Cleo stood breathlessly in a bizarre abyss. The place was like an Escher painting that had been torn into pieces and scattered in every direction. There were stairs leading nowhere, doors that connected to themselves and odd windows that looked into parallel universes. It hurt her head to think about the area too much, it obviously was not meant for normal minds to comprehend.
She looked over at her friend on the nearby stairwell and shouted over “It’s okay Winoa! The jump is easy to make, gravity seems to be really odd here”. Her friend looked nervous at the massive gap between the two stable platforms then took a running start and jumped. Her jump through the void was serene and graceful, as if time had slowed down for her. Finally she landed on the edge of the platform, and Cleo grabbed her hand to make sure she did not slip off.
The two of them had become firm friends after they were paired together during the second floor testing room. It turned out that once Winoa had been forced to get over the stigma of Cleo being a fourth child, she discovered they actually got on well. They were as different as oranges and apples, but they were both members of Chaos clans and knew that life in the clans could be hard. In comparison to Winoa, Cleo was over the moon. She had never actually had a friend before, so she was unsure of how to really deal with most situations that occurred, but it was refreshing for her to not have to be so on guard all of the time. That alone was enough for Cleopatra to enjoy having her first friend.
Winoa looked almost the opposite of Cleo, where she was thin, Winoa was muscled. Cleo was tall for her age, while her friend was short. She was fair and flaming, while Winoa was dark and windy. Yet they were friends. They had become friends and companions through strife and it held them together tighter than blood ever held Cleo to anyone. It was a new experience for her and she loved it.
Together they had reached the third floor testing room and had been confronted with this crazy maze. Only one of them had to complete the maze for them both to pass, but if they both failed then they would be stuck in the zone forever. They were told in the introduction that this area was endless and one could only leave if they went through five doors labelled one to five. Each door was situated in a region of this weird space where the rules of physics seemed to have gone on holiday.
In front of them was a staircase that seemed to lead back to the start but was the only way to progress. There was no other route in any direction for them to follow, so they did the only thing they could and progressed. After about twenty minutes of going round in circles Cleo could not take it anymore. She screamed at the world, the stairs and anything else that would make her climb up those steps again. Winoa on the other hand was frowning.
“What are you thinking about, Win?” Said Cleo.
“I am pretty sure we aren’t going round in circles”. Winoa paused and surveyed her surroundings, sitting down and sticking her thumb in her mouth to help her think. “Well we are, but it has a purpose”.
Cleo stopped screaming at inanimate objects and turned towards Winoa. “Other than to drive me mad? What is it?”
“Well I am not exactly sure, but I swear that every cycle we have gone through has moved this platform closer to the second door”. She stood up and said “Wait here. If I don’t show up in ten minutes then run the loop. I am going to do that now, and will wait on the other side. If I don’t show up again then we are going into different but similar looking rooms, If I do then the platform should move closer to the door. Unfortunately I don’t know which is the right answer yet”.
“I understand”. Cleo replied, “I will follow you after a count of six hundred unless you show up again”.
“Alright then, let’s do this. See you on the other side, sister!” And with that Winoa was off. She summoned wind beneath her feet and sprinted over the gap in space to the door. Opening it she went through without a moment’s hesitation.
That was something Cleo loved about Winoa. She was so used to having to decide whether her actions would impact people’s views of her that impulsiveness was not a trait she often showed. She always admired the freedom that people had, that she lacked because of her father, and Winoa had that freedom in droves. To Cleo it seemed like everything she did was for her sake and no one else’s. She idolised her first friend.
Less than ten seconds after Winoa left the room the entire place dimmed. The platforms began shaking and Cleo lost her balance. She immediately lay down on her front and rode the platform as it began moving towards the exit door, edging ever closer until finally it stopped moving with the door hanging mere inches from the platform. The room lit up again and Cleo threw up over the side of the platform. She may have been a Saint but the vibrations disturbed her stomach in unimaginable ways.
As her vomit flew off into the void Winoa returned. “You look like death, Cleo. What happened in the five seconds it took me to reach here from the door?”
She wiped her mouth and pulled a flask of water from within her storage ring. “You were gone for a few minutes. The platform was bumpy. I threw up into the void”. Each sentence was punctuated with gulps of water as the young girl desperately tried to wash out the acidic taste in her mouth. Once she succeeded, both of the girls took a look at the door with the big number two on it.
After what felt like an hour, the two girls decided to just open the door and jump through to the other side. With their hearts in their mouths they flew through the entrance and landed in a black and white checkered world. On the floor in front of them was hundreds of tiles, each alternating in colour. The pattern on each tile made it look like they were a hole, and there was void underneath. It was confusing for both the girls, because they could not tell whether the tiles were real or fake. Eventually all they could do was step forward.
Cleo took the first step forward and put her foot on what looked like a black tile. She did not fall through, so assumed that the black tiles were safe. Once Winoa saw her land on the tile safely she quickly followed and took the initiative to try and jump on the next black tile. Once again she landed, but just missed the edge with her back foot and felt herself begin to slip into the void. She summoned a gust of wind behind her to push herself forward, finally landing on the tile safely.
“Cleo, the white tiles seem to be the fake ones. Let’s pick up the pace, I can’t even see the door yet”.
“Alright, but something about this seems too easy”. Cleo responded, then jumped forward two tiles safely.
They continued forwards for about ten minutes when out of the corner of Cleo’s eye she seemed to see a black line in one of the tiles, but before she knew it she had passed the line. Winoa jumped forward and once again landed on the black tile, and now it was Cleo’s turn to progress. She hopped over the white space in front of her and dove onto the tile, but the tile was just more space. Winoa just saw her friend quickly disappear into the tile, so before she could even think about what she was doing she lunged towards her and caught Cleo by the wrists before she would plummet into eternity.
Cleo was too shocked to even scream, but when she got her bearings and realised she was safe, she pulled herself up onto the white tile that was now their safe spot. She brushed herself off, neatened her red dress and then fell to her knees and began crying. It was the closest to death she had ever come and she had no idea how to deal with it. All she could do was cry. Winoa tried to console her, but eventually the young girl could cry no more. She wiped her eyes with a small hand and a determined look showed upon her face. This place had made her cry in front of her new friend, and she would get it back for that.
She ignited flames on her fingers, they were pretty little lights that flickered around each digit that seemed to jump with joy at being summoned. With these flames she would find out if a tile was real or not. Not even thinking about it for a moment Cleo began to fire off the little flames towards the platforms in front of her and within seconds they had a path that led forwards by over a hundred tiles. To compensate for her fear she would pass this exam quicker and better than anyone else.
The two girls began sprinting towards the exit, every one hundred or so tiles they would stop and Cleo would burn a path for them, but within two minutes they were at the third door. Without batting an eyelid Cleo opened the door and stepped into the room beyond.
The room beyond the third door was a simple greyed hallway. It stretched off into the distance and disappeared beyond their sight. The hall began sloping down, and the girl could clearly see that the road began dipping into a crevasse, spiralling down inside the rock before disappearing beyond her sight. She looked around and quickly began walking forwards, testing out with earth to make sure there were not any traps ahead of her. Cleo was not as gifted with earth as she was with fire and wind, but her anger gave her a clarity that she had not had before. It allowed her much smoother control over all the elements, but especially the two that she had already mastered.
“This seems far too easy Cleo”. Said Winoa as they began descending into the rock.
“All of the tests here have been relatively easy. They have just been messing with our heads and how we see things. I expect this to be no different”. She strode onwards as her friend ran to catch up. After roughly five minutes of walking the two girls felt a sharp twisting in their guts. There was something wrong but they had no idea what it was. A few seconds later they began exiting the other side of the tunnel, where they were presented with a round hill that they had to walk up. The angle of their path had not changed, but now they were walking up instead of down. It was disorientating, but they adjusted quickly. Seeing that this was effectively the only gimmick, the two girls began picking up the pace. They both pushed their senses through the earth to make sure that they were safe, and walked on their way.
After another twenty minutes the path led inside the hill once again, and the girls felt that strange sense in their gut. Winoa buckled and tripped at that point, falling towards the floor. However the moment her body no longer touched the ground she began floating. It was as if gravity only paid attention while she was touching the ground. She quickly dove for the ground she was on and touched it without the momentum that she had when she fell.
“Oh damn!”
“What is it Win?” Replied Cleo.
“It was like the earth just stopped holding me down for a second. It was incredible!” She sighed. Winoa would have liked to play around with the idea that she could just float off and fly about, as even masters of wind on the chaos tree can only begin removing the shackles of gravity when they truly reach Heaven rank, but she had to pass this test. It was a necessity. Once she began mastering The Book of Chaos she could play around with flight all she liked.
The two went on, testing the ground once they got outside the tunnel. It seemed that gravity would only affect things that were touching the ground once they left the tunnel. If they left the tunnel while touching the floor then they would begin floating away. It was something odd about the material of the land they were in and the fact it had no natural gravity. Couple that with the fact that every time they went through a tunnel the world would turn upside down, and the place became a pain for the girls. They quickly ran through the area, being careful during the tunnels, and eventually reached the top of the mountain they had been climbing. It could have also been the bottom of the gorge they were descending into but neither of them were quite sure. Pushing open the door labeled four they were confronted with the last room of the test. What lay in front of them was a large gorge. Neither girl could see the bottom of the pit, nor could they even see the other side. The vista was obscured by a broiling stormfront that stretched far and wide. Occasionally one of the girls would see a spark skittering across the dark clouds, looking like it could jump out at them at any time. It was a fearsome sight.
On the floor was an odd map of the gorge. It had over a hundred caverns scattered all over the place, each one connected to another two or three by a ledge. The girls could see from the map that the exit to this bizarre zone was one ledge away, but they had no idea how far the ledges were from each other or how safe just jumping off the side of the wall would be. Every other route so far had been laden with odd and unpredictable dangers, so anything could be a trap.
“What should we do?” Said Cleo, staring at the distressing map.
“You might be happy to jump towards that storm, but I am not going near that thing”. Replied Winoa. At this point she was actively reigning in Cleo’s will to complete this trial with very little regard for her life. “I’m going to look at these paths. Are you coming?”
“Alright. Without flight this place seems like the best option”.
The two girls moved into the nearest cave and followed the path in front of them. There was not much around them but they were both quite tense. There could be a trap at any point, and the innocuous nature of the paths they were on made them feel like there was something coming just round the corner. Finally they exited the tunnel and were presented with a very similar experience to when they entered the area. In front of them was a veranda, much like the first area but rather than the odd map being etched on the floor, it was presented neatly on a dais. The map was exactly the same; it just showed that the girls were on the the far left of the area rather than in the bottom-centre where they started. They had walked for less than three minutes but they had managed to cross the entire area. It was as if space was being stretched and squashed.
Under the sign there was a little plaque with the phrase ‘To get to the fifth you must go back to the start of this.’ Cleo would not have noticed it if she had not seen the plaque glint when they were deciding the path to leave.
“Hey, Win, look at that. To get to the fifth? Does this mean the door?”
“Looks like it. Does that mean we have to get back to the first room we started in?”
“I guess so”. Cleo said. She looked at the paths and decided to walk back the way they came. The path this time was about five minutes of walking, but no less tense. The girls were even more on their guard now that they had walked though the path before, but they were no slower. Once they realised the path was longer on the way back they became suspicious.
“There is something wrong with this,” said Win.
“Yeah,” Said Cleo, “I don’t understand. We went down the same route right?”
“Definitely”. Winoa looked at the map on the dais in front of them. She studied the image in front of them and said, “If the map was correct then we have travelled onto the far side of the gorge in way less time than it should have taken”. They had travelled tens of miles in five minutes by walking. In any world that would be incredible, but they had no idea where they were going. The paths seemed to lead where they wanted to, not where you needed them.
Winoa looked around the area for any sort of clue while Cleo continued to peruse over the ‘map’. She scoured the room before turning to the dais that had grabbed their attention so easily beforehand. It quickly gave them an answer that was no clearer than before. Embedded into the ground by the back of the podium was another plaque. This time it said ‘sometimes the only way to go forward is to go back’.
When Winoa read this she stopped and thought for a moment. Both these plaques were suggesting that they should retrace their footsteps. Perhaps in a place where the route changed depending on how one entered the cave the best bet really was to just repeatedly re-enter the way they came out.
“Cleo, I have an idea about how we get out of here quickly. It sounds odd but I think we just need to repeatedly retrace our steps and we will get out of here in no time,” said Winoa.
“Well it beats the idea of just picking things at random”. She smiled. Cleo did not realise it but Winoa liked to see that smile. In Winoa’s mind she did not smile anywhere near enough. They walked back the way they came and were once again confronted with an area that looked the same but said they were elsewhere. They quickly walked back the way they came and found another different room. Neither girl knew whether they were going the right way but they were making progress of a sort. The two girls spent an hour just walking back and forth between entrances until finally they reached an area that looked different to all the rest. In front of them was the final door. Unlike the other doors, which had been rather plain, this door was ornate, red and had a big number five on it. It was without a doubt the exit, and after finding it the girls could not be happier.
The other side of the doors was the simple room that they first met the adjudicator of this floor in. He was sitting on a table next to an hourglass that had run about a third of the way through. Magnius, he had said his name was, was not a large man, but with his spectacles low on his nose and a book in hand he looked like quite the scholar. As the two girls walked through the exit to the odd space warping dungeon, he put down his book, looked at the timer and greeted the girls with a look of pleasant surprise upon his face.
“Congratulations ladies!” He said the moment they closed the doors. “You are the first people to complete this round of tests. Would you like a rest or to move on immediately?”
“I want to move on immediately!” Said Cleo. “I want to see what the third floor contains”.
“Please Cleo, I need a rest,” said Winoa. “We have been focussing intently for hours and I just need a moment to relax. Can we sit down and move on in a bit?”
Cleo looked at her friend and then realised how drained she actually felt. The task that they had been presented with had stressed their minds to their greatest depths. It did not seem like much, but when presented with odd rooms constructed in ways that made no sense to reasonable thought, it would cause a lot of undue stress on the minds of the challengers. She sat down next to her friend and began to massage her temples. Her headache had come on the moment she had left the room and let herself relax, and rightly so. She had pushed herself way beyond what was entirely necessary in passing this test but it had made her cry and nothing had done that to her in a long time. Her family was not worth her tears in her eyes, so she never cried. No matter what they did to her.
“While you girls are sitting there, would you like your reward for completing the third tier of tests of Babel?” Said Magnius.
“Sure” both girls said with pained expressions on their faces. Their headaches were quickly beginning to ease up but that did not mean they were ready to approach anything complicated yet. Magnius pulled a couple of wooden charms out of a small bag and said, “These talismans are known as Break Talismans. They are well used artefacts that can be activated to break through something. The better quality the talisman the more powerful they will be”.
Both girls looked at the talismans in their hands. They had heard of the main product of the Dominus clan before, but they had never actually seen one. A high quality break talisman could stun even an ascendant immortal, but the lower grade ones would work well enough on saints or lower. These talismans were one-time use trump cards that could completely change the outcome of a fight. It was a precious lifeline that they had been given on this floor.
“As well as the talisman, you will also receive four copper and eighty stone shards”. He handed them the money, which they both put in their storage spaces. “The final thing is that I need to upgrade your pointer stone. It will now contain an instant messaging system. You will be able to register the aura frequency of someone’s stone and then send them messages, no matter where they are in the tower”.
The girls had seen the stones do this for members of their clans who had challenged the tower before. It seemed to be the most useful addition that the stone actually had, or at least the one that people relied on most often. Cleo quickly registered Winoa’s aura frequency and her friend did the same.
“With that you can leave whenever you want. If you would like to stay please don’t worry too much. No one will likely be coming out of the maze for a few hours yet”.
The girls chatted about it for a while and eventually came to the conclusion that they would leave once they rested up. It did not take long, owing to their saint-like constitutions, and so soon they were on their way again. They left Magnius to his own devices and ascended into an extremely large cavern.
The cavern was one of the most stunningly beautiful natural formations the girls had ever seen. They gazed in awe at the way the surroundings were lit up by the red Salamandrite, and how there were beautiful ethereal patterns made from the multicoloured gems. It was a breathtaking underground maze that they would have to walk through to get to the next door. Winoa pulled out her pointer stone and checked the distance to the next stele.
“Umm… Cleo? We may have an issue”.
Cleo had not really been paying too much attention to what Winoa had been doing. She was too entranced by the magnificence of the gemstones surrounding them, and the elemental energy she could feel sprouting from them. Winoa’s words snapped her out of her reverie, “What? What’s up?” She said as she turned around to look at her friend. Before Winoa could even say a word Cleo could see what the issue was. The pointer stone was showing a large sixty above it. Her face dropped as she recognised the multitude of issues with that number. “It’s going to take two months? Two whole months to get to the next room? What are we going to do for food?”
They looked around and collected some gemstones before moving on. It was reaching the end of the first day when Winoa pulled out the gems and had a close look at them. Cleo could not see what she was looking at them for but when she shouted out in success the young girl became intrigued.
“Cleo! I think I have worked out a solution to our future food problem”. Winoa looked very proud of herself.
“What is it Win?”
“I’m not going to be able to do it yet, but you have a fair amount of earthen control. You could use the earthen power in these gems to speed up the growth of the potato seeds we have in our storage spaces! It’s effectively infinite food as long as you can find yellow gems”. She threw a few bright yellow gems at Cleo. “Examine them, you’ll be able to feel the earthen chaos coming out of them”.
“Do you think this is Treantite? If it is then we have struck a goldmine and should collect as many gemstones as we can”. Cleo was taken aback. Treantite was one of the most valuable agricultural gemstones. It was required for a chaos practitioner to grow any large amounts of plants with success. It also allowed for people to use their own earthen power more precisely.
“I think so. If the red stones are Salamandrite and the yellow are treantrite, does that mean the the blue are Nereid Aquamarines? And what are the white stones?”
“I don’t know. Either way I will grow some potatoes for us when we get to our next stopping point”.
The girls moved on once they had eaten and slept. The cavern should have been oppressive to them but due to the affluent elemental energy, both Cleo and Winoa loved being there. They quickly paced through the caves, not even stopping to take breaks and checked their pointer stones regularly. The stone picked up their increase in pace and registered that they would only take forty days at the rate they were going. They were both pretty happy about that, and so at the end of the day Cleo decided to sort out a bigger meal than they had had over the last couple of days.
She pulled out a couple of potato seeds out and infused earthen energy into one of them. The potato quickly swelled and then exploded from the excess energy. She let out a gasp when she was covered in mashed potato. Failure after failure happened until Cleo finally began succeeding with plant growth. It was hard for her to control the power so meticulously because it required the opposite of what Cleo was used to. Fire was all about releasing mana at its maximum, and wind was all about keeping the mana flow steady. Earth was often about using just the right amount of mana appropriate to grow plants. Eventually after blowing up nearly twenty potatoes Cleo could finally grow the potato to its maximum. She quickly grew a few more and began preparing them for dinner.
The two girls chatted and laughed about the situation they were in over dinner, then quickly decided to go to bed and prepare for the next day. Cleo was just about to drift off to sleep when she noticed a red knife stuck into the ground. “I wonder how that got there…” she thought as she faded into blissful nothing.
