We’re all in the classroom in Corwen’s school building, but the teacher isn’t in at the moment so we’re just chatting and reading.
“We didn’t forget,” I assure him. “We totally would have gotten around to it eventually…”
Griffin rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but then we would have been old like Aunt Rosemary.”
“At least you’re comparing it to someone who is actually old and not me,” Anise puts in cheerfully.
“You’re old too,” Griffin says sagely. “You’re just not old old. Aunt Rosemary is old, old, old.”
The subject of the conversation strolls into the classroom. “Am I old, Griffin?” Aunt Rosemary asks. “I was born on June 3rd in the year 665 of the Age of the Green Fox. How old am I?”
Griffin groans loudly. “Oh no, not math again!”
“Well, you can’t call me old unless you can tell me exactly how old I am.”
“But you’re covered in wrinkles and got gray hair so you’re obviously old,” Griffin says.
“In any case, now that Drake is back from his adventure, we will be heading out to the Forgotten Tower in August. We have a new member of the class to go with us as well. I hope you’ve all met Basalt by now. He just spawned so he will be very confused about the world so I hope you are patient with him.”
Basalt chuckles. “Don’t you worry about me. Though it’s funny to think I’m the same size as them but they’ll be getting taller and I won’t.”
“Yeah, but I’m never gonna have as much hair on my face,” Griffin says.
“You never know,” Basalt says with a wink.
“I’m never gonna get old,” Griffin says. “I’m gonna make Legendary before I’m 14 and be a kid forever.”
Aunt Rosemary sighs. “That is unlikely without special quests, anti-aging items, or reincarnation. If you wish to risk your life trying, the only thing I can do is chaperone.”
“He was gonna sneak out of the village,” Juniper says to me conspiratorily. “But Aunt Savannah overheard him.”
“I don’t know how,” Griffin says with a pout. “She wasn’t even in the Hearth.”
The Forgotten Tower is a few days’ travel south-southwest from Corwen village, a fact which I would not have remembered had Aunt Rosemary not been along and continually reminding us of which direction we’re going and why Griffin and Willow ought not to keep sneaking off to try to find treasures in the fields and forests around us.
Rowan, Basalt, and Juniper are comparatively stoic. Burdock is distracted, perhaps thinking about his class choice he’ll be receiving next month.
I listen quietly, watching the skies and the aspects flowing around me and seeing what I can detect about the world around me, and mostly importantly improve my [Fast Travel] skill. That requires absorbing the idea of this path I’m taking into myself.
“The soul is marked by the roads it travels,” I muse aloud, staring at the great yellow orb and scattered blue and green skymotes.
“Meadow’s so mad about not being able to come,” Anise says. “Aunt Savannah’s taking no chances on her upcoming grandkid. I’d be surprised if Meadow stays at the Hearth at all next year.”
“She wouldn’t want to spend time with her kid?” Basalt wonders.
“She’s not exactly thrilled about being expected to have a kid or two to maintain the Hearth’s population,” Anise says. “You can’t get pregnant, so you probably wouldn’t understand. No kids, no family, so somebody’s gotta make the kids. Her brother and sister are going to actually take care of Meadow’s kid.”
“So like how your sister takes care of the kids when they’re at the Hearth but you watch after them when they’re out on a field trip?”
“Yeah, that,” Anise says. “Totally watching after them. Totally keeping them out of trouble. And absolutely not letting them fall into holes and get lost in a dead dungeon. I am a stunning contribution to the family.”
“It was Tempest’s fault, not yours,” Basalt says. “You could hardly be blamed if the mind behind the world itself decided the Hero needed to be separated from his mentor.”
“Huh, I guess when you put it that way…”
We don’t even see the tower before we reach it. There’s just suddenly a break in the trees and it’s there in the small clearing before us with the austere welcome message appearing in my head. A hush hangs over this part of the forest, and the sounds of wildlife have suddenly vanished.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
“Alright, kids,” Aunt Rosemary says, rather ruining the ominous atmosphere with tour guide cheer. “Let’s get camp set up for the night. Basalt, have you unlocked Survfival (Fire Making) yet?”
Basalt shakes his head and goes to follow along the [Tutorial Teacher]’s instructions to unlock the skill while the rest of us set up camp.
“We will only be visiting the first two floors,” Aunt Rosemary says. “If you do well, perhaps we will attempt the third, but no further. You are not yet prepared for Elite foes mixed with Heroic bosses.”
“But we will be,” Griffin grumbles. “Eventually.”
“I wanna do magic already,” Willow says. “But I got some enhancement skills. I’m gonna find all the things in this tower!”
“We’ll be sure to give plenty of opportunity for sneaking and searching,” Aunt Rosemary promises.
“What sort of enemies are here?” Rowan asks as we’re eating dinner.
“Shadows,” Aunt Rosemary says. “They can take the form of any person or animal, but make no mistake that they are still monsters. The more color and definition they have, the more dangerous. Now gets some rest, kids.”
Basalt winds up laying flat on his back staring up at the yellow night sky. “How? Ugh, I need a blindfold.”
The ancient halls seem to stretch impossibly wide and impossibly tall, but it’s just a trick of the lighting. It’s quite the trick, though. I can tell that space is warped somehow, but only because the the aether flows are different and much stronger inside. This is not unusual for a dungeon, but the effect is much stronger here than in the lower level dungeons I’ve visited before. This place is actually dangerous.
We don’t get far before I start to detect something. At the edges of my hearing, music. Tugging at my mind, beyond the range of hearing of your average human. Music that’s wrong on some primal level these innocent children will never be able to understand.
Unbidden, I feel a panic attack rising within me as the background music increases in volume and intensity. It goes slowly enough that I don’t even realize what’s happening at first, and by the time I understand what’s going on, I’m already hunched over and hyperventilating.
“Drake?” Aunt Rosemary asks over my shoulder. “Are you alright?”
“Music,” I whisper.
“What music?” Anise asks over my other shoulder.
“There’s music,” I say. “Music everywhere. Can’t you hear it? It’s in my head. I can’t get it out of my head! It was like death metal with a thumping bass and growled lyrics you can’t understand and—”
“Drake,” Aunt Rosemary interrupts. “Breathe. Block it out. You must be picking up on some psychic music the rest of us can’t hear.”
“Let me step outside for a minute,” I say.
When I exit the dungeon and step out into the not-sunlight of a yellow sky, a system window pops up into my third eye.
“What was that?” Basalt wonders, stepping up behind me. “I just got a skill named [Spirit Hearing].”
I nod. “You heard it too, I guess?”
“Sometimes the world gives extra challenges to Heroes,” Aunt Rosemary says.
Basalt frowns deeply. “Well, I could feel that music in my soul and I’m not sure what the soul even is.”
“I suppose we’re going to have to deal with this anyway,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to deprive the kids of an adventure or let them go in without us, and I’d rather build up resistance to whatever this is at a point where it isn’t significantly dangerous.”
We step back into the tower, more wary this time and on guard for what to expect. If this were an actual band, I would imagine it would be the sort whose very name was deliberately offensive and the album would probably have a mature content warning on it.
Basalt and I sit close to the exit for a bit, trying to acclimate ourselves to the psychic pressure before trying to go in further and getting overwhelmed again.
“How’s your Sanity meter?” I ask.
“Fine,” Basalt says. “I suppose dwarves are at least partially resistant to this sort of thing. I keep getting levels in Enhanced Heart (Stone Resilience). Increases resistance to mental and emotional effects depending on how much stone is around you. The tower is made of stone, so I suppose that counts.”
“I’m putting my own skills to use to fight it off myself,” I say with a sigh. “Look at those kids. Fighting shadow rats without a care in the world because they can’t hear the terror resonating in our souls.”
“It probably doesn’t help to call it resonating terror,” Basalt says. “It’s just music.”
“It’s soul music, though.”
“Did you ever work a double shift in retail repeating the same vapid pop songs over the store radio until the end of time?”
“If I did, my mind has blocked out the memory of it for the sake of my sanity,” I reply.
Basalt pulls out his bronze axe. “Well, the music probably has a source. I’m betting it’s the boss of this section of the tower. How about we go kick its butt and shut it up?”
“You’re right,” I say, taking a deep breath. “Can’t let the kids have all the fun here.”
As we press through the tower, low-Basic shadowy rats give way to mid-Basic shadowy foxes, who give way to high-Basic shadowy wolves.
Guttering torches offer low lighting, enough to make the shadow creatures indistinct until they’re very close to us. Most of us don’t have the Perception necessary to hit them with ranged attacks. The average adult has a base of 20 points in all attributes, but it will be many years before we’re at that point.
Still, they go down quickly enough to daggers and staves. I have no doubt the shadows on the upper floors would not be so susceptible to the attacks of children wielding low-level weapons. The wolves take twice as much effort to kill as the foxes, who take twice as much as the rats.
We finally reach the terrifying boss of this section. Surrounded by dark and shadowy wolves stands an alpha among shadows. (I’m pretty sure the dungeon did not read up on actual wolf behavior when designing these encounters.) The boss wolf is almost twice the size of its pack members and its eyes shine with an ominous red glow.
“The Subwoofer,” Aunt Rosemary says. “The boss of this area. Mid-Elite. The Basics should be able to handle this on their own.”
“The Subwoofer?” I repeat. “Seriously?”
The red-eyed boss wolf makes a reverberating growl that grates through my soul. Even the kids with only their physical hearing can sense this one, but can’t comprehend the full depth of it.
“Let’s do this!” Basalt says, hefting his axe.