Demorian watched the comings and goings of the group as they progressed in the maze, working carefully with his various game tools – many of which he had developed himself – to poke away at the code of the maze. Unfortunately, it didn’t appear that he would have a full map any time soon. That is, not before the group had mapped most or all of the maze manually.
With everyone momentarily gone from the entrance room save Nighthand, Sheena and Nall, Demorian decided to give the power pair a chat. He sauntered across the room, taking up a spot leaning against the wall that Nall slouched against. Sheena still poked and prodded him with her power glove, an artifact only Demorian and Nall knew she was using, and that Demorian himself had coveted for quite some time. She never did let him know how she had created it, and he had never been able to replicate her skills. His ability to manipulate Twilight was limited indeed.
For a moment, he reflected on the old days. Nall had been an Elite in the past, this was true. Eventually he had been usurped, his power stolen, his level reset. He had been ejected from Yamiyo, and much of his early questing was simply to find a way back in. He chased every rumor of a rare item, knowing that the keys to Yamiyo often presented themselves as such in order to draw in and trap unwary players.
Raine, Sheena and himself had been his initial recruits. Raine and Sheena were like sisters to the ex-elite. Raine was the sober, older sister who looked after the trio in their misadventures. Sheena was exuberant, extremely powerful and lacked any kind of temper control at all. Nall, of course, had the knowledge to guide them to places they needed to check out. Demorian had only joined later, a fourth member for the then-forming Freedom Fighters. He provided a dry wit, a skill with hacker technology and a powerful blade of his own. He could not match Raine for her skill purely with game code, and he could not match Sheena’s command over Twilight. What he could do, however, was adapt and learn from the hackers themselves. More than once, a trace element of code he recognized led them to a secret hacker haven where they could further their journey.
Those days, after his coma and as he grew in power, had been some of the finest of his life. Nothing matched the camaraderie they had felt, and the power they wielded as the group grew. The Freedom Fighters had seen many iterations over the years. Members grew and members left, and no few of them met bitter ends. Each of these deaths, Demorian knew, haunted Nall – though he would never show it. Demorian had a more jaded outlook. He had accepted the possibility of his death, and the deaths of others. The emotional rift had been part of his initial separation from the group in the first place.
Besides, during his time as Marionette, he had done no few unpleasant things. He regretted little of that time, though. It had brought him back to the Freedom Fighters, and his aid behind the scenes had helped them along their way. Even now, he was in a position to finally end their time in the game.
“Thinking about old times, are you?” Nall said, looking up as Demorian stared into space. The icy blademaster looked down and smiled.
“Something like that.” He shrugged. “That newcomer, Maoh. You always pick up people in the strangest places.”
“The more the merrier.” Nall said, stretching. Sheena gave him a sharp look, but he smiled. “I’m feeling much better, honestly.”
“You still shouldn’t push yourself!” Sheena scolded, but she tucked her invisible glove away and backed off. Indeed, Nall was looking much better. The occasional patch of staticy fuzz crackled across his character model, but overall he looked ready to fight.
“I almost feel bad, letting them do all the work.” Nall chuckled. “It seems like more and more these days I’m left on the sidelines. I used to be at the head of the pack, wading in among the monsters and taking on all comers. We fought back to back all the time, didn’t we?”
Demorian nodded. “All four of us. Yet now… Raine is back at base, Sheena never gets to cut loose and if we lose you, all our hopes are gone.”
“It’s not quite that bad.” Nall said.
“Sure it is. You’re the only one that can use the Items, after all.” Demorian eyed the assortment of Twilight Items Nall wore.
“Even so, keeping them away from the Elites is enough. We can’t let them regain any, or we’ll face a new Elite taking the place of one we killed.”
“Do you trust them?” Demorian asked abruptly.
“The coup? Klive… he was never one to go back on his word, and I can certainly see him growing fed up with the absentee Master. He was never one to really tolerate the leadership of Garaa and Royce. They’re just the power pair and are too overbearing to ignore.” He stared at his hands, lost in thought for a moment. “Whether anyone else will join him, I don’t know. Xenobia is a huge gamble, but especially with that spear, she could turn the tides.”
“I still wonder about that spear.” Demorian said. “She just showed up with it one day. No one knows where it came from, how it formed, what it can do. All we know is that it’s on par with a Twilight Item, and everyone is afraid of her because of it.”
“I saw it develop and even I don’t know.” Nall said.
“It absorbs power!” Sheena broke in. “Kurai PKed people and absorbed their data into it, and it kept absorbing Twilight along with it!”
The three were silent for a long time after that. With the exception of players like themselves and Nighthand, those who had been in the game for a long time, the concentration of Twilight in an individual player was low. The amount necessary to form something on par with a Twilight Item would have involved the absorption of thousands of players. Each one a character killed and deleted entirely.
-----------------------------
Nighthand had grown antsy waiting in the lobby of the damned maze, so he decided to do some exploration of his own. He picked a path that had been explored already and followed it, choosing teleporters that had not yet been explored to fill in gaps on the map. With how much was already filled in, he expected more to find double-backs and dead-ends, and he was not much disappointed.
Rooms A, K, O and R were the same each time he jaunted out. A was a likely-trapped pile of GP under some leaves, which he left alone each time.
“Why not take some?” Silverblade said in his mind.
“Why bother taking any? I have far too much as it is, and there’s bound to be a trap associated with it.”
“Well, you like a challenge. We could handle whatever comes up.”
“True. I just don’t care enough.”
Room K, of course, was the horribly under-leveled RogueBane. The poor ghost was completely ignored each of the times Nighthand went through. Once again, why bother with a completely inferior challenge?
Room O had, at one point, been completely on fire. The charred surface and stiflingly hot air attested to that. In Nighthand’s scarred eye, the elemental affinity of the room was an odd mixture of Wood and Fire. He didn’t want to rekindle it, so he left it alone. It was an easy path to stroll through.
Room R, on the other hand, gave him pause. It held a well with several GP on the rim, and from the reports generated by the automap he knew it was akin to a wishing well. More accurately, he supposed, some kind of hacked version of the Monsieur game event.
“Want to try it out?” Silverblade asked.
“Maybe. What do we have to wish for?”
“You might try upgrading some scrolls? Looks like there’s a few GP left to throw in.”
Nighthand flicked one of the GP coins into the well, leaning on the rim and watching it fall until it splashed far below. He pulled a single coin from his inventory to replace the fallen coin and the water roiled, splashing upwards. He was soaked immediately, and the water sprite sat on the rim.
“You have offered me this token, and so I will offer you one as well. Present to me an item.”
Nighthand handed the sprite a Summon Night, and she vanished. When he looked at the scroll again, it had been replaced with a Nightcall. A good trade, he thought. Silverblade echoed the sentiment.
Flicking another coin and replacing it as he had the first, he backed up in time to avoid most of the splashed water. She gave him the exact same speech, and he handed her the same Nightcall she had just upgraded. Once more she splashed and disappeared, and he was left with a Bind Wryneck in his hands.
“Nice.”
The next room Nighthand stepped into was room V, which was some kind of storeroom of assorted junk. He strolled through it, though it looked like a tornado had hit it. He saw signs of a spell having gone off, and wondered what might have possessed someone to fire off a spell at inanimate matter. Perhaps it came to life to attack?
Spotting something shiny in the piles, he pulled a Silver Scarab from a box. The metallic insect figurine did nothing, he knew, save sell for some GP. He shrugged and smiled a mischievous smile.
Several minutes later, he had built a veritable tower of boxes, bits of furniture, boards and assorted debris. He had also come across two more Silver Scarabs. All three of the insects he placed carefully on the tower, which he had built to be eye-level. Now the next person to drop into the room would be face to face with three silver beetles.
Chuckling to himself, Nighthand proceeded to room Y. This one had contained a battle-puzzle, Nighthand saw from the map, and Baron had cleared it out. The monsters did not respawn, and Baron was in the next room along one fork. Nighthand, then, took the other.
This fork, it appeared, let to T1. That was a treasure room with the treasure already claimed, so Nighthand popped through it back to the entrance easily.
His next trip was much the same. Rooms A, K, O, R and a face-to-face with his Silver Scarab trap in V brought him to the unexplored branch from the storeroom. This one, as it turned out, led to T4. Yet another claimed treasure room. He sighed, hopping back through to the entrance once more.
-----------------------------
“They proceed well, mistress.” The willow-man said, kneeling before Xenobia on her throne.
“How long before they reach us?”
“Perhaps not long, if they can pass the rest of the challenges this tower offers. Some of them, their strongest, do little but remain stationary while the expendable members search the maze.”
“I see. Cowardly, but I can’t argue with the effectiveness.” She waved her hand. “Keep watching. Let me know when they are about to arrive.”
“Yes, mistress.” The willow-man strode off, leaving the throne room once more.
-----------------------------
A, K, O, R passed as they always had. This time Nighthand took the path to room S. This room was completely empty save for a pair of shackles and an empty pedestal now. Maoh, their newest member, had been chained here. Nighthand took a moment to search for any other hint about the man’s existence, but he found nothing.
Room U, as he progressed, would have been a cunning trap if the answer had not been given on the map now. He waited, yawning, as the spiked retracted for him to teleport away.
Room X, then, was his first challenge for the trip. Two hulking lizards with vicious weapons stood directly over the exit teleporters, and whoever had passed through before had not been able to solve the puzzle. He knew from the map key that they had phenomenal defenses. Shifting slightly to speed, he darted in and slashed across the stomach of one. The number “10” popped up, confirming the guess. Who knew how much HP the pair had? It would take him an incredibly long time to whittle it away.
Or would it? Nighthand grinned. He took up a position in the middle of the room and stood, his sword to his side. “Come on, ya big babies.”
“Not the most creative taunt.” Silverblade said.
“Doesn’t have to be if it works.” Nighthand replied with a smirk.
The heavyblade shifted entirely to strength, feeling his limbs go sluggish and heavy. He could still fling his sword around, which was good – it was what he intended to do. Dodging a blow from the lizard with the red scales and plate armor was not going to happen. The massive hammer rose and the lizard, with a heavy two-handed swing, drove it down on Nighthand.
Much to the surprise of the lizard, the hammer met the blade like it would a steel wall. Nighthand barely flinched at the blow, though his feet were driven into the soft wood of the flood by nearly half an inch. Stepping forward out of the depression, he heaved, staggering the lizardman. He whipped his sword around in an unstoppable slash, tearing through platemail and scales with equal ferocity.
The blow did a mere thousand damage, but it was more than anything else had managed against these lizards. The monster howled in pain and swung in a sideways sweep. Nighthand crouched, jamming his sword into the ground and taking cover beneath it.
The horizontal hammer swing had too much momentum to stop when it hit the ramped blade. Instead, the lizard lost its balance as the heavy hammer carried it in a circle. The blue lizard man, approaching to help clear out this foe, caught the hammer in the gut. “2000” was the number that rose up from that blow, and Nighthand grinned.
“I guess the key was to get them to hit each other, eh?”
“Looks that way.”
Nighthand jumped into the air, using a flap of his wings to gain a higher altitude. He came down with a Juk Smash. Thorns exploded from the ground where the skill landed, carving a stripe into the side of the staggered red lizard. Simultaneously, the blue lizard landed a blow of its own, angered by the perceived treachery on the part of the red.
So the battle went, Nighthand trading blows with the lizards as they fought in a three-way melee. Nighthand took some damage from a glancing blow, which sapped a good portion of his health. Thankfully, he was more than stocked up on healing, and the lizards seemed to have no way to replenish themselves.
It was only a matter of time until the red lizard fell, and Nighthand faced down the blue one on one. The battle was short from there, as it was only two heavy blows before it too fell. Nighthand shifted back to normal, weary from the heavy strength expenditure, and felt he moved almost too fast to control. He rested, then, for a long moment before continuing on.
When he moved on, the path was a boring on. He stepped into one teleporter and found himself in room D, the hedge maze Demorian had demolished. From there, the remaining teleporter led him to T1 once again. He sighed and returned to the entrance.
-----------------------------
“Can you key someone else for a Twilight Item?” Demorian asked the pair. He was more addressing Sheena than Nall, though either could answer.
“I’m not sure!” Sheena said. Nall shook his head.
“The process is a long one.” Nall added. “It has a low success rate as well. I only know of one person who was able to survive, and they didn’t last long.”
“Oh?” Demorian said. “I hadn’t heard of this.”
“It was back when I was still an Elite. All of us, originally, came into The World with our items. We brought the power with us, essentially. We decided to experiment with giving them away early on, to see if we could groom successors. It didn’t seem like we were going to be in our positions forever, but… well, you know how that turned out. Without all of the items, we can’t leave. If we had replacements, perhaps we could escape.” He shook his head again. “Except of course we would never let each other leave. We knew too much about each other, including where our bodies are kept. Still, a possible replacement was worth looking into. The horrible monsters that came of the research still roam the game. I should know, one of them caught me, and it’s why I’m so messed up.”
“I see. And the one who survived?”
“He was a cause for celebration, for a while. Then he disappeared.” Nall seemed lost in thought for a moment. “I hope he escaped, knowing his future would have been terrible as a puppet of the Elites. I suspect, however, that someone killed him in order to prevent anyone from leaving. We may never know the truth.”
“Ah.” Demorian too lost himself in thought, and conversation trailed to a halt.
-----------------------------
Nighthand’s path now followed a similar path. A, K, O, R were all the same. From S, the room Maoh had arrived in, he took the path room a room that turned out to be room W.
This room was similar to the rest, though the walls had been carved more hexagonally than the circular layout of other rooms. Set squarely in the center of each wall panel was a colored crystal the size of his head. Each crystal glowed with a color – Red, Blue, Orange, Green, Yellow and Purple, each unique, each rotating. Every few seconds they changed, and Nighthand watched for a clue what to do.
Nothing suggested itself, so Nighthand shrugged and moved to the left-hand teleporter. Much to his complete lack of surprise, it didn’t work. Whatever had to be done in this room had to be done before he left.
Opening his scarred and missing eye, he saw the room virtually glowing with elemental power. Each crystal was charged with an element, obviously enough, though their purpose was made no clearer.
“Any ideas?” Nighthand asked his head-partner. “You were always the more studious of us.”
“Well, the crystals alternate elements every three seconds, but they don’t strictly alternate opposites. They are clearly attuned to elements, but there is no residue when they change. They don’t have a base, so to speak.”
“Wonderful. Great news. So what do we do?”
“That’s a great question. Maybe you can remove them from the wall?”
“Worth a shot.”
Nighthand approached the nearest crystal, bathed in its light as he took hold and yanked. It didn’t budge. He tried gaining a hold on it and twisting, but it wasn’t jagged enough to give him leverage. Shrugged, he grabbed his sword and jammed it at the base of the crystal, digging slightly into the wood. He threw his weight against it, hoping to dislodge the now-blue rock.
A lattice of cracks filled the crystal and it went cloudy, and a second later when the rest of the room shifted, it stayed blue. His blade had dug into the crystal itself, clearly damaging it.
“I hope that wasn’t valuable…” Nighthand muttered. Then the crystal shattered, the particles of broken stone dissolving into the air.
His elemental eye watched as the blue particles swirled around, invisible to his normal eye. They flowed around and through him, and he watched them coalesce across the room.
The creature that formed to his normal eye looked like a red-painted version of himself. It had the hair, it had the scar, it had the wings and, most importantly, it had the sword. To his elemental eye, it was completely based in fire. Of course, an elemental threat. It was interesting, however, that the particles were completely water-based until the last moment, when they turned to fire.
Nighthand’s weapon was a dual-elemental blade with both Juk and Gan abilities, but the monster before him was clearly using Vak. It came at him with a Vak Divider, slamming the heavy blade into the ground. Nighthand had moved aside when the first hint of a skill began, shifted to speed to avoid the attack.
Firehand drove after Nighthand with a ferocity matching its element, but Nighthand was undeterred. Nighthand’s speed was such that he had no trouble dodging, though the fiery monster had no limits on the fire-based skills it could toss around.
“Looks like it can’t copy your powers, just your strength.” Silverblade said.
“So it shouldn’t be too hard to take down.” Nighthand replied, dodging another blow and dancing backwards.
“Hopefully, unless it has a trick up its – swap!” Silverblade cried in alarm at the end.
Nighthand did so, allowing the AI to control his body, and just in time. Firehand threw out a GiVak Kruz, but Silverblade had seen it coming. Using his power, the one Nighthand had no access to – despite being able to see clearly how it was done with the elemental eye – Silverblade threw up a MeRue Rom and warped the energy into the building fire spell. The two spells intertwined and, with a kick from Silverblade, dissipated altogether.
“Want to fight?” Silverblade asked.
“You do it.” Nighthand said. “It’s about time you had some fun.”
Silverblade was a more conservative fighter than Nighthand, though their skills were the same. In seconds, the battle was over. Silverblade precisely used their State Shift to strike the perfect balance between speed and power. No doubt some calculation had gone on in his mind, taking their HP into effect and determining exactly what degree of power was necessary to demolish their foe without overkill. Once that was accomplished, it was a simply matter for the precise warrior to deliver a calculated blow. Firehand’s head rolled and the entire body dissipated.
“One down, five to go.” Nighthand commented.
“Indeed.” Silverblade replied. “It can use skills of that element, but not our special powers. It has our base stats, possibly at the time of creation. You saw it do that scan of us when it formed.”
“So the remaining five, assuming they’re the same, will be equally easy to kill.”
“Assuming, yes. I suggest, however, popping them open when they’re yellow.”
“Why yellow?”
“If the act the same way, they will form a darkness version of ourselves. We can use the Nightblade to deal with them. They won’t be able to copy it, since it’s our special ability, and it will weaken their attacks. In fact, they will only be able to use spells, since there are no darkness elemental heavy blades.”
“Well, go for it.”
Moments later, Silverblade was putting his theory to the test. He used their Smiling Blade to lever cracks into a crystal when it turned yellow. Just as before, the crystal shattered on the next change of color, and the particles investigated their character data. The monster that formed was darkness elemental, and as a consequence looked much like Nighthand had when he initially entered The World – dressed in his current clothes, at any rate. And with black skin. So, really, not much like he had initially looked beyond black hair.
”Powers of the Dark, heed my call. Take this offering and lend us your fang, Wryneck, lord of the Night. Come to me, Nightblade!” Offering up one of their level two darkness scrolls, Silverblade held the scroll aloft. Instantly the bundle of paper crunched and puffed into blackness. Behind them, space itself rent open as if a claw had torn it. From the blackened wound, an ebony hand reached out on an arm several lengths too long to be human. It doubled back on two elbows, reaching into the portal. From it, it drew the Nightblade, which it stabbed at the feet of Silverblade.
The sword was the same as always, Nighthand noted, as Silverblade drew it from the ground. The arm disappeared and the rift healed, and already a darkness spell was forming around them. Silverblade held the sword aloft, and Nighthand watched as the darkness particles in the air were absorbed into it. The power of the level 3 spell that formed was significantly reduced, and Silverblade simply took the damage.
Silverblade ignored the dark clone, moving around the room with virtually all of their stats shifted to speed. No spell could land on them, they moved too fast. Each time a crystal shifted to yellow, he shattered it with a blow. The particles could chase them, a factor of the room gimmick, but the monster that formed could barely register their presence.
Soon, five black clones of Silverblade were jolting this way and that, trying to follow their obscenely fast movements. Silverblade used their speed to his advantage – the only player in their troupe that could be faster was Nall, and that was because no matter how fast they got, he could extend time itself to give him a longer period to move.
Silverblade began to harry five clones, leaving long slashes on limbs and torsos as they moved. Each individual attack was incredibly weak – virtually none of their stats were still in power, and they were still attacking high level monsters. Still, the speed at which they were delivered meant they stacked up quickly. Each blow also forced the clones in one direction or another as they reacted to the damage.
Occasionally one of the clones would cast a spell, but the Nightblade only fed off the energy. For Silverblade, it was a trivial matter to avoid the epicenter of the spell as it landed.
Finally, each of the clones had been driven into the center of the room. They had been damaged enough, and Silverblade stepped into the center of them. He paused just long enough for all five to target him with a spell, and initiated the peculiar skill of the Nightblade. He shifted to strength as well, ensuring the skill would deal maximum damage.
They began to spin, a brutal parody of the Blademaster’s Revolver skill. Nightblade Storm, as it was called, sent them spinning with the reach of the extra-long sword. The whip at the base of the handle lashed out as well, dealing extra hits as they spun. A flurry of damage popped up, and around them the clones fell dead.
The skill ended and Silverblade hit the ground. Five simultaneous Darkness spells stuck them, but the damage was gone. They had been initiated, but since their casters were dead, the power behind them was zero. They were merely cosmetic. Awash in darkness that did no harm, Silverblade turned their body back over to Nighthand.
“Flashy. I didn’t know you had it in you.” He commented.
“I thought you might enjoy it.” Silverblade replied.
Unfortunately for them both, the remainder of their trip was a bore. The left teleporter led them to room X, the one where they had so-recently slain the lizardmen. Retracing their steps through A, K, O, R, S and W, they stepped onto the other portal and ended up in M4, another room already cleared by the party. Nighthand sighed and returned to the entrance room to wait.
“Another room down, a few more pathways explored. We’re getting close now. We have to be.”
Room Key
En: Entrance room
A: room with loose GP coins in a pile of leaves
B: flowers of three colors. Red shoot fire, yellow shoot paralyzing seeds, white are the only way to kill them. Respawn every time.
C: statue with crystal hearts. All hearts consumed.
D: hedge maze with path cut through it.
EN: Entrance
EX: Exit
F: ominous rustling followed by endless bug swarm
G: blue treasure chest that exploded
H: an extra-small room with an illusionary ceiling that leads to the real teleporters outside the walls. Monkey statues jeer.
I: illusionary zombie copies of players in the room copy movements. Projector destroyed.
J:
K: ghosted player named RogueBane. Attacks when revived. Keeps respawning but can be ignored.
L:
M1: Battle against a vampiric ghost, now dead.
M2:
M3:
M4: Puzzle boss with elemental crystals and a juka golem. Dead.
M5:
N: A Maoh imposter, killed, but not without friendly fire.
O: Room was completely on fire. Fireballs bouncing around light sections again when they are doused. Room completely doused now.
P: Maoh, Tak and Sekai are here.
Q:
R: a deep well with some GP coins on the rim. Acts as a combination wishing well and monsieur.
S: Maoh was chained in this room.
T1: treasure chest claimed by Baron
T2: treasure chest claimed by Canti and Talal
T3:
T4: treasure chest claimed by Maoh
U: a thorn trap that can be avoided by standing in the center of the room. Enough space for two friendly people at once without damage.
V: a storeroom full of random crap. Maybe treasure in the trash?
W: Elemental crystals that form clones of the one who breaks them. All broken.
X: Two lizard men impervious to most damage except each other. Dead now.
Y: Lizard men and a timer to respawn them. All killed and timer disarmed.
Z: Baron is here