Liar King (Tower of Babel Book 2) Read online

  Provided he could stomach the losses.

  If only the mercenaries accepted payment in regular Zenni, it wouldn't have been a problem. Silver had happily offered to throw money at the problem but to no avail. The Developer wouldn't allow a cheat that simple.

  Cayden drew a deep breath, reached for the floating window, and declined the offer.

  "We should probably get going before Celia sends a search party," Cayden remarked.

  Silver only laughed. “Cayden, who exactly do you think sent me in the first place?”

  ***

  “So that is the tomb, huh?” Shifty asked as the party waited on a ridgeline overlooking the open field beneath them.

  “Yeah. Why?” Came Cayden's curious reply.

  “Just not what I expected.” The older man said with a shrug.

  Celia looked up from the spellbook in her lap, a bemused look crossing her expression. “What did you expect it to look like?”

  “Something more... I dunno, tombish. I'm not asking a lot here.” He shot back at the sarcasm in Celia's tone. “Sloped roof, statues. Maybe some columns or gargoyles or something?”

  But not a hole in the ground.” Celia teased him.

  “Definitely not a hole in the ground.”

  "Well, they do have statues." Michael pointed out, calling attention to the plains beneath them once again as the enemy forces crested a small depression that had kept them momentarily out of view. "Lots and lots of statues."

  None of them had been quite prepared for their first glimpses of the Wardens. They'd been told the Wardens had been crafted to guard the liar king, but for whatever reason, all of them had envisioned some form of monstrous humanoid, or other inhuman beast. Once Cayden had seen construct traits on the War Frame his imagination had shifted to a more robotic enemy, so even he was unprepared for a literal Terracotta Army out of his grade school history class.

  Nor did things get any better the longer they watched them. There was a certain uncanny valley effect in the way the stone soldiers moved, in large part because they were just that, stone soldiers. Their bodies were rigid in general, but they could still move with a fluidity that seemed all but impossible. Stone shouldn't move under its own power, but if it did, it sure as hell shouldn't move like that.

  "No archers." Silver commented. The mage had bemoaned her lack of divination spells to help her watch the battle for much of the trip. In the end, it had taken a pair of binoculars from Shifty to mollify some, but not all of her complaints. "Few nasty looking spears."

  "Not much we can do about it now," Cayden replied. There was a certain freedom to knowing that the orders were set through to the evening turn. Valserys had remained behind in Bastion to watch the War Frame and adapt their tactics should things go wildly off the rails, but absent that, the die was already cast, and they had only to wait and see if it would be a one, a twenty or something in between.

  Not that the freedom had kept him from trying to experiment and push the envelope on their march to the Sub-Tomb.

  For one thing, he'd learned that his troops could use ranged weapons. Just not well. If he put a crossbow in the hands of a trooper, as he had, the man could be instructed to fire it, even if his accuracy was lacking. Nothing useful in the short term, but if they ended up defending Bastion itself, it would be good to know that his troops could be ordered to throw rocks.

  For another, rules regarding the movement of troops were absolute.

  It had been an easy enough trial. They'd followed along with the First until the unit reached the limit of its movement, then he'd asked one of the soldiers to follow him far enough that they'd have crossed into the following hex.

  At first, the soldier had come up with excuses. He needed to eat or had orders to do this or that. When it became clear that Cayden would not take no for an answer, he became somewhat insubordinate. It had taken three of them to slow-walk the Elan soldier to the edge of the hex, the man becoming more and more averse, to the point they had to carry him the last few steps.

  All of it was nothing more than an attempt by the Developer to keep from impacting the vermilissitude of his game. The moment they reached the hex wall, the soldier could go no further, his body stopped by an invisible field that permitted players, but not soldiers. There would be no circumventing movement rules by way of forced movement, that much was certain.

  “Going well so far.” Silver continued.

  "Which is our cue to get moving," Cayden replied. "Grab your things; I want us in there as soon as our troops clear the hex."

  Staying out of the combat had been a hard decision, but a necessary one. Much like the forced movement, none of them had any idea how their presence would affect the combat power or other facets of the planned battle, and a fight as close as this one was not the proper opportunity for them to test things. Cayden had insisted on going so far as to stay fully outside of the hex itself, lest their very presence throw a wrench into the plan.

  Of course, that also meant they had the better part of a mile to hike before they could even begin exploring the Sub-Tomb. With only a handful of hours before the start of the Warden turn, they were cutting things close, even without the walk.

  “Alright everybody, let's mosey!” Cayden announced.

  A brief pause followed his words, followed by uproarious laughter.

  “Let's mosey?” Shifty snorted between waves of laughter. “Since when are you some banjo playing farmboy.”

  “It's a refere-”

  "Turns out we didn't actually beat Cayden's doppelganger after all." Celia giggled. "Lucky for us its factory setting was '19th-century southern aristocrat."

  "Whelp, time to hit the old dusty trail," Michael added in his best, but still awful, southern accent.

  “Oh for...!” Cayden started, his attention turning to Silver. “You get it, right?”

  Her smile said she did, but the shake of her head denied it all the same. “Oh no, do not bring me into this.”

  Cayden's head sagged in defeat as he summoned his sword to hand and began to march down the slope of the hill. “Fine. Whatever, you uncultured swine. Come on then.”

  The jovial mood of the party darkened as they crossed the open field. The tail end of the battle was still raging, its noise and smells an uncomfortable mixture as they drew near. Babel might be a mostly bloodless game, but it still had sweat, and tears and screams.

  But only from their allies.

  Even on the retreat, the Warden army didn't voice a single cry.

  "There is our opening," Michael remarked as the last of the Warden units began an orderly withdrawal. His forces harried them, but unlike the Beastmen they had picked apart so easily on the retreat, the Warden troops fought fiercely in formation even as they gave ground. He was no military tactician, but even a layman could see that the Warden troops would not be quickly swept aside once defeated.

  Ahead of them, Bastion's soldiers had discarded one form of tool for another, hundreds of them putting shovel to soil, or collecting materials from the small number of supply wagons they had brought with them. This had been part of his strategy as well, the reason the location of that road had proven so fortuitous. It left his units with just enough movement that they could begin to fortify themselves against what he saw as an inevitable counterattack.

  "Half soldier, half construction worker. And people ask me why I never joined up with the army." Shifty marveled.

  Three sets of eyes fell upon the rotund rogue, but it was Celia who took the easy shot. “Really? That is why you didn't join the army?”

  “Why young miss I'll have you know that when I was your age-”

  “Regale us about the big bang some other time Shifty.” Cayden cut in. “You're up.”

  "... this isn't over." Shifty frowned, his steps picking up speed until he was moving at a light jog ahead of the rest of the marching group. The difference meant he reached the entrance to the tomb half a minute before they did, which gave him plenty of time to scour the entrance for
traps.

  As it turned out, he found two. A pressure plate activated what they suspected would be a barrage of poison darts, while a misstep would send them plunging forty feet down into the most traditional trap imaginable.

  "Not exactly the most original defenses," Shifty remarked with a grin as his party members approached, instructing them how to circumvent the pressure sensor, and which side of the tight hallway would send them falling into a pit of spikes vs. which would not.

  "Sometimes the classics work best," Michael replied as he awkwardly shimmied around the edge of the pit trap in armor that was not exactly made for delicate movement.

  “And sometimes they are just really good at instilling a false sense of security.” Cayden cautioned.

  "I'm keeping my eyes open," Shifty assured him as he stepped aside to let Cayden lead the way into the torchlit darkness.

  The outside might not have looked very 'tombish' as Shifty had described it, but the inside certainly did. Every inch of the place looked positively ancient. If a surface was not covered in a small mountain of dust, it was adorned with a frightful amount of spider webs. Trickles of water had formed natural interruptions in the artificial corridors, the various ancient text that adorned the walls worn down to almost nothing by the ravages of time.

  One other thing it had in common was that it was eerily empty, and frighteningly quiet. Considering the mass of Warden soldiers guarding the entrance, they had planned on considerable resistance, yet they'd found none. There were Terracotta soldiers inside, dozens, perhaps hundreds more that filled alcoves and lay across sealed caskets, but they were either ornamental or inactive.

  It was also tighter than they'd expected. The walls were close enough to one another that Shifty and Cayden had to turn at an angle to fit through the narrowest parts of the passages, while poor Michael was forced to stoop and bow almost constantly.

  There were runes here or there, highlighted by Cayden's occasional use of Find Rune, but they'd have to wait. What had looked like little more than a hovel from the surface was expansive beneath, with branching passageways that sloped up and down seemingly at random, as though the tomb itself were designed to confound those searching it, which he supposed it was.

  “This is going to take a while.” Silver said as they reached their third intersection.

  “Maybe we should split the...” Celia started, only to trail off as the absurdity behind her own words struck her.

  "You were going to say 'split the party,' weren't you." Michael teased.

  "No." She replied unconvincingly. "Even still, it might not be the worst idea. We're stuck going single file anyways, so it isn't like-"

  "What is the number one rule of tabletop gaming," Michael asked.

  "This isn't-" Celia cut herself off with a frown as Michael's body language shifted. "It's 'don't split the party,' but that doesn't necessarily apply here."

  “I thought the number one rule was 'Thou shalt not lose caster levels.'” Silver smirked.

  "She's right," Cayden said.

  "Thank you, Cayden." Silver smiled sweetly. "I remember because the second was 'Thou shalt not lose caster levels. Verily this rule is unto like the first, but is of such import-;"

  “I meant Celia.” He snorted. “This place is way too huge for us to be able to find anything before it rolls over to the Warden's turn.”

  Silver's face darkened. “So we let the Elan take a bit of a bigger hit and make sure we do this properly.”

  A pause hung in the air before Shifty spoke. “What would we do for party splits?”

  “You can't really be considering-”

  "Celia would go with me, and you three could go together," Cayden said. "Michael can tank decently against anything we expect to find, and the two of you do so much damage that he won't have to do so for long."

  To Cayden's surprise, Michael nodded at the suggestion. “All the Wardens outside were at or around level ten. We can handle that, and we can retreat if we stumble on anything bigger.”

  “Works for me.” Celia nodded.

  “I'm being outvoted again, aren't I?” Silver asked icily.

  “You're the one who wanted to tag along in the first place.” Cayden reminded her.

  “To keep you from doing anything stupid.” She scowled. “Can we at least try and keep close to one another?”

  “Yeah. That we can manage.”

  ***

  They managed it for all of fifteen minutes.

  The convoluted nature of the tomb had made any attempt at keeping one group close to the other an exercise in frustration. Even attempts to run parallel to one another through the series of right angle passageways were frustrated by subtle changes in depth that left one party passing under the other rather than meeting up as expected.

  A running map was kept, of course, which meant they were only separated from one another in a practical sense, too far away to help in a hurry if something were to go wrong. Neither group was truly lost, not with mapping software that would supply helpful directions to either the exit or to their companions at a moment's notice.

  "At the next stack of dubiously humanoid bones, turn left," Cayden muttered.

  "What?" Celia said, her steps picking up slightly as she realized she was lingering too far behind him.

  "Nothing." He assured her, a smile cast over his shoulder. "Just being smarmy."

  "What else is new?" The girl inquired.

  "Hey, I resemble that-" Cayden paused mid-sentence as the scrape of a stone footstep alerted him to danger ahead.

  The two of them waited together in silence, but they didn't have to wait long.

  Just ahead of them, a Warden rounded the corner with shortsword in hand. Its face was stern, but it was an unmoving expression, one crafted onto its very features.

  The more he watched it, the more difficult it became to shake the discomfort that washed over Cayden. It was his first time seeing one of the stone men up close, and he didn't like it. The way it moved felt as though it were violating the very laws of nature, like watching the skeletons from Jason and the Argonauts. The movements were wrong, not quite choppy but not fluid either. Stone moved in a way it was not meant to move, then solidified with each step, as if the statue were being crafted and recreated with each movement.

  Only one thing stood out from the drab, cracked stone warrior, and that was the steel in its hands. The blade of the shortsword was metal, steel that gleamed in the fire lit hallway as the warrior advanced.

  "At least we're probably going the right way," Cayden remarked wryly.

  If Celia gave any reply to his quip, it was smothered by the clatter of body against shield as the stone man picked up speed, the crunch of its footsteps resounding down the short distance between them as fast as the warrior himself. For a man made of stone, the Terracotta warrior was fast.

  Warden Soldier hits you for 92 Physical (Blocked)

  He hit hard as well. Too hard for a mere level ten. "Skill Use: Observe."

  Warden Skirmisher

  Level 12(Elite)

  HP: 1800/1800

  MP: 0/0

  TP: 1150/1150

  Skills: Unknown

  Resistances: Earth 50%

  Weaknesses: Water 100%

  Special: Construct Traits

  An elite, that explained it. Elite monsters were one step removed from boss monsters, a Starscream to the more frightful Megatron. At equal levels and numbers, they posed a substantial, but not necessarily life-threatening concern. When they were outleveled and outnumbered, not so much.

  Cayden grunted as he pushed back with his shield, shoving the Warden soldier back far enough to open distance to attack. "Skill Use: Southern Cross."

  A sensation of warmth flooded his limbs as he felt the usual loss of control take hold, bringing him through the motions of the skill and inflicting significant damage to the stone soldier in a quick one-two of downward and horizontal strikes.

  “Pain of the past, return to the present! Old wounds!” C
elia incanted only a few steps behind him. A glow of light accompanied the words, a small ring of magical energy pulsing from beneath the Chronomagi's feet as she directed her arcane energies at the already stumbling Warden. The effect was immediate, a half dozen new cracks appearing in their opponent's stone facade.

  Cayden knew they didn't need healing for a fight like this, and it was always satisfying to work alongside a party member who was smart enough to make the same sort of deductions.

  "For once, it might be nice if the right way didn't involve things that wanted to kill us," Celia replied, at last, a brief sigh falling from her lips as she started to cast a new spell.

  In the end, they made incredibly short work of the Warden. Elite or no, a level 12 enemy wasn't going to stand up to players of their caliber for long.

  "Crazy suggestion. What do you think about going this way?" Celia said, indicating the right-hand corridor that the Warden had come from.

  "You had me at crazy suggestion," Cayden replied to a giggle from Celia.

  The passage ahead of them sloped down, and unlike most of those they'd come across so far, there didn't appear to be any offshoots. It ran straight for a distance, then curved sharply for a few dozen feet, before going straight once again. After the third such curve, the design became clear, a corkscrew pattern leading them deeper and deeper into the depths of the dungeon.

  "Guys. I think I've we've got something here." Cayden said after toggling the party chat feature on his display. Then, after a few seconds without a reply, he repeated. "Silver? Shifty? Celia can you-"

  The girl held up a finger in reply, apparently already on it. "Helloooo? Shifty, you there?" A few seconds passed, before she turned her attention fully in Cayden's direction, shrugging with a combination of confusion and worry. "Maybe we're too deep?"

  "It isn't like these things use Cell towers," Cayden said dubiously. Even so, he was struggling for a better answer. To his knowledge, there was no skill, monster or environment in all of Babel, save for the chamber of an unbeaten floor boss, that should disable voice comms. Party chat was so secure that they hadn't even bothered to test it before splitting up. "Maybe something in the area though? Let's go back up."