NOVEL NEXT 83 - An Inexplicable Sterile City
Archmund expected the Dungeon to shift drastically as he went from the Upper Tier 2 to the Middle Tier 2.
But nothing had prepared him for this.
Light streamed upon them, not the faint fluorescent half-light of an office or the dim death-glow of the Dungeon, but sky-blue brilliance.
There was a massive widescreen rectangle of blue, as pure as sky, that stretched twenty feet up, floor to ceiling. The rest of the room was cast into shadow.
"Whoa," someone muttered. It might have been him.
Slowly, carefully, he walked up to the blue, as if it might come alive and pull him into the void.
He reached out his hand and touched the cool of glass. He exhaled, slowly, and his breath condensed upon the window. He shared a look with Mary. Though she was anxious, there was pregnant wonder upon her face.
"Did you know about this, Granavale?" Beatrice said, her voice strangled by awe, as she walked up to join him. "Is this where your power comes from?"
He shook his head mutely as he looked through the window.
They were in a tower, hundreds of feet up in the air.
Far below, there was a city made of pure crystal. Spikes of cyan and lavender and jade and steel, all glinting with the brilliance of the illusory sky.
"The Omnio agent who helped me clear the First Tier," Archmund said, his breath just barely leaking out of his throat, "she told me that the first part of each Tier still makes sense. It follows the rules of the outside world. That's where we just were."
"And here?" Rory said, his eyes scanning through the cityscape. Archmund followed him. There were big, blocky buildings next to sharp spires piercing the sky. Yet all of these buildings were extremely distant from them, a world away, thousands of feet, and from their height they were indistinguishable from a circuit board.
"Enter the middle subtier, and things stop making sense." Mercy Stirpstredecim di Omnio had given examples of food made of sand and books with smeared text, the stuff of dreams. Archmund wondered if she hadn't imagined just how nonsensical the Second Tier could be — or if she'd kept things in simple terms, believing that a country bumpkin like him could never truly comprehend something as absurd as this. They were so far above that city that clouds speckled the spaces between the buildings, their shadows dancing about the buildings like whales.
It could not possibly be real. There was no way that any souls, living or dead, filled those thousands upon thousands of skyscrapers and apartment blocks and tenements. There was no way unlife bustled through those city streets paved with crystal, no way goods and services were exchanged, no way families grew, lived, and died. This had to be an illusion.
And yet what a compelling one it was.
It fooled his mortal senses, and his sense for magic was not enough to detect any nuances in the illusion, the ebbs and flows of the reality.
Which meant…
Archmund turned to Gelias, who had also touched his hand to the glass.
"It's quiet here," was all the elven boy said.
It was. So high in the air, none of the usual bustle of a city, the chatter of the crowds, the pounding of footsteps, the honking of horns and whir of machinery — none of it made it so high up. The only sound was their own breaths.
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Or perhaps it was silent in truth, the silent crystal of the sleeping dead.
It could not possibly be real. He had to remember that.
"What about the lowest subtier?" Beatrice said. "If things stop making sense in the middle subtier, does it get worse?"
Though she tried to hide it, there was a quaver in her voice. Was he the same way? Shaken, by this assault on their perceptions of reality?
Archmund shook his head. "You saw the reflection of the manor. That was the deepest subtier of Tier 1… I was told it would be real but foul, but I have another theory."
He didn't want to say it out loud. He didn't want to scare them.
Beatrice kicked him in the shin.
"I think," he said, giving her a dirty look, which softened as he saw the contours of her barely disguised fear, "that the strongest, smartest monsters lie in wait as their minions do the dirty work. They stay in their places of power."
And there, they became strong.
The allure of that mysterious distant city was so strong that Archmund almost wondered if it by itself was a trap, sucking them in, tricking them. But eventually they had to move on, tear their eyes away from the wide blue window, and continue deeper into the Dungeon.
And yet the only way forward was along the corridor, right next to the blue window. They proceeded in single file, Archmund at the lead, Mary at the rear, the three nobles between them, silhouetted against that magnificent blue.
They came to a door. It looked like frosted glass, though it resonated with the power of crystal. There was a small black square affixed to the wall next to it. On the other side of the door, Archmund saw row after row of cubicles.
Oh, he wasn't going to fall for that one again. From the end of the First Tier, the Second Tier had looked like a cubicle farm, and yet its Upper Subtier had been a warped corporate atrium, and its Middle Subtier was a skyscraper high above a distant city. No doubt there would be something as arcane and beautiful and frustrating as all those beyond it.
He tried the door.
It refused to budge.
"I don't suppose any of you can pick locks?" he said.
Beatrice walked up to the door. "This doesn't even have a lock."
"But could you?"
"No. But it wouldn't help if I could."
Archmund was about to spit out a genius rebuttal when Rory walked up to them. "I can try to bust through it."
"Wait," Archmund said. Crystal was strong. He had doubts Rory would manage to make it through, even with his adult-level strength, at least without substantial reinforcement from Gemstone.
Archmund pulled the door again. It didn't work, but he felt the crystal structure beneath his hand. He pulsed his magic, willing heat and light and soul to flow from that ineffable place beyond normal perception, from the place where his solar plexus met his crown and his mind united with body, testing the door.
But the door was fully suffused with magic of its own. His flowing power spilled forth, dancing across the outer lattice of the door, but then was rebuffed entirely. There was already magic fully permeating every nook and cranny of the crystal door — the wrathful magic of the dead, the dark power of the Dungeon. Magic he was not strong enough to overcome.
He released the door and stepped back.
A hand tugged on his sleeve. It was Mary. He ignored how the other nobles seemed torn between bemused and scandalized.
"What is it?"
"What you told me as a joke," she said hesitantly.
That narrowed things down not at all.
"Mary, I say a lot of things. And tell a lot of bad, unfunny jokes."
She leaned in close to whisper in his ear, her cloak obscuring the motions of her mouth. "You have the reincarnated soul of a—"
He jerked away. "How is that supposed to help?"
"This is an administrative office or clerk's room, isn't it? The kind they have in a proper city, or the capital," Mary said.
"You recognize it?"
"My aunt and uncle had stories," she said. "Adults work in places like these, so they know their ins and outs, and how they work."
So that was what she was getting at.
"I think it's a big assumption," Archmund said, "to think that a Dungeon would suddenly start to have puzzle mechanics. It's been a pretty straightforward 'go and kill stuff' type deal so far, hasn't it?"
Mary gave him a look. "Puzzle… mechanics…? You think the strangest things sometimes."
She turned to Rory, Gelias, and Beatrice. "Good sirs and lady," she said deferentially, "might I ask you to assist in helping us look for a key?"
"Of course!" Beatrice said loudly. "A key! Of course a locked door would have a key! Why didn't I think of that!"
She crossed her arms and stood up straight rather smugly.
"Where's the keyhole, though?" Rory said.
Sometimes, he really hated when Mary was right about him. He really hated it when Mary knew him better than he knew himself. He'd had at least two lifetimes to figure this out, so how come she had managed it in like 3 years?
Because he knew where the keyhole was, and he knew what a key would look like.
Especially in a world that, for some unexplainable, inexplicable reason, mirrored and mimicked the corporate offices of his past.