Andrew Rowe - On the Shoulders of Titans

“I don’t like poison . And that, Mara, looks like the kind of room where we’d get poisoned.”

“Bah, I could take ‘em. But I prefer the wheel thing, anyway. That looks more fun!”

“More importantly,” Sheridan pointed out, “It looked like a way up. I’m fairly confident I saw ‘stairs’ written on one of the slats on the whirl wheel.”

I hadn’t been able to get a look from that far away, but apparently Sheridan had better eyesight.

I also wasn’t familiar with the term “whirl wheel”, but I didn’t bother asking about it. It was easy enough to glean from context.

We started heading to the blue room, but we were interrupted by the sound of Keras’ voice.

“Corin, we have a problem.”

I paused in my step. “What’s wrong? Er, I mean, necklace. Message Keras. What’s wrong?”

It was easy to forget that I had to activate the necklace before I could actually send a reply.

“Researcher is…gone.”

I felt a moment of panic. “…Gone?”

“She was just telling me about the next rune to smash, then she said something about her Summoner, shivered, and disappeared.”

That was bad.

Potentially very bad.

If her Summoner had just called her back to the Divinatory, at least she’d be safe, but we’d have lost our tracker.

If her Summoner had unsummoned her…or cut off her contract entirely…

…She’d be dead. And it would be my fault.

“No specifics?” I asked, just to confirm.

“No. Whatever it was, she couldn’t resist it. I think she was trying to, but it only lasted a second.”

Resh.

“Okay. Did her bracers disappear with her?”

“Yeah?”

At least that meant if she was physically transported somewhere else, she’d still have a mana source. That was good.

“Okay. Did she tell you how to get to us?”

“Not in detail, but up is up. I’ve climbed a good way before. Now that she’s not here, I can just cut through here and start climbing, but I’m worried about her.”

“Understood, but we have no way to find her right now. Just head to us, then we’ll see if we can figure out if we can find her later.”

“Okay. I’m on my way, but even without Researcher slowing me down, it’s going to be a while.”

We said goodbye and turned off the necklaces for now.

I hoped Researcher was safe.

We headed to the blue room.

As soon as we were inside, I heard a loud ticking on the right side of the room. A clock had started, listing three hundred seconds.

There were no obvious traps, so we headed closer to the spheres, which were positioned about ten feet from the gap in the floor.

At that distance, I could see more details, and with that, more complications.

First, the wheel was surrounded by translucent crystal, similar to the walls I’d seen in the prison. There were gaps on the top side of the crystal, but only right around the outer ring of the wheel.

Second, the outer ring of the wheel was spinning faster than the central section, meaning that they were separate pieces. We couldn’t just throw the ball inside and expect it to roll directly down the nearest wedge in the funnel section — the momentum of the outer wheel would probably move it around a bit before it fell.

Third, there were tons of tiny runes on the walls of the room. I wanted to read them, but there wasn’t enough time. I could tell at a glance that several of them involved attack spells.

Fourth, I could now read the inner “wedges” that lead to the holes.

There were twelve in total. Some were more pleasant than others.

Monsters!

Traps!

Fabulous Prizes!

Bigger Traps!

Stairs Up!

Extremely Dangerous Traps!

I Forgot What This One Does!

Money!

Moderately Dangerous Traps!

Mystery!

Bigger Monsters!

Literally Nothing!

We had a moment of silence while we all processed the goddess’ terrible sense of humor.

Well, most of us. Patrick snickered a little.

“Aiming for the stairs is obvious, but we’ll also want to figure out which two other ones we want to aim for.” Sheridan noted.

I thought about that. “We could aim for the same spot more than once. Obviously if we miss the stairs on the first time we’ll retry that, but maybe we could trigger the ‘Fabulous Prizes’ one twice?”

Marissa knelt down and began to lift the spheres. She grunted with effort. “These are heavy .” She sat the last one back down. “And they’re not all the same weight.”

The latter part was actually even worse — it meant that the first throw wouldn’t necessarily dictate the behavior of future spheres.

I turned to Sheridan. “Think that timer is for the first sphere, or for all three of them?”

“Always assume the worst.”

“Fair. Okay. We need to get this moving. Patrick, can you levitate one?”

Patrick frowned. “I don’t know. If Mara was struggling with them, probably not. Mara, show me the lightest one?”

She pointed to the one in the center.

“Levitate.”

It floated off the ground just a few inches, then bobbed up and back down. That wasn’t how the spell normally behaved.

Patrick took a breath and focused on the sphere. It hovered upward a few more inches. “I can move it, but barely. Might need someone to give it a shove.”

And that means he probably won’t be able to move the heavier ones at all.

“Put it down a sec.”

Patrick dismissed the spell. The sphere dropped, cracking the stone floor below. “Oops.”

I glanced at the clock. Three minutes left.

I quickly explained my plan, and got a round of agreements.

One and a half minutes.

I drew my sword, then charged toward the gap and took a leap.

Jump.

The blast from my ring hurled me toward the wheel.

Blasts of fire shot out from the side walls. Fortunately, I was ready. I slashed in the air and sent shockwaves in both directions. Ice neutralized fire.

I landed atop the crystalline structure that encased the top of the wheel.

I sheathed my sword.

Patrick levitated the first sphere.

Marissa punched it.

It flew at me faster than expected, but I still managed to step in the way and catch it. The impact carried me back a few steps, but I managed to avoid falling into the abyss below.

Sheridan pointed and a pair of walls of bone appeared within the outer wheel.

I rolled the ball until it was at the edge of the crystal, then waited for the wheel to cycle around and dropped it into the section that Sheridan had walled off. It rolled right down into the “Stairs Up!” slot, because that was the only pathway that hadn’t been blocked.

A glowing doorway appeared in the wall next to the entrance, rather than a literal stairway. It had a symbol of an up arrow above the door, so it was still obvious we’d found our path.

The clock continued ticking down. We had two spheres left.

“Go!” I gestured to the others.

Patrick tried to levitate the next sphere, but it was too heavy, as expected.

As Marissa hefted it upward, Sheridan conjured a bone bridge across the gap.

Slowly, Marissa began to carry it across. Rolling it might have been faster, but it was more likely she’d roll the ball right into a pit that way.

I drew my sword just as Marissa began crossing the bridge. The fire traps activated on the sides of the room again, and Marissa wasn’t in any position to defend herself.

I managed to slash one of the fire blasts out of the air, while Patrick shaped the other flames out of the way.

Ten seconds.

I put my sword away, debating if I should try to jump across and do something with the third sphere.