“What were you thinking, Aeshma?” I asked as I picked my way through the still-smouldering shards of ceramic tile, all that remained of the triggered traps. “I nearly got thrown off the rope by that first explosion! You even scorched Jie, look!”
Aeshma barely glanced at the ichor drying on the Mimic’s proffered surface. “Yeah, sorry about that. It’s just that Tatz gets me so angry, you know?” She moved her hands from her horns to her hips. “Anyway, I had to show off a little bit in order to get under her skin. It was, like, strategic.”
I sighed. “Look, obviously Tatzel’s an ass, and obviously she’s provoking you. But if Jie and I keep taking chip damage from you rushing ahead, it could kill us.”
Aeshma’s face scrunched up. I couldn’t tell whether she was concerned or annoyed. “I forgot how long the rope was, dude. I didn’t think the explosion would reach you.”
“I know you didn’t mean for us to get hit, but if you were paying more attention–”
“Sheesh, I said I forgot! I was paying attention, I just… forgot about Jie’s positioning, okay? I’m perfectly capable of keeping you alive and in one piece. Remember how I saved you down in the cellar?”
Tatzel’s voice hissed over the PA, “Better watch out, Roland. Keep nagging and Aeshma will get bored of you so fast it’ll make your head spin. Maybe literally, if she decides to twist your head off.”
Get bored of me? What did that mean? It was probably just Tatzel’s way of sowing discord between the two of us. Unless…
I looked Aeshma up and down, from her gladiatorial sandals to the tips of her horns. Even if she got mad at me, she wouldn’t kill me. Right? I pushed Tatzel’s comment aside for the time being. “Of course I remember what happened in the cellar, and how, uh, brave you were. But you’ve been acting super recklessly here. You’re letting Tatzel get under your skin.”
“Sounds like your pet is getting awful uppity, Aeshma,” Tatzel hissed. “Feel like killing him yet? Like you did with Derri–”
“SHUT UP TATZEL!” Aeshma yelled. “And Roland’s not my pet, he’s my best friend!” She said it with a heartbreaking amount of sincerity, given that we’d only known each other for a few days.
Aeshma took a deep breath then turned to me. “You’re right, Roland, screw her. Let’s just keep moving. Now, what’s up with this door…?”
My message had been more along the lines of be more careful than screw Tatzel. But I got the sense that when she was riled up, Aeshma would only hear what she wanted to hear. We both peered intently at the strange door in front of us, with its ten-foot tall carven face and enormous brass knocker.
“Oh, the door? That little thing?” asked Tatzel with barely concealed glee, “That’s my Brainknocker! I can’t wait to see you struggle with this one. Do the two of you like… hmm, let’s see… riddles? How about three of them in succession?” Tatzel cackled. “Oh, this will be delightful.”
Aeshma ducked into a boxing stance. “I don’t need to hear the dang riddles, Tatz, I already got my three answers for ya right here!” she said, and launched the first of what surely would’ve been a series of three punches. Her fist bounced off the door’s mustachio’d upper lip with a dull thunk.
The door’s wooden eyes slid open.“Ho there, child, be not so up-riled! My wood is dense and sturdy, you see; no bare fist can damage me!” the door said. With every syllable its upper lip slid, puppet-like, into the space below its mustache
Tatzel snickered. “You’ve made him angry! He’ll be talking in rhymes the whole rest of the day, I bet.”
Aeshma shook the pain out of her knuckles then aimed another punch for the Brainknocker’s wooden eyeball. This time some sort of repulsive force activated and sent her skidding across the floor. Tatzel snickered over the PA system.
“No luck with the punching, Aeshma?” I asked. “Maybe we should get the door to tell us its riddles.”
As soon as the word riddles escaped my lips, the Brainknocker’s eyes lit up – literally glowing with a faint, pale light. Also figuratively, the face on the door looked really excited for the opportunity to tell us its riddles.
“In the morning I am ancient. In the evening I am bright. Cold or hot, it makes no matter; put me down and feel my bite. What am I?” the Brainknocker intoned.
Aeshma let out a sigh. “I’ve got half a mind to give the thing another wallop.”
“Hold on, maybe we can solve it. This is a Zone One Dungeon. It can’t be that hard of a riddle, can it?”
“Yes Aeshma, why don’t you use that head of yours as something other than a battering ram for once?” mocked Tatzel.
Thankfully Aeshma ignored the taunt this time. “I don’t think it’ll be that easy, dude. Tatzel’s definitely bending the rules here.” She rubbed her knuckles, where a deep purple bruise was spreading like watercolor. “My punch didn’t even leave a dent, did you see? And when the Brainknocker pushed me away, I think it was holding back to avoid hurting me. This thing is waaaay overleveled for a Zone One Dungeon guardian.”
“And that’s against the rules?” I asked.
Tatzel’s voice once again hissed over the PA. “It’s only against the rules to have an overleveled Dungeon guardian. Brainzorgia here isn’t a guardian. He just happens to be hanging out in the doorway. And if some idiot Succubus were to come by and trigger his passive abilities, then…”
Aeshma chewed her lip. “I think we have to solve the riddle, Roland.”
“What happens if we get it wrong?” I asked.
“Then for this world you will not be long!” Brainzorgia announced gleefully. “I would explode and kill you.”
Aeshma was staring up at the door thoughtfully. I could practically hear the gears grinding inside her skull. After a moment she perked up and raised her index finger as though she’d had an epiphany… but then she lowered her finger and shook her head. “It’s no use, dude, the riddle’s impossible. There's nothing that fits.”
I couldn’t believe Aeshma was giving up so easily. I tried to pep her up a little. “The riddle ended with feel my bite, right? Could that be, like, a snake? Or… what else can bite? Just brainstorm with me here.”
Aeshma nodded pensively. “Dogs bite. Cats bite. Oooh, Dragons bite, too. Is it Tatzel?” She looked suddenly solemn. “No, in the morning I am ancient. I knew Tatzel from way back when, and she was never ancient.”
“Okay, how about winter? Like, a biting cold? Does that expression exist here?”
“Oh yeah! That’s it! Door, we’re ready!” The Brainknocker’s eyes glowed more intensely as she reached for the eponymous brass knocker. “It’s–”
“Hold up!” I said, grabbing Aeshma’s outstretched arm. She looked at me quizzically. “I was just brainstorming. Winter doesn’t make any sense. You can’t put it down, and it’s not ancient in the morning or bright at night.”
“Got any better ideas?”
I cast my eyes around the room, hoping to spot some clue or something to jog my memory. I was met with nothing but bare, featureless stone walls. Just plain, old, normal-looking stone walls.
“I might have an idea,” I said. “The door’s too strong to punch through… but what about the wall next to it?”
Aeshma and I exchanged mischievous glances before pacing over to a span of wall a few feet from the door. She cocked her fist back and laid into the wall with a bone-rattling hook. A torrent of dust and gravel followed her hand out as she pulled back.
Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work!
“Oh no, no, come on! That’s not allowed!” Tatzel shouted. “Brainzorgia, do something! Stop them!”
The Brainknocker’s teeth rattled together in what seemed to be laughter. “My intended solution it is not, but they’ve triggered none of the passive abilities I’ve got!” The glow slowly faded from the Brainknocker’s eyes; then its wooden eyelids clapped shut and, over Tatzel’s wails and complaints, the creature’s visage went still and lifeless.
Aeshma rubbed her knuckles.“This should work fine. It’ll take a few minutes, but that doesn’t matter. Sure beats having to solve a riddle.” She grinned as she wound up another haymaker. “Nice call Roland! Did you hear how upset Tatz was, too? Ooooh, I can just imagine her now, throwing a tantrum up there in the Boss room.”
With Aeshma slowly pulverizing the wall, I took the opportunity to check on Jie. Unfortunately, the deep crack I had noticed earlier hadn’t disappeared. If the Mimic truly did have the ability to repair himself like I had speculated, it must’ve only been in a limited capacity.
Over the sound of Aeshma’s punches, Tatzel’s voice piped quietly over the PA. “What Level are you, Ae? I know it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other, but…”
She paused, but Aeshma didn’t answer. “Your Human… is he a Wizard, blowing through all his mana to buff you? Is that how you’re doing all this? You’re not…” Tatzel’s voice trailed off as Aeshma noisily ripped a chunk out of the wall.
“Are you draining him, Ae? Keeping a Human Level-farm? Even you’re not that stupid, are you?” There was a note of worry in her voice. At first I thought she was concerned about an overleveled brawler coming her way, but something in her tone said otherwise. And then there was the matter of the nickname, Ae. I wondered if there was more to their acquaintance than either of them had let on.
PWUNK!
Wordlessly, Aeshma punched out the last bit of stone separating us from the other side of the wall. She’d opened up a hole maybe three feet across and three feet high.
I crawled through first. The other side opened up onto a massive staircase leading down. A mess of shrubberies spilled out from the planters that lined either side like leafy balustrades. That was a nice touch, too, because to either side of the staircase was just more nothingness, all the way down to the impossibly far bottom of the Dungeon, cloaked in fog. Even with the planters in the way, I didn’t want to stray too close to the edge.
“Fine, don’t tell me, then. What do I care?” Tatzel continued. She had been quiet for a solid minute, and a bit of edge had crept back into her tone. “And by the way, do you have any idea how long Brainzorgia spends coming up with those riddles? He customizes them for every adventuring Party that comes through here. It’s his life’s work, and you ignored him. Passed him by like he was nothing. So… good work, Aeshma, ruining everything like usual.”
“I dunno,” I said. “Brainzorgia seemed kinda pleased that we came up with a creative solution to his puzzle.”
“Great, thanks for your opinion. Oh, and good job enabling Aeshma with all this, by the way. Do you even understand what you’re doing? You two are going to get ghost-stormed within the fortnight, and that’s being generous. Do you know what a ghost-storm is, Human? Because–”
“Tatz?” Aeshma cut in.
Tatzel paused. Maybe she was expecting Aeshma to explain herself. “Yes, Aeshma?” she asked smugly.
“You gotta chill out.”
Tatzel let out a scream of frustration, but to Aeshma’s credit, she did stop talking after that. And so Aeshma and I descended the stairs in blessed silence, taking extra care to avoid tripping over overgrown roots from the central planters. Ivy hung down from the ceiling, countless stories above us, from the rim of an enormous stained-glass skylight which depicted a howling black Dragon with two sets of arms. The Dragon’s long, legless body formed a sort of spiral pattern, broken only by a pair of wings protruding from the creature’s shoulders. I wondered whether it was supposed to be Tatzel.
“Are we going to have to kill her?” I asked. The look Aeshma threw me made it clear she knew who I was talking about. “I mean, obviously the two of you don’t get along. But are you really okay doing… that?”
The fog was growing denser as we descended deeper into the cave, and it was hard for me to read Aeshma’s expression. “I can beat Tatzel for sure. Like, no contest. The main thing I’m worried about is her poison breath. I mean, I can handle it, and Mimics don’t breathe, so Jie will be fine. But one whiff of the stuff could kill you.”
“I could just wait outside the Boss room. That’s not really what I was asking, though. Back at Camp you and Tatzel were bunkmates, right?”
Aeshma’s face tightened. “Yeah.”
“Oh, we weren’t just bunkmates,” Tatzel said, nearly making me jump out of my skin. With how quietly Aeshma and I were talking, I had forgotten that Tatzel could hear us. “We were teammates! Until Aeshma went on one of her classic rampages and screwed it all up.”
“I wasn’t rampaging, I just got a little overzealous. I told you all a million times. I can’t believe we’re having this discussion again,” Aeshma said.
“You slaughtered half the–”
‘AH AH AH! We are not talking about this right now!” Aeshma yelled. “So to answer your question, Roland: yes, I am super okay killing Tatzel, because of what a giant pain in the ass she is, and also because I hate her.”
Aeshma fumed, waiting for Tatzel’s reply to hiss over the PA. But no reply came.
Down here the fog was so dense it was hard to make out much beyond a few yards in front of us. Just a few steps ahead, the staircase ended abruptly, that much we could clearly see. But neither Aeshma nor I could tell what lay in store beyond that. And neither of us liked the prospect of taking another step and falling into the void.
So we agreed to stop and waited for the fog to dissipate. It did seem to be letting up, albeit slowly. Aeshma was chewing her lip and didn't seem to be in a chatty mood. Probably she was still thinking about her conversation with Tatzel. I was still thinking about the conversation, too. And specifically some of the comments Tatzel had made.
“So, uh. What’s all this about murder and rampages and twisting people's heads off?” I asked, breaking the silence in the least graceful way possible.
Aeshma shrugged without looking at me. “It’s complicated,”
“We've got some downtime now, right?” I said. I took a deep breath and launched right into it. “Tatzel was talking about ‘pets’ and ‘tearing off heads’, and like, you getting ‘bored’ of me. And I know she was trying to pick a fight, but it's still, you know, kind of concerning? I'm interested in hearing your side of things, because as far as I can tell, you haven't really pushed back on anything she's said. Like, rebutted her or anything. You just cut her off with things that make her upset too, which is fine and a great tactic and everything. But, uh. I guess it makes me think that the things she's saying might be true?”
My ramble hung in the foggy air.
There was fear in my gut, now. Not fear that Aeshma was going to hurt me or anything like that, but that I’d hurt her with what I’d said. And that if I upset her, she wouldn't want me in her party anymore. I almost just told her to forget that I had said anything. But finally she replied, her voice distant and a little sad. “Can we talk about this later, once we’re out of here? It's complicated, and Tatz isn't outright lying about all this stuff, but… look, I think some of this will just be hard for you to understand. Like, because you're a Human. You know?”
From Tatzel’s comments, it sounded like this wasn't just a matter of my Human sensibilities getting in the way. But for now, it would have to do. “Okay. We can talk later, then.”
Aeshma broke out into a big grin. “Perfect! And you can tell me about Human stuff too. Ooh, you can tell me about your sister!”
Thinking of Becca got me smiling, too. Then I noticed what lay beyond the end of the stairs now that the fog had mostly cleared, and the smile slowly slid off my face.
The staircase ended over a deep, dark chasm, maybe fifteen feet across. On the opposite side of the chasm, the staircase continued down as usual. Bridging the gap, floating over the chasm at about the level of our feet, were three red, soft-looking orbs. Aeshma’s eyes bugged at the sight of them. “Queen’s beans! Tatz, is that from Obstacle Run Challenge? It looks just like that bit in the middle of the course!”
There was a sigh over the PA. “Yes, Aeshma, I repurposed some equipment. I blew most of my budget transporting Brainzorgia here.”
Aeshma was bouncing from foot to foot excitedly. “This is gonna be so easy, Roland, the platforms aren't even moving. You literally just have to step from ball to ball. Get a running start and just run over them. Easy peasy. Watch.” She jogged to the edge of the stairs and effortlessly stepped from orb to orb to demonstrate. Then she crossed back over to stand beside me.
“I think we had Obstacle Run Challenge in my world, too,” I said.
“Sweet! Then you know this part is, like, trivial.” She hopped across the orbs again, backwards this time.
My memory of obstacle game shows back home was that people fell all the time, usually accompanied by funny sound effects. But Aeshma was making it look so easy. And I was in pretty good shape. Not great shape, but passable for a twenty-three year old man. Definitely fitter than a lot of middle-aged game show contestants.
“Yeah… yeah, I think I can do it! It was probably the studio trying to get better ratings by only showing the contestants who really embarrassed themselves.”
“I’m not gonna pretend I know what that means, but yeah! That's probably true! You sound so confident dude, I love it!” Aeshma said, bouncing up and down on the last orb.
“Okay then… here goes nothing!” I said. I wound up a few steps and started to run–
“STOP! WAIT!” Aeshma shouted. I skidded to a halt moments before leaping to the first orb. “Your shoe’s coming untied.” Sure enough, it was. I tied it up and walked back to my starting spot. A few deep breaths, then I broke into a sprint. When I reached the edge of the stairs I bounded confidently onto the first orb.
I immediately sproinged to the side, directly into the howling chasm.
Tatzel broke out in a howling fit of laughter as I plunged down into the abyss.
NOTABLE MONSTERS
--------------------------------
Brainzorgia LV23
Ancestry: Monster
Class: Brainknocker
Notable Perks:
Riddle Me This (Tier 10): Each tier grants the ability to devise increasingly complex riddles.
Threefold Riddle: You may incorporate sets of occult symbols into your riddles. Your target must simultaneously speak, act out, and hold the symbols as innate beliefs, to get credit for their solution.
Old Growth Wood: You gain damage resistance equal to half your maximum health.
