A Dangerous Thing

As soon as I circled the option for knowledge in the Journal, my reward materialized in the form of a pseudoportal, inches in front of my face, from which a half dozen stone tablets tumbled out and fell into the sandy floor beneath. They fell with dense thuds, but through fortune or design while some cracked, none of them shattered. I shrugged and squatted down to read their contents.

The tablets came in two sets of three, it turned out. One was a sort of a mythic poem about a necromancer who came to this place, the House Alsarab, fleeing the destruction of his home. He made some deals with demonic forces, the most notable of those being a creature called the Crowfather to improve his necromancy. I assumed this was the figure that we had seen in the council hall, but I still didn't see what connection it had to the Tower as a whole or our journey out of this theme-park of a section of the Tower. I made sure to memorize the names and places mentioned in the poem just in case it came up in another puzzle, but for now I turned to the second set of tablets.

These actually resonated with my own arcane knowledge skills. In fact, these were schematics of an incredibly advanced spell. If Conjure Icicle was a middle school algebra problem, this was a portion of the code for Apollo-11's computers. I barely recognized any of the needle-point carvings of sigils and runes on the tablets, but enough that I knew it was spellwork like I'd done it. Again, in the sense that both dissecting a frog and gene sequencing is biology. I was, at least, pretty certain I wasn't looking at a complete spell. Even if these were somehow the sigils for the spell, they'd have to be of a rank that I'd have to sit down and calculate, and I wasn't sure I remembered the arithmetic to do it. It certainly didn't have an incantation attached to it. I thought it was very unlikely that the poem would be the incantation either, as I had never seen any of those make any coherent sense before.

All that investment in Arcane Theory and Abjuration wasn't quite totally useless, however. I managed to figure out that it was the array for an abjuration spell, though I couldn't exactly explain how I knew even that. And I also found several symbols that didn't fit. These were all very intricate and ornate. Some were sharp and jagged, some- geometric and precise, others still flowing and symbolic. These didn't fit spellwork as I understood it, but I did see one that at least felt connected to our current predicament. Surrounded by tiny runes and sigils, not far from other less abstract symbols, there was the abstract representation of a skull of a bird. I was extremely confident guessing that it was the skull of a raven, though whether it was my increased knowledge attribute remembering a web search from a decade ago, or if I was just recognizing a pattern of this section of the Tower I could not be sure.

"Anything good?" Mr. Xiang said. "I think this is a part of a spell to keep, I don't know, maybe powerful creatures out," I said. "How powerful?" Mrs. Xiang said. "Mythical. Honestly, I kind of get vibes of gods," I said. "There is only- Nevermind," Elijah said. "I was thinking it was strange. In these sorts of games there are usually divine powers. Healing magic from the gods, that sort of thing. I don't know, I still am not certain what to do with this knowledge," I said. "We've seen devils though. Isn't that the same thing," Kristen said, "I mean, they're both religious." "Not sure. Chum did mention Mephistopheles. Maybe it's like an evil god thing, and we definitely haven't seen anything like that. Maybe, like, angels could be somewhere in the Tower?" I said. "Sounds like we still don't know anything. Keep going?" Mrs. Xiang said.

We passed through several other identical courtyards, before I decided we had to stop and think. Clearly this wasn't just a small area we could explore entirely. Indeed it seemed to be just as vast as the Tower itself, even if it had none of the subterranean feel of the Tower as we knew it from the first two days. I began drawing the map again, my cartography skill slowly ticking up all the way to rank 2 over the next hour. Finally, Kristen noticed the pattern.

"There! It's the exits, they're not all in the same place. So, if I'm getting this right, hmm, with this pattern…" she said, and went quiet figuring out something I was entirely incapable of seeing. I would've thought one of my mind attributes would have made me better at spatial reasoning, but I guess not. Or else, she was particularly good at it. Or, she was wrong, and when she said "This way!" and we all started following, we were just going to get lost.

So I kept drawing the map as we kept moving in a way that seemed entirely erratic to me, more time passed. I had to re-cast the fire protection spell several times, which kept me at consistently low mana. I had, of course, burned through my reserves when I had cast through the pseudoportal, as that was its main disadvantage, so now, every minor fight we got into meant that I could only cast a spell or two, and would be out of mana by the end. Elijah still couldn't manage to interfere much with the monsters, but he was becoming more able to move and less frozen, while still not fleeing, which was, apparently, an improvement.

It was nearing the end of the second hour of our time in the House Alsarab when we finally saw that drastic change we had been envisioning. Instead of another identical ceiling-height wall we stood in front of a monolithic structure made of red sand-stone. It reminded me of Petra in Jordan in some ways, like a door made for giants, leading into a tomb. Shadows poured out of the entrance like smoke, and two stone guardians stood on either side of the entrance.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

From where we stood these might have been statues, a little taller than human scale and wielding spears of stone. They were entirely frozen and immobile, and yet there was something that made me uneasy. Perhaps they were too articulated, or else I was developing a mystical sense for things like this. Perhaps I was simply being paranoid and wound up being correct in this one instance. But when we walked up to the door and the two statues groaned to life and crossed their spears in front of our path to the tomb, I was ready for it and didn't so much as jump.

"Doesn't look impossible to walk past," Mr. Xiang said. "I'll bet you anything they'll fight us if we try," I said. "No bet," Mr. Xiang said. "Do we fight them then?" Elijah said. "My mana is low and not recovering. I'd rather not rely on your ability to smash them apart before they crush you. No idea how fast they are," I said. "Well, obviously there is a way past," Kristen said. "I hate puzzle games. They're always set like this objective test of intelligence, but you basically always end up having to guess what the person making the puzzle intended," I said. "That's just bad puzzles. A good puzzle is all about the logic of the situation," Kristen said. "And is this puzzle a good puzzle?" Mrs. Xiang said. "God, I don't even know if it's a puzzle," Kristen said. "The Journal doesn't lie. Probably. If it says the chamber is unlocked, it must be unlocked," I said. "Try the mask," Kristen said. "If it works like described, it'll be incredibly confusing for you," I said. "You saying that is making it worse. So is this. Darn," Mr. Xiang said. "Alright, how about this. Everyone, turn around and wait for five minutes. Literally count to three hundred. I'll be back and tell you whether it worked or not by then. If I'm not there by the time the fire resistance runs out, try to fight the guardians and get out of here," I said. "Wait, what are you talking about?" Elijah said. "The mask. The most significant part of the description was that there was no word about resisting the effect or breaking it. It just said that it would work period. I have no idea what'd happen if I put it on in front of you, but I bet it'd be uncomfortable at minimum," I said. "It was odd. All the descriptions the Journal gives always have these caveats. Not worth risking," Kristen said. "We will turn around and not look so you can do your business," Mr. Xiang said. "Ha-ha," I said.

And so they all turned around and I put the mask on. It was of solid silver and had no strap or anything to hold on to the face, nor did it have eye-holes, but as soon as I put it on it went transparent and stuck to my face. It didn't feel like I couldn't take it off, just as if it was attached by suction just strong enough to not fall off. A moment after I put it on I heard a hacking throat sound, and when I looked back to the group I saw Elijah on hands and knees throwing up in the sand. He must have peeked, but if that's the worst of it, he would have to handle it.

The next moment the two guardians raised their spears to their side and knelt in front of me. I had hoped that something like this might happen, and not entirely without reason. The items description had said that the new identity would be connected to the mask. The mask had previously been worn by someone called Empress. And so, my best case scenario had been basically what had just happened- the magical constructs treated me as an authority and let me pass.

And then I was passing through cold and darkness that seemed infinite. The sensation of the stones underneath my feet was the only feeling that still reminded me of the previous area that I had come from. For a moment it seemed like I was back behind the fridge in the Cafeteria again, but as my eyes adjusted I sensed slight outlines of, perhaps, lesser darkness. It feels wrong to call it either more light or more gray than black, but I could still just about tell it apart, and suddenly instead of a pitch blackness, I felt more like I was walking through a see-through underwater tunnel, like in a large aquarium. I was inside some place rather than the void that was surrounding me. And therein I found my clear path, as I had only one direction to walk- ahead.

I had taken less than ten steps. I saw something in the distance. For a moment it was a white speck in the eternal darkness. A second later, it was mere feet away from me. The skull of a raven the size of a wardrobe, massive elk antlers jutting out from either side, and black feathers flowing like a river down and away from this strange head. It spoke, or rather, the construct I was inside vibrated in a deep, low frequency. It reached out with a hand of bone, and when it touched the ward against gods, it sparked with pure white energy, and pulled away.

When I tore my eyes away from it, things had changed once more. Where before there had been a tunnel of darkness inside darkness, there was now a solid, dark wood door with dark green panels and a polished brass knob. It looked expensive more than anything else. The crow thing spoke again, and I knew that the wards were protecting me from whatever it was saying, for I could not hear it.

I turned to walk back to the others, and saw that the door was actually only a few steps behind me. Until, that is, I tried walking towards it. Then it became farther away with every step I took. When I turned around, however, the wooden door was right behind me once again, within an arms reach. I had to hope that the others were smart enough to figure it out, and so I took off the mask- this let a strange cold in my bones, but also shut the crow thing up- tore a piece of paper out of the mundane notebook that I'd picked up all the way in the classroom I found myself more than two days ago, wrote down it worked, folded it securely to the mask and threw it back into House Alsarab.

Then I turned the handle and walked back into the Tower.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.