Somnus V - Chapter 12

Kat leaned her head to one side and then the other, limbering up whatever the Tower of Somnus used rather than muscles. Ahead of her was a long hallway, its walls made out of what appeared to be brass with lit braziers spaced out about every fifteen paces. Evidently, there was no handy guide or explanation as to how a challenger was supposed to complete their class evolution trial.

 It was strange to be in the Tower without the rest of her team, but apparently, that was normal for a class evolution trial. Her lack of weapons and armor was even more unsettling. Kat felt naked without a knife or three at her side, but the plain, coarse white smock she was wearing made her feel almost completely helpless.

 She took a deep breath, closing her eyes for a second to try and focus herself. That was probably what the creators of the trial wanted honestly. It was clear that part of the trial’s goal was to put her in a new situation that she had no control over in order to see how Kat reacted. The key was to stay calm and alert, and knowing the intentions of the trial’s creator was at least half of that.

 With her focus restored, Kat took her first step into the hallway. Almost immediately, all of the flames in the braziers began to burn brighter, and a wave of heat washed over her. Kat quickly recited the words to Resist Fire, waiting for the spell to steal her mana and provide her some protection from the blaze.

 Nothing happened. No flash of magic, no wave of cool air. The spell didn’t even draw mana from her. It was like the words she’d recited were nonsense, entirely useless.

 Worry growing inside her, Kat tried Leaping. She jumped an ordinary amount. Her body was light and her legs were strong so she almost reached the ceiling, but that was it. No draw of stamina, no stupendous bound.

 Her skills and abilities didn’t work. Kat’s mind whirred as she tried to process that information. Technically the trial was to try and evolve her class from elementalist initiate, so it would make sense for her to only be able to use elementalist abilities, but that didn’t make her feel much better. So much of Kat’s build and reflexes were based upon using skills that were outside of her class.

 She felt crippled by the changes. It was like she was running at full speed on a moonless night. Kat didn’t know what was ahead, and each step might be the one that led her face first into a pillar.

 The braziers pulsed, sending another wave of heat as they began to burn even hotter. It wasn’t so bad that Kat was taking damage, but she could feel her stamina draining as she fought to continue walking

 It felt like her skin was baking. She could feel herself sweating, but the instant the water left her pores, it was evaporating. Despite that, it didn’t seem to help. The heat infiltrated her body, filling her lungs with hot air that burned and choked throat.

 She looked up at the hallway, eyes watering. The exit seemed to be just as far away. Kat had been walking for almost a minute, but it was like she hadn’t made any progress.

 This wasn’t working. Kat clenched her jaw. There wasn’t much material on how participants were supposed to surpass their trials, but the one commonality was that the solutions usually involved their class. If she was going to progress as an elementalist, it was time to use her elemental powers.

 Kat fired a Water Jet at one of the braziers. The water moved too fast for evaporation to do much damage to the spell and a moment later the hallway darkened. Another Water Jet doused a second brazier, and the temperature began to drop. Not enough for it to be pleasant, but Kat could finally breathe properly.

 A third and fourth spell doused more braziers, dimming the hallway considerably. Choking hot steam began to sting Kat’s face and eyes, prompting her to stop.

 It was still too hot for her to move normally, but the thick clouds of evaporated water would boil her long before the air itself would. The only good thing about the change was that her skin no longer felt completely dried out.

 After a second of thought, Kat dropped into a crouch. Almost immediately her condition improved as she moved out of the scalding steam.

She crawled on her hands and knees for about thirty seconds before looking up again. The end of the hallway was just as far away as when she started. Whatever was going on, trying to press forward without solving her current situation would be futile.

Mana turned into water again and again. Before long the entire room was dark. It was still uncomfortably warm, and Kat had a nagging suspicion that she’d choke on the steam if she tried to stand up.

Unsurprisingly, Nightvision didn’t trigger. That would have been far too easy. Instead, Kat found herself crouching in the dark. For the first time in forever, she felt blind and deaf.

The darkness was something more than she had ever experienced. It wasn’t like night on Earth where the neon billboards of Chiwaukee gave enough light for a traveler to find their way. It wasn’t even like a night in the country where there was at least the stars and moon to turn the world into a dim twilight. The trial had no source of light whatsoever. Intellectually, that was easy to understand, but in practice it was jarring. She couldn’t even see her hands on the floor or the floor itself.

She took a deep breath. There really wasn’t any alternative to crawling. Kat made it about five paces fumbling before every one of her instincts fired a warning at once. She couldn’t see anything and the only sound was her breath and her fingers brushing across the floor, but that was enough.

Kat cast Dazzle and hissed in pain at the sudden flash of light. Sensory Dampening wasn’t working either, yet another ability that she’d come to rely on instinctually stripped away from her. As she blinked her eyes against the brightness, she saw what her instincts were warning her about.

Barely a pace ahead of her was a pit that had appeared out of nowhere. Kat had no way of knowing how deep the pit was, and she didn’t intend to find out. She redirected herself at an angle that would take her past the trap, a shiver running down her spine.

The pit hadn’t been there when she started out. It had only appeared once the braziers had been extinguished. If she hadn’t used her light magic, she would’ve fallen into the trap, there was no question about that. With each passing second it seemed more and more like the trial was designed specifically for her, to test the limits of her abilities.

Minutes passed with her carefully casting Flare or Dazzle every thirty or forty seconds to make sure that she didn’t fall into one of the holes. Unlike before, the end to the hallway was growing closer, but as she approached it, the traps started to vary.

  Needles dripping with something that was almost certainly poison began to appear in her path. If Kat were simply patting her hand on the floor ahead of her to look for the holes in the ground, she would’ve found out what exactly the thick purple liquid coating the spines was.

 There was even a tripwire that took her almost three minutes to pass. It was barely visible in the flashes of light created by Kat’s magic, glittering menacingly at around neck level for a crawling person in the intermittent bursts of light. Eventually, she had to stand and suffer through the scalding water vapor that still choked the higher level of the passageway for a second or two as she stepped over the trap.

 Just as she was about to reach the exit, a thought occurred to her. Kat had been focusing so hard on the traps and reaching the end of the hallway, that she hadn’t looked up. Ordinarily, there would be nothing on the ceiling, but almost everything about the trial seemed designed to disorient her and knock her off her game.

 More than that, a hallway was simply too obvious. There was a startpoint and an endpoint with hazards in between. Despite that, everything else about the trial seemed designed to make her think, to force her to use her abilities to the fullest. So far, she’d used light and water, but that still left gravity.

 Another flash of light, skimming more off the top of her dwindling mana reserves, confirmed her suspicions. Directly above the exit was a hole in the ceiling that her magic couldn’t penetrate.

 There wasn’t any question in Kat’s mind. She cast Levitate and kicked off the ground, sending herself soaring up through the gap.

 As soon as she reached the next level of the trial, the world around her changed. Suddenly she was in a circular room, about sixty paces from one curved wall to the other, lit by glowing crystals that were set in the ceiling in a grid, each stone about five paces from the other.

 Under her, rather than a pit leading to the dark, steam-filled hallway, was a floor made out of smooth stone. Kat tapped the surface once with her toe to make sure it was solid before dismissing her concerns.

 She’d already encountered a half dozen things that weren’t physically possible. One more didn’t change much.

 What worried her more was that nothing was happening. Kat was in an empty room without an exit or a hazard. It was possible that the trial was there to try and test her ability to avoid boredom, but that didn’t seem like a likely possibility.

 Kat took a step forward, and the room seemed to react instantly. Every one of the glowing crystals transformed into a pillar of light, and a quiet gurgling sound announced the opening of a dozen grates that were pouring water into the chamber.

 Then the world seemed to shudder slightly, and Kat felt gravity increasing around her. Not by much, but with each passing second the tower seemed to be pulling harder and harder at her.

 She glanced around the room a second time, licking her still dry lips worriedly. There still wasn’t an exit, and already the soles of her feet were wet. It might have been her imagination, but Kat could swear that the pillars of light were growing slightly in size as well. Every hazard in the room was steadily getting more dangerous, and she had no idea how to escape or solve the predicament.

 More water filled the room, and before Kat realized, she was ankle deep and the gravity was about a quarter stronger than she was used to. With a soft clicking sound, barely audible with her suddenly mortal hearing over the sound of the water gurgling into the room, a series of portholes opened in the chamber’s walls.

 Kat hissed as something glinted in the dark recesses. Almost without thinking she cast Levitation on herself.

 Shards of crystal, prismatic and beautiful, exploded outward from the wall. Kat threw herself into the air, twisting slightly to avoid the two glass spikes that passed closest to her.

 Everything should have worked. With the help of Levitation she was able to toss herself into the air and corkscrew her body in a way that would have made an Olympic gymnast jealous. It all changed the moment one of the shards hit a pillar of light.

 It exploded into a prism of light that sprayed across the room. Kat might be fast enough to dodge the launched crystals, but despite her level, dodging light itself was impossible.

 A patch of red and a streak of blue flashed across her body from the rainbows thrown off by the mirrored shards. Kat felt a burning sensation in her bicep that was matched by a jagged line of icy cold in her calf that took her breath away.

 Then she landed. Her left leg buckled, dropping her down to one knee. Already the water was up to Kat’s lower calf. A quick glance at her arm revealed that the previous spark of light had burned through the skin, leaving an angry reddish black streak on her bicep.

 Kat stood up, hissing in pain from both her injuries as she Levitation struggled against the increased gravity. Water gurgled as it lapped at her calves, and Kat’s face twisted into a frown.

 Both the water and gravity levels made it hard for her to move, yet they didn’t show any signs of stopping. Already the crystal spears were hard to dodge. If this kept up, Kat’s chances at avoiding being impaled on a glass spike were diminishing by the second.

 In the walls, the portholes opened up a second time. Kat bit her lower lip, using the pain to focus on her surroundings despite the injuries to her arm and leg. A glimmer of light on the far wall marked what looked like a portal.

 Before Kat could make a break for it, the crystals fired a second time.

 She dove low and to the left, dodging one attack that splashed into the water near her while another two zipped by overhead. A ribbon of red light passed over her back, and suddenly Kat found herself gasping in pain and inhaling a lungful of water for her efforts.

 Coughing and sputtering, she staggered back to her feet. The portal on the far wall was gone, and the water was up to her knees. Kat stretched, wincing in pain at the in her limbs and back. Already she could feel her body starting to slow down as the gravity ratched upward once again.

Levitation was basically at its limit. If it wasn’t for the water, Kat could move freely for the moment, but outside her spell, gravity was at least double what it was normally. An ordinary player likely would be struggling to keep their balance under those conditions, dodging the quick and hard to predict attacks would be an absolute impossibility.

The gun ports in the walls opened up a third time. Once again a portal appeared, some twenty paces closer to Kat from where the last one had been. Just as she took a step toward it, a flash of light from the ceiling caused Kat to look up.

There was another portal on the ceiling, some ten paces above her and a bit to the left, in the absolute center of the room.

Before she could make any decision, crystals bolted from the wall, flashing through pillars of light and sending beams of colored destruction skating across the ceiling and water.

She bent over backward, planting an arm elbow deep into the water to stabilize herself as the attacks zipped by, the wind from their passage tugging at the strange tunic she’d been given when she first stepped into the trial.

Kat’s mind whirred. Getting to an exit on the walls wouldn’t be easy. The location kept changing and the portal itself only existed for a couple seconds while the crystal launchers opened up. That said, the ceiling portal would be almost impossible. Water sloshed around Kat’s knees, and gravity was already slightly higher than Earth average, even with the help of Levitation.

None of that kept Kat from glancing up at the spot where the portal had been. Something deep inside her said that the ground level portal was the easy way out. Ordinary players would use it and earn ordinary class evolutions. Meanwhile, the ceiling portal called to her.

The gun ports opened again, and simultaneously the two portals appeared, one on the opposite wall from the last time, and another on the ceiling in the middle of the room.

Kat sloshed to the side, dodging just in time to avoid serious damage. One of the shards bolted through her tunic, leaving a cut along her side as it creased her ribs while splashes of purple and yellow light flashed over her as one of the crystals hit the pillar next to her, unleashing a destructive rainbow.

Her shoulder went numb where the purple light touched her, and every nerve in her hand felt like it was on fire despite a lack of any visible damage from where it had been bathed in yellow light. Even dunking her extremity in the water as it rose to around waist level didn’t do anything to soothe the pain.

She glanced up at the ceiling again where the portal would open. Something deep inside of her screamed that it was the way forward. She was in a Tower. The purpose of the tower was to climb it and gain power. Staying on the same level wasn’t succeeding. It was succumbing to mediocrity.

Still, that realization didn’t mean much on its own. Kat somehow needed to reach the ceiling in order to escape. Between the gravity and water, she could barely jump at all. Without access to her skills, the ceiling portal only existed to taunt and tantalize her, promising power but hiding just out of her reach.

The crystals slid out of the wall again, igniting the portals. The wall portal was behind her now, but Kat didn’t even look at it. It wasn’t her goal. The minute Kat found herself settling for ‘good enough,’ her climb was as good as done.

Dungeons on each level grew harder and harder as did the guardians to ascend to another floor. It was always possible to conquer lower level dungeons or to simply not max out the number of dungeons on each floor in pursuit of the cheaper and easier power that came from ascending levels with the help of an experienced team, but that only made a climber weaker.

It would be incredibly easy to take a shortcut at any point such as facing off against easier dungeons or conquering a floor boss with a full team of six, but that was the path to eventual failure. Only by risking everything to take each and every opportunity offered by the tower could a player manage to grow strong enough to ascend the tower on their own.

Crystals launched themselves toward Kat yet again. This time, she dove into the water to avoid them. Her movements were sluggish, but by the same token, the crystals were moving at less than a quarter their normal speed.

WIthout thinking, Kat summoned her Pseudopod, using the watery appendage to grab hold of a rough patch on the floor and yank herself to the side out of their path. Seconds later, she surfaced again. Kat had managed to avoid all the attacks without damage this time, but the water was around her belly button.

She took an experimental step. Gravity pushed down on her upper body and the water tugged at her torso and legs, slowing her movement even as it buoyed her. It wasn’t so intolerable that she couldn’t breath, but there wasn’t any question in her mind that Kat would be able to sprint to one of the wall portals anymore.

Unless she half swam her way to the edges of the room and waited for a portal to hopefully appear nearby, she was trapped. More and more, it was beginning to feel like the ceiling was her only foreseeable exit.

The holes in the wall opened up, only half of them above the steadily rising water level. Crystals peeked out, aiming themselves at her before they launched themselves once again.

Kat smiled, her teeth glinting as she glanced upward.

Trapped? That was fine. If anything, she welcomed it. The Tower wasn’t forcing her to do anything she didn’t want. If anything, it was only reinforcing her resolve.

If the possible wasn’t an option, so be it. Kat would just have to do the impossible.

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