Spoiled Spoils

"So who the fuck are you?" Artemis said.

They pretended not to understand us for half a minute. It was a stupid deception, because all of us had spoken to interdimensional beings that we had no business understanding, and so knew that the Tower translated for us. Eventually one of them understood that we weren't going to buy it.

"We won't tell you anything," one of the men said. "Fine. Bjorn, how are casualties?" Artemis said. "Pah. Casualty. One dumb Zachary. He'll pull through with half my mana spent. Everyone else is either not so bad, or got a healing potion quickly," Bjorn said. "Only loot food, weapon upgrades and coins. I fucking know those are about to come in handy one of these days," Artemis shouted over to the part of our group going over the bodies. "Sorry, coin-flip," I said. "Don't worry about it. If getting through a fight only costs a bunch of potions it was a good day," Artemis said. "Um," one of the captives said. "What? You can go now," Artemis said. "I don't think that's how an interrogation is supposed to go," a captive said. "Shut up, let's get out of here," another said. "I don't do interrogations. I just figured you must be trapped here against your will like everyone else we've met, and you might have had some reason to do something as stupid as attack an armed and levelled group with higher numbers," Artemis said. "Kryt, she has a point," a captive said to another. "Shut up, Kryn, they're heroes, they'll start frothing at the mouth any moment now," Kryt said. "That's just Zack," Hannah said, "Didn't find potions." "Damn. Alright, if everyone's well enough to walk, we're setting out as soon as everyone's ready," Artemis said.

She started walking away from the captives, and began looking after those of us who had been tired or wounded at the outset of the expedition.

"Wait! Wait!" Kryn said. "Shut up, Kryn," Kryt said. "We're fucking dead unarmed and on our own," Kryn said. "Hah, unarmed. Because your hands got blown up," Hannah said, and the amount of deadpan she put into those words requires poetry to describe. "And that too! How are we supposed to reach the entrance with no hands," Kryn said. "Yes. We are dead already. We will not sully our honor by fraternizing with heroes," Kryt said. "Look, I keep my people alive. If you want to join up, I'll do my best for you, just like I would for anyone else. But if you keep talking like we're a dangerous other, I'm going to expect getting backstabbed," Artemis said. "You're lying," a third captive said. "She's actually not. Though I don't know if everyone feels the same, Artemis," I said.

She sighed, and I still couldn't quite tell if she was acting or if she actually was treating these people as casually as she was because she didn't care about them joining or talking one way or another. I only expected that it was the latter because I knew she cared about people and about keeping the Guild safe, and so getting extra bodies and information would be very useful.

"We're from the planet Kyrt," Kryn said. "God, there can't be that many possible combinations of those four letters," I said. "Four?" Kryn said. "That doesn't matter. Please continue your story," Artemis said. "Our world was subjected to a demi-plane of heroism a century ago. We only just now managed to overthrow the hero tyrants. It was really, really bad, understand? They didn't care about suffering, death, or killing at all, you know," Kryn said. "Shit, I mean, yeah, that makes sense. How long were they in the plane?" I said. "Only a year. They came out with impossible powers and complete lack of mercy," Kryn said. "It's only been two days. Of course we aren't there yet. We hope to never become like that," Artemis said. "See, they don't understand," Kryt said. "It might help us understand if you explained literally anything," I said. "Alex, let me handle this," Artemis said. "We heard about this plane and volunteered as monsters. Our plane was powered by arcane crystals and higher fae. By all accounts it was a paradise where people could go into play-fights with weak monsters until they got powerful enough to fight slightly more dangerous creatures for exponentially greater rewards. The thing powering this Tower doesn't have a name," Kryn said. "I thought it was powered by elementals," I said. "That's heating, insulation, maintenance and atmosphere. The simple stuff. If you only had the elementals, you'd basically have a big, comfortable house to starve in. The advancement, the monsters, the narrative is made by something else," Kryn said. "The darkness in the walls," I said. "You've been tainted by it already!" Kryt said. "Wait, what?" Artemis said.

"I meant to mention it, but it never came up. There's sort of, well, nothing inside the walls. Like the vacuum of space, just with a breathable atmosphere," I said. "The atmosphere is nothing like breathable, but since you were still in the Tower, the elementals provided you with a direct injection of air," Kryn said. "You seem to know an awful lot about this," Artemis said. "Lexios was leading us. I listened to his words the past two days. He's the one who convinced his master to send us here," Kryn said. "The toothless traitor?" Artemis said. "All the apprentices that get thrown in here on the first three days get mocking monikers. He was a powerful wizard out in the multiverse, the magic here just isn't mature enough," Kryn said. "Okay, so that explains why you wanted to kill us. It's an incredibly stupid reason, but fine. What do you know about today's challenge," Artemis said.

"Lexios thought we'd get split apart. We had to find weapons since we don't have Journals or advancement. It should have been enough for hero nymphs," Kryn said. "Nymphs?" Artemis said, incredulous. "Not gone fully crazy yet. Not hatched," Kryt said. "Do you know if we're going the right direction, at least?" Artemis said. "At a guess, sure. Makes sense it would be towards the center," Kryn said. "What's 'it'?" Artemis said. "Nobody knows. Ascension to the next challenge, probably. There'll be a test of some sort, probably violent, and it won't be easy to get there. I've studied demiplanes of heroism extensively, but they are each unique by definition. Each made by the intelligent design of an archmage of incredible power, and fueled by one sort of intelligent energy source or another," Kryn said.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it "Alright, thanks, Kryn. Offer's open. Any of you can join us and help, and any of you can leave. If you join, I'll do my best to keep you alive," Artemis said.

It didn't take very long for the aliens to understand that they really didn't have much of a choice. Even the hostile Kryt eventually swore and joined our ranks. Since they were all suffering from debilitating wounds, they were stationed in the middle of the pack with the other wounded, though nobody seemed to much like the idea. As we set out walking East once more, there was an obvious distance between them and the nearest Earthlings. They didn't seem to be inclined to talk to the Guild members around them, and most of us seemed to be quite afraid of them and preferred to just ignore the strangers that had just attacked us, or keeping a suspicious eye on them.

As far as I was concerned, that was a problem for Artemis, I would probably just make it worse, like I had made the actual fight worse by walking past the intersection without even considering the potential of a flanking attack. If it had been just me, I'd probably be dead already. Again.

Over the second hour of the day the confluence became a lot more obvious, intersections now coming in distinct trident shapes, at more and more shallow angles. The main difference in the second hour was that everybody was a lot jumpier than through the first, but we didn't run into anything else until things changed suddenly.

Clarence saw it first, and he must have had some ability to see through the unnatural fog of the Tower, as I could have sworn the strange door was still in the mists when he said "Well that's peculiar," and I had the time to say "What?" and take several steps forward before I noticed what he was talking about.

The hallway ended abruptly. Ahead of us was a door, and it was unlike any of the classroom doors, or even any of the special room doors. It looked like it was a sliding wooden door, maybe like one of an elevator, and it had a red button on the wall next to it. There was no other explanation. "Damned peculiar," I agreed.

The front line caught up with us, and Artemis said "Huh."

"The Kyrtans did say that we would be split up further ahead. Maybe this is it," I said. "Or maybe it's a dead-end, with a door that leads into a wood-chipper," Artemis said. "Fuck. Do you think we have the time to explore some of the side passages?" I said. "Clarence, what do you think?" Artemis said. "Judging by the point at which the perpendicular passages began tilting away from us, I would estimate that we would have to walk back for quite a while, and then again on the other side. It wouldn't likely take more than a few hours, but with an unknown time-line I expect we should at least investigate," Clarence said. "I can seal off the door easy. If there's a group of monsters waiting to ambush us as soon as the door opens I can fill it with ice or fire from safety," I said.

Artemis transmitted my idea to the rest of the Guild, and asked for questions, comments, or suggestions, but the Guild was pretty tired, so there were mostly indecisive shrugs and a scattered agreement to my idea to push the button and see what we were dealing with. I cast the barrier spell with the full casting procedure out of my spellbook, and pushed the button.

The door opened with a ding that made it clear that it was indeed meant to resemble an elevator, and the interior agreed. There was space for, maybe seven people inside, but a simple pictogram on the back wall of the, sure let's call it elevator, showed five people.

"Probably don't want to risk more than five," I said. "Probably don't want to risk it at all," Artemis said.

I walked around to see around the corners by the door. On the inside too there was a single red button.

"I mean it's pretty fucking obvious what it wants us to do at least," I said. "Back to that same question. Follow the rules, or try to break them," Artemis said. "If you have some idea for breaking them, I'm all ears," I said. "Shit, I don't know. You're supposed to be the big brain here," Artemis said. "Those stats don't make you smarter. Well, at least they don't make you better at solving puzzles," I said. "No, I don't have any ideas," Artemis said, "Anyone, any ideas for how to break this thing?" "Don't break it, that would be very bad," Kryn said. "Not the physical object. The game around it," Artemis said. "Oh. Then no," Kryn said.

The Guild was leaning against walls, yawning and frustrated, and not a lot of suggestions came out of it.

"Why don't we take a break. A power-nap, some lunch, maybe an hour," I said . "Fuck. I don't love it, but yeah. Hear that everyone? Lunch time, have a nap, one way or another we're making a decision and leaving in an hour," Artemis said.

There were still enough classrooms adjacent to the halls for us to at least have an accurate timer. It had just passed under 22 hours. I wasn't really tired though, having slept very recently and not really being involved in anything dangerous since. It was fifteen minutes into our break when I slapped my forehead and went 'duh'. I went to Artemis with my idea, and she agreed with my assessment, slapped her own forehead and echoed my 'duh'.

We took a distinctive object- a notebook with a flower pattern found in one of our starting classrooms and tossed it into an elevator. I pushed the button on the inside and withdrew my arm as the doors were closing. There was the usual sound of an elevator departing, and eventually another ding. I pressed the outside button again, the door opened again, and there was no notebook there.

Then I cast my pseudoportal spell, targeting the notebook. By this point it was relatively easy, even if it still took around twenty seconds to materialize. Through the portal we saw the interior of the same elevator that we had sent the notebook through, and we saw the notebook itself on the floor unharmed. The door of the elevator was open, and we could see through it. It opened up into another hallway, and it even seemed to be like a school hallway, except instead of windowless, identical wooden walls, there were wide open windows on the left side. It appeared that there was a terrible storm going on, so that the only thing you could see through the windows were flashes of lightning, fog and battering of heavy rain swept by wind.

"Alright, so we know it doesn't lead into a literal woodchipper at least," I said. "Still could be dangerous," Artemis said. "Pretty sure everything we do is going to be dangerous, Artemis," I said. "Fuck," Artemis said. "I'm willing to go," I said. "Not alone you're not," Artemis said. "But we cannot take the strongest people through either. There's every chance we won't get back, and we cannot leave the weaker and tired members of the guild behind to face this in their groups," I said. "Fuck. Yeah, you're right. This is definitely a voting situation," Artemis said.

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