Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

Veric moves in again. We set aside everything strange that just happened.

Watching the golem, I expect its eyes to light up. Ever since we answered the Eye pillar, the golem's eyes have always come on first.

This time they stay dark.

'Something's wrong. Chaos Theory?'

"Wait…"

The guardian's right foot has changed position.

Only slightly. The stone sole presses into the floor, the ankle tilts a few degrees, and part of that giant body's weight starts migrating onto the leg. Freya catches it at the same time I do. I see her hands tighten on the scythe, ready to move.

"Wait…"

The pressure keeps building, and only then do the eyes come on. At that moment the floor starts cracking under the foot.

Then the guardian releases all of it.

And the stone under it explodes.

The golem comes out of the kneeling position in a brutal launch, thrown forward by the force stored in that leg. There's no sequence of steps. The first push carries twenty-six feet of rock across the hall, straight at Veric.

Now I have the read.

"FREYA! HIT IT WITH EVERYTHING!"

She screams.

Not a word. A sound of pure effort that comes out with the movement.

"YAAAAAHHH!"

Permafrost covers the floor with ice under her boots and locks her feet down like a cocoon. Freya takes the scythe back, turns her hips and shoulders, and unloads everything into the Foot pillar.

The ice blade hits the stone with a crash.

The mist around it opens in a circle.

The impact crosses the hall and reaches me through the floor, and the pillar stays intact. Not a chip, not a crack. The scythe blade shakes in Freya's hands while small fissures spread through the ice near the edge. Her weapon nearly broke.

Those pillars were built to take the test. With the strength we have, breaking them is out of the question.

The guardian is still in the air when its eyes go out.

The answer was accepted.

That doesn't cancel the momentum already in motion.

The golem lands on both feet a few yards ahead and keeps sliding across the stone, tearing a long furrow in the floor. Veric raises Undertow on pure reflex while that mass comes at him.

The guardian stops less than five feet from him.

Veric stands still behind the shield, and the golem stays just as still in front of him.

Then the giant turns its body, walks back to the center of the room, and takes up its starting posture in front of the statue. Knees on the floor, head down, eyes dark.

Nobody speaks for a few seconds.

Freya is still holding the scythe with her arms tight and her breathing ragged.

I look at the Foot pillar, then at her.

"Perfect read."

Rhayne lets out the breath she was holding.

"Really perfect."

Zhang Xi nods from across the room.

Veric lowers Undertow and looks at the furrow that ends near his own boots.

"I'm starting to like it when you people solve it before it gets to me."

Freya breaks the ice that was locking her to the floor.

"Keep walking out in front of it and maybe that'll happen more often."

Four.

Hand, Eye, Crown, and Foot are done.

We're left with Mouth and Heart.

The difficulty of guessing which pillar will activate is gone too.

"Freya, you're free now," I say. "If something gets past the answer and it goes after Veric, pull its attention. Buy time. You don't have to bring it down, just take as much load off Veric as you can."

She nods.

I point at the two remaining symbols.

"Zhang, Heart. I'll take Mouth."

Rhayne would stay on the Link.

Veric would keep getting hit.

A reasonably fair distribution, by our standards.

Before he goes back to the line, I open my bag and take out one more OXI Candy. I already used two during the last preparation. There's no reason to save the rest while the guardian escalates with every correct answer.

I chew this one and wait for the energy to spread through my channels.

My eyes go to the HUD.

[OXI: 5,000/5,000]

'Full. Better this way.'

Veric notices the movement. I almost never refill in the middle of a fight. He knew things were about to get worse.

"Ready?" he asks.

"Go."

He crosses.

For a fraction of a second nothing changes.

Then the golem opens its mouth.

The sound that comes out doesn't seem to belong to a throat.

A deep bass crosses the hall and hits my chest before I understand what I'm hearing. My ribcage vibrates. The mist pulls away from the guardian's head in waves. Dust falls from the surfaces of the pillars and from the corners of the room. I feel Eventide shake in my hand.

It's like standing in front of the horn of a tanker ship, except the sound is coming out of a stone creature in a sealed room.

It doesn't last long.

When it ends, it leaves a ringing in my ears and my chest feeling struck.

"Mouth."

I'm already calculating.

Volume of air displaced. Frequency. Duration. The pressure of that wave against my body.

The golem starts to stand.

I look at Zhang, then at Freya. Both of them are frightened in a way that surprises me.

They recognized the pillar, but from the look on their faces neither of them has a clear read on the answer. Rhayne would be the best of us at seeing any OXI component in that phenomenon, but the Link with Veric interferes with her view of the OXI around her, and part of her focus is already locked on him.

We need an answer now.

Eventide lights up.

I gather OXI into the blade, estimate the effort it would take to produce that wave, and strike the Mouth pillar.

The sword cuts the air and hits the stone, and nothing happens.

The golem keeps coming.

"Shit."

I got it wrong.

Veric sees the guardian arriving and sets Undertow.

"Azure Dividend!"

The blue protection opens around him.

Rhayne reacts in the same instant.

The earrings flare.

A black layer grows over Azure Dividend, wrapping the blue barrier in a compact cocoon just before the golem arrives.

Level five hits Veric. The punch lands.

The black cocoon deforms first. Azure Dividend sinks right underneath it, compressed along with it while the floor around Veric gives out in a circle. The stone cracks, drops a few inches, and kicks up a low wall of dust around the rim.

The shockwave crosses the hall.

My clothes snap against my body. Freya has to open a wing and drop one leg back to keep her balance. Zhang shields her face with an arm.

At the center, Veric is still standing.

Shut inside both defenses.

Barely.

The arm holding Undertow is shaking. Blood shows between his teeth when he tries to breathe, but the worst of the price isn't on him.

Rhayne staggers.

Two red lines appear at the corners of her eyes and run down her cheeks. She looks at Veric through the Link, frightened by some reading only she is getting.

"From zero… to sixty-eight in a single hit…" She drops to her knees.

The golem pulls its arm back, still fully active.

Another attack is coming.

I look at the Mouth pillar.

My first mistake was thinking only about total energy.

The sound comes back to me.

The vibration in the chest.

The waves moving the mist.

The short interval between the low pulses.

I didn't take a hit when the golem opened its mouth. The air was compressed and released in an oscillation. Frequency, pressure, and duration working together.

I trade Eventide for Kraken. The sword turns itself in my hand.

'This time, I'll use the flat of the blade. That is the secret.'

So I strike the pillar with a single, short blow.

I wait out the interval I can still feel in my ears and strike again.

The pillar answers with a low vibration.

I keep going.

I'm not trying to destroy the stone. I adjust the force between strikes, reproducing the cadence and the timing of the emission. Kraken transfers the impact and the pillar gives part of it back as resonance. Striking with the flat of the sword throws the waves out in one clean, distinctive clang.

The bass starts building inside the stone itself.

The guardian moves to attack Veric again.

"A little more…" I mutter.

I hold the sequence.

Pressure.

Interval.

Pressure.

The pillar's vibration finally reaches the frequency I can still feel at the center of my chest.

The golem's arm stops and its eyes go out.

I drop Kraken to the floor and breathe out while the guardian walks back to the center of the hall. This time nobody relaxes until it completes the whole route, kneels, and lowers its head.

'Five.'

Only the Heart is left.

Rhayne dismisses the protection from the earrings and brings a hand to her face. The blood has already reached her chin. Veric cancels Azure Dividend and nearly falls when the barrier disappears, but Zhang Xi gets there before he touches the floor.

"Both of you sit."

There's no argument.

Veric lets himself drop while Zhang Xi starts with him. Suzanoo's Love runs across his chest, arms, and shoulders, hunting the damage the two barriers couldn't stop. Rhayne stays close to hold the Link until Zhang confirms Veric is stable.

Freya comes over to me.

She isn't looking at Veric.

Her eyes stay on the last pillar.

"Ten minutes."

I turn to her, trying to follow.

"Ten?"

"Even after Zhang finishes. I want ten minutes."

Freya rests the scythe against the floor.

"The fifth one almost went through two defenses and made Rhayne bleed from the eyes. The next one will be worse. We come up with a second plan before we put Veric out there again. And a third, if we can."

I look at the Heart pillar.

The symbol looks simple next to what just happened.

I know what that pillar does.

Or I know what it did in the other life.

That doesn't mean the same thing anymore.

"Okay. Ten minutes."

Veric lifts his head.

"The Soul Tickets—"

"Ten minutes cost less than a funeral. I don't want to hand your Echo Fragment to Garen Azurea."

He closes his mouth.

Zhang finishes his chest and moves to Rhayne. The light of Suzanoo's Love covers her eyes and the lines of blood stop spreading. Rhayne breathes slowly, still keeping her face turned toward Veric until Zhang Xi asks her to close her eyes.

I sit down near one of the finished pillars.

The others do the same, one by one.

Freya starts repairing the cracked section of the scythe with Permafrost. Her wings begin to melt, almost disappearing entirely. Veric checks Undertow's joints and runs his fingers along the edges of the shield, looking for structural damage.

I look at the guardian.

The cut Eventide opened in its head is still there.

Five answers are through.

Only one is left.

In the other life I knew how the Heart behaved. I knew the signal, I knew the type of answer, and I had a clear idea of what we were supposed to do when the time came.

The problem is trusting that.

Chaos Theory already rewrote the Ferryman's Toll once in the first stage of this dungeon. The first room changed in exactly the place where my experience should have given us an advantage. There's no guarantee the last stage of this guardian is still the same.

Freya sits down near me when she's done with the scythe.

"Have you thought of anything?"

"I know what to do if it repeats what it did last time."

She waits for the rest.

"And if it doesn't?"

I look back at the Heart.

"Then we'll have to work it out before it finishes the movement."

Freya doesn't seem to like that answer.

I don't like it either, but it's what we have.

Zhang Xi finishes healing Rhayne and stands.

"Seven minutes."

The clock on the Soul Tickets is still running.

Even so, nobody tries to cut the break short.

Veric is breathing better and starts walking toward Rhayne, who's cleaning the blood off her face.

I keep watching the two of them from near the last pillar.

In the other life, that puzzle had an answer. Now I'd rather go in ready to find a different one before I lose someone who matters to me.