Unconquered Tower

FORTY-FOUR

“Fuckah,” Taoya’s voice was slurred, blood running down his mouth. He gingerly held his jaw, spitting every other second a mix of shattered teeth and blood.

“You going to live?” Roan asked.

“I’m fine.” It was hard for Roan to understand what he was saying, but he caught the gist of it. The big guy was hurt but it was mostly superficial. Roan leaned over the dead body of the general, hands moving quickly. Every horde officer had carried some type of necklace so far and this one wasn’t any different.

Roan pulled the thin string off the corpse and frowned as he saw it wasn’t like the other officer sigils. A single, simple, bronze key sat on the string. Hardly longer than Roan’s finger, it dangled for a second before Roan mentally put it away in his spatial ring.

“Something good?” Taoya asked. He’d walked over to Tyler and gently rolled the woman to her back. A healing potion appeared in his hand and he fed it to the unconscious fighter, ignoring his own injuries for the moment.

Roan didn’t respond right away, instead he kept his eyes moving. The fighting was for all intents and purposes over. There were no more of the horde fighters around. The death of the general seemed to have broken what discipline the creatures had, all of them fleeing and leaving just the three climbers by themselves.

“I don’t know. It’s a key. How’s Tyler?”

“Fucked up, but she should be fine. I think. Need to get her to Moira,” Taoya said. He slung her body over his shoulder before materializing another healing potion and drinking it.

“I’m going down the tunnel,” Roan said. Taoya paused and shook his head slowly.

“We won here, man. It was ugly and people got hurt, but we’re all alive. Don’t risk it on a maybe.”

“Do you ever think about how we didn’t get a hundred percent clear on the last level? We missed something. I don’t want to miss something here and it bite us in the ass later. I can catch up to all of you in a few minutes and can take care of myself,” Roan argued. He got to his feet and was moving toward the cave that the general and his officers had attacked from.

“Don’t get killed. I’ll have them wait until it’s night, but then we’re leaving,” Taoya said. The man started up the slope of the caldera, not seeming bothered by his burden. Roan waited a second, making sure Taoya was on his way, before turning and rushing toward the cave.

“If there’s a key, there’s a lock, and where else would the general keep his locked possession than his office. Which should be down here.” Roan sped down the hallways, his new skill giving him the only sight he needed. Unlike the goblin made hills with their constant fake walls and hidden cubbies, the natural cave was as if something had drilled a hole in the stone. Straight down with no branches.

Entering the cave he found the hobs they’d all been waiting for. Most of them were puddles. Tyler’s acidic attack had melted them in the tight confines of the tunnel. His boots splashed in their remnants, soggy bones popping under his weight. The stench of it burned the back of his throat, but he pushed through it and raced downward.

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“Must have launched her attack but the general and first couple hobs got to her before they died. We got lucky the general was weakened.” The dragon-kin had been ferocious even wounded as it was. A fully healthy one would have required more bodies or better planning to kill.

Roan’s progress wasn’t interrupted as he headed straight into the bowels of the world. The air grew cold and damp, almost refreshing after the frantic battle upstairs. His every step was perfectly placed, his mapping skill constantly showing him the earth around him. As long as he didn’t push the skill to its limits he could run without burning through his limited mana stamina.

Light started to burn along the edges of his vision. Soft blue glowing moss lined the tops of the cave. It was so faint at first Roan thought he was hallucinating, but it slowly grew brighter. It didn’t reveal much. The stone was smooth and flat all around him. There were no markings or markers that he could see.

After a few minutes the tunnel evened out, the floor rising and expanding into a massive cavern. Here the smells of thousands of close contact goblins, including their latrines, smacked him in the face. It was an ungodly smell that drove into his brain with burning knives. His eyes watered and he coughed, using his free hand to cover his mouth and nose.

Torches burned along with the blue lichen, helping create a smoky haze. Roan coughed again, but pushed through the cavern. There were roughly cured skins laying on the floors, bones crunched underfoot, and embers from dead fires that he kicked his way through.

The general’s quarters were easy to find. A series of lion hides had been stretched out to create the illusion of a room. Roan paused at them, seeing the moldering heads, and realized why the cub had been by itself. He pushed the hides back and the smell instantly disappeared. He turned and looked at the hides, surprised to see semi-familiar enchantments carved into the hides.

"That's new,” Roan muttered before turning to look over the room. A pile of hides were near the wall, a crude bed. There was nothing else in the room. Just a bed.

“Yeah, that’s definitely suspicious,” Roan muttered. He activated his new skill and pushed it hard, summoning another of his rapidly diminishing steaks. Ripping at the steaming piece of meat, he examined the room quickly. With the mapping skill he found the hidden cubby quickly. At shoulder height above the bed, a hollow space had been carved out and covered with a thin piece of rock.

“I like this skill. Very useful.” Roan peeled the rock out and tossed it to the bed. The hole held only a small, rectangular, wooden box. It was smooth under his fingers, polished to a dark shine. Enchantments ran all over it, dozens of them tightly wound together.

“Spatial box? I’m keeping that,” Roan said, a smile stretching his face as he recognized the enchantments. He re-summoned the key and unlocked the box with a loud click. Roan’s breath froze in his chest as the top of the box swung open revealing nothing but inky blackness.

“Oh. That’s cool,” Roan whispered, peering at the box. Moving before he could think, he put down his polearm and shoved his hand into the box. Instantly he could feel the connection just like he could with his spatial rings. The condensed space wasn’t very large, maybe four times the size of the actual box itself, and it was mostly empty.

Summoning the items out he found himself with a sheaf of yellowed papers and a piece of metal. Roan set the spatial box down and looked over the papers. They were covered in spiky black writing that he couldn’t decipher. Pages and pages of it that were completely useless to him.

The second item was stranger. It was metal, or at least felt like metal. Colors swirled on it like an oil slick. The edges of it weren’t jagged but rather well cut and smoothed down. Something about it tickled his brain.

“What…oh.” Roan lifted the metal piece away from his face, certain that he knew what it was. A puzzle piece.