[Quest] The Dark Tower

The rats watched the food fly into the other corner and quickly and quietly moved towards it like so many red-eyed shadows. They ate with incredible haste.

The mother rat looked as though she planned to turn and run after the food like the others until the kind knight saw fit to lift her and her children out of the black hell that the unfortunate little animals lived in. The rat seemed grateful, in a ratty sort of way, chittering thankfully as she ate her fill of food. When she was full, the little creature curled up around the seven infant rats of hers and went to sleep, feeling safe for the first time in her rodent life.

Alicia would find no obstacles in the trench other than the dry bones that smelled strongly of 20 years' worth of evaporated rat urine and the darkness that she alleviated with her shield. The tower vermin had left the knight alone after her tribute of the food, and now politely went about their business.

Strangely, if she tarried long enough in the room, the spikes would begin to slow down. Over several minutes, the spikes gained more and more time before they sssnked up through the ground until there were sixty second intervals between each rising. The machinery's noise, however, became louder and more ominous, as though the room had somehow realized that Alicia was avoiding the spikes and was plotting some fresh torture.

If the knightess got close enough to the glyph to touch it, she might notice a small phrase engraved beneath it:

The very second that Alicia touched the glyph, she would find herself transported to a place much brighter than the gloomy room. The very walls themselves seemed luminous, rather, luminosity appeared to be a property of the atmosphere in the room itself. There were no shadows on the ground, as the light came from every angle and every drop of "paint" on the wall.

There were a number of things apparent in the room.
The first was a red glyph on the far end of the room at hand level and a door next to it. The door was locked, but there was an inscription under the door that said, "Ready!"
The second was a large, wooden stand.
The third was the woman behind the stand who looked genuinely surprised to see the young knight standing there. Her clothes showed a coastal influence, and she held a bowl in her hand.

"Oh! You like... passed the test?" she asked, her eyes wide before she began hastily throwing lemons and bits of sugarcane into her bowl and grinding it with a pestle. "Like... nobody ever comes up here. They always get stuck on like... the first floor."
The young woman finished expertly grinding the lemons and cane into a fine paste. She reached under the cabinet and poured some ice and water into the bowl. She stood back up and mixed the water with the paste until it was completely dissolved. Finally, she held the bowl out towards the knight. "Lemonade?"

The ditzy-looking lemonade girl smiled, almost embarrassed when Alicia asked her to sample her own beverage.

"I'm so sorry! I bet you're thinking like... totally gross, amirite? Like, eww. How long have these lemons been like, sitting here. I get it."
Without the slightest bit of hesitancy, the woman lifted the bowl to her lips and took a dainty gulp. "Aaaah. That's like, totally good."

She set the bowl down with a loud clack. A small, pudgy, purple octopus crawled up on the counter. Unlike a normal octopus, it had a rather humanoid face, sans a nose, on its head, the tentacles being more like legs. It licked its purple mouth and narrowed its eyes at the lemonade. Apparently the octopus liked lemonade.

The young woman ducked under the counter and began placing more supplies on the stand: a bowl, another pestle, another bunch of lemons, some more sugar cane, a pitcher of ice water. "Do you want me to like... make you another one?" Her voice was audible from behind the wood counter. "I know it's like, totally gross to drink after other people, but like, you adventurers or whatever are always fine with that when you like, come through here."

The octopus dipped a tentacle into the bowl and brought it to its mouth, tasting the beverage and closing its eyes in happiness, savoring the flavor.

The lemonade stand tender figured out the pet's shenanigans. "Ewww! Stop that. Bad! Bad! I'm totally sorry!"

"Right, duh." The woman popped herself lightly on the head for forgetting Alicia's question. "I like... don't get to talk much so excuse me if I'm like... bad at it. So! Let me introduce myself." The "self" was drawn out musically and she put her hand to her chest in a manner that might have come off cute were it not for the eldritch circumstances from which she spoke. "I don't have like... a given name. Actually, all of this..." she waved a hand about to indicate the entire room, and by extension the tower. "...is me. I am the tower." Her tone was grave for a mere second before she leaned on the counter and began twirling her hair, her ditzy manner returning. "But you can call me Torra! So like, I have many aspects, but I showed you this one because you're super nice and we can be BFFs!"
The woman grinned goofily, reassuringly at the lady knight and casually began grounding up some lemonade for her pet. "You probably should've talked to my dad outside. He might've given you some pointers. I think he was really rooting for you."

Several whiskers peeked over the edge of the food sack, and the mother rat from the floor previous peeked up, intrigued by the sweet smells on the air.

The woman squealed, though it wasn't from fright at the rat as much as it was from excitement. "Miska!" came the high-pitched cry. "You brought her out? How awesome! I mean, like... I haven't seen her since she was human. Anyways, this is like... a big test!" She finished the lemonade and set it in front of her pet, who accidentally fell into the bowl. "There's this like... strong sword at the top, right? It's my job to make sure nobody lame gets it. You already showed compassion by saving that lady, there. We're just going to check for some other qualities."

She ducked beneath the counter again, getting yet another set of lemonade supplies from just beneath the counter. The pause was long enough for questions.

"What kind of sword?"

The lemonade lady seemed to be a bit confused by the question. "Like... how many types of swords are there? I don't get out much, so I can't really tell you anything other than that it's a sword. My dad put it up here. He said that it was a special one, so like... I guess that's your answer!"
Her voice was unusually cheery for one who was willing to kill someone over an item that she didn't know the details over.

"It's not like you can turn back now or anything. Cool metaphor, huh? Like... people go looking for power and they're like... drawn to it and stuff. But when they start chasing it, BAM!" She clapped her hands together. "They suddenly can't stop. Like weed. Oh, and there's a bunch of gold and stuff around the sword too. I'm sure it's worth a lot in a trade."

The lady was clearly confused as to why the knight would be seeking out demons. This was evidenced by the strange look she gave the knight and the comment, "Well, some demons can be hot, yea. They bring a lot of drama, though and like... never want to commit."

She twirled a tendril of blonde hair around her fingers. "Like... I'm really not sure. I was just a little kid when my dad like... turned me into a tower. I don't really mind, I've like... got lots of company. I guess I'll like... do what everybody else does when someone like... finishes all of the challenges. Otherwise I guess we'll like... be here forever."

The thought didn't seem to sadden her any.

Torra smiled and benevolently received the bag of rats from the kind knight. "I'm sure they'll thank you if you like... make it through."
The lady set the bag next to a bowl of lemonade. The female rat, having drank nothing but unpleasant things to survive thus far, happily accepted the sugary beverage. "Miska was like... one of the first group of people to come here. It was like... her and her two boyfriends I guess? And it was one other guy too. She like... like... I barely remember but it was like... she was half demon and she wanted the sword to like... take over a bunch of villages with and like... make everyone her slaves and have like... all the guys oppressed and stuff and serving her. It was pretty messed up. They were talking about it all loud, and I guess her boyfriends got tired of it because they saw the big rats we had and fed her to them back when we had like... big ones and while the rats were distracted they like... started fighting each other on the first floor and trying to like... get to the exit first. I was like 'whatever, losers' and killed them with spikes. After they died they like... lost their normal bodies and I like... turned their souls into little rats that had to hide from the spikes and the bigger rats. They like... couldn't die either. Every time they did they just like... came back as a different rat. I guess I felt bad because like... anytime someone was mean to them and didn't try to help I like... turned them into a new rat instead of letting them on this second floor. Eventually there were like... enough rats to kill the bigger ones I originally had down there. It isn't all like, gloom and doom and stuff. They get to like... live forever as rats. Like, if they die, then they just get to be born as a new one or they like... form. And Miska even got to start a family. You should see how many kids she's had while she was down there. I've lost count. Every few years she like... dies of a tumor, though. Rats don't live very long, but she like... gets to come back every time. And she's ruling down there too, I guess, since she's like... the only girl rat. The guys all love her a lot. Like, you should see the party they have whenever they have like... energy and aren't all just lying around. Sometimes I go talk to them. It gets lonely here so I like... keep everyone who's failed here with me one way or another. Besides, I couldn't like... let them go out and spoil all the answers."

She smiled, petting the little rat softly, who still drank away, as though she wasn't sure when she would find a clean beverage again. "I like for new people to come through. Some of the ones who have been here longer have like... forgotten how to talk and stuff like that. It's a real bummer when they forget what it was like to be like... human."

There was a pause. Miska looked up in fear. "Anyways, you like... wanted to know the floor structure? You'll see like... the third floor, the fifth floor, the seventh floor, and the ninth floor after this, right? And like... each one of those rooms is going to like... have some things in it." She began running her finger along the air in front of the lemonade stand and it left marks on the air as though the space was a dry-erase board. "You'll probably see some people who have like... failed the room. There aren't going to be as many people on these floors as like... the floors previous. Most people like... failed at the start. Anyways, you'll see them..." A squiggle. "You'll see some markings on the far wall, they're usually like... glowy. If they aren't glowy, then there's like... a problem. The red mark on the first floor was like... okay, but if you see any red marks after this you'd like... better not touch them. If the marks are like... green or blue or some color like that, then things are all right. Anyways, if you like... don't want to free anyone or figure out how to help, there's like... an emergency exit on the far end. You really shouldn't take the emergency exit, but if you open the door you'll see like... a stairway leading to the next level. Usually you'll see like... a clue in each room." More squiggles. "But you don't really have to like... free anyone if you don't want to. It's just kind of a nice thing to do."

Suddenly, the glyph on the far-end of the room turned green. "Green glyphs are always safe to touch. Do you like... have any more questions?"

Hardly had Alicia turned and said goodbye before she would find herself in the darkness again.

This room was different from the first in that the darkness was not complete. A glyph on the far end of the room threw light. The lit glyph was adjacent a door. The door had a goat-skull and worm motif. That door had an unlit glyph above it, and another unlit glyph on the side of the door opposite the lit glyph.
The lit glyph connected to a line that cast a bright red light on the room, and was lit for about a third of its length. Interrupting the apparent flow of energy was a statue (not attached to the wall) with an unlit glyph on the ground before it. There were two other such statues in the room. All three of them looked like men in full armor wielding hammers.

These things were on the periphery of the room on the outer circle formed by the icy, stone walls.

On the inside of the room, there was a vast contraption shaped like a large cylinder. Specifically, there were three gears embedded in the ground. They weren't turning, as atop them were piles of boulders sturdily held in place by cement. It was one large wall, segmented into three wall segments. The gears seemed to be making some effort to turn, as they emitted a quiet, mechanical noise, the impotency of which was the polar opposite of the free, ominous churning of the spikes on the first floor.



If Alicia took a brief walk around, she might notice a hammer not unlike the massive instruments wielded by the ominous statues.

Just over the boulders, a larger cylinder of ice was visible. Various adventurers in various states of undress, and injury were sealed inside of this column in various positions. Horror marked their stiff faces.
If she looked long enough, she would see one of them blink. One of the barely-clothed men writhed responsively within his frozen encasement, his bare skin blue and his eyes rolling around in his head, as though he wished to warn the knight of something. Most of the company, however, failed to move at all. Behind the walls, not yet visible, were three more statues of men with hammers, though these had the walls before them instead of the glyphs.

There was an inscription near the door at the far end of the room:

The statue is apparently light (100 lbs.) and hollow on the inside, not nearly as heavy as its ominous appearance would indicate. It moves easily when Alicia pushes it, falling over on its side.

However, upon hitting the ground with a crack and a crunch, it would emit another noise, a shout of pain followed by a sound not unlike a whimper of fear. It didn't sound like it came from a large and intimidating warrior. In fact, the noise sounded like one that might issue forth from the throat of a very small, very intimidated little man.

There is nothing interesting under the statue. Everything else in the room remains the same.

The wall before Alicia tumbles down easily, much as the statue had been easily ruined.

The straining sound of the machine is reduced as the gear rumbles to life, turning easily.

Behind the wall, a statue of a frozen, starving man with a hammer stands, looking at her miserably. The statue is very, very lifelike and detailed, its white body standing delicately atop the stands with chains and shackles around its arms and wrists. It's sort of like a morbid version of one of those old, naked greek statues. The bones of the depicted man are clearly visible and easy to follow, as his skin is drawn tight by hunger. Apparently, the person shown in the artwork is still capable of holding the hammer quite well, though he clutches it as one might clutch a precipice for dear life.

The gear churns happily along between her and the half-dead man.

Having to swing at the wall would make her turn from the shattered statue behind her for a brief moment. If she looked at the ruined statue again, she'd find it was restored to exactly how it was when she walked into the room.

The arrow flew with a great deal of force due to its close range. It took off a great piece of the statue's arm, and a sound like an old man crying out rang through the chambers. The arm didn't fall off immediately, but it eventually cracked under its own weight and that of the hammer. The arm fell to the floor, crumbling. The hammer tumbled forwards into the gear, which mechanically ground it up into a fine powder and continued its mindless churnings.

All the while a voice cried out from the statue, though nothing about the stone's facial expression or pose changed, since it was a statue and all. "Please... please don't... It hurts it hurt it hurts it hurts..."

The arm of the statue bled profusely, defying all logic. "It hurts... help... help me! Make it stop! Why can't I die? I just want... it HURTS!"

Slowly. Slowly the statue's blood loss ceased until the root of the arm became a solid, nonbleeding nub. The cries, likewise, were muted.

"It hurts..." he continued to protest up until the healing spell was complete. "It... I feel..."
The voice from the statue took on more sane overtones. "I feel... nice... I feel... a touch. A woman?"

He fell silent for a moment. "A woman's touch. I just want... one more night... woman? A woman. Please, woman, have mercy..."

A sigh seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. "They like... never learn. Perverts."

The man didn't stop begging when the sigh interrupted him. He simply continued talking, asking with so many flowery words for various kinds of acts. His voice joined the background noise provided by the turning gear. "It's been so long, I can barely remember... just one night, blessed woman. I swear not to tell anyone. It will be our wonderful secret. Our wonderful, wonderful secret. Please... I know that's why you did this to me. I'm very sorry, I should have asked more kindly. Just don't leave me in this hell... I can only feel, but you have given me nothing to feel. Is not this punishment greater than the crime? I swear it, I have learned my lesson. I'll even taste your lemonade when you give me back my taste. Is that not all you wanted? I'm begging you... You must be so lonely in this tower. Don't tell me it isn't true. Touch me again. Please..."

The statue continued speaking.

There was another statue behind the next wall. This one was a fat and repugnant man with a hammer. He wore an open bathrobe and nothing else, really. In a way, this statue was more offensive than the last, and he had a possessive, predatory gaze permanently sealed on his face. The stone smirked lecherously forwards, forever.

With the second wall down, the second gear began to turn, even further lessening the sound of the machinery straining. It was beginning to chug along quite successfully. Only one more gear remained.

The statue of the repugnant man made no noise. If it had a soul like the talkative one, that soul had no way of sensing that she was there.

The final wall came down to reveal a fairly ordinary looking man. He wasn't creepily gaunt as the older man's statue, nor was he bloated like the statue of the twenty-something year-old hedonist. No, this was a middle aged man, one who looked somewhat disturbed by his circumstances, but was not the type of person one would attribute evil to. His muscular frame was the one who worked hard to get where he'd been in life, and he wore scant bits of chainmail, though most of it had ostensibly been torn off by the beast that had stripped the others. Also of note were his pointy, feline ears and his long, equally feline tail.

He looked plainly ahead at the destruction of his wall, and the final gear began churning.

"Why hello there."
The statue's mouth moved, and it became apparent that this was more than just a statue. The tail began to twitch inquisitively, and the man smiled. His voice sounded trustworthy. Color returned gradually to his body starting at the top of his ears and traveling down to his chest. The tip of his tail as well had a bit of color on it that animated the entire limb, though this effect ended at the base of the appendage. His humanoid legs and his armored paws remained stiffly in the stone.

The circle of the tormented bodies began rotating as the machinery became animated.
Likewise, many of the souls who were aware of what was going on tried their hardest to scream, though the ice stuffing their lungs and throat prevented any noise from coming forth.
Familiar spikes extended down from above, shattering the ice on the ceiling and sending it down in great chunks. The entire room shook with a force that would probably knock the young knight off of her feet.

Much as the cylinder in the middle of the room was rotating clockwise, the ceiling was rotating counterclockwise and steadily descending, the spikes thrusting in and out, in and out, chugging, chugging in rhythm with the moving gears, much faster than the spikes on the first floor. They'd begun grinding the top of the ice prison into a fine frost powder, and if they continued to descend, they would soon consume everything in the room.

The living statue looked up. "Oh dear, not this again..."

When the knight turned, all of the noise suddenly stopped.

True to the lyrical prose, the wall had returned to the state it was before she moved the boulders, which were now cemented back into place...

...save one. The hammerless statue's wall remained down and the gear remained cheerily turning. He continued to cry on. "Something's shaking. Is she coming?"
Surprisingly, the gaunt one became quiet, deciding that he'd either died and fallen into oblivion, or the woman who touched him must have died and left.

The ceiling had retreated back into place as well, as though time had rewound itself.

"Hello! Hello, mi'lady?" the man with obvious oni heritage cried out. "Are you still there? Could you maybe break this wall down again so we can talk properly?"

The man breathed a sigh of relief as well. "You really are a sight for sore eyes, mi'lady. A lovely knight of purity. Quite unlike the usual rabble that comes through here. Well, not like I would know. I haven't really seen anyone pass this point. Of course I will be happy to assist you in any way I can. I wouldn't want--" he looked down at his body, as though to verify that it was, in fact, still stone. "--you to come out like me. Yes, I know I'm a demon and your kind don't trust demons as far as they can throw them, but I can help you with this riddle."

First of all, he took his hammer and threw it into the gears where it was ground to pieces. "You sorted out a part that I couldn't. That's jolly good. These hammers are plainly the problem. Now, the part that I almost solved was the outer ring. You see there?" He pointed a clawed finger towards the lit portion of the wall that extended from the bright glyph to Switch A. "If you touch those unlit glyphs in front of those statues, it will extend the light to the next unlit glyph. The problem lies in the fact that when you turn your back to those stones, the wall will reset. Also, turning your back on us means that the walls here will most certainly rebuild."

"My name, fair lady?" the man blinked, his striped tail waving back and forth as an inquisitive expression came over his face. "Well, you may call me Paguma. I think that's my name, anyhow."

"I've had a lot of time to think over this puzzle, and I think that the key is restarting the machinery somehow, but not in the wrong order. Look, the last part goes 'the radiator's been shut down, and I've been sealed in ice'. A 'radiator'... well, it was an old word I came across in my studies, but it's a hypothetical device that gets hot in a piece of machinery. They had one somewhat operational in Medius somewhere, some relic hunters had found one, but they couldn't imagine what it was for. They're trying different things... if you fill one full of heat magic, you can cook food and melt things on it, but that's a lot less efficient than a fire."

"Anyways, I think that those lit glyphs are a manifestation of magical power on the outer wall. If you can somehow get the power to complete the circuit, I bet the radiator will turn back on and free the people. It's just a theory anyhow. I haven't seen anyone try it, and well... I might have beat it if I hadn't slipped up. You don't want to hear of what I did, mi'lady. You have a long ways to go."

"I thought we were friends..." the statue whispered.

The glyph Alicia touches on the ground immediately lights up. Red power surges through the next piece of the line like blood through a vein.