The House of Mirages

It took me longer than it should have to figure out that the writing was notes on spellcraft. These were written by an unnamed student in a school that the Tower translated as House Alsarab, but there was a strange cadence to the translation. Later events would indicate that the Tower didn't want to give the game away by giving us the full translation to us in the first room we landed in.

The reason it took me so long to understand that the writing was about a theory of magic was that it made no sense at all to my own understanding of arcane theory. It spoke of transfer of aether through mind constructs towards the heart-valve and a chant to entice the spirits of the land. I suppose it could be argued that this too fit the visualization-expression process of the standard casting procedure as I understood it, but since the tablet must have been created by the Tower, or else teleported from somewhere in the multiverse, I didn't see why it would be so far removed from the much simpler magic of my experience.

"I guess this is supposed to be a magic school," I said. "What, like-" Elijah said. "That which must not be named, yes," I said. "The whole Tower is kind of a magic school," Mr. Xiang said. "No, it's like a hero school, with many different powers, magic is just one thing we learn," Mrs. Xiang said. "Yes, dear," Mr. Xiang said, reflexively. "Is it of any use to you wizard types?" Kristen said. "No idea. It seems unnecessarily complex. I've already cast a spell on you here, remember, so it's not that we have to abide by a different casting procedure here," I said. "It must be some sort of a clue, no?" Mrs. Xiang said. "Probably, or it might just have been in the pocket of someone who got pulled from their homeworld to here, and be completely useless," I said. "Well, that would still tell us that there were other people brought from other places here," Elijah said. "And that they already had a magical theory before coming here," Mrs. Xiang said. "Point taken, it is a clue one way or another, but either way we do not know what it means without exploring further," I said.

I made a note in the Journal chat that we were moving on to explore other rooms of our new halls. Clarence had landed in a high tech, low life cyberschool of some sort, and Hannah was preparing her team to go through. She was taking the badly injured, traumatized woman with her, so Zack was going too, to give them all the best chance to survive. With my new mental skills I did the math in my head without consciously thinking about it- indeed, I'd avoided consciously thinking about it- and knew that even if each of the core party took four people with them, there weren't enough of us to cover the whole Guild. I just hoped there were enough competent people outside of the core to survive.

On the other hand, I really should be focused on our own survival. To which end, we determined a quick marching order with Mr. Xiang and Elijah in front, Mrs. Xiang and Kristen in the middle, me in the rear. Elijah had insisted to be in the lead, and, well, if he actually had a defensive class he would have to learn it sooner or later, or else die.

At first the second room looked identical to the first, with the exception of a distinct sand dune on the near side of the room. As we entered, an unfelt gust of wind blew the sand away and revealed the dessicated body that must have been ten feet tall when alive, and even nearly completely mummified it was larger than any of us. The proportions of the bones looked more or less right to my untrained eye. Perhaps the head was a little smaller.

As we stepped closer to investigate, the air was split by the cawing of hundreds of crows, which appeared as if from nowhere, flocking towards the fallen body. There were more of them than I could count, and they were of the fully black sub species native to central Europe and brought over to the continental United States. I raised my staff, ready to cast spells at the intruders, but they flew over our heads landing on the body and beginning to pick at the dessicated flesh. Their wings flapped and they cawed, and when we came closer they hopped and flew at our hands and faces, so as to keep us away from their prize.

"Um, does this feel like a metaphor to anybody else?" Elijah said. "For what? A book that's never coming out?" I said. "No, I don't mean like, a specific metaphor. Just, you know, crows, picking clean a corpse of a giant. I mean, I don't know, I'm probably just imagining things," he said. "Mmyeah, maybe. On the other hand, I've heard over and over again that there is meant to be a narrative to the Tower. Metaphors would fit right in," I said.

The crows were now swarming the body of the giant, flocking and guarding their food with displays of beak and bravado.

"Well, if it is a metaphor should we watch it to the end?" Kristen said. "Be ready for anything," Mrs. Xiang said. "Yeah, weapons ready," I said.

Everyone followed my orders immediately, which kind of made me uncomfortable, but whatever. The crows swarmed the body plucking out giant jerky and cawing as they ate, and after less than five minutes they had picked the body clean to the bone. They then flapped over to the fountain and started drinking. The removed flesh revealed a spear that the giant had been laying on, made of some brownish metal, probably bronze, the size of a railroad track.

"I'll go over, see if I can find any more clues," I said, nobody verbalized an answer, so I took a step onto the sand floor. With a groan out of nowhere and a clacking and a creak the skeleton came alive, raising up from the sand, which flowed in rivulets down the bones of the skeletal body. What was more, unlike the skeletons or zombies I'd seen in the original Tower, this one rose with black smoke and steam hissing off into the bright light, and blue-black pinprick lights bursting out of its eye-holes.

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The giant skeleton moved with a puppet-like limpness, but speed and precision of a master puppet master. I fell back into the sand, and just barely avoided its wide swings, as it picked up the massive spear. Once again it moved lightning quick and I only had the time to think, not say the incantation for shield. So it was a good thing that that was how the ability that reduced the number of syllables in my spells worked, because the spear clanged off the invisible saucer of force, giving me a second to scuttle back, even as Mr. Xiang stood in front of me. After a second, Elijah joined him, and we had our front liners in the front line. Kristen was asking which bomb to use, but since I didn't know what bombs she had available I didn't spend time answering.

Instead I stood next to Mrs. Xiang, who had taken out my old spellbook and was now looking through it, looking for a spell to use.

"You go icicle, I'll go grease-fire," I said. "Won't it cancel out?" she said. "One of the things will probably work," I said.

I raised my voice in incantation, and looked over to the two men struggling with the giant skeleton. Mr. Xiang was dancing and rolling far more acrobatically than a man his age should be able to, while Elijah was holding out his hand in a warding gesture, a slight ethereal sheen coming off in cone shape from his hand. The kid looked terrified, but hadn't broken yet.

Finally, the monster pushed past Mr. Xiang by throwing him to the ground and moved behind the still-frozen Elijah and I flinched as I saw his death coming in front of my eyes. Then, Mr. Xiang made a swift shape with his hand, and said a word- it didn't seem like an incantation, but it activated a special ability. Dust and smoke surrounded the fighters, and when it cleared a moment later, he stood where Elijah had stood, ready to dodge and counter the incoming attacks.

I finished my incantation, and the skeleton was first soaked in oil, then lit on fire, then hit by Mrs. Xiang's basic, un-modified icicle spell.

The skeleton gave no reaction to the spells, but was now on fire.

"Shit, I forgot, the basic icicle is sort of useless. Try blocking strikes with the shield when it attacks the boys," I said. "My husband is no boy, he's a big strong man," she said, and I couldn't suppress a chuckle.

The man and the boy- I couldn't think of eighteen year old Elijah as a man- were doing worse now that the skeleton was engulfed in flame that didn't seem to slow it down at all. Elijah's face was screwed up in a visage of fear, while Mr. Xiang managed to dodge the physical blows, the fire was catching both on his clothes and hair, which he had to take focus to put out.

"Kristen, anything to put out the fire?" I said. "Uh-, Oh!" she said, and I heard it as uh-oh! And looked behind me, though there was nothing to see there.

When I looked back I saw some sort of dense foam spreading out from the ground near the skeleton, hissing as it put out the fire on the feet and legs of the enemy. The sort of roiling, bubbling mass of bubbles and foam looked like dishwashing liquid put in a jacuzzi, that is to say, it rose more quickly than you would think, and higher than you would expect, but ultimately it neither captured nor fully put out the ten foot tall skeleton. It did pause, and that gave Mr. Xiang at least the chance to lunge out with his spear.

He was extremely precise, going through the ribcage and hitting the skeleton right in the spine. Indeed, the spear crushed the segment it hit into splinters and went through all the way. Unfortunately that did not seem to stop the skeleton either. While there were only strands of dead nerve and shards of bone holding the spine together, the skeleton seemed to have lost none of its resilience or range of motion.

This, unfortunately, meant that Mr. Xiang was now overextended, with his back directly underneath the skeleton, who twirled its spear around and stabbed down in a fatal motion. I heard Mrs. Xiang shout the incantation for the shield spell, and the spear stopped an inch before hitting Mr. Xiang. The skeleton, unperturbed kicked out and threw Mr. Xiang across the room and onto the sandy floor with a heavy thud.

But I was already in the middle of casting more spells. The fire having proved useless, I cast the same icicle spell that Mrs. Xiang had, but with my higher Arcana attribute and the modified icicle spell I could do a lot more damage. Instead of going for my usual, dense, sharp-edged shards of ice, I instead elected to throw blocks of ice on top of the skeleton. They fell at terminal velocity, one from a pseudo-portal above the skeleton's head, and a second later, two more at the same speed came from its front and back. A series of cracks shattered the skeleton into a thousand pieces.

I let out a breath of relief and rushed to Mr. Xiang's side. I was half-way there when I heard Elijah call my name in a weak, frightened voice, and as I turned, I saw that the skeleton was not defeated. I mean, I couldn't exactly call it a skeleton anymore, for it was now a whirling bone tornado. Except that wasn't right. The bone shards were moving in a cyclone, but they weren't spinning at high wind speeds, instead moving erratically by some sort of a telekinetic force. I only had seconds to think what the fuck, before the shards stopped moving in a leisurely, vaguely circular pattern, and instead darted out as flensing blades, moving too quickly to block, and seconds later I had inch-deep cuts on my face and forearms.

"To me, quickly!" I shouted, and the two women started moving towards me to Mr. Xiang's stunned body. He was moving weakly, but was entirely unprotected against the attacks of this living storm of bones. Elijah, however, was frozen in fear. For fuck's sake. I started to move back to pull him over, but saw that the strange shield ability seemed to be functional. At the very least it deflected the most direct strikes, which would have to be good enough.

As soon as we stood over Mr. Xiang, I threw up an invisible barrier in a sort of low dome formation.

"Mrs. Xiang, I'll need your help," I said. "Daniel!" Mrs. Xiang said. "He'll be fine if we live through this. We need you," I said.

She took deep breaths and calmed herself. Nobody who had survived the Tower for two days collapsed from stress. Well, perhaps except for Elijah. And the lady who'd lost her arm. Probably a bunch of other members of the Guild. What mattered was that Mrs. Xiang didn't collapse or freeze, but got a cold, professional look on her face, and said:

"Alex, what do you need me to do?"

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