37: Obelisk II
Nima was fine with silence.
She didn’t mind people or their conversations in any capacity, but it was less stressful to simply remain without speaking. She wouldn’t have to worry about trying to analyze people based on what they were saying and could simply keep her focus trained all around her- not just where they were heading, but also down the tunnel behind them to prevent a sneaky attack. Since all four of the other girls decided to walk in silence following Alexandra’s comment about Jasmine and Eris’s favourites in their polyamorous relationship being clear, Nima found no mind to continue the conversation.
Even if their favourite members of the relationship most certainly were not clear and Nima would very much prefer having a solid answer.
However, Nima opted not to pry. She’d rather avoid the risk of upsetting someone than try to obtain a bit of information that ultimately held no bearing over her. Meghan may have started the conversation, but Nima had faced similar situations all too often- asking for clarification or adding onto the given topic, only to be blamed like she was the one who stepped over a line.
Nima decided to follow her rule of thumb to avoid unsightly outcomes in conversation: people seemed to be the most sensitive about family, romantic relationships and sex. As long as Nima didn’t ask any questions whatsoever, then things seemed to mostly pan out without issue. It was as remarkable as it was frustrating- even the most innocuous of questions could set people off.
Like, when Stacy Bannigan was introducing Nima to her boyfriend, how was Nima possibly supposed to know that asking which of the four boyfriends he was would be an inappropriate question? Nima still wasn’t entirely sure why Winston was yelling and Stacy was crying. If they were in a one-female-four-male polyamorous relationship, why would Winston be so upset about the mentioning of the other three males?
At least Eris, Jasmine, and Alexandra’s relationship seemed to be more stable.
She kept her fingers tight on her spear and idly double-checked the straps on her wrist-mounted buckler. It was still a bit of an odd change to get used to- having such a small means of protecting herself compared to the scutums and tower shields she had always trained with. However, having Dexterity always be equal to her Strength meant that she could place even the small buckler exactly where it needed to be for just as much coverage as a shield ten times the size. Plus, since Alexandra would be serving as a dedicated ‘tank’ and Jasmine easily filled an ‘off-tank’ role, it meant Nima would ultimately be far better off with a smaller and much more maneuverable option since she would be focusing on holding off-angles instead of frontlines...
A single flicker of movement.
That’s all it took. One bit of shifting from a pebble that was perfectly stable the half-second prior immediately flicked Nima’s focus from ‘Alert’ to ‘Combat’. In the time it took to swivel on her heel and lift her spear towards an unseen threat, a copied version of it was glowing over her shoulder and holding in her mind’s eye. Unfortunately, that was also all the time it took for her to realize that she was completely alone.
Instead of the tunnel they had been traversing down, a small, circular cavern in the cave spanned out in front of her. Quickly glancing over her shoulder revealed nothing but a solid wall with none of her four teammates in sight. Several priorities flashed through her mind, but one took precedence as her vision flicked back to glance over the room. Nothing was moving. No immediate threats.
“Meghan?” She called, the sound somewhat distorted by the small yet surprisingly echo-ey space. The Shaman had been the individual closest to Nima, so if the Obelisk had somehow put up walls to split them off, she had the highest chance of being nearby. Sadly, there was no response. Nima continued trying anyway.
“Claire? Alexandra? Jasmine? Can anyone hear me?”
Silence was the only answer. Nima gritted her teeth.
Of course, she’d heard of this kind of thing. Any who wanted to go into the Obelisk were all but required to study up on how it typically functioned. Random environments and random forms of life, and all of it was extremely hostile. However, not everything was combat. Sometimes, there even seemed to be odd puzzles or challenges that needed to be overcome. On uncommon- but not unheard of- occasions, the Obelisk would even split up a party upon entering an environment or even partway through.
Like now, as it seemed.
Nima flicked her eyes around the room. No tunnels, no doorways, no visible exits- just a circular floor about twenty feet in diameter surrounded by a dome-like cavern of solid rock. However, there were three pedestals in a vaguely-triangular shape and equally spaced around the small room. Each were topped with unlit cast iron braziers filled with a white-ish powder that most certainly was not ash. The weirdest part was that although there were zero visible light sources in the room, it was only slightly dim. Nima could see clearly, even the carved scripture running up the length of each pedestal. All were different, and although they were all written in the common alphabet, none of the words were the language.
Something made her eyes flick to the left one first- some instinct in her head she couldn’t quite explain.
FURA BALAR ASKAR D’KORMON LOHSE
Then the one on the right;
TEER RAI RAGR F’NALLOW M’MORI
Eyes went forward to the one directly in front of her.
TOL NAVON MURTHE F’DRIX FERE
Nima narrowed her eyes. She recognized that it was Ra’lan, and a few words specifically caught for easy translation. Fura, Teer and Tol were Four, Three, and Two respectively. Then there was Askar- Control. Mori- War. Murthe and Fere were Stuck and Punish. At least, Nima was pretty sure.
That was one part that aggravated historians the most- Ra’lan was primarily a spoken language. When the standardized alphabet began to form and people moved away from the proper runes, each individual person tended to spell whatever word however they thought the pronunciation would be spelled. That meant most hard consonants and even some vowels were interchanged with others as long as the written words would still sound the same when spoken.
It still irked her whenever Dad would spell her name as ‘Kneemuh’, just for the fun of it. The most annoying part was that she had no good argument to get him to stop- by technicality, it was still a correct spelling of the Ra’lan word because it was pronounced the same, and therefore an appropriate spelling of her name.
Nima blinked her focus back around the room. If Four, Three, and Two were mentioned, then where was One? Sounding out the words in her mind made lines Four and Two sort of rhyme, and the cadence seemed almost poetic. If that was the case, then there was a very good chance there was supposed to be some fourth segment that rhymed with Three. There was an even higher chance it would be revealed by lighting the braziers in the correct order.
Nima walked up to the pedestal on her left, hooked her buckler onto her belt to give herself a free hand, then pinched a fingerful of the powder in the iron bowl. It was granular, almost like sand or even sugar. It didn’t give off any sort of particular scent, and absolutely nothing happened when Nima reached into a pouch on her side and pulled out a flint to strike against the back of her spearhead. The shower of sparks made no effort whatsoever to ignite the sand.
Nima furrowed her brow, then took a step back. If anything she heard about the Obelisk was true, then the puzzles or challenges were usually pretty obvious as to what the end result was supposed to be- it was everything in between that wasn’t so clear. Not only that, they were always possible. The Obelisk never gave a task, fight, puzzle, or challenge that the participants weren’t physically or mentally capable of completing. Nima was pretty sure the outcome was supposed to be that the final part of the poem revealed itself when all three of the other braziers were lit, and that would somehow allow her to escape and return to the team. She wasn’t fluent enough in Ra’lan to understand what the poem was saying, but she was at least able to ascertain that it WAS a poem, unlike many others who would have been completely clueless.
That alone was her key to figuring out how this worked- it was a lot easier to find the answer when she knew what she was looking for. Light the braziers, find the final part of the poem and get out. Nima pinched the bridge of her nose.
Now the question was; how to light the braziers?
Meg kept her eyes trained forward down the tunnel, looking over Alex’s shoulder as the group walked in horrendously awkward silence. After all, what was she supposed to say? ‘Oh, I’m sure both your other girlfriends love you too’. Meg had zero clue what was really going on between those three, especially since the incident last night. Jaxie was trying to set her and Claire up with Eris for their ‘open’ situation? What did that make Alex?
The pain in Alex’s tone certainly made it obvious that the Knight felt like the odd woman out in their relationship. Meg wasn’t quite sure how being magically angry worked with Berserkers, but Jaxie absolutely heard Alex say that and decided to remain completely silent. By Meg’s best assumption, it was a silence of guilt- like when someone would call Meg’s ass out for something and she couldn’t even think of anything to say that would get her out of the grave she dug herself.
Fortunately, everything changed in the blink of an eye to avoid the residual awkwardness that hung in the air like iron chains. Unfortunately, that came in the form of her eyes shifting to see that the Knight in front of her and the Evoker by her side were both gone. A quick glance over her shoulder showed that Rainbow had also vanished, prompting a vocal outburst that sprouted from her lips before Meg had an opportunity to properly clamp herself down.
“What the fuck?!”
The tunnel had opened up to a cavern the size of an amphitheatre, and Jaxie was spinning around with her axes raised. Thankfully, the Berserker wasn’t actually attacking- she was just analyzing the situation and visibly taking note of the missing party members. Meg watched Jaxie growl, then pivot on her heel once again in the sand covering the floor to look around while the Shaman did the same.
Probably a hundred and fifty feet on a side, the two girls were in the dead center of a circular room that had a ceiling covered in stalagmites (those were the ones that hung down, right? Meg could never remember) hovering like a thousand pointed spikes ready to rain down from a hundred feet in the air. The floor wasn’t stone like it had been for the rest of the cave. It was covered in something that was hovering right on the border of gravel and sand- extra gritty and coarse. Torches lined the walls, each giving off a brilliant blue flame to illuminate the cavern which most certainly seemed to be an arena of some kind.
That was, if the thing descending from the shadowed ceiling was any indication.
Jaxie gripped both axes so tightly that Meg could hear the leather grips creaking. Just as quickly, she held up her glass orb to funnel magic while willing towards the back of her mind to summon Kitty. Wind tugged at her ankles even through the uncomfortable and heavy boots, and an instant later a translucent wolf was silently snarling at her side while a blast of poisonous magic was ready to be channelled through the orb.
”In Blood I call for it to spray, until thine death meets my decay.”
The voice that came from the creature was eerie at best. It most certainly did not sound human in any capacity, so much that Meg couldn’t even try to discern a gender. It was more akin to listening to wind blowing through a gorge. It resonated and echoed around the arena in a way that was beyond unsettling and sent chills through Meg’s spine. As the thing came lower, Meg expected to be able to see it more clearly. If anything- it was the exact opposite.
Nothing about it seemed comprehendable in any capacity- and it was incredibly anxiety-inducing to try and figure out what Meg was seeing. That’s because it almost felt like her mind wasn’t wanting to work. She could point out the details of the torch sconces on the wall and the discolourations in the chunky sand covering the floor. She could analyze the patterns of blood splattering Jaxie’s armor, and even count the ghostly strands of fur sprouting from Kitty’s shoulderblades. However, as soon as her eyes turned to the thing lowering in front of them, everything became cloudy.
She couldn’t tell whether it was five feet away or five hundred. She couldn’t tell if it had a body, or if it was just a misshapen mist of energy. She couldn’t process anything she was seeing- like some connection in her brain was being severed any time she tried to look at it. Her head was hurting just from the failure of comprehension, so Meg turned her gaze away and stared at the floor.
“What?”
”In Love I am who shows the way, sharing warmth with those who’d lay.”
Meg’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Meanwhile, Jaxie cocked her head. When the Berserker spoke, Meg could practically taste the fury in the air as Jaxie growled.
“Where are they?”
”When I Wander, the world’s my claim, none the land or sea the same. Of all three, I share a name- in fear that I mark Sin with blame.”
After the… thing stopped speaking, Meg watched Jaxie’s posture shift. Her shoulders lowered like she was going to charge. “Where are they?!”
“Uhh, Jaxie?” Meg let her charged poison spell fade and very, very carefully placed a hand on Jaxie’s forearm. “This isn’t a fight.”
Meg gulped when Jaxie looked over her shoulder. Holy fuck. Again, she really didn’t quite know how Jaxie’s anger operated as a Berserker, but at least when they were going through the last few fights and walking down the tunnel she had seemed… cold. Silent. Standoffish. Like someone shit in her oatmeal and ruined the rest of her day, but still very much in control.
Now, Jaxie was visibly boiling over. Eyes were shrunken and nostrils were flared. Meg may or may not have peed a little bit, but forced herself to let out some shaky words.
“Jaxie, I think it’s a riddle. If we solve it, we’ll find our friends.”
One moment, Claire had been walking down the tunnel and gratefully using the atrocious silence of Alex’s sad remark to replace the panic rising in her chest. It was MUCH easier to ignore how the tunnel walls seemed to be closing in when she was focusing on how unbelievably awkward everything became following Meghan’s question. All they needed to do was reach the end, then they could go to a different environment that didn’t feel like a stone coffin. As long as they kept moving and kept making forward progress, Claire wasn’t too inclined to rip out someone’s throat and try to suck the oxygen from their lungs so she could breathe properly.
Of course, the next instant suddenly made her steps cease completely as she was abruptly pinned against a solid wall with her cheek pressed into rock. A grunting came from immediately behind her, followed shortly by Alex’s confused voice. “Huh- what? Hnngh!”
A patch of glowing moss was brushing Claire’s head from the ceiling that forced her chin into her chest, and her legs were bent to fit in the closet-sized space that seemed just barely big enough for the Knight to fill- someone several inches shorter than Claire. Immediately, blood started pounding through her ears.
“Agh! Who-... who is this?” Alex asked. Claire couldn’t find her voice. She couldn’t even breathe.
“Hello? Wake up! Come on, we’ve gotta get out of here! Who’s in here with me?”
“C-Claire…” she managed to squeak out. Her palms felt clammy. She felt Alex’s head shift from behind her- they were pressed back-to-back in this tiny deathtrap.
“Okay. Claire, is anyone else here?”
Claire shuddered. Alex piped up. “Come on, Claire! Where’s everyone else?”
“I- I don’t know! Not here!”
The Evoker wasn’t getting enough air. She felt lightheaded. She could hear her heartbeat through her ears and sweat was running down her neck in streams. While she shuddered, Alex let out a long, slow breath of realization.
“You’re claustrophobic.”
“Is… is it that obvious?” Claire tried to offer a smile, but then immediately wiped it away in an attempt to suck more air into her lungs.
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?”
Claire felt like her chest was caving in. “Be-because it’s nobody else’s problem.”
She felt Alex shifting her arm to lower it.
“Hey, it’s okay- it’s okay. I promise. We’re gonna get out of this, we just need to find out what the Obelisk wants us to do, okay? Here, hold my hand.”
Claire felt Alex’s fingers probing near her thigh, and she quickly squeezed one hand downwards until she managed to interlock her digits with the Knight’s. Even through the heavy gloves of her armour, Claire did feel a bit of comfort from the connection. She may have been stuck here, but at least she wasn’t alone.
“Don’t think about what’s happening,” Alex said, tightening the grip. “Just focus on me, then try to look around and tell me what you see. This has to be some kind of puzzle. We solve it, we get out. Easy peasy.”
Claire groaned. “I think I’m gonna throw up.”
“...Please don’t.”