Forge of Eternity: Alpha Testing, page 38
Everyone had drifted closer to us as we talked, finding Amalie’s information more intriguing than the wall art.
“Who owns that one right now?” Goodwin asked.
“The forest elves, actually, and they have decided not to affiliate with any of the factions. Access to the Forge of Nature is heavily regulated, earning the right to enter takes time,” Amalie spoke as she continued a slow, steady scan of the wall. “So far, none of the factions have earned the right to even see the Forge entrance. Several spies have gotten close enough to know the entrance has a dungeon or a raid motif.”
“Why hasn’t anyone just conquered the elves and taken the forge?” Uri asked, clearly puzzled. “If it’s so important overall, then it’s worth taking by force right?’
“That may happen eventually, but right now each faction is focused on expanding their power quickly. There’s a vacuum out there, a small fight over resources here and there is just standard day-to-day stuff and easily ignored. Taking on the forest elves in a potentially long-term war effort isn’t smart though,” Amalie sighed and shook her head. “Add in the fact that the other two factions have an interest in seeing that you do not succeed in your attempt. At that point, you can reasonably assume this isn’t going to be in anybody’s short-term goals.”
“I feel like we need a class on current in-game garbage, taught by you,” Phelyya said, looking at Amalie. “But right now, I think we should focus on moving forward.”
“Agreed,” I said, slowly facing the room and feeling along the earth for any traps or enemies. “Amalie, keep doing what you’re doing for now then meet us at the end of the hall. Keep your ears open in case we attract unwanted attention.”
“Want me to hang back too?” Goodwin asked, gesturing at Amalie as she slowly walked the room, eyes fixed on the walls. I gave a thumbs-up, then motioned for the others to follow me.
The hall ended with two paths available. The archway on the left had stairs leading down into dark water. While I couldn’t see anything, I could feel the corridor extend down for a way before it curved up yet again. The other option led to a simple room with a series of mirrors and a painfully bright beam of white light running a circuit between a subset of the mirrors. In the center of the room, a statue sat poised facing the entrance. The figure was about hip-height and looked like a wingless dragon.
“Swim into an uncertain fate, or do a mirror puzzle to fight a drake about the size of a human,” I mused, looking between the options. “That’s a simple choice. When Amalie joins us we can start on this mirror puzzle.”
“Looks fun,” Amalie said, peering up at the imagery surrounding the two options. “The Suffocating Caverns is a hard pass from me. The Hall of Reflection sounds much more inviting.”
Amalie - Lightly Puzzled
I looked over to see Deacon’s brow furrowed in thought. “Before we move on, did you learn anything useful from the writing on the walls?”
“Putting it like that makes it sound ominous,” Uri said with a mock shudder and spooky hand movements. “Mene, mene, tekel, upharsin.”
“Nothing quite so dramatic,” I said, shrugging. “Most of what I could read were just names of the challenges and tips for beating them. One section implied there was some sort of progression, where new challenges become available on subsequent visits, but nothing all that useful to our quest. One had a giant eyeball symbol, likely what Mr. Kitty wanted us to pick, but it’s just a stone archway.”
“So we press on and hope for better secrets beyond?” Gavin asked, stepping into the Hall of Reflection. “Any insight for this challenge?”
“It just says if you ignore the rules the pain will be greater,” I said looking over to confirm I had the wording right.
“If you’re gonna be dumb, you’ve gotta be tough,” Goodwin said, faint traces of a musical inflection in his voice. “Not the worst words to live by, huh Deacon? If you’re gonna dump intelligence you better stack constitution.”
Deacon gave a snort of amusement, looking around the room. I followed suit, surprised to see that it was larger than the hall, maybe fifty feet deep and a hundred feet wide with vaulted ceilings. There were a number of mirrors, not surprising given the name of the room. The mirrors had no uniformity to their placement, which was more than a little frustrating. There were eight mirrors in total, two on the far right of the room somewhat near the corners, two staggered toward the middle, and the remaining four near the left wall. Two of these seemed to match up with the mirrors on the right, but only one directly lined up with a mirror in the middle.
A beam of painfully bright light ran from a symbol in the wall on the left, bouncing between three of the mirrors on that side. The beam ran between the mirrors and presumably back to its source. In addition to the mirrors, there was a prism on a pedestal with three sides.
The most interesting item in the room was a statue of a drake, a western-style dragon without wings. It stood just about four feet high and measured nine feet long if you included the tail. Like the other stonework we’d seen, it was incredibly detailed. The broad head had a fin of sharp protrusions and a length of curved spines ran up the creature’s back.
“Are we supposed to just turn the mirrors?” Uri asked, walking over to the nearest one and pushing on one side experimentally. Immediately his body went rigid as blue arcs of lightning raced across him. Gavin ran forward and swung his staff against the mage’s arm, breaking both his connection with the mirror and his wrist.
“Maybe stacking intelligence isn’t all that useful,” Deacon said, watching the cleric tend to Uri.
“To be fair,” I countered, “Gavin’s intelligence score may be the reason we only had a single injured party member instead of two dead ones.”
“Perhaps, lady Amalie,” Gavin said, considering the words before continuing. “It may also have been a result of my life experiences, or even Fortuna’s direct influence.”
“Watch people get electrocuted often?” Phelyya asked. Gavin just gave a small shrug and busied himself with inspecting the fully healed Uri. I noticed a small raised section near the base of the mirror and scooted the other party members aside to get a better look. The raised square had generic, non-magical designs, so obviously I stepped on it, hoping the game logic of the dungeon would hold out. The button spun the mirror by forty-five degrees. On the other side of the room, another mirror spun ninety degrees.
“Well, that’s annoying, but at least the buttons don’t spawn mirror copies of us or anything,” I blew out a frustrated breath and stepped on the button again with the same result. On the other side of the room, Goodwin activated the button underneath another mirror, causing it to spin forty-five degrees while spinning mine by ninety degrees.
“I think I just made it worse,” Goodwin backed away from the mirror with his hands raised.
“No,” I shook my head and pointed back at the mirrors, “Go try again and see if we get the same results.”
The same effect occurred, my mirror moved ninety degrees while Goodwin’s moved half as much. I motioned Deacon over to another mirror, seeing similar results, with a bit more combustion. When the mirror paired to Deacon’s turned, the beam of energy panned across a quarter of the room, leaving a smoking furrow in the wall. The movement was slow enough that everyone moved to safety, if only barely. Everyone was paying attention after that though.
It only took a few minutes to map out which mirrors paired to each other, thankfully without any overlapping for the secondary mirrors. Then again, knowing how to manipulate the field was only part of this battle.
“We can move the mirrors, but what do we need to do with them?” Uri asked, looking around the room. The walls were simple worked stone with no decoration or design, aside from the circular inscriptions around the source of the beam. The prism seemed more like a tool for splitting the beam than a target for the energy. I walked over to the only other item of note in the room.
The drake statue had a very dinosaur-like feel to it up close, the spines on the back sporting a respectable fin. The face was more in line with my expectations of a dragon with sharper, angular features. There were three fist-sized holes on the creature, one on each side and the third in the center of its chest. Each hole was surrounded by arcane carvings on a raised circular base.
“Looks like we direct the beam into the holes, then we get to fight yet another statue,” I said, looking over the inert creature. “I assume this forge probably has some connection to earth magic.”
“Or constructed enemies are easier to create,” Gavin suggested. “You did mention before that this dungeon is purported to be a manufactured trial of sorts.”
“Doesn’t explain the elementals we just fought,” Deacon countered. “Not going to complain though, I’ll take stone over fire monsters.”
I nodded in enthusiastic agreement. “Fire creatures are not my favorite enemies right now. We ready to get this boss animated?”
We each moved to a mirror and began rotating them in sequence. It took the better part of an hour to activate two of the three slots on the drake. Properly angling the prism to split the beam in a useful manner was its own special kind of frustrating. The novelty of the puzzle had evaporated by the time two of the holes were activated, and we were beginning to lose our patience. An errant rotation from Goodwin almost led to blows when it sent the beam of burning light into Uri’s back. To be fair, Uri should have been paying attention, but I wasn’t about to tell him that.
“We’re only two mirrors off from a completed puzzle,” I said, trying to inject some positivity into the group. “This looks like the home stretch.”
“Not to be an asshole,” Phelyya started, in a tone that promised she was about to be an asshole, “but to get the last two mirrors turned we’ll completely wreck the rest of the pattern.”
“True, but that isn’t so bad though,” I said. “If we mess it up we can always redo it.”
“Or,” Deacon said, walking over to one of the two mirrors we needed to move, “we could just turn these last two by hand.”
“That is not a good idea,” Uri said, waving his arms to dissuade Deacon from approaching the mirrors directly. “It is very painful and doesn’t work.”
“True, when you tried it without knowing they were electrified,” Deacon said, politely moving Uri’s arms aside. “Gavin, can you heal me if I need it? I’m going to be smart about how I move it, and I trust that I’m better set up to just power through it if needed.”
I wasn’t so sure his experience would be all that different from Uri’s, so I moved to get a better view of the impending disaster. On one hand, Deacon’s earth elemental lineage might offer some resistance. On the other hand, this dungeon didn’t seem like it was designed to have its challenges bypassed and I wanted to see what happened. Instead of grabbing the frame with his hand, Deacon leaned his shoulder against the side and managed a couple of struggling steps forward. The mirror groaned against its stone base and shifted into the desired position, his health barely dropping.
“Okay, I’m impressed,” Uri gave a couple of slow claps. “You are much better at getting electrocuted.”
“Electrocution implies the electrical exposure resulted in death,” Gavin corrected. “You were merely shocked.”
“Semantics aside, good job Deacon,” I said, redirecting everyone back to our remaining issue. “Should we move the beam off the other mirror so you can move it safely?”
“Shouldn’t need to,” he shook his head, “I can push it from the back. May have to rush over to the boss, depending on how long it takes to start attacking. Electricity damage isn’t bad, so Gavin shouldn’t have a problem getting me back to full quickly.”
As much as I couldn’t argue with the results, this approach still felt wrong. Deacon preferred straightforward solutions, and man-handling the mirrors into place was just about as straightforward a solution as could be expected. Goodwin’s summary of the dungeon clue jumped into my mind again as the last mirror shifted into place.
“Everyone, get behind me,” Deacon called out, moving away from the energy beam and mirror. We got into a loose battle line toward the rear of the statue. Light was pouring into the three open slots on the statue and it began to change in hue with pulsing, shifting colors of light around the edges of its scales. The dark gray of the stone scales and claws shifted to an iridescent white at the beast’s feet.
“Should we attack now, before it finishes transforming or whatever?” Phelyya asked, bouncing from heel to toe like a hyper-caffeinated toddler.
An errant arc of power shot into Deacon from the nearest beam supplying the statue. Goodwin pulled away when the spark jumped in his direction, though his focus remained on the changing statue.
“Son of a bitch,” Deacon swore, getting back to his feet. “Wait for it to finish transforming. I just got hit with a twenty percent penalty to both constitution and dexterity for cheating.”
The beast’s transformation had an unnatural quality to its pacing, like watching a time-lapse video mixed with a strobing multicolored light. I looked away, checking for other changes in the room, noting only that the sole entrance was sealed off now with solid stone. Looking back to the drake, I noticed something I hadn’t seen when watching it directly; the creature was growing in size. It was probably happening at a steady pace, masked by the light show.
“We are probably going to need to back up a bit,” I suggested. “Anyone else notice the thing is almost twice the height it was when we came in?”
Deacon and Goodwin both looked at me with wide eyes while Gavin looked at me quizzically. Everyone began backing away slowly until there was a good ten feet of distance between Deacon and the statue.
“This is looking less simple than it was a minute ago,” Uri said, taking in the surrounding room. “That dragon thing is as big as the queen we fought. Maybe bigger.”
The creature had grown to fifteen feet long and stood as tall as Deacon at the shoulders. All the creature’s scales had taken on the highly reflective white hue, and a soft glow continued to emanate from their edges. The holes on the creature where the light beams fed into it had remained in place, sliding lower along the beast’s body to stay level with the beam. Abruptly the holes sealed shut and the drake opened its eyes, standing tall and stepping deliberately out of the path of the light beams. I focused on it for a moment and the game supplied the creature’s name and health bar.
Identified: Juvenile Light Drake, level 7, 1000 HP total.
The creature sighted us immediately, then looked around the room slowly, a keen intelligence in its eyes. As it brought its gaze back to our group, it turned. The boss monster opened its massive jaws to reveal an interlocking fence of gleaming white teeth the length of short swords. I took aim at the creature’s forehead and cast a Fire Blast, hoping to deal some decent damage on my opening attack, or at least make it flinch.
Just as the orb of fire left the end of my wand, the drake opened its jaws in a frightening display as it roared. The sound was like a physical force and I instinctively clapped my palms hard against my ears. My ears were larger than I remembered and I had to shift around to get a good seal that could blunt the sounds. I was still reeling from the noise when my vision went suddenly, and completely white.
Amalie - Enlightened
My eyes squeezed shut on their own accord just before the Light Drake’s blinding breath weapon washed over me. The sensation was uncomfortable heat, like slightly too hot coffee scalding your tongue, except all over my body. I dropped to a crouch, curling down to protect myself while keeping my feet under me. I heard Phelyya’s avatar scream, and a few shocked gasps from the rest of the party.
Light Drake disrupted your Fire Blast.
Light Drake strikes you with Forceful Roar.
Stunned (Debuff) - You are unable to move. 10 seconds remaining…
Light Drake strikes you with Blinding Light.
Blind (Debuff) - You are unable to see the world around you. 10 seconds remaining…
I was simultaneously relieved and furious with myself. The breath weapon hadn’t dealt any direct damage, but we’d just stood there and taken it to the face. Now the entire party was completely defenseless for at least ten seconds and the drake was going to absolutely destroy us before we had a chance to recover. I braced for the inevitable killing blow, wondering if it would crush us or eat us.
Neither, apparently. I felt a blunt impact to my side, the blow felt like the force of another body tackling me from an awkward angle. A second later, my shoulder hit a solid surface and I found myself laying against a wall, one of my teammates pinning my legs to the ground with their limp form. There was something blunt and painful digging into my stomach, either an elbow or the blunt end of an otherwise deadly weapon.
“You should be safe until the debuffs wear off,” Deacon called out from somewhere relatively close. “Gavin, heal Phelyya, she took stupid amounts of damage from that for some reason. Goodwin, get on the boss’ left. Uri, when you’re recovered take the right.”
This wasn’t shaping up to be a total party wipe after all. The debuff timers ticked away the seconds in agonizing slowness, each one dragging out for subjective minutes as I waited. My vision was a purplish-white splotch, an amorphous afterimage burned into my retinas that provided no useful input. I could still make out my heads-up display and menus, so I listened to the fight while watching the party’s stats in the icons while my own debuffs counted down.
The blindness effect finally faded away, allowing me to look around and take stock of the situation. Phelyya was still incapacitated, deadweight digging the pommel of her dagger into me. Lucky for me it was just the pommel, the blade looked like it might have been sticking through her arm. Gently rolling her off me, I saw Gavin helping Uri to his feet, the human staying low to remain protected by Deacon’s earthen barrier.
