My own dueling canes had always been purely runic; the trigger mechanisms based on touching a rune and the application of focused thought. I was not an attuned — I had no magical abilities of my own — but anyone could use a dueling cane with sufficient practice. And I had practiced. And practiced.
A runic weapon like this would tear mana from the inside of the wielder’s body, using it to power a blast of energy if the cane was in its default state, or to charge the blade with energy if the weapon had been deployed. Duelists learned to quickly switch between states to use the melee and ranged functions. A single blast from a cane was often enough to incapacitate an unarmored target. Thus, dueling vests were used.
I took the dueling vest, too, and slipped it on. I replaced both the weapon and armor with coins.
Having already taken three items, I couldn’t resist taking a little bit more, even knowing the ever-growing risk.
I took the book and the scroll, again replacing them with coins. I really hoped the goddess liked coins.
The dueling cane’s mechanical parts bothered me. It was an unusual design, foreign. I flipped the switch on the back, and it deployed a blade as I expected. I had to push the switch back in and pull it down to get the blade to retract, which was an annoyance. It was most likely spring-loaded.
Well, I’d adapt.
The weapon had a small clip on the bottom designed to attach to clothing, which I used to secure it on my belt. I’d draw the cane the instant I sensed any chance of combat.
I flipped open the book. It appeared to be blank. A puzzle? I’d worry about it later. I put the book away.
I broke the seal on the scroll next, unrolling it.
On the positive side of things, this had writing on it.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t in a language I could read. Valdaric, maybe? I wasn’t a linguistics expert. I rolled it up and shoved it in my pack, mildly irritated.
I briefly considered whether or not the quill was meant to be used in conjunction with the blank book.
I had no way of knowing, really.
One quill exchanged for one coin.
A good deal for the goddess, as far as I was concerned. Maybe this whole tower thing was just an excuse to rob seventeen-year-olds of their hard-earned savings.
I doubted it, but who could know for sure?
I approached the blue door first. Blue was a nice, safe, tranquil color. It also was generally assumed to be associated with mental traits, and I figured I had the best chance of surviving mental puzzles.
I touched the gem. The door rumbled, sliding down into a depression in the ground.
The next room was square shaped, and in the midst of it, a smaller square, divided into a grid. There were three doors on the opposite side of the room, each with a different color of gem. Purple, green, and — um — maybe indigo?
Each of the grid squares near the center had a color-coded tile, and each tile had a foreign symbol within.
I really hate color coded tile puzzles.
I’d read a lot about this style of puzzle, and even tried a few practice ones. I was terrible at them.
I stepped away from the door, shaking my head. It closed without any further interaction my part.
I walked over to the red door and opened it.
It showed a long, narrow hallway, wide enough for two people to walk abreast. I could see the door on the opposite end, but just barely.
In the middle of the path, however, was a monster.
The world’s most adorable monster.
It looked like a big house cat, with gray and white stripes, sitting with its front paws raised. It had three long, bunny-like ears and a trailing rat-like tail. It tilted its head to the side as it saw me, giving me a quizzical expression.
It was too cute to die.
I stepped away from the door, chuckling to myself.
It’s possible I am the world’s worst adventurer.
One door left.
The red door slid shut as I headed to the yellow and touched the final gem.
The last room was square, about twenty feet across. The same size as the first one I had opened.
This one was divided into smaller squares too, but in a very different way.
A solid third of the squares were missing. From my vantage point in the doorway, I could see nothing below the gaps in the floor but darkness. I assumed, to be safe, that it would be certain death if I fell in one of those holes.
Directly across from me, blocking one of the room’s three exit doors, was a mirror. It was taller than I was and nearly twice as wide.
This seemed like the most appealing option. Visible pit traps didn’t worry me anywhere near as much as stepping on the wrong tile in some kind of color puzzle.
I didn’t step into the yellow room. Not immediately.
First, I needed to map those squares.
The left and right half of the room were almost symmetrical. Not quite, but it took some observation to spot the differences in the paths. Two paths led to two doors on opposite ends of the room.
The third door had only a single square of floor in front of it, with no solid path to it. I’d have to jump, or otherwise problem-solve, to make it to that one.
The doors were, of course, also color coded. The green door was the isolated one, on my left. Orange was on my right. Gold in the center. Two were clearly combinations of the colors from the first room, and I had seen green as an option in the room with the colored squares… Would both green doors lead to the same place? I wasn’t sure.
And it wasn’t easily testable, since I knew there was a good chance the door I used to enter this chamber was going to vanish the moment I walked in. The goddess disapproved of backtracking, apparently.
The room seemed too simple at a glance; the mirror probably had some kind of function that wasn’t obvious from a distance. Maybe some of the tiles were illusory, and some of the “gaps” were actually solid, and I’d have to look in the mirror to see the true path. That seemed like a valid puzzle, and it scared me a lot less than the colored tiles.
It scared me more than the cat-rat-bunny, but I really wanted to avoid killing something without cause.
I scanned the room for anything I might tie my rope for a lifeline if I fell. No handrails, no obvious protrusions from the floor. Just squares, some empty, some apparently safe. And the mirror, of course.
I had brought a lot of rope. Nearly fifty feet, coiled up, high quality. The tower was notorious for having pits, many of which would be fatal.
I tied one end of the rope around my waist with a climbing knot. I prepped the other side of the rope as a crude lasso, took a deep breath, and stepped inside.
As I expected, there was no exit when I turned around.
I did not, however, expect the shadowy simulacrum of myself that appeared in front of the mirror.
Oh, resh. That’s bad.
I raised my rope, preparing to throw it at the mirror.
The duplicate copied my motions exactly, holding an identical rope.
Ah, the “killer shadow that mirrors what I do” puzzle. A classic.
I slid my foot forward, not taking a full step in case the ground in front of me was illusory. Fortunately, the next square proved as solid as it appeared.
The shadow creature mirrored my movement.
I waved.
It waved.