Malcolm looked around again, “A lot has changed, so not sure I know.”
“That and the Structure or someone is using insider knowledge against us, so I wouldn’t rely on it too much.” Valgrin added. Hope Malcolm can handle this, seems to be fine.
“True,” Malcolm pointed at his friend. “The original room was coded for the dial to record a series in fifteen minute blocks. Starting with twelve and ending on one-fifteen.” He walked to the orange dial as he spoke. “This would be the ending dial, the yellow one is the starting dial. I had all type of clues in the dungeon. Fractions that indicated a quarter, time entries in journals were always one of the six accepted times. Clocks working and not working that were always one of the accepted times. Each time someone would check the time on a clock it would advance to the next quarter-hour, restarting at twelve once it hit one-fifteen. All that to say, not sure how this translates now.”
“Any reason it looks like an empty aquarium.” Valgrin let a handful of pink gravel fall out of his hand.
“‘Cuz it is. My attempt at giving clues what they might be dealing with for failure.” Malcolm pointed up, “This is one big aquarium and not all the fishes will be happy to see you. At least they weren’t.”
“Need to work on the solution, I’m sure we’re on a timer.” Ylnah tried to redirect Valgrin and Malcolm.
“Good point. Malcolm, there is a timer involved, right?” Valgrin turned to his friend.
“Timer,” Malcolm stood over the dials, studying them as he spoke. “Every wrong guess would reduce the time to the next event.”
“So not quarter-hours, one-sixths? Six dials, ten minute chunks.” Izzy offered.
“I don’t have anything else.” Malcolm looked up, “Anyone?”
Valgrin shook his head and kept examining the plastic tree and gravel, hoping there was some little clue that would point him in the right direction.
“So, if we start with the yellow one. Move that to the twelve posit…”
A tinny voice filled the air, “You have fifteen minutes until the next event.”
Valgrin jogged a few steps to get to the center section with the dials. “Sounds like time to get serious. And I have nothing else. If you start with the twelve and do increments of ten, that won’t close out the hour. We’ll stop at ten til.”
“Lets do that to start. I’ll grab this column you grab the other. Ten, thirty, and fifty on your side.” Malcolm bent down and started turning his dials.
Valgrin huffed, then bent down and started turning the dials in his column. Both finished a few seconds apart.
“Error. Time penalty.”
“You could tell us what the penalty is.” Valgrin called after the voice stopped. No answer.
Ylnah scuffed her foot against the gravel, “This could get ugly.”
“Aye, lets reverse it. Valgrin your orange dial starts at twelve and do the ten thing just like we did.” Malcolm was working on adjusting his dial before he finished.
Valgrin looked over at Malcolm, “Is there some button we push to say we’re done changing dials?”
Shaking his head, Malcolm replied, “I didn’t design one. Don’t see one eith…”
“Done?” The tinny voice asked.
“Yes.” Malcolm answered.
“Error. Time penalty. Also save time by declaring yourselves done instead of making me ask.”
“Wait a minute. We were given no rules. We said we were done.” Valgrin gave up when he realized the voice wouldn’t answer.
“Going to go with my original ans…”
“Event begins.” A whirring noise underneath the group accompanied the disembodied voice.
Malcolm slammed his palm against the nearest dial. "Dammit! Can’t finish a…" He cut himself off this time, darting to the next dial with sweat beading at his temples. His fingers trembled slightly as he twisted each one to match the quarter-hour pattern, the mechanical clanks and whirs drowning out his muttered calculations.
Izzy shifted her weight from one foot to the other, glancing down as cold water seeped through her boots. "We've got water in the yellow zone," she called, her voice steady but eyes widening as she watched the liquid close to reaching her ankles. "Rising pretty fast too."
“Dials done.” Malcolm shouted to the room.
“Error. Time penalty.” Valgrin was sure there was a little sarcasm to the tinny voice this time.
The water swallowed the dials inch by inch. A new sound cut through the room, a slow, mechanical whooshing that seemed to come from everywhere at once. Valgrin's breath caught in his throat as panels along both walls of the oval slid open with an ominous hiss. For one suspended moment, nothing happened. Then darkness spilled out, a writhing mass of gray and black that hit the water with a sickening splash, breaking apart into dozens, then hundreds, then thousands per mass of squirming, undulating shapes just beneath the surface.
“Vampiric leeches! Frargla, this is not good.” Ylnah screamed as she ran toward the center. “This many will drain someone in a few minutes. They don’t do good out of water, only last a few seconds.”
Valgrin's heart hammered against his ribs as sweat beaded cold on his forehead a sense of panic rose in his core. A quick look at the frantic movements of his friends told him he wasn’t alone. What? How? Would that work? He watched as the leeches writhed closer, their gray-black bodies slithering beneath the surface. He called out, “Climb the plastic trees. You’ll have to step through the leeches though, so make it quick and hope they fall off when we get out of the water.”
He snatched Skwilly with trembling fingers and plunged into the churning mass. The water seemed to come alive around his calves, a thousand hungry mouths latching onto his flesh. Each step grew heavier than the last. Finally, with a desperate lunge, he hauled himself into the plastic palm tree, gasping as he frantically tore leeches from his bleeding legs. "The normal ones," he panted, watching a vampire leech drop away, "have to be pulled. Vampires fall off on their own."
“Got the same here.” Ylnah yelled from her side of the oval.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
“Valgrin,” Malcolm shouted from a few yards away. “This plastic an insulator you think?”
“Should be.” Valgrin nodded, then added. “Why?”
“Hey all!.” Malcolm got everyone’s attention. “Stay in the tree and don’t touch the water. Going to see if a little lightning can help us. All clear?”
Valgrin watched as the others gave the all clear, his breath held tight in his chest. Malcolm's hands began to glow, first a faint blue, then brighter until a crackling ball of lightning formed between his palms. With a grunt, he hurled it toward the center of the aquarium. For one terrible moment, nothing happened, then electricity exploded across the water's surface, arcing and snapping in violent blue tendrils. The boiling mass of leeches convulsed in unison, their writhing slowing until, one by one, they floated belly-up to the surface. Valgrin exhaled shakily, grimacing at the grotesque carpet of dead parasites now covering the water like a hideous, mottled blanket.
“Not going to lie, this ain’t going to be fun to walk through.” Valgrin called out as he headed down the plastic tree.
“Event two will begin in less than eight minutes.”
“Thank you.” Valgrin deadpanned.
Ylnah splashed through the knee-high water, over to Malcolm and the dials. “I was thinking, we had two from column one unlocked and one from column two. Should we try something like a two for one column and one for the other.?”
“Didn’t think to count the unlocked.” Malcolm scratched his chin, “Could it be the number of unlocks per column, which would reverse the settings?”
“Pick one and do it.” Izzy’s frustrated voice cut across the distance.
Malcolm looked up with a start, then nodded once and thrust his hands into the water. He paddled and pushed, but the leeches remained inches thick on the water. “Can’t see dial. I can feel it and know when it hits the next notch, but I don’t know the starting position.”
Ylnah and Valgrin waded over to join Malcolm, scooping away the floating carcasses with their hands while Skwilly used his tail to clear a wider path.
"I can see this one now," Malcolm called, twisting the dial until it clicked into place before sloshing through the gruesome soup to the next position. After setting the dials, Malcolm called out to the room. “Done.”
“Error. Time Penalty. Event two begins.”
The familiar whirring started, Valgrin decided the water vibrating just enough to add another layer of ick to the dead leeches.
“Water is rising faster than event one.” Izzy stood waist-deep in leeches.
“That could be a good thing,” Malcolm dove under the water, seconds later he splashed back up. “Yep, can see the dials. Diving under the critters.”
“Event two, phase two.”
A sloshing noise overtook the whirring as jets of water shot out from the sides. Leeches were thrown deeper into the water, their dead bodies churning throughout.
“Thirty five jets on each side,” Ylnah let everyone know. “If I counted correctly, that is.”
“Filling up fast and the water is getting colder.” Izzy added.
On cue the portals opened up above the jets and hundreds of pounds of crushed ice plopped out of each one. The jets pushing the ice to the middle, swirling it. Within minutes the ice stopped melting and the water levels rose quicker as the ice dropped.
“Climb on the trees, again.” Shouted Malcolm, through chattering teeth. “May not last but only thing I see.”
Valgrin stayed in the water, “I’ll try to warm it up a little. Get a chance to reuse Melt Ice.”
He concentrated on the spell he'd used at the fountain. A headache bloomed between his eyes as the form teased his consciousness, fleeing whenever he got close. He pulled at the magic in the water; it responded with grudging slowness. Each tendril of power felt like sandpaper scraping his mind raw. The orange and blue energies ebbed and flowed, slippery as eels. With a desperate mental lurch, he drew in a massive surge of magical energy. It flooded him like a broken dam—hot, cold, chaotic. He converted what he could and spun it outward. The water warmed by degrees, ice beginning to surrender. But the spiraling energy didn't dissipate, it grew, feeding on itself. Valgrin's skull became a pressure cooker. Blood streamed from his nose, then something wet and warm from his ears. His vision narrowed to tunnels of pulsing orange and blue.
<
The magic was no longer his to command—it commanded him, expanding inside his body like a bomb about to detonate. Another snap in his brain sent the world wobbling. He had enough thought to control his fall backwards, allowing him to float on his back as the energy continued to assault him. His body filled beyond capacity, something had to give.
<
Valgrin clawed at the magic with his mind, his consciousness fraying at the edges as the power surged higher. Stop! His mental command shattered against the roaring tide. The energy doubled, then tripled, filling every cell with molten pressure. His teeth ground together as blue-orange spirals consumed his vision. He desperately imagined a container, anything, to hold this storm. A freezer bag. A box. A vault. But the magic seemed to laugh, splitting his skull from within, transforming his bones to glass rods about to shatter. His body arched backward, muscles seizing as the universe collapsed to a single point of excruciating brilliance behind his eyes. He screamed. Then he screamed some more. His scream stopped when his world turned black.
He heard the splashes, felt the hands grabbing at him. He heard words, but he couldn’t understand them nor respond. He floated, in the water and on the calming magical energy he saw in his mind. Orange flitted with blue, green and purple flowed in and out. He was the aquarium for a moment. Then something that didn’t exist, yellow fur and golden hued claws. The colors continued to flow around him, ribbons of various width surrounding him, bringing him comfort. He pushed the orange out, making room for the others. Something tried to distract him, he ignored it. Then it started to call to him, still he ignored it. Then he felt the warm water around him. Hands slapped at his face. He didn’t want to respond, so he didn’t. Another round of slaps and his ability to ignore reached an end.
Sputtering Valgrin opened his eyes to see a terrified Malcolm, Ylnah, Skwilly, and Izzy all looking down at him. “Thyrin dur coos,” he tried to speak, shocked at the nonsense coming out. “Thyrin durren lerrim bridda.” His eyes widened and he decided to listen.
“You okay?” All of them asked as their concern increased.
“Dronna toor.” Valgrin replied.
“Event three will begin in under six minutes.”
“Shit, I have to go try the next set of numbers.” Malcolm swam off to the dials.
“Izzy, can you do something for him.” Ylnah pointed at Valgrin.
“Thyrin durren, ribbly.” Valgrin said forcibly, trying to will everyone to understand him.
“Missed setting one to the right number. So retrying,” Malcolm yelled. “Done.”
“Error. Time penalty. Event three begins in two minutes.”
“Thyr…prime!” Valgrin shouted as he splashed. “Prime…the number of locks. Prime then not prime, one and twenty after, all three.” He heard Malcolm splash right before blacking out, again.
His eyes fluttered then opened, taking in the light milk chocolate with dark chocolate dots pattern of the hallway wall.
“He’s awake!” Skwilly’s hooves punctuated his statement.
“Worried about you.” Malcolm spoke over the heads of the other.
“Feel ran over.” Valgrin groaned as he sat up against the wall. “But I’m here. Take it you resolved the dials.”
“The one twenty position worked.” Malcolm recounted. “I had done one two, so an easy and quick fix. Got it in before event three.”
Ylnah got his attention, “Any idea what happened to you? The Structure warned us all and it didn’t sound good.”
“Sandy sort of spoke to me while I was out of it. Seems I tapped into the magical source for the room. Seems to be sort of battery sort of memory. I was pulling in magic to undo the ice, tapping into the source caused me to pull in more magic than I could handle. Didn’t know that and once I tried to stop I couldn’t. I found a way to cycle back into the source, which released the magical pressure. Structure says I absorbed way more than I should have. My brains should be floating around that aquarium. It’s not sure how I survived.”
“I speak for all when I say, I’m glad you did.” Izzy said as she hugged Valgrin.
“So, we staying the night out here or what?” Valgrin asked.
“No,” Izzy explained. “That voice we heard in the aquarium room told us we had sixty minutes in the hall before we had to go to the next room. That was about ten or fifteen minutes ago.”
“Ugh. Guess you better help me up so I can make sure I have legs to stand on.”
Malcolm reached down and helped a shaky Valgrin to his feet.