TS6 - Chapter 31

“Town princess?”  Dorrik asked as they ran alongside the panicking townsfolk toward where the bell was still ringing.  “I thought that princesses were a higher noble rank, not something you would find in a small border village such as this.  If I was wrong about that, I have an angry letter to write about Chrome Cowboys Episode 921, Revenge of the Dairy Queen.”

“No,” Kat replied.  “Town princesses are absolutely not a thing.  Whoever it is that made this floor based it on Earth, but they are taking quite a few liberties.”

“They based the floor on Earth?”  Kaleek asked.  “I mean, there are humans sure, but once your race is in the Tower’s system, it is sure to replicate them somewhere.”

“Orcs and Dragons are monsters from human fantasy,” Kat said, her gaze rapidly taking in the panic filling the town square as they arrived.  “I’ve never seen any reference to them in the Tower before now.  It’s pretty clear that this entire scenario is one that was made based off of my memories or something of the sort.”

She shrugged before frowning slightly at the number of human bodies with one or two orcs mixed in that lined the streets of the village.

“Given that this entire dungeon seems to have been created at my request,” Kat continued, “I think that the administrator in question is having a little fun right now.  Playing around with my expectations by recreating something out of a human fairy tale.”

The man that had first welcomed them into the town alongside Stella ran up to their group, blood trickling down his face from a massive gash over his left eye.

“Travelers!” He called out, missing a step and stumbling as he hurried to intercept them.  “Please!  I know that we just begged for your aid, but I must ask your help a second time.  The orcish raid on our pasture was just a feint.  Their main force assaulted the town itself.  That hasn’t happened in the past because our fixed defenses have been enough to scare them off, but with most of the town militia fighting outside the walls they were willing to risk our crossbows and catapults.  The real goal was our town princess.  You need to rescue her or all will be lost.”

“How will all be lost?”  Dorrik asked quizzically.  “I have read much human history, but I have never been able to make sense of your nobility.  It seems that they consume much value while providing little if nothing to the populations that support them.  What in particular makes this princess so important to your town?”

The human stared blankly at Dorrik for a couple of seconds before disregarding him entirely.

“If you don’t rescue her within two days, I am sure the orcs will sacrifice her to the dragon.  It is well known that dragons feast upon princesses, and in two days it will be the spring solstice.  Please, you must save her.”

“But what makes her death so different from the members of the militia that fell at the hands of the orcish raiders?”  Dorrik questioned.  “I see at least a dozen dead within the village walls.  Would our time and effort not be better spent on helping nurse the wounded back to health so that the village will be ready to withstand the next attack?”

Once again, the human stared blankly at Dorrik.

“Please!” The man called out.  “You must rescue her within two days or all will be lost.”

“I am asking why all will be lost,” Dorrik replied, slightly cross as he glared down at the villager.  “It is like I am talking to a hologram that has nothing but preprogrammed responses.”

There was another two to three seconds of silence before the human spoke up again.

“Travelers!  Please!  I know that we just begged for your aid-”

“We accept your quest,” Kat cut in, struggling to keep a smile from her face as she feigned a sense of seriousness and gravity that she absolutely did not feel.  “If you could tell us which way the orcs went, we will set off immediately.”

“Thank you kind travelers,” the man gushed.  “The orcs left town as soon as they captured our princess.  We were too busy with the fires and wounded to follow them closely, but they traveled to the West, toward the mountain.  I’m sure that if you set out right away you will find signs of their passage.  As fearsome as orcs are, they are not a race known for their stealth abilities."

“But-” Dorrik sputtered as Kat took hold of his lower right forearm and guided him away from the villager.

“Come on,” she said.  “We should get out of here before he tells us that we need to kill ten rats or something.”

“I do not know what rats have to do with any of this!”  Dorrik replied, crest fluttering madly as he shook his head.  “Honestly Miss Kat, none of this scenario is making any sense.  It is like there is some sort of outside force pushing us into a course of action that would not logically follow from the information provided to us.  After all, why would we pursue these orcs?  Why would we try to slay this dragon?  We were simply told to do these things and there is an expectation that we will follow through despite a complete lack of supporting information.”

“Are we in a game?”  Kaleek asked, finally speaking up around the time the three of them cleared the edge of the village once again.  The orc’s tracks were clearly visible on the ground, the knee high grass trampled flat by a caravan of bulky warriors.

“This feels like a holographic game of some sort,” he said, motioning vaguely back toward the town.  “Specifically one that was programmed on short notice or by an understaffed team.  It takes time and work to write in proper motivations for the characters so some developers just don’t.  The fact that we started getting repeat dialogue once Dorrik started asking questions that they didn’t expect really hammered the point home.”

“That was the impression I got as well,” Kat replied.  “Everything so far has been on rails.  As soon as we show up to a place we are directed to the next thing we need to do.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the entire scenario would fall apart if we went rogue.  I’m willing to bet that walking East rather than West would have meant us running into an invisible wall at some point.”

Kaleek nodded along while Dorrik seemed to only grow more confused.

“But why are the non-avatars not programmed to answer realistically?”  He asked.  “This is the Tower of Somnus.  The dreamscape has been perfected over millennia to the point where every interaction is polished and feels just as real as the waking world.  I do not understand why the townsfolk could not explain what a village princess is.  The very concept does not make sense from the beginning.”

Kat took a deep breath, steeling herself slightly before replying.

“Because I think that this entire scenario was created in a day or so.  It seems like the administrators have some sort of time compression ability so ‘a day’ might actually be a month, but I suspect that putting everything together and creating entirely new fantasy races might take a bit of time.  The Tower in general is polished because the gardeners were allowed to take their time crafting it from the ground up.”

She then went on to relate her conversation with “T,” watching carefully as the frown and confusion on Dorrik’s face deepened.  Kaleek on the other hand didn’t seem to care.  The quest promised him orcs to hack apart, and that was about as deep as his concerns about the scenario ran.

“I am…” Dorrik began, trailing off into a contemplative humming sound.  “I am not sure how I feel about all of this.  I am used to conceptualizing the dreamscape as an awe inspiring and inscrutable creation.  Something as powerful and impossible to comprehend as a black hole.”

“A testing ground and a path for the truly powerful to reach the same levels as the tower’s creators makes its own kind of sense,” Kat replied.  “I imagine that it could get a bit boring at the top, talking to the same thousand or so people for eons at a time, all while your descendants settle down and become too complacent to actually join you as equals.  I’m not going to pretend that I fully understand how the architects think, but if it were me, that would drive me absolutely up a wall.”

“Actually,” Kat continued, her forehead scrunching up into a frown, “that puts the ‘embargo’ on new races that are too violent to join the Consensus in a new light.  What if the goal wasn’t to civilize us, but to give fresh species a chance to thrive and grow in the sort of violent and antisocial ways that gave the founders the drive they needed to make it to the top?  After all, would it be so crazy if the  purpose of all of this is to give a species a generation or two to induct new people into the tower without the complacency and bureaucratic slog of the Galactic Consensus?”

“Take the dungeons,” she said, motioning vaguely upward at the world around them.  “The idea of moving on to another floor without completing all dungeons and collecting all awards from the floor that I’m on is just bizarre to me.  I can understand why a couple people might cut corners doing something like that, but I grew up in a world where being able to run slightly faster or jump slightly higher might spell the difference between a fist full of creds or getting caught and having my employment involuntarily terminated by the corporation I worked for.  Every day was dangerous, so what was a little more danger in order for me to become stronger in the future.”

“How many other races have something like that built into their cultures?”  Kat asked.  “It seems like a fair number of people want to push themselves to the twenty four to thirty six point, but even after that how many true monsters do you have out there?  I am convinced that if someone gave me a hundred years I would be sunbathing in a star’s corona and playing tennis with small moons.  I just can’t conceive of being satisfied with less than that.”

“But in forty years?” She said with a helpless shrug.  “You’ve already seen how the wealthy and powerful from my world perform.  They aren’t worthless in the tower, but they aren’t that different from ordinary members of the Consensus.  They want to be strong, but they aren’t willing to risk and push to get there.”

They jogged for a long moment, almost a minute before Dorrik spoke up.

“I do not like the implications of your statement,” he said slowly, “but I cannot disagree.  The Galactic Consensus saves dozens of races from exploitation and suffering each century, but at the same time, that suffering seems to be the fuel that propels a people to greatness.  Even in our group, Kaleek and I have both suffered personal tragedies that push us to grow well beyond the rest of our races.  If the goal of the architects is to encourage people to join them at the apex, the Consensus must seem more like an impediment than an asset to them.”

“But not everything is about losses and gain,” Kat replied.  “Don’t let Belle hear that by the way.  I’m sure the gardeners or the architects or whatever we want to call them care that their descendants are happy and thriving.  There’s certainly something to be said for living a comfortable and predictable existence.  Honestly?  That’s what I want for Earth.  We might not see as many people so hungry for progress that they push themselves constantly into danger, but that seems like a plus to me.  I am the end result of desperation and an almost pathological fear that I am too weak to protect my family and myself.  That might be enough to make someone strong, but it sure as heck doesn’t mean that they are emotionally stable.”

“As our party’s token emotionally stable member, I don’t see the big deal,” Kaleek responded sagely.

Kat almost choked on her response, image after image of the big otter wildly hacking away at already dead monsters or throwing his body directly into a crowd of opponents, a wild and savage smile deforming his face.

“Hold,” Dorrik hissed, waving for the two of them to stop with one of his lower hands.  “I think I see an orc outpost up ahead.  At a minimum, there is some sort of fortification made out of logs and the trail we are following seems to disappear inside.”

“Do you have any idea what their defenses look like?” Kat asked, raising a hand to shield her eyes as she squinted at the structure.  The grassy plains that they had been traveling through came to an end at the base of the mountain, replaced by a forest that spread most of the way up its slope.  “After our one fight with the orcs, I think a large party would be a challenge even if we had our magic and skills.  Without them, I think we might have to fight a bit more strategically if we want to win.”

“There are three watch towers and each one appears to have two guards,” Dorrik said after a second of consideration.  “I am sure that there are more orcs inside as well.  Given the difficulty of our earlier struggle against six orcs, I would agree with Miss Kat.  We should exercise caution before we act.”

“Fight like cowards because we are weak and helpless,” Kaleek replied cheerfully.  “Understood.”

Kat couldn’t find it in herself to be mad at Kaleek.  Technically it might sound like he was arguing with the two of them, but the way he said it made it clear that he didn’t really care.  So long as there was someone for him to bash and batter with a greatsword at the end of the day, Kaleek would be happy.

“I still have some of my gravity domain,” Kat offered.  “Not enough to really launch anything so I can’t fill in as a trebuchet, but if I sneak close enough I could probably float some large rocks up in the air and drop them on the fort.”

Dorrik’s crest fluttered as he considered her proposal.

“Do you truly think that you will be able to approach unnoticed?”  He asked, glancing at the orcish watchtowers.  Kat followed his gaze.  The guards didn’t seem to be incredibly alert, one pair was playing some sort of card game while another was engaged in a contest of seeing how fair each of them could spit off the tower.  Only the third pair seemed to be taking its job seriously and they were on the far side of the camp.

“I can probably make it there unseen,” she replied.  “That doesn’t mean unnoticed though.  The plan would be to have some fairly big stones hovering twenty or so paces in the air.  If they don’t look up it shouldn’t be a problem, but if they do?”

“A giant floating rock is pretty hard to hide,” she said with a shrug.  “Of course, they won’t really be able to dodge the rocks without abandoning their fortifications, and at least then we’ll be able to fight them in the open.  I’m not sure I’m thrilled with that, but it’s still better than fighting an enemy that is safely behind palisade walls.”

“What about traps?” Kaleek asked.  “If Kat kicks the hornet’s nest they’re likely to abandon their defenses, and as much as I like fighting, if there are more than fifteen orcs we’re going to be in a lot of trouble.  I don’t think we can do anything with knives or sharpened wood, their skin is way too tough for that to be any good, but we could probably use leaves and grass to cover up a couple pit traps and even if dropping an orc ten paces doesn’t seriously injure it, I doubt it will be able to crawl out anytime soon. Then, once the battle is over, Kat can just use one of the rooks to smoosh them.”

Both Kat and Dorrik turned to look at him, their mouths practically agape.

“What?”  Kaleek questioned defensively.  Kat just shook her head.

“Who are you and what have you done with Kaleek?  Not only is that a decent plan, it shows a respectable amount of caution and preparation.  What are you going to do next, start reciting poetry to us about the need for moderation and meditation?”

“Luckily for you,” Kaleek replied proudly, “the only poetry I know are dirty limricks.  I can recite those for you if you want?”

“I think I’m good,” Kat said with a roll of her eyes.  “Now let’s get started on these pit traps.  I’m pretty sure that I can make it a lot easier by fiddling with the gravity covering the dirt while we dig, but there is only one way to find out for sure.”

The next two hours were sweaty but productive.  It took a little bit of work for Kat to be able to selectively target the ground while ignoring the rest of their party, but once she figured it out, actually digging out the pits was a breeze.  The dirt quite literally floated away.  All they needed to do was use their hands or a stick to dislodge the clumps of dirt and gravel.  Once it was no longer stuck to the soil and clay around its original location, Kat was easily able to move it away.

About halfway through the process, she couldn’t help but smile to herself.  If she ever got bored of being a shareholder and running a third of Earth, she had a bright future making most modern industrial excavators obsolete.

During the excavation, they found eight boulders.  Six were about the size of Kat’s head, but two were around the size of her torso, easily outweighing Dorrik and Kaleek combined.  It likely wouldn’t be enough to instantly kill all six of the guards, but unless their wooden watchtowers were secretly made out of granite, Kat would be surprised if they could survive her bombardment.

While she finished up her project and prepared the stones, Kaleek and Dorrik collected and laid down beds of sticks over the five pits that they had dug, concealing them from casual observation.  Anyone that looked closely would likely notice the traps right away, but the orcs hadn’t looked terribly perceptive and with any luck, they would be too busy chasing Kat to notice anything amiss.

With a deep breath, Kat let her focus shift, targeting each of the boulders and loosening gravity’s hold on them.  Without the ability to empower her domain it was difficult, but after about twenty seconds all eight of them, close to the limit of Kat’s weakened focus, were floating in the sky above the treeline.

Kaleek and Dorrik were finishing off their plan, creating and filling clearings with loose dirt and kindling hidden near the traps as Kat set out.  She was careful to dart from tree to tree, struggling to split her attention between the distracted and disinterested guards and the rocks floating twenty paces above her.

Her progress was slow.  It was hard for Kat to tweak the gravity surrounding the stones to make them drift forward and hover simultaneously, especially when trying to keep herself from being spotted.

After about five minutes, Kat was finally close enough to the palisade to hit it with a thrown dagger.  The guards nearest her were still playing some sort of card game, but her cover had grown very sparse.  

Kat bit her lower lip, chewing on it as her eyes darted back and forth.  There were two smaller trees between her and the orcs, but the last ten paces between the final sapling and the wall was completely open.  Unfortunately, with her range limited to a twenty pace sphere, Kat would need to get closer than that.  Ideally, she wanted to be flush against the wall itself so that she could drop the boulders from their highest.

She dropped to one knee, using her knife to cut some leaf covered branches off of a nearby bush.  Silently, she laid down using her limited remaining focus to pile the branches on her back before beginning her crawl toward the wall.

The hair on the back of her neck stood completely on end.  Silently, Kat cursed the rules of the floor with each painstaking shuffle forward.  Ordinarily her light magic would have all but completely concealed her or Kat would’ve used Shadow Step to simply circumvent the dangerous open ground.

Instead, she was forced to move with slothlike speed, all the while waiting for a shout of alarm or the meaty thump of a thrown ax burying itself in her back.

She pursed her lips, crawling one stretch of her arm at a time closer.  All of her previous confidence fading instantly.

The orcs were barely twenty paces away, wrapped up in their card game.  If any of them bothered to look up, they would notice that something strange was happening immediately as they spotted the rocks bobbing through the air.

Then, it would only be a matter of seconds before they could look down and spot her.  The branches resting on her back were enough to dissuade casual observation, but they weren’t proper camouflage.

Time seemed to drag onward.  Kat’s forearm dug into the forest soil pulling herself a half pace forward.  Above her one of the orcs shouted something angrily, slamming a fist the size of her head on a wooden table as a hand in the card game came to a close.

She froze.  The other orc was shouting back.  She strained her ears trying to catch any other sound of movement, but the dungeon’s special property felt like gauze packed into her ears.

The card table scraped as one of the orcs jumped to his feet, and Kat risked a glance upward.  All three guard groups were looking at the commotion in the nearest tower, fully distracted.

Kat sprang up into a crouch and ran up next to the wall, holding herself flush to the palisade.  She took two breaths to steady herself before closing her eyes and reaching out to her connection with the floating rocks.

They were just at the edge of her domain, the sudden sprint across the open almost severing her connection with the trailing boulder.  Slowly she pushed them forward, feeling the ripples of gravity as the rocks slowly floated into place above the arguing orcs.

She held her breath, waiting for one of the sentries to look away and spot her.  The boulders moved into position, hovering over the guard towers with glacial speed.

The alarm never sounded.

Kat clenched her hand, forming it into a fist as she flipped gravity.  It wasn’t anywhere near as strong as her usual control over the force, barely amounting to two or three times its ordinary pull, but from a large rock almost twenty paces in the air, that was more than enough.

The two largest boulders slammed down like meteors, each of them taking out one of the two guard towers.  Shouts of alarm erupted from the camp, and a second later the remaining six smaller boulders pummeled the wreckage, transforming the shouts into screams of pain.

She didn’t have any idea exactly how much damage the barrage had done, but there was no time to stick around and find out.  Kat jumped to her feet and took off toward where Dorrik and Kaleek were waiting.

More shouting from the fort signalled that she had been spotted, and without thinking Kat cut to the side, zigging and zagging across the forest floor even as throwing axes whooshed through the air past her.

A quick glance over her shoulder revealed that someone had opened the crude palisade gate, and about a half dozen orcs were sprinting after her obsidian axes waving wildly over their heads.  Then there wasn’t any more time for Kat to worry about her pursuit.

It was time to run.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  
<-Previous<-

Index

->Next->