216. Traps and Loopholes

  Met with a clear obstacle and an even clearer solution, the Upheavers first did what any self-respecting Wayfaring party would: try to find a loophole.

  “No good,” Oriole announced with a heavy sigh as he jumped back out of the Gloaming mists that blocked the party’s progress. “THE PLEDGE protects me from [Unmooring], but the mists are thick, and they extend much farther than is safe for me to explore. I could try again, but—”

  “No, come back!” Serac was safety-first when it came to her party members. “We can’t risk you getting lost in there forever!”

  “Ashvanaga then?” Renna offered a second idea. True to her [Oath] of leaving no stones unturned, she’d been the one to suggest (without batting an eye) sending Oriole in for a test run.

  “Not an option.” Serac already had the answer. “I just tried summoning it, but no dice. I think this place counts as a dungeon.”

  “Then what’re we waiting for?” Zacko’s [Oath] prevented him from rocking the boat too vigorously. As such, he’d carefully kept himself out of all loophole-seeking experiments. “We didn’t get these visas to not use them.”

  As sensible a notion as any, but it still left the visa holders with one conundrum to solve. Between the four of them, they had two [Marks of the Oathward] and one [Mark of the Oathless]. Meanwhile, the mechanism before them had just the two rectangular imprints of different colors—clearly meant to be activated with an [Oathward]-[Oathless] pair.

  “Princess and I could go first,” Zacko suggested with a shrug. “Maybe there’s a way to open up a path for the rest of you to follow?”

  “No,” Renna said firmly—perhaps a little pushily. “I will go first… and yes, perhaps try to open up a path for—”

  [THE PLEDGE Spell: MARK OF THE OATHLESS]

  A flash of earthy-red gloam. All eyes turned to the spellcaster responsible. Oriole the tabbycat was a picture of concentration as he pushed his signet ring into the pendant around his own neck.

  Serac gasped. “Wait, that might actually be genius! Did it work?”

  Normally, THE PLEDGE would brand a [Marked] object with a signet seal. Such had been the case with the envelope and even Ash the living castle, one of the stone blocks on its battlement now bearing a tiny red imprint. The pendant, however, bucked the trend. Even as the party watched on in anticipation, the whole of the box-shaped lotus changed in color. Not to red but raw umber.

  Oriole stared at the newly transformed pendant, amazed by the ‘loophole’ he himself had discovered. The rest of the party also took a moment to admire the spot of improvisation. But next came the question of how to divvy up the pairs. In order to conform to the [Oathward]-[Oathless] configuration, the quartet was left with two possible choices.

  “Me and Zacko would be the most ‘tried-and-tested’ pairing,” Serac said reasonably. “We’ve been together the longest, and our styles complement each other pretty well.”

  “Right, but that also makes the whole thing more unbalanced,” Zacko himself argued. “The ol’ reliable on one team, and Bubblegum babysitting a KL-17 ginger on the other. No offense, Bubblegum; I’m sure you’d make for a great babysitter.”

  “None taken,” Renna said without batting an eye. Behind her, Oriole made a face in protest. “On this count, I tend to agree. I can hold my own in a fight, but we don’t even know what we’re getting into. If it’s a Rite of Passage like what we had with the Gatekeeper, it might not be a fight at all. With that in mind, it’d be prudent to separate our two most versatile Wayfarers—those, of course, being Serac and Zacarias.”

  Count on Renna to maintain an analytical approach in the face of the unknown. Serac’s first reaction was to blush and deflect the unexpected praise. But then, if she really thought about it, the frog woman had only stated an objective fact.

  “That settles it, then.” Zacko settled it. “I’ll babysit ginger boy. And the two princesses can team up to show what the Lowly Realms are made of.”

  “I don’t need babysitting!” Oriole hissed in indignation.

  “Calm down, Brain Cell, you can have your nap once this is over.”

  The boys continued to jaw at each other (well, one boy jawed and the other egged him on) as they made their way over to the center of the room. Before they interacted with the double-slotted slab, however, Renna made sure to supply them with some Pearls—one [Courage] and one [Endurance] each for the NINEFOLD master and SHADOWSENT cat-wrangler.

  Zacko’s turn as a babysitter was off to a great start. His charge was still seething as the two of them presented a pendant each to the color-coded keycard slots. Then, faster than a babysitter could say ‘stick close’, the room groaned to life and swallowed them up.

  Serac blinked in startlement. One Ksana, a burly Manusya and a slouching Tiryaga had yammered side by side in front of the Gloaming barrier. The next, something large, velvety, and obsidian reached out and grabbed hold of both souls, before dragging them bodily into the mists.

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  “What just happened?” Serac exclaimed, even as she scanned the mists with Pathsight. No labels. Nothing to indicate where her friends had been spirited away to.

  “I suppose we’ll soon find out,” Renna said calmly—no, perhaps a little eagerly. She’d clearly been dying to do this for some time.

  Serac managed a wry smile and a shake of the head. By now, she was old hat at weird surprises and unexplained phenomena. She supposed the frog Yaksha’s reckless curiosity was as good a coping mechanism as any on the slopes of Mount Meru.

  Renna the [Oathward] on one side, Serac the [Oathless] on the other. Nearly as soon as they presented their visas, the room reacted with the same urgent ferocity with which they’d disappeared the boy duo. Several velvety, obsidian flower petals shot out of the mists and swallowed the pair whole.

  Another puzzle piece fell into place. Serac realized what had happened to the boys—understood the significance of the room’s dome-like shape. This whole place is a lotus. Another Lotic space to host a Rite of Passage…

  All was darkness. Total, disorienting, diminishing. But this time, Serac had a partner to share the darkness, and that was enough to boost her spirits. With certitude of purpose, she unholstered REVOLVER, simultaneously as Renna flipped open the remaining lids of OYSTER.

  As two Wayfarers primed their respective Instruments, the darkness responded by taking on visible, palpable shape. Light filled the unseen spaces at a languid pace, until the venue revealed itself in its entirety.

  Night sky. Derelict brick buildings. Streetlamps made of roaring oil drums. The scene looked a lot like Duskpool, minus all the furry neighbors to liven things up. Had the pair been sent back in time? Or perhaps forward again?

  Serac, ever in touch with the memories [Immanent] in the world, was immediately overcome by a sense of loss and longing. Her instincts demanded she leave this place, if only to get away from the melancholy and seek the warmth of hearth and community. The place certainly looked open enough, despite it being contained inside a Lotic space.

  But I know it can’t be that easy. Sure enough, as the Wayfarers made their way deeper into the ‘city’, the scenery simply moved with them. There was that same brick corner they’d passed moments ago. The same streetlamp with the dented oil drum and crooked smoke. Progress was a mere illusion. The whole venue, in effect, was a trap.

  “Every trap should have a mechanism to disarm it,” Renna reasoned, mellow as you like. Serac wasn’t 100% sold on the veracity of the statement, but it was as good a starting point as any. She left Renna to read the ripples while she herself tapped into some rudimentary detective skills.

  Look for patterns first. Then something to break them. Night. Brick. Oil. All the trappings of a decaying Duskpool. But if this were part of the ‘twice-lit’ city, shouldn’t there also be something of—?

  And then she found it. A single brick that wasn’t quite like its terracotta siblings. Smooth and sleek, with a distinct velvety gleam. Far from a perfect disguise, but perhaps that was by design. Serac gave it a closer inspection, and sure enough, identified a pattern of dense, fine grooves to exactly match the contours of the Mirroring Lotus. Here was yet another slot for a visa check—but which one?

  Thunk!

  Serac spun, startled by the dull impact. On the other side of the ruins, a pink frog could be seen swinging her giant shovel with gusto, only to be rebuffed by her targets’ unreality. DREDGER made meaty contact with the crumbling walls, the slanted streetlamps, and even the cobblestone at the frog woman’s squish-patter feet. Nothing gave way, and why would they? They were mere illusions conjured by the Lotic space.

  “Renna? What’re you doing?”

  “This place is too still,” the Yaksha complained. “Thought I might agitate things a bit.”

  In the absence of ripples, Renna had elected to generate some of her own. A brute force approach if Serac had ever seen one. I suppose that’s one way to do it, but it’s funny to see Renna being the hotheaded one! Then again, it was also perfectly in keeping with the frog woman’s no-nonsense approach to problem-solving.

  Fortune favored the persistent. On about the umpteenth swing, DREDGER’s blade produced a loud ‘crack’. A whole section of bricks crumbled to dust, leaving behind a visible crater, as well as a single obsidian block embedded within.

  Two slots for two different keycards. These too were color-coded, after a fashion. Serac’s disguised brick was clearly the lighter of the two, meaning the Wayfarers were already well-positioned to present their respective visas.

  Serac the [Oathless] on one side, Renna the [Oathward] on the other. The room acknowledged the combined gesture, but at first only with a distant rumble. The rumbling soon grew louder. So much so Serac felt compelled to look up in the sky, despite knowing it was no sky at all. The room, along with the ruins of Duskpool, now quaked in their entirety, as if rocked by the march of a colossus.

  And even as two Wayfarers watched on in fascination, a colossus indeed revealed itself. First, a meteor of pure light streaked across the Night sky, burning a hole into the illusive fabric. Light then streamed in through the tear, accompanied by the entity—nay, entities—responsible.

  One was a Tiryaga. A ginger tabbycat, no less. But where Oriole ere’Quinlan cloaked himself in black leather to blend into shadows, this man would stand out in any crowd. He was decked out in full, shining armor, only the ear-slits on his visored helm giving evidence to his feline features. In his gauntleted hand, he held a torch of blinding light, the very same with which he’d shone a path through the illusion—the mechanism to disarm the trap.

  He wasn’t alone, of course. For the knight in shining armor had ridden into battle on a steed even grander than he. Enormous wings to darken the Night in their shadows. Reptilian scales of umber and gold. Bulging lizard eyes that lit up like brimstone. Flared nostrils, large and cavernous, that even now smoked with the embers of dragonflame.

  [Designation: HELLEBORE ere’PENDRAGON—the Last Dragoon]

  [Aberrant Race: Gloamspawn]

  [Aberrant Class: Rite of Passage]

  [PRIMAL Instrument: THE BRIGHTENING LOTUS]

  [PRIMAL Steed: Y DDRAIG CYFNOS]

  Pluribus and have to gush. Incredible show, but what else do you expect from Vince Gilligan? Also, Manousos Oviedo might just have become my favorite TV character ever. OK, carry on, just had to get it out of my system.

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