I Forgot What This One Does!
Money!
Moderately Dangerous Traps!
Mystery!
Bigger Monsters!
Literally Nothing!
We had a moment of silence while we all processed the goddess’ terrible sense of humor.
Well, most of us. Patrick snickered a little.
“Aiming for the stairs is obvious, but we’ll also want to figure out which two other ones we want to aim for.” Sheridan noted.
I thought about that. “We could aim for the same spot more than once. Obviously if we miss the stairs on the first time we’ll retry that, but maybe we could trigger the ‘Fabulous Prizes’ one twice?”
Marissa knelt down and began to lift the spheres. She grunted with effort. “These are heavy.” She sat the last one back down. “And they’re not all the same weight.”
The latter part was actually even worse — it meant that the first throw wouldn’t necessarily dictate the behavior of future spheres.
I turned to Sheridan. “Think that timer is for the first sphere, or for all three of them?”
“Always assume the worst.”
“Fair. Okay. We need to get this moving. Patrick, can you levitate one?”
Patrick frowned. “I don’t know. If Mara was struggling with them, probably not. Mara, show me the lightest one?”
She pointed to the one in the center.
“Levitate.”
It floated off the ground just a few inches, then bobbed up and back down. That wasn’t how the spell normally behaved.
Patrick took a breath and focused on the sphere. It hovered upward a few more inches. “I can move it, but barely. Might need someone to give it a shove.”
And that means he probably won’t be able to move the heavier ones at all.
“Put it down a sec.”
Patrick dismissed the spell. The sphere dropped, cracking the stone floor below. “Oops.”
I glanced at the clock. Three minutes left.
I quickly explained my plan, and got a round of agreements.
One and a half minutes.
I drew my sword, then charged toward the gap and took a leap.
Jump.
The blast from my ring hurled me toward the wheel.
Blasts of fire shot out from the side walls. Fortunately, I was ready. I slashed in the air and sent shockwaves in both directions. Ice neutralized fire.
I landed atop the crystalline structure that encased the top of the wheel.
I sheathed my sword.
Patrick levitated the first sphere.
Marissa punched it.
It flew at me faster than expected, but I still managed to step in the way and catch it. The impact carried me back a few steps, but I managed to avoid falling into the abyss below.
Sheridan pointed and a pair of walls of bone appeared within the outer wheel.
I rolled the ball until it was at the edge of the crystal, then waited for the wheel to cycle around and dropped it into the section that Sheridan had walled off. It rolled right down into the “Stairs Up!” slot, because that was the only pathway that hadn’t been blocked.
A glowing doorway appeared in the wall next to the entrance, rather than a literal stairway. It had a symbol of an up arrow above the door, so it was still obvious we’d found our path.
The clock continued ticking down. We had two spheres left.
“Go!” I gestured to the others.
Patrick tried to levitate the next sphere, but it was too heavy, as expected.
As Marissa hefted it upward, Sheridan conjured a bone bridge across the gap.
Slowly, Marissa began to carry it across. Rolling it might have been faster, but it was more likely she’d roll the ball right into a pit that way.
I drew my sword just as Marissa began crossing the bridge. The fire traps activated on the sides of the room again, and Marissa wasn’t in any position to defend herself.
I managed to slash one of the fire blasts out of the air, while Patrick shaped the other flames out of the way.
Ten seconds.
I put my sword away, debating if I should try to jump across and do something with the third sphere.
Sheridan conjured another pair of walls inside the wheel, but Marissa lost her grip with her injured hand and dropped the ball a moment too soon.
It landed in the “Mystery!” slot.
Then all the light in the room was gone, and I was falling.
Marissa and I screamed at the same time.
That was nice. At least we had company while we fell rapidly into a seemingly endless abyss.
After a moment, I realized my falling had slowed down because of the ring.
Marissa had no such advantage. Her screaming told me that she was below me, now.
I needed to think fast in case there was a bottom here to hit.
I reached into my bag. “Retrieve: Lantern.”
The magic lantern appeared in my hand, and I activated it immediately.
We were falling down a cylindrical shaft. I still couldn’t see a bottom, but I could see Marissa below — barely.
I didn’t have much time to think about a perfect solution.
I pulled off the ring of jumping, and I began to fall faster. I kept a tight grip on it with one hand, while holding the lantern in my other.
Marissa was still far below me, but she’d flown toward a side wall and now she was trying to slow herself down by grabbing onto it. It wasn’t working.
I pointed my hand upward and focused, then unleashed a spherical burst of transference mana.
The explosion pushed me down.
Below, I thought I could finally start to see the ground, and Marissa was still edging closer to it rapidly.
The “ground” wasn’t a solid floor, of course. That would have been too simple. It was a green, bubbling liquid.
Almost certainly acid.
Possibly acid that was also on fire.
I pushed more mana out of my hand, blasting myself downward faster and faster.
Until I passed her.
I lost my grip on the lantern. Fortunately, it stayed on, even as it plummeted.
I slipped the ring back on.
My movement slowed as it reactivated. Fortunately, the pressure was evenly distributed throughout my body, and it felt more like an upward gust of wind than anything else.
Marissa crashed into me from above. That part hurt.
For a moment, we flailed ineffectively until we caught hold of each other.
The ring slowed us both. This was good, because I saw the lantern continue to drop past us, and then I heard the splash and fizzle as it hit the liquid.
It was dark again, except for a light far above us.
I couldn’t see the source, but at least it let me orient myself to be sure I was facing up.
“Hold on!”
A fall was almost certainly going to be fatal. I couldn’t let us down gradually and just try to climb after we’d rested.
My circlet was an option now that I was physically in contact with Mara, but I wasn’t going to give up this soon, and I wasn’t sure it would work.
Jump.
That took us upward a bit, but nowhere near enough.
I repeated it three more times before the ring ran out of mana and ceased to work.
But the ring was just using transference mana. Sure, it had special functions to make sure it emitted from below me, but I’d already proven I could guide myself downward with mana.