I pressed my finger against the rune that I believed was responsible for communication with a matching book and focused.
Arrow of Direction.
A glowing arrow appeared, pointing straight up.
After an instant, it vanished.
I tried the spell a few more times, but every subsequent attempt failed. I’d probably triggered some kind of location spell countermeasures.
But I’d learned two important things.
One, Tristan was somewhere above us.
And two, I apparently had the ability to use basic information gathering spells inside the spire. I presumed that was because my Arbiter attunement marked me as an assistant to the visages, so the spire’s basic countermeasures against divination didn’t affect me.
That could be very significant in the longer term, if I could learn better information gathering spells. For the moment, however, I had to work with the minimal information I had.
Then I tucked the book away in my bag. I didn’t store it in the box — I wanted to be able to check it quickly.
“Tristan is above us somewhere. I don’t know where.”
Sheridan folded their arms. “I don’t suppose your brother could give us some clues on how to make it through the rooms on this floor?”
I glanced back toward the book, then back to Sheridan. “Believe me, he’s awful at that. We’re better off on our own.”
I didn’t mention the fact that Tristan wanted us to leave. Maybe I should have, but with two of our climbers separated from the group, morale was already low. I didn’t want everyone to decide to abandon the expedition.
Sheridan rolled their eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”
The room had three doors. Each was a simple wooden door with a handle, similar to what I’d seen on the first floor.
Each door did, however, have a single colorful gemstone in the center.
To the west, a red gemstone.
To the north, blue.
To the east, yellow.
The presence of the gems seemed odd. I remembered the color coded doors in my Judgment, but they hadn’t been like that in the first floor of the spire.
And when I’d read about the spire, I didn’t remember there being gems like these in the upper floors. Was that just an omission in the books I’d read?
“Sheridan, have you been up here before?”
They nodded. “Sure. But not many times. I’ve done some climbing, but I’m not a professional like Derek or Elora. And this is already different from anything I recognize.”
“Any idea which way to go?”
Sheridan shrugged. “Derek is usually the one leading the way, and he prefers physical stuff. That’d be either red or yellow.”
“So, it’s normal that there are gems on the doors?” I asked.
Sheridan frowned. “Now that you mention it, this spire doesn’t usually have them, outside of Judgments. The Tortoise Spire has them on every floor, though.”
I scratched my chin. “…Any idea about why there might be a change?”
Sheridan shook their head. “Katashi’s personal preference, maybe? Don’t know.”
That was an interesting possibility.
Could Katashi be restricting the spire in Tenjin’s absence? “Hm.” Probably wasn’t worth worrying about immediately. “Okay. Red is fighting, yellow is speed and agility?”
“Red is more like brute force in general, but yeah. Something like that. Blue tends to be puzzles.”
I turned to the others. “Any preferences?”
Marissa enthusiastically punched one hand into the other, then winced. Apparently, she wasn’t fully healed yet.
Patrick just shrugged.
“We’ll check each of them. Mara, up front with me. Unless Sheridan is hiding physical combat skills?”
Sheridan shook their head. “I’m a Mender and a Necromancer. I can fight a bit, but healing is my focus. My attack spells are ranged.”
“Okay, let’s do this.”
We walked to the blue door first, since it seemed the least likely to explode in our faces.
It led to a circular room with a large pool of water in the center. No monsters, no obvious traps. Just a big pool of water.
I closed the door. “None of you have water magic, I assume?”
A chorus of shaking heads.
“Okay, we’ll skip that for now.”
Selys-Lyann could potentially freeze the water, but without walking in, I couldn’t get a better look at what the actual challenge was. If it was something like swimming to the next room, I didn’t think it would be a good idea without water magic.
I opened the yellow door.
There was no floor in the next room.
It was just a long hallway with vines draped from the ceiling, leading to another yellow door on the other side.
Some of the vines looked sturdier than others.
I gazed downward, but there was only pitch blackness below. Clearly, falling was a bad idea.
I closed the door.
“Not too bad,” Patrick noted. “I think I could maintain four levitation spells at this point. We could probably skip the vines entirely.”
“And Corin’s got ‘is ring.” Mara looked thoughtful. “We want to try this one?”
I shook my head. “Let’s check the last one first. I have a feeling there’s going to be a trick in there.”
We headed to the red door and pulled it open.
The room ahead was circular, with doors on the left and right sides.
The floor was grass and dirt, rather than stone. The more concerning part, however, were the knee-high mushrooms that stuck out in dozens of places. There were probably at least thirty of them.
“Mushrooms?” Marissa asked. “That’s the challenge?”
She had to say something.
All at once, the mushrooms began to rip themselves free from the ground. They sprouted tiny, spongy arms and legs and charged.
Marissa lowered herself into a combat stance, but they never got that close.
Instead, the hoard of mushroom creatures stopped a dozen feet away and opened fang-filled mouths, ejecting clouds of some kind of mist.
Or, more likely, toxic spores.
I tried to slam the door shut.
Obviously, it couldn’t be that simple.
As soon as the door closed, it disintegrated, leaving no barrier between us and the clouds of spores.
Patrick reacted quickly, pushing his hand forward. A gust of wind blasted outward, pushing back the mist.
“Don’t get close or breathe that in!” Sheridan instructed. “You do not want to see what happens.”
I drew Selys-Lyann and slashed in mid-air, launching a shockwave of ice and freezing a pair of them solid.
Marissa punched at the air, sending out a shockwave of her own and blasting several of the mushrooms back.
But there were dozens. Patrick maintained the gust of wind, but the mushrooms were pressing through it.
Sheridan pointed at the floor. Spears of bone erupted from the ground, piercing through the lead wave of mushrooms and stopping the charge.
That gave Patrick a moment to point with his other hand and hurl a tiny, compact sphere of flame.
He stopped the wind for just a moment, then when the sphere of flame was near the mushrooms, he activated the wind again.
The moment the wind made contact with the sphere, it detonated, annihilating nearly every remaining mushroom.
Patrick stepped forward, blasting the smoke from the explosion clear with another concentrated burst of wind, then clearing the remaining mushrooms with more blasts of fire and lightning.
“Wow.” Marissa nudged Patrick. “Not bad.”
Patrick blushed. “Wide area spells are sort of what I’m made for.”
“Still, Mara’s right. You were quick to counter those spores. That could have gone a lot worse.” I pointed toward the room. “I guess we’ve pretty much cleared this one out. May as well go inside and check the doors?”
Patrick spent a few more moments using wind to send the remaining spores as far from us as possible, then created bubbles of air around us just in case. I hadn’t realized he had that degree of control of air magic. It was pretty impressive.
The south door had a white gem, which was intriguing, but it was locked. “White means, what, a safe room?”
Sheridan nodded. “Yeah. We definitely want to get back here if we can. It’s strange to have one so close to where we started. You usually have to go through about six rooms to get to a safer room. There are shortcuts, but right next to the entrance is…odd.”
“Can we break it open?” Marissa asked.
Sheridan shook their head. “Not a good idea. Spire guardians often show up if you start breaking things, and I don’t know if we can handle one.”
“Other door, then.” I pointed across the room. Another red gem. “Hopefully the key is over that way.”
We headed to the other door and opened it.
The next room was another long hallway, much like the one with the vines, but wrought from solid stone. It was wide enough to walk two abreast, but just barely.
The floor was dirt and grass, though, and I could see some roots protruding from the floor.
“Anyone see any obvious traps?” I asked.
“Nothing.” Patrick frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“Better than the vines,” Mara offered. “I bet those were going to reach down and try to eat us or somethin’.”
She was probably right. I turned to Sheridan. “Preference on this room or the vines?”
“It’s generally safer to continue down the same path unless you have a good reason to go back. Every door leads you one step closer to an exit.”
“On it is, then.” I turned toward Patrick. “Be ready to levitate us if the floor is dangerous?”
“You got it.”
We pressed on into the next room.
The distinct lack of immediate death traps made me nervous.
Maybe it’s just a hallway?
That was too optimistic, of course. I never believed it.
We reached the door on the opposite side of the hall. There weren’t any obvious traps on it, but we didn’t have someone like Vera with us who could check with any degree of reliability.
I turned the door knob and opened it.
There was a solid stone wall on the other side.
The door we’d entered the room from slammed shut. That was a little startling, but not particularly worrisome in itself.
There was a grinding noise as the walls of the hallway began to move closer together.
Then the roots below us began to slither upward, latching onto our legs.
After a series of expletives from everyone, Patrick and I drew our swords and began to hack away at the vines. Marissa lashed out with a blade aura from her injured hand.
Sheridan focused on the walls, turning to the left and dragging a hand slowly upward. Spears of bone blasted from the ground on both sides of the hall.
For a moment, the walls slowed their progress inward, but the bone spears were already beginning to creak.
Sheridan gestured, conjuring more bone spears to replace the ones that were being crushed. “Can’t keep this up forever. Need an exit.”
“Check the walls,” I instructed the others. “There will probably be a hollow spot somewhere.”
Mara finished cutting herself free and leapt to the door I’d just opened, slamming her good fist into the stone. It cracked, but didn’t break.
Not hollow, then. And probably not the right path.
She winced and swung around to begin working on other walls.
Patrick and I focused on vines, trying to keep us from getting entangled. Sheridan’s efforts were entirely on slowing down the creeping walls.
I guessed we had a minute or two before we were crushed. I’d try to activate my circlet and teleport us out before that happened, but I couldn’t guarantee teleportation would work in this room.
Marissa continued to leap from place to place, pounding on walls without finding any weak points.
“Up!” Sheridan yelled.
It took me a moment to see it, even with Sheridan’s prompting — a section of the ceiling that had just a slight outline around it.
Marissa saw it, though. She ducked, channeling energy around her good hand.
“Dragon ascends to sky!”
She jumped higher than I’d thought possible, swinging her fist upward, and smashed straight through the ceiling into the next room.
The rest of us ran to the spot where she’d jumped.
She reached down with a hand. “Safe!”
I jumped. Marissa caught my hand and pulled me through.
We helped the other two up a few moments later.
The room below us lasted longer than I expected. It took another solid minute before the walls had completely closed, pulverizing anything that was still inside.
Still, we were all breathing heavily while we took in our new surroundings.
This chamber was much smaller, maybe ten feet in each direction. It looked like we were inside a house now, or maybe a school building.
There was a table in the center of the chamber, not far from where we’d emerged through the floor. It contained an open book, a single piece of parchment next to the book, and several pieces of alchemical equipment. Burners, distillation devices, that sort of thing.
Next to those was an hourglass, slowly draining sand from top to bottom. It looked like it had just started the moment we’d entered the room.
The single door to exit the room was directly in front of us. The gem in the door was colorless. It had an obvious slot for a key next to the handle.
The left wall had a shelf with dozens of labeled jars and vials. Alchemical ingredients. Shadeleaf, Lifestrand, that sort of thing.
Along the back wall, there were three large crystalline containers. Each was open on the top, but solid on the other three sides.
Within each of the crystalline containers was a gold-rimmed treasure box.
The far left treasure box was immersed in liquid.
The central one was surrounded by an aura of fire.
And the one on the far right? Lightning crackled within the crystalline container.
Patrick walked over to the table and read the single piece of parchment aloud. “Find the right solution to choose your path.”
I put a hand over my eyes. “Solution…? Ugh, the goddess’ puns are awful.”
Sheridan walked over to the table, flipping through the book. “Alchemical recipes. But reading through all this would take ages.” They turned to me. “Corin, you’re an Enchanter. They teach you alchemy classes, yes?”
I winced. “I sat in on a single class once. Aside from that, I’ve read a couple books on enhancement elixirs, and attended a couple lectures. I know how to distill things. Nothing advanced.”
“Better than the rest of us, I suspect.” Sheridan offered me the book. “I learned about which potions to use to treat specific conditions, but not how to make them.”
I scanned over the page the book had already been open to. With luck, it would be relevant.