Unconquered Tower

THIRTY-FOUR

It took them an hour to show up. An hour for Roan to sit there with all his thoughts swirling around about what Taoya had told him. By the time Darren showed up with the rest of the strike team, Roan was a ball of anxiety. He looked over the group as they walked in and immediately thought of the best way to fight and escape them.

It was composed mostly of the group that Taoya had come in with, the eight of them all lean fighters armed with high-quality weapons. Moira was in the rear of the group with one of the rusted swords carefully tucked into her wide robe belt. Darren was there with a few others that he didn’t recognize, but Roan didn’t see Tyler.

“Her talent must be very exhausting if she’s not joining this.” Roan nodded to them as they drew close to each other. Darren took the lead as he always did while roan did a final count of everyone there. Fourteen of them not including Roan. It would take one-hundred and fifty shards to have created enough amulets for all of them, which wasn’t many, but with how many had been sold it was surprising that they had managed to find this many.

“We don’t know what we’re facing, but this has to be where the final one-hundred anomalies are. We finish this quest and I can only assume that there’s going to be a nice reward for our work. No heroics, save your aces until I call for it. Whatever has corrupted this life force is down here. Get ready for a level boss. A real one and not one of those fake ones that guarded the saferooms,” Darren said. Everyone nodded along as if they knew what this was about while Roan stood there without moving.

“Only one who isn’t a sect member or a college student. Even that weirdo Jared is here,” Roan thought to himself.

“Eveyrone, this is Roan. He’s been one of our best association members. He’s going to take the lead,” Darren said and Roan felt his stomach clench. He didn’t mind being in the lead, but so soon after turning down Taoya’s proposal it felt strange.

“Follow me then,” Roan said, the words falling flat and empty out of his mouth as he turned and started down the tunnel. Darren was right behind him, only a step or so behind.

“I’ve gone down most of the route. There’s not too far to go before you can see where it’s resting,” Darren whispered.

“See what?” Roan whispered back.

“I don’t know. It was a shadowy shape in the back of a massive hall. There was a ton of the anomalies in between me and it though and I didn’t want to aggro them. It’s clear walking until then though,” Darren said.

“Still stay alert. You can’t trust them.” Roan kept his eyes locked on the floor, seeing if there were any types of traps. Floor plates, trip wires, pitfalls, anything that would slow them down as they entered the level's final challenge. There hadn’t been anything like it so far, but the moment he relaxed and didn’t check he was going to find himself dying to a trap.

It took several minutes to work their way through the passage. The hallway was full of flickering lights of torches and candles. Shadows loomed deeper and deeper as they walked until Roan struggled to see. The continual push of corrupted life energy increased. His amulet grew hotter and hotter until his skin burned, but Roan didn’t stop.

The hall shifted slowly, the walls widening out. A caustic green glow emanated from the depths of the blackness. With every step he got closer the glow grew brighter, showing him the hidden width of what he realized was a wide bowl.

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Stone shifted to loamy earth in one step to the next. Roan paused as he looked around himself, trying to find any sign of the anomalies that Darren had said would be guarding the area.

“Where are they?” Roan whispered as he looked over his shoulder at the group of fighters who were behind him. They looked just as confused as he felt. That relieved a bit of his anxiety about being ambushed by them.

“Darren?” Roan said as he shifted nervously before taking another slow step forward. The deep emerald glow of the depths of the wide arena was slowly increasing as they stood there.

“Oh, shit,” Darren said. Roan squinted his eyes harder toward the glow and started to make out the shapes out there. Humanoid figures that stood silent sentinels before the glow, their features lost in the glare of the slowly increasing light. The gale of the corrupted life force continued to increase as Roan’s amulet heated up hotter and hotter. Without taking his eyes off the figures, he pulled the amulet out from beneath his shirt and let the layer of fabric offer him a bit of relief.

“Is that a mushroom?” someone asked. Roan looked beyond the figures and toward the source of the glow. It did look like a mushroom. If a mushroom was nearly a hundred feet tall and glowed green bright enough to illuminate the entire massive arena.

“Mushrooms grow in decay. It makes sense from a thematic point, life growing in death,” Moira said. Roan didn’t really care as he stared at the hunched over figures that waited for them.

A single figure stepped forward. It moved with none of the liquidity of life, but rather a hunched jerking motion like an automaton. Forward step by step it came, each one of them uneven and threatening to spill the anomaly to the dirt.

“Climbers.” The voice rasped out, inhumanly flat as the figure got closer and closer. Roan squinted against the glare and reeled back as he recognized the anomaly. It was the undead that had taken Jared’s necklace. Gone was the massive tumor, her body looked normalesque. Her clothes were dirty and bloodstained but it was her face that stopped him. Her skin bulged with black veins, sliding through her face in a web.

“It’s a root structure,” Roan whispered as the thing stopped before them. Words continued to pour out of the creature’s mouth.

“You are stuck here. Trapped forever. Until hunger and thirst consumes you. Or blades and teeth and claws. This tower. Is death.” Each of its sentences was short and staccato, broken up with gasping heaves as the creature drew in more oxygen, as if it didn’t know how to regulate its breath.

“Whatever is speaking is not human. And I doubt that it’s the mushroom. Not if it’s corrupted.” Roan didn’t say a word as Darren stepped forward, taking the place as their speaker.

“What are you?”

“Like you. Trapped. Seeking escape.” It stumbled forward closer and Roan saw tendrils coming out of its mouth, wrapped around its lips and down to the base of its throat. They flared up and down, the ends waving wildly in the energy dense air.

“You’re trapped here? How?” Darren asked. Roan was getting impatient, he wanted to act, to strike as fast and hard as he could. Kill the anomalies while they had the chance, before they inevitably began their own attack.

“Break the tower. Free me. I shall reward you,” the creature rasped. Roan felt a shiver down his back as he looked toward the beacon of light that the mushroom had become. The stalk of the massive thing had a black spot, about seven feet tall and three feet wide. It looked like a doorway.

“Darren, let’s kill these things,” Roan hissed.

“You forget. Most of our ancestors have history with the tower occupants. Each tower is its own challenge. This could be an ally,” Darren whispered back.

“In what world is the life force corrupting monster an ally?” Roan gritted his teeth but didn’t move as he looked around at the others. None of them moved towards the creature and Roan was forced to stand there while the idiots listened to it.