The sun crested the horizon early in the morning as the party made their way to the tower. Early in the morning they weren’t getting attention, something they had to be worried about with their fresh celebrity status. Spike tugged at his new breastplate, their new upgrades after their week of farming the tower, just to be sure they had the best gear they could have. Besides, getting out early was the best, as it was time to tackle the new floors.
Smolder rolled out of the way as the beam shot where she just was, the cobblestone floor exploding in her wake. The eyeball in the middle of the room narrowed itself and continued to track her. She exited her roll onto her feet and sprinted, barely diving behind cover as the next beam struck that wall, blowing a hole in it, but protecting her.
“We’re running out of cover!” Smolder shouted to her party, hiding behind different little chest-high walls. “We have to make it to it, we gotta go two at once.”
“Are you sure you should be yelling that?” Spike shouted. “What if it hears us?”
“It’s an eye not an ear!” Smolder shouted. “Just do it!”
“Fine!” Garble shouted, getting ready to go. “On three.”
“Three!” his sister shouted immediately, and the two of them sprinted out from behind their cover.
"When you start, there are six letters. When you take one away, there are twelve," spoke a rotund feline with a cheshire grin to match. "What am I?"
Spike fired two finger guns at the beast. "Ha! Twilight got me this one for my birthday." In a lower voice, he added, "She always gets me a book." But, in that case, it had paid off! "Dozens! Take away one, Dozen, twelve." He snapped his fingers with pride as the cat evaporated, defeated by his knowledge of riddles.
Twilight trotted warily, the entire party slumbering on her back. She whickered softly, but there wasn't a person around to hear her thoughts. That floor had been made for them, relying on a summon to carry them when anycreature holding a chain was put fast to sleep. She would bring them to victory, or death.
She ducked as a great blade came swinging at her from the wall, slicing through the space between where she had been and where her passengers hovered a moment before gravity caught up with them and brought them back to her. She squealed in an equine way and dashed forward past the trap. The sooner she was done with that floor, the happier she'd be.
The entire party danced as one. "Step left, clap, step right, turn," called out Garble who had taken the lead, following the prompts that only came in music and colors. They were all sweating, having worked for what felt like an hour to get it right.
And it hadn't been their first time through, forced to flee every time even one of them missed a step. Only complete perfection would let them advance.
Smolder's piercing curse was the hint, and they all vanished to try again.
The five of them, without even a summon now, all panted as they stepped into the lobby floor, Spike collapsing into a pile on the floor.
“Huff… are we here?” Sandra said, looking out. “Did we actually make it?”
Garble panted, trying to hold it together. “Yeah… ten floors.”
“Nine floors,” Spike said, from on the floor himself. “We still have to do the boss.”
“Tomorrow,” Garble said. “It’s…” He looked outside the windows to the night sky. Lights dotted the sky and the town below, with a handful of lights seen out on the plains surrounding the town, in the safe zones established. “It’s not even sunset.”
Spike pulled himself up. “Not tomorrow, either.”
“What, you got plans?”
“Gear farming,” Tabitha said, finally composing herself. “We found new stuff on the way, which means we need new stuff to fight the next boss.”
“Yeah,” Spike said, still out of breath.
“At least we don’t need to go up nine floors again, we got some of the shiny stuff on the first few, we could just do them over and over.”
Garble growled. “Guh. Can’t we skip it?”
“Maybe if we want the boss to kill us, no, we gotta go back down to go up,” Tabitha went to the teleporter beam, attuning herself to it. “But for now, sleep.”
Everyone sighed, resigning themselves to the task ahead of them.
The whole party turned left again, stepping back, shaking their hands again for what felt like the twentieth time in a row, all bored looks on their faces, and then everyone stepped back one more, except Sandra stepped forward, and all of them popped away, back to the starting room.
“Dangit!” Garble tossed his sword down. “It’s turn clap backstep shake hands backstep.”
“I’m sorry! I lost focus.”
“I can’t work with this!” Garble shouted. “Can’t we go back to beating up stuff?”
Tabitha stood in between the two, trying to stop the hostilities. “This is less dangerous and more profitable than spending time on the huge hp sinks in the earlier floors. We all agreed, try to do the floors that we could do more easily. This floor resets loot even though it’s a puzzle, so we do it over and over. Besides--” She changed tactics, standing back just a little. “--You’re the one good at this one, right? You can go back to calling it out.”
Garble snorted out a puff of smoke and flame. “Fine.”
"You are learning the patterns. You are becoming what you set to be."
Spike turned from the frozen figure of the boss, caught in time just as it began to fall. "I'm learning and practicing. We all are. You know that."
"As we must." He set his fingers together. "You're almost close enough to touch. Freedom, after so long."
"Real talk." Spike frowned just a touch at his 'friend'. "The door is right over there." He gestured downward. "You can reach it, I know you can. Walk out. I don't see anything stopping you."
"It is rarely as simple as it looks, as you well know. How many times did you ascend those stairs?" The man nodded towards the flight that took them to the very boss they had just won against. "This is hardly your first attempt. Why didn't you win the first time? You had the ability, did you not?"
“We didn’t know how! We had to learn how to beat the boss… especially that part where he started throwing out the fire tornados where we were standing that didn’t go away for like… a full minute.”
"Rarely as simple as it looks," he repeated, looking vindicated in his stance.
"So get to work." Spike threw up a hand. "Do what we did. Figure it out, a thousand times if you have to until you get it--"
"--That is a kindness," interrupted the man. "One not extended to elements of the tower itself, which I am. There are no take backs. There is no recall. If I step over that line, that is the end."
Spike stared at him. “You’ll… die?”
“No, I’ll find myself back at the top. Like usual.” The man had a wry grimace on his face. “If there was a way I knew to end it, even if it were grisly, there are times when I might have taken that deal.” He shook his head. “No, there is no escape, even the most basic mortal escape.”
"But it is worse. There are those, within the tower, that have rebelled, and the punishment is dire. If the tower cannot have you willingly, it will by force. If it can't have you with the light of free will, it will accept a puppet." He spread his hands slowly. "And that is what you suggest for me?"
"No! No… Look. I'm not letting Sandra go." He thrust a pointing finger at him. "Not you, or the tower, can have her. The tower likes heroes, so listen up." He stomped a foot down. "I'm not letting you have her, and we're getting our happy ending. What do you say to that?"
“I think you sound like a broken record.”
"A thousand times, if I have to." Spike smiled at that. "We're just going to keep on repeating until we get where we want, so accept that. We haven't shown any signs of changing that."
"The journey from 90 to 100," spoke the man as if just abandoning the topic. "They will break you. You will lose things, things you can't get back. Your very essence will be tested. You wish to reach the top? You may curse the fact that you didn't give up before then. Come. Come forward. You want your wishes made reality? Show it."
"Spike? Was he here?" Tabitha laid a hand on his shoulder even as the ground rumbled, the boss striking it. "That was… more than a little odd. You just froze up for a split second, and I happened to be looking in the right direction."
The boss began to shine and fade away, it’s magic distilling into various magic baubles, and Tabitha turned to see if anything nice dropped for her. “Wait,” Spike’s voice stopped her.
She turned back with a raised eyebrow. “What?”
“He, the tower, he told me that the floors over ninety will… uh… he said that it will be harder than anything else.”
“... Yes, that’s how all the tower floors work.”
“No! I mean like… he was really grave about it. Talking about how it will test our very essence, about how it will break us.”
Spike took a pause, and Tabitha swooped in. “Hah, that’s what every floor would say to us, if they had the chance. I’m in this to win it, and that won’t stop me.”
“No, he said that we will lose things, things I can’t get back.” Spike looked over at the rest of his party, who hadn't quite noticed they were talking yet. “Look, he… he didn’t even really warn me of level seventy, when we had that big difficulty jump.” He stared at Tabitha. “He means business when he says it.”
Tabitha snorted. “So, what? We grind more to start? We ascend more carefully? What’re we supposed to do that’s different?”
“I mean, he warned me for a reason. He must have.” He threw a hand aside even as he noticed a good bit of gear, but didn't feel motivated to scurry for it. "He said, basically, we will pay. I'm not saying to change what we do… We're going, but just… to be ready." He reached out and grabbed, getting a squeak from Smolder.
"Let go of that." She snarled at him, his hand on her tail.
"Things we lose that can't be gotten back," repeated Spike with firming conviction. "Sorry, just talking about the warning I just got."
Smolder yanked her tail away with an angry snort. "I get the idea. The tower did it to me once, I'm nice and familiar."
"Ain't letting it touch her again," angrily promised Garble as he grabbed a sword he saw laying there, looking it over. "Eh…" Destined for the furnace, that one.
Tabitha lifted both her hands. "This? Right here? This is what makes a hero what they are. I am… I can't even say how proud I am to be here, to make these choices, and to have friends who will make them with me."
Sandra reached to pat her friend on the back. "Welcome aboard. Let's be careful, but we can't stop."
"Exactly!" Tabitha brought down both hands clenched together in a sudden fist pump combo. "I'm ready for this!"
Spike shook his head at the eager human, hoping she wouldn't have her hopes dashed in some cruel way. "That's it. Be, you know, careful, but we can't stop." Too many things were reliant on them, including the jerk that was 'in charge'.