Forge of Eternity: Alpha Testing, page 33
“Feel free to try it out, I’ll wait down the hall,” Phelyya said with a laugh.
“Wait,” I said, my mind latching onto something he’d said. “What do you mean because nobody’s been down there?”
“Like, maybe the fireball gas needs to be lit off every so often, or something?” Uri shrugged. “Or maybe we triggered it wrong and other things went off that weren’t supposed to. The dungeon didn’t look like it was in good shape.”
“Fireball… gas…” I rolled the words around in my mouth as I thought. “That rotten egg smell, I always hear that associated with sulfur, which is also associated with hell and brimstone or whatever. I wasn’t very good in chemistry, so this is all context clues from games and books and stuff, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that was probably a flammable gas in the dungeon then.”
“Brimstone is a rock or stone which can be set alight,” Gavin said, nodding. “You are correct in your assessment, sulfurous gasses can be flammable. Their build-up in mines can also lead to disastrous conflagrations or even just a fatal fouling of the air.”
“So, how do we fight gas?” Goodwin asked. “I assume we can’t find the magical equivalent of a giant exhaust fan to clear it out.”
“I actually think Uri was right, after a fashion,” I suggested. “Perhaps a pilot light went out. I can throw a Firebolt down the hall and try to burn away the gas and maybe reignite whatever pilot lights went out.”
“I’m going to assume our explosive exit from the dungeon probably already accomplished that,” Deacon said. “Now we just need to worry about whether there’s enough oxygen left to breathe down there since combustion requires oxygen and I’m not sure an ancient buried dungeon has a fresh air supply.”
“You all are probably forgetting something,” Phelyya said in a teasing tone. “This is still a game. Who wants to walk into a dungeon and die because you didn’t bring a canary to tell you the air was bad and you need to go get some magical scuba tanks or whatever to move on. That’s some adventure game shit. Don’t think too hard about it. We just need to look around a little more and take it slowly this time.”
I opened my mouth to argue, then closed it again realizing she did have a point. Actually several points. The game put on a good show of realism, but based on how Deacon described the speed of crafting, it was certain the world cut some corners. At this point, the question is how much realism is the game including and where should we be swapping out game logic for standard logic. We continued on a bit in silence.
We made it to the small tunnel into the cavern, Phelyya, Gavin, and I leading the way while Uri, Goodwin, and Deacon followed behind. I could only imagine how uncomfortable it would be to travel through here for someone playing one of the larger races, like a half-giant or an orc. We should probably talk to the foreman about putting in a larger tunnel, or making a more direct route to the dungeon entrance so we didn’t have to go through so many tunnels.
Entering into the cavern, I turned on the lantern and shone it around, happy to see everything remained as it had the last time we came through. There were still bug juices clinging to the marble trees from burst eggs, with a faint unpleasant chemical odor permeating the air I assumed was related to the slowly decaying contents of the eggs. Luckily it wasn’t a rot smell, since the locusts we killed helpfully disintegrated into loot sacks instead of leaving behind carcasses.
I opened my menus and turned on the tracking option associated with my signet ring since I wasn’t sure if the dungeon technically started in the stone forest, or in that first hall we entered. When everyone had made it through, and our light hadn’t sparked off any unexpected movement or attacks, we proceeded to the stairway at the far side of the pit. Reaching the other side, we all paused before starting down the stairs.
“Last time only that center part was glowing, right?” Deacon asked, though it seemed to be rhetorical.
The far wall of the pit was no longer a dull engraving, all the lines now emitting a soft, blue glow. This made the entire mural significantly more imposing, and offered sufficient light to see the tops of the trees below. The figures did not gain any further clarity, the heroes on the left still got more detailed while the ones on the right path lost detail as they moved along their paths. The throne, however, and the runes in the center were pulsing orange now, as if from firelight.
“Maybe we kickstarted it when we lit that fire?” Goodwin asked. We all looked at each other and shrugged, proceeding down the stairs with our attention fixed on the far wall. As we got to the halfway point, I noticed something more concerning to our immediate goals. Aiming the mana lantern down at the trees confirmed it.
“Can anyone see that path the locust queen made yesterday?” I asked. “Because I feel like we should be seeing it by now but I don’t see any breaks in the tree cover.”
“I think the forest itself is part of the dungeon,” Phelyya said, shrugging. “And I think the dungeon reset itself after we died.”
“I’ll be honest, I was not looking forward to trying to climb through that rubble heap again,” Deacon said. “Not thrilled about the single file cobblestone tile puzzle crap, but if it’s an easy enough pattern we can probably get through it faster than yesterday’s slog through the rock pile.”
“I’d like to second that,” Uri agreed. “I feel like I rolled my ankle every couple steps last time.”
At the bottom of the stairs, we saw only a single path this time, the stone vegetation growing over the top of the cobblestones. The walkway was only wide enough to accommodate one of us at a time, and Phelyya’s misadventures down it last time showed that we would have both traps, and enemies to contend with.
“What’s the plan?” I asked. “We moving as a group, spacing out, ignoring the path altogether?”
“Is that last one an option?” Goodwin asked. “I’m not a big fan of trial and error pattern matching puzzles.”
“We’re taking the path,” Deacon said, cutting off further speculation. “There’s no advantage to grouping up, we’re just going to get in each other’s way. We’ll spread out and whoever is at the front can pass advice back as we go.”
“I’ll take the lead,” Gavin said, striding forward decisively.
“No,” Deacon grabbed the small man by the back of his robe. “Uri will go first, I’ll follow him. You’ll be behind me, Phelyya, Amalie, and Goodwin can figure out how they want to handle the rear.”
“I’m, uh, not so sure why I’m going first,” Uri said, raising a hand nervously.
“You’re a spellcaster, so you have a high intelligence stat, right?” Deacon asked, receiving a nod. “You have a good chance of being able to figure out any patterns in the stones, and even if you make a mistake you can dodge better than me. You can do even better if you keep a haste spell active. I’ll be following you in case you somehow bite it along the way and we just need someone at the front who can soak up the damage while we try to keep going.”
I nodded along. The decision made sense since Uri acted as our off-tank already, meaning he knew how to take a hit. His time manipulation magic was also a perfect fit for reacting to mistakes.
“Put me in the middle, just behind Gavin,” I said, still nodding a bit as I thought. “It gives me the best flexibility to help if we run into enemies. Unless anybody else has ranged attacks they’ve picked up recently.”
Nobody disagreed and we all waited a healthy distance from the mouth of the path as Uri started forward. He made it a good ten feet down in at a slow walk, carefully examining each step as he went. At that point, he looked around and gave a thumbs up.
“Any pattern I should be looking for?” Deacon asked. “I remember some of the steps you took but not all of them.”
“I just spaced my steps evenly, from the start of the path. They’re all mostly the same shape and I haven’t seen a major difference in color. Entirely guesswork at this point.”
Uri was still facing us when the stone depressed underneath his foot. Instantly he recognized the danger and made a quick motion with one hand. A stone vine whipped toward his neck at incredible speed. Even with his enhanced speed, Uri wasn’t able to dodge out of the way entirely. He did, however, manage to parry with his bracer as he leaned backward out of the way. Off-balance, he took another step back, triggering another trap. A stone bush to his left exploded in a cloud of dust, serrated leaves flying in all directions and knocking Uri’s feet out from under him. He landed hard on his side.
“Stop moving!” Deacon yelled, surprisingly commanding. “Just take the hit and don’t move.”
I checked the party icons, seeing that Uri’s health was down by about a fifth. Not all that bad for triggering traps back to back, though I couldn’t tell if the first one had done any damage. Uri slowly moved to a crouch, careful not to press any stones on the path that he wasn’t already on. He paused, inspecting something at the edge of the path where the bush had exploded. He reached down toward the cobblestones with his hand.
“I don’t think touching them is a good idea,” I said, seeing him lean further forward.
“Not touching them,” Uri said, slowly moving his hand back and forth. “Reading them. Or trying to anyway. They have some sort of symbols.”
I got closer to the path and took out the mana lantern, inspecting the stones myself. I couldn’t see any patterns or differences with the light on them. I turned it off briefly and tried to look with the glowing sleeve of my robe. They still just looked like ordinary cobblestones.
“Nothing over here,” I said, standing up and turning the lantern back on.
Slowly, Uri looked at the stones under him, as well as those further along the path away from us. “I can only see the symbols from a certain angle, looking back your direction. Let me try something.”
He stood and placed his boot on a stone he’d already safely stepped on. He then made a quick hand motion and stepped on the stone that triggered the vine whip. Nothing happened for several seconds, then it suddenly sank away and Uri dropped into a crouch. A vine whipped from one tree to another where his neck had been only a second earlier. The danger gone, he took out his rapier and went to make a strike against the first stone.
“Uri are you out of your mind?” Deacon asked loudly, pausing the Warmage as he made to swing. “Use your old rapier if you’re going to hack away at rocks.”
He sheepishly sheathed his new sword and pulled the one from his other side. Now holding a weapon that was apparently allowed to be abused, he slashed at the top of the stone several times in quick succession. He looked at it from various angles, nodding to himself. He repeated the process on another stone nearby a half step away, continuing until he was standing back in front of us a few minutes later.
“Good thinking,” Deacon said, as Uri made it back off the path. “Any reason you didn’t just do that on your way forward when you found safe spots to stand?”
Uri opened his mouth and closed it again several times before shaking his head. We all chuckled and Deacon patted him on the shoulder.
“Seriously though, good work,” Deacon said. “Now, let’s keep going. Uri, you’re still in front and we’ll be staying at least ten feet back. Everyone else can be on any marked spot on the path behind me. This should be a breeze now.”
I rolled my eyes and waited for my turn, wand at the ready. “Oh, with a statement like that there’s no way the game is going to find a way to make this harder for us.”
Deacon - Path
The cramped path and looming stone trees gave me a greater sense of claustrophobia than the ridiculous crawl down the halfling-sized mining tunnel. Moving forward at a slow creep and having to tiptoe over traps didn’t improve my mood at all. Every time Uri stepped on a trap I had to clench my teeth not to curse at him. It wasn’t his fault and I held my tongue. None of us had found a discernible pattern for the safe cobblestones yet, other than multiple traps were normally close together on the path. Even my tremorsense provided no hint as to which steps would cause an issue. Instead of moving forward with any methodical testing, we were using the tried and true technique of sending out a somewhat expendable resource to go trigger the traps and see what happens.
“Oh shit!” I heard from Uri for what felt like the thousandth time as yet another stone depressed under his weight. I crouched and raised my shield against possible incidental impacts, covering my lesser armored areas as best I could. The exploding shrapnel bushes had a long range, whenever Uri managed to evade the blast, and they appeared to be the most plentiful traps along the path. Uri jumped into the air and just barely got one hand around a low branch. As he hung there, a series of stone vines whipped horizontally, then began questing in the area of the depressed cobblestone. Ten seconds later and the vines retreated.
After some minor positioning to avoid the stone he’d stepped on previously, Uri dropped back to the path on known safe footing. I didn’t relax my guard, the traps seemed to be clustered together, and when one was triggered more were likely nearby. Sure enough, a loud crack issued from the side of the path as Uri stepped on the next stone. I ducked my head, and a few shards of jagged shrapnel pinged against my shield ineffectively.
“Need healing?” I asked, hoping he didn’t so we can just keep moving.
“No,” Uri replied, testing another stone already. “I got lucky and guessed which plant it was this time.”
I grunted a reply and we pressed onward. The path curved constantly and offered little in the way of remarkable scenery. An entire jungle rendered in marble and shades of gray was impressive at first but offered little variance over time. Even the traps were repetitive at this point. The exploding bushes were the first to go from mildly annoying to infuriating. The stone vines that constricted around the ankle, digging in with their long, pointed thorns before rip-cording their way back into the foliage, made me realize there was a whole new level of hate I could feel toward non-sentient objects.
“Guys, I see something up ahead,” Uri said, turning back to us. “There’s a clearing, and I think I see something moving.”
Phelyya: Oh, please, shout it out some more then. I don’t think you were loud enough the first time.
Uri: Shit, well, I don’t see it moving anymore.
“It’s fine,” I said, unable to keep the annoyance from my voice. “I’m okay with just charging through whatever traps are up ahead if there’s something to kill at the end of the path. I’m getting tired of this impossible puzzle and really want to get this quest completed to see if it nets me anything in the Earning Your Keep quest. My lack of progress is making me nervous.”
I shut my mouth, having voiced a bit more than I wanted to. The quest that would keep me immortal and powerful was a nagging stressor in the back of my awareness. Dwelling on it wouldn’t help anything, so I had been trying to push it out of my mind any time it came up. I must be extremely frustrated to have let that little detail slip.
“Is that why you’ve had such a short fuse?” Amalie asked. “I’ve been enjoying your frustrated reaction to things and I assumed it was just your personality. And I don’t know why I said that, that sounds rude and normally I’d just keep it to myself.”
That was odd. I was going to comment on it when I was distracted by the sight of the small clearing up ahead. Within the limited area of the forest path, our glow dust provided ample illumination, and Amalie put away the lantern in case we needed it later, so the sudden presence of a real light source was jarring and a little painful. I couldn’t feel any enemies or fauna up ahead through my tremorsense, so I considered it safe to assume that the clearing was empty. Or there were enemies in the trees which didn’t show up to my strange earth-based sensory input. I thought the game considering inanimate stone trees the same as real trees was a bit unfair, but so was being able to see your enemy through their movements so I let the point go.
As my eyes adjusted to the brighter light my speed increased, Uri’s crude slashes in the rock became more apparent, and the stones on the path began to widen. The light in the clearing resolved itself, incrementally, into the form of a large crystalline fountain. A quick scan revealed no enemies, but I also couldn’t see any other path leading out from the clearing, which was concerning. On a slower scan, I noted the dozing form of an animal in a tree branch, roughly the size and build of a hairless housecat but with the face of a man. Like everything else we’d encountered here, it appeared to be made from polished stone. The creature’s expression was tired and serene, lids half-closed but still clearly awake.
“Is that a sphinx?” I asked, squinting at the small creature. “I thought they were supposed to be bigger.”
A high-pitched squeal indicated Amalie was in range to see it. “Can I keep it as a pet? Oh, even better, maybe I can make him my familiar! I think that’s a thing my class can get.”
“I am no pet, nor am I a suitable familiar,” the tiny Sphinx spoke, stretching in the manner of a cat, “I am tasked with guarding this path. Answer me truly and you may proceed. Are you prepared?”
Looking around I received nods or shrugs from the team.
“Yes, we are prepared,” I said, stepping forward. “We have faced the dungeon before and know what to expect.”
The small creature’s human face took on a mocking smile. “You think you are prepared at least. What do you seek beyond?”
Everyone spoke at once, which was barely comprehensible. Everyone said some variation on getting loot or completing a quest. The small creature’s tail flitted back and forth as it considered us, brow drawn over scrutinizing human eyes, its lips pressed into a thin line. Eventually, it nodded, features relaxing.
“Your goals are self-serving but acceptable. Drink from the fountain and, for a time, you may move freely and unmolested through the Marble Forest,” the sphinx said, then curled up on its branch and yawned. “The path continues twenty feet behind me, but is now free of traps.”
