilim was located somewhere up their specifically marked staircase.
For practical reasons, I decided to attempt finding Arx first. She was the more experienced Dungeoneer and a Scout-type besides. Plus, her little humming trick might be handy for navigating the area.
So with that in mind, I headed toward the right-hand staircase. However, the instant I set foot on the first step, I heard a distinct click and a dart fired out out of the newel post straight through my left kneecap.
I froze there for several seconds as a long, drawn out wheeze of pain escaped my lungs. “Fuhhh-huh-huh-king biiiiiitch…”
*****
Healing my knee was not difficult. The dart had shot clean through, and I was an experienced enough healer not to waste any unnecessary Life Energy. However, the injury had served as a useful, if unwelcome, lesson.
Unless I found some food—or got one of my lilim back—I would have absolutely no means of regenerating my pool. So the more traps I fell victim to, the more and more starved I would become. Meaning, there were only so many traps I could afford to endure.
Assuming they remained less than fatal.
So it should not be surprising that the next few minutes of my life were spent in trying to slide my way up the banister. I had no idea whether that was the intended method of ascending the staircase, but it was a method, and that was all that mattered. Detecting traps was not a part of my current skill set, so for the time being, I was not taking any chances.
Unfortunately, the thing had been polished to such a slick finish that were it not for the balusters underneath I would have had no purchase whatsoever. I ended up having to very carefully balance my weight atop the handrail while clamping the underside as hard as I could with my forearms. Then, using my legs, I had to slowly and oh-so-delicately push myself up.
By some miracle, I managed it without falling, though by the time I finally set foot on the second-story landing, I had to take a few minutes to rest. Even with a 10 in Toughness, my hands were quite visibly shaking from the exertion.
“Why is that?” I wondered aloud. A 10 was supposed to represent the natural maximum, and yet here I was still huffing and puffing like some amateur. Marathon runners could go for miles without stopping. All I had done was slide up a staircase.
Then again marathon runners trained specifically for running, and I definitely had a running skill. It was only barely in the double digits as I recalled, but I had one. So it could be that my climbing skill was insufficient to utilize what Toughness I had to its fullest effect.
The thought left me curious, and absently, I called, “Lady Bline, please tell me what my climbing skill is at.”
I even remembered not to request the information in the form of a question, yet still She did not answer. Hmm… still giving me the silent treatment, I see.
“Hey, I’m sorry if I offended you, okay?” I tried, hoping I could rectify the situation with a simple apology, but apparently She was not yet ready to deal with me. It would seem I still needed to give Her some time.
Hopefully, not too much. I kind of need access to this stuff.
Sighing, I returned my attention to my earlier train of thought. I was fairly certain my climbing skill should be somewhere in the single digits, so that I had needed so much endurance to use it made a degree of sense.
“Might do me some good to invest just a tad into Strength, too,” I murmured. That way, I would not have to work as hard to achieve the same effect.
Then I realized the direction my thoughts had gone, and I clicked my tongue in annoyed dismissal. I was hardly planning to delve into the wide world of professional banister-scalers. I was a mage! If anything, I could just buy a teleportation spell. Or levitation? I nodded sagely. The Telvanni might have been a bunch of pricks, but they were right about one thing: every mage worth his salt should at least know how to levitate.
Shaking out my hands, I climbed to my feet once more and took a look at my immediate surroundings. I was currently standing on a black and white rug just in front of my recent conquest. To my left, another set of stairs joined up with the other side to head up to the third story. Meanwhile, the landing curved off to my right leading to a pair of doors set roughly half a dozen paces from one another. Between them, there was a stately grandfather clock with a trio of familiar-looking crystals hanging in the lower chamber. And coincidentally, it began to strike one at about the moment I laid eyes on it.
I was suspicious of coincidence… plus, those crystals were an obvious point of interest.
So, I decided to go in for a closer look. Tentatively, I stretched a foot toward one of the large floor-tiles, taking a page out of Jax’s playbook. I had no idea whether I was being too cautious, but if there were any more traps, I would at least have my weight centered on my back foot. That way, I would not be fully committed if one of them—
Abruptly, the entire landing heaved, and I was thrown backward down the stairs. Darts shot out from all directions, occasionally missing me as I tumbled down, but by the time I finally rolled to a stop at the bottom, I was both heavily bleeding and more than a little bruised.
Gingerly, I rolled over onto my back and again stared up at the UFO-shaped chandelier. I only had enough breath left in my lungs to manage a single word, and that weakly. So I said it.
“Ow~”
*****
Like a detective at a crime-scene investigation, I examined the multitude of blood splatters staining the once-pristine marble staircase. Not every dart had hit me so there were a few gaps, but it was clear there was some kind of pattern to them. Moreover, after counting the spent ammo scattered about, there were less than half as many as there were stairs—though I could not be certain I had found them all.
With that information, my best guess was that every other step was trapped, plus I now had a fair idea as to how the dart mechanisms worked. Just touching the stair was not enough to set it off. You had to put some weight on it, and then a dart would fire from one side or the other somewhere along the plane of the step.
And now that I knew that, it was easy enough to circumvent. Gingerly, I placed my toes onto the lip of the second step and hauled myself up, being careful not to allow any part of my leg to intersect with a potential dart path. No ominous click or projectile came, so with a smile, I continued to the next. And just to test my hypothesis, I attempted the third stair.
Sure enough, once enough of my weight was pressing down on it, a dart fired away. And thanks to my caution, it missed me completely.
I chuckled darkly. “Donum, you clever boy.” Never mind that I had figured it out in potentially the hardest way possible.
In any case, I managed the rest of the stairs with little fanfare, and sure enough, they were perfectly safe as long as you knew which to avoid. But now that I was on the landing once again, I was back in unfamiliar and extremely dangerous territory.
The landing looked exactly as I had left it, with no sign that it had flung me off. The clock was still in exactly the same spot, and the rug lacked so much as a wrinkle to indicate the earlier fiasco.
Probably nailed down.
It was 1:47 by that point. The fall, healing session, and subsequent investigation had taken more time than I thought. But what was I supposed to do now? Whatever trap was at play here had triggered with only a slight brush with my foot, so I could not brute-force it like I had done with the steps.
Well… I could probably figure it out through trial-and-error, but I would starve myself to death in the process. There had to be a clue around here somewhere, otherwise this trap would not even begin to be fair. And the Dungeon was always fair.
Unless the clue is hidden somewhere else, and I’m not supposed to be here yet. That was a distinct possibility with these open-ended puzzle-trap situations. My decision to go up this particular set of stairs first had been somewhat arbitrary, after all.
I frowned at the thought. I had tried my hand at a few of those old puzzle games like Riven and Kings Quest. I could usually get pretty far, but eventually I would get frustrated and have to look up a solution. The answer would always be some horseshit you would never think of in a million years… like the outline of this one cave entrance happened to look kind of like a frog if you squinted from one specific and otherwise not-at-all interesting vantage point, and of course that meant you needed to input the symbol from that one room with the squeaky wheel—which also somewhat sounded like a frog croaking—into the nearby rock face.
I was still salty about it, too.
Whatever. I would give this area one last attempt before trying somewhere else.
Carefully, I scanned the immediate vicinity in as much detail as I could muster. The walls, the ceiling, the newel posts, all of them seemed quite mundane. The only thing that stood out—and consequently drew my eyes again and again—was that grandfather clock. But I also did not dare move any closer at the moment. Thus far, the rug was the only known safe ground.
So like an eleven-year-old forbidden from leaving his room, I used the handrail to lean as close as I could without leaving the carpet.
Much like the rest of the furnishings, the clock was baroque in design. The housing was a lovely, dark-stained wood with an abundance of fanciful carvings running up and down the edges. The interior was lined with white marble to match the banister I had earlier climbed, and as I had previously noted, the lower portion housed some sort of swinging pendulum with a trio of blue crystals hanging above it at irregular heights.
Normally, old-school grandfather clocks of this type would have some counterweights installed in the lower chamber. I had no idea how it all worked internally, but if you forgot to periodically wind it—which would raise those weights inside the chamber—the clock would eventually stop.
The crystals appeared to be serving as the weights. That had to be significant. How so escaped me for the moment, so I dismissed them for later.
As far as the clock-face itself, again there seemed to be a lot going on with it. There were various gears and whirly bits visible beneath the hands, and there were some elaborate decorations or perhaps writing along the sides. However, it was too small to make much sense of from the rug.
But I could see the numbers just fine. Each of them shined in gold to make them more visible against the silver backplate with the exception of the 12. That number was made of the same marble as the lining and, to set it off, it had been framed by the shape of a simplistic black diamond.
Interesting.
The seemingly trivial little detail made me take a second look at the floor. The tiles were set diagonal to the wall—a diamond-pattern. And some of them were black.
Righting myself again, I then squatted to take a closer look. Besides the black ones, there were quite a few colors to the floor pattern, however while complex, it was all in grayscale, so it remained tasteful. Other than that, I noted that each tile seemed equal in size and perhaps large enough to rest a single foot upon without touching the grout.
There was definitely something afoot here—forgiving the pun—but I could not see any obvious mechanisms. It just looked like a regular, if elaborate, set of floor tiles.
So then, how to make sense of this? Why draw my attention to the floor tiles with a clock?
Hmm… the black is on the twelve. My gut reaction was that the black tiles would be safe if the clock read twelve. But it was… I glanced up to double-check… almost two. That seemed to be saying I would need a different color.
Well, if we’re using a clock, then I’d assume there must be twelve colors to pick from. So I began counting them out. It was not so easy, as most of them were quite similar in hue and no individual tile was set orthogonally to its closest chromatic-neighbor, but eventually I arrived at a total of seven: black, white, and five different shades of gray.
I frowned. Shit. Seven? That can’t be right.
So I counted them again. There were definitely seven.
I sighed and sat down cross-legged to think. Was I just grasping at straws here? It could have been just a simple coincidence. The clock had clearly been chosen and placed there to match with the decor, so it made sense for it to have similar design features. Those crystals were obviously important, though.
Hmm… ordinarily, you’d think there should be twelve to match with the clock. Or at least some multiple like six or three.
For a few minutes, I sat staring at the pendulum swinging back and forth. Black on twelve. Black on twelve…
I glanced back at the floor. Black, a bunch of different grays… then white. I quirked an eyebrow before shifting my gaze back. If it were me, I would think white should go on the six. White is the opposite of black. Six opposes the twelve. Makes sense.
…and then five others.
Now that I was staring directly at the clock face, the solution came to me in a snap. I had been thinking about it in the wrong way. Of course, there would be seven colors. To get from 12 to 6 might take six hours, but in order to represent that information, you needed seven different symbols. The six for each new hour plus one to represent the one you started on.
And if I were to arrange the shades of gray into a gradient from black to white… and then back again, I had all twelve digits accounted for. Of course, there might be other variations, but this was the one that made the most sense to me.
Confident now that I had figured it out, I stood and stretched a foot to the nearest off-black tile. But then I froze and glanced at the clock. Seconds later, the clock struck two.
I tutted. Close one. Slightly more hesitant now, I shifted my foot over to the nearest off-off-black. Then I did a quick scan to make sure I was actually picking the off-off-black and not the mid-gray.
Dammit… why couldn’t this have been a rainbow design?
*****
Awkwardly standing in front of the grandfather clock—my stance was a little unsteady owing to the tile positions—I was able to examine it in more detail.
The three crystals were inaccessible for the moment. There was a glass panel over the front of the pendulum and weight mechanism which was secured with one of those Dungeon-specific, triangular locks. Naturally, the Key was absent.
I did give a passing thought toward smashing it open, but the heaviest thing I had on me was my knife. The shield I had recently purchased had unfortunately gone missing during the flood incident.
I shook my head. Most wizards could not even use a shield, and here I was, perfectly able yet I kept misplacing them like pencils. If I did not know better, I would have thought the universe was conspiring against me.
Okay, gonna need to find the Key to this thing, I guess. What was one more item for the list?
As for the rest, the only other relevant detail I could see was a set of three sentences which had been inscribed in concentric circles around the edge of the clock face. It took me a moment to make sense of them. Their orientations were not at all what you would expect from that kind of setup. Instead of being centered, each of the lines was rotated in seemingly random directions.
However, after a moment, I had it.
Jump for glee: Blues in three, As hanging weight.
One of six, One of seven, One of eight.
First find a Key. Left to see, Right to mate.
I sighed. “Oh, great. We’re back to riddles, are we?”
Still, it could have been a lot worse. Obviously, the ‘blues in three as hanging weight’ had to refer to the crystals in this clock. And I did need a Key to open the thing. So that all made sense.
The middle line though? My first instinct was to check for differences between the three crystals, but they seemed identical from what I could tell. They were all cut into six-sided prisms, slightly more than a hand in length, and hanging as though glued to some sort of facet by a brass chain. So that was no help.
The rest of the riddle was pretty nebulous. Obviously, I was looking for one of my mates—Jax occasionally referred to me as hers—and there were a pair of doors on either side of me. So it could have been referring to that. But… see? See what?
“I’m left to sea, alright.”
I chuckled at myself before shaking my head. It would appear that was all I was getting from the clock.
“Well, I’m mainly looking for Arx right now, so… let’s check out the right side,” I muttered aloud, and putting action to words, I carefully toed my way over, keeping to the two o’clock tile.
The door was made of some unidentifiable, long-grained wood which was varnished in a dark cherry and featured a complimentary dark brass latch-handle. Otherwise, it was not particularly significant-looking—just a regular door in a regular house.
Naturally, I assumed it would rip my arm off if I so much as touched it. So, while standing as far away as I possibly could, I unsheathed my knife and gave the handle a gentle tap. I waited and, when no response came, I tapped it a little harder, causing the handle to jiggle ever-so-slightly.
Nothing happened. Which was fortunate. My cautionary approach would have done jack-all to prevent anything but a pit trap directly in front of the door, but I was short on both skill and resources. At that point, I would have loved to have a ten-foot pole.
Hell, I would have taken a ten-inch knife! Mine was barely eight including the handle.
Just have to make do.
Steeling my nerves, I slowly pressed down on the latch with about the same expectation as a man attempting to pet a rattlesnake. However, to my surprise, the door simply clicked and began to gently swing inward on well-oiled hinges.
“Huh. Guess not everything around here is trapped, after all.”
In hindsight, that would have been a bit much. The whole point of a good trap is take you unexpectedly. And as Syndrome so eloquently put it, if everything is a trap, then nothing is. Paraphrasing, of course.
Unfortunately, the other side of the door led to pitch darkness. It was not quite to the level of the void space, but it was close. The light spilling in from the entryway seemed to disperse and scatter, as though it was fighting its way through some sort of dense fog. But if so, none of it was coming through to my side of the door.
Just as an experiment, I cast Unclothe the Darkness to summon up my helpful see-in-the-dark outlines and, with their aid, I was able to make out a hallway extending forward a few paces until it abruptly turned and disappeared off toward the right.
But then I frowned. That seemed… off.
It took me a moment to figure out what was bothering me, but when I glanced to my own immediate right, I realized that the door was only about one good step away from the edge of the wall. And at least on my side, the wall wrapped around the corner to extend to wherever the entry hall led on the bottom floor. So why would a darkened room have a hallway in it that only led straight into the wall?
Some kind of chicanery, that’s what!
As unsurprising as that revelation was, it did help click together a piece of the puzzle. Obviously, if this way was not only dark but led to… some kind of shenanigans, then it made sense for there to be something to help me ‘see.’
I nodded. It seemed a reasonable enough conclusion. And despite not needing a flashlight, I had a feeling I was going to need more than the simple ability to see in the dark.
Besides, it could not hurt to at least take a peek into the other door before making a commitment. So I carefully made my way over to the other side, wobbling slightly from having to keep to the correct tiles, before again giving the second door handle a few experimental taps with my knife. As before, there was no reaction.
Good. No traps again.
Smiling, I grabbed the latch and twisted.
Abruptly, the door jerked back as though sucked open by a great wind, and as off-balance as I was, I might as well have been at the mercy of a judo champion. In that brief moment of weightlessness, I had just enough time to note that not only was it far too bright, but my inevitable meeting with the ground was taking far too long.
And then I splashed head first into a pool of water.
More than a little shocked by this turn of events, it took me perhaps a second longer than it should have to realize I ought to be putting some effort into resurfacing. But then the bit of water I had accidentally sucked into my lungs started to announce its unwelcome presence, and I kicked upward, coughing and sputtering.
Once I had calmed down enough to look around, I had a moment of sheer disbelief… and then panic. The mansion was gone. There were no walls. No doors. Nor even a ceiling. I was outside. It was a clear and blustery day. And somewhat more importantly, I seemed to be treading water in the middle of the ocean.
With no land in sight.
“The fuck?!”
A gust of wind was my only answer. Followed by the sound of a door slamming shut. Above me.
Startled, I turned toward the noise. The door I had just come through was still there… seemingly attached to nothing and hovering about two stories above my head. I stared at it in utter befuddlement for quite some time.
Weird though its existence was, it was still something of a relief to know it was there. It served to ground the situation. Yes, I might have just walked… fallen through a door on the second-story balcony of a messed-up trap-mansion into the middle of an ocean, but I had not been randomly teleported. This was purposeful. And I could get back.
Theoretically.
“Now, if only I could figure out how to dolphin-jump my ass up there, I’d be in business. And who the hell just installs a door leading to a random spot the middle of the sea with no warn—oh, dammit all!” Disgusted, I let the back of my head tip into the water as I groaned my frustration into the sky. “’Left to see.’ Ugh… It was a pun!”
I had even said it out loud!
Faintly, I heard what sounded like some giggling carried on the wind, and I narrowed my eyes. Faen. For all I knew, they might have set this whole thing up only after having heard me make the stupid joke in the first place.
“Horns of the Shepherdess… when will I learn to keep my big mouth shut?”
With a defeated sigh, I began to slowly spin, scanning the horizon for something I might have missed. There had to be more to this than making a ridiculous pun into reality. Just dumping me into the middle of the ocean with no recourse but to drown would have been pointless. Unless they thought it was ‘funny.’ But it would not have been fair, and that was important.
Sure enough, before too long I spotted a small island off in the distance. It was going to be one hell of a swim, but I could make it. I would have to.
Seleroan
Well, I hope everyone had fun with that one. A light sprinkling of puzzles and traps to start things off, eh?
And if you just can't wait to see what's on that island, come check out the Patreon to read ahead. I could always use the support.
