Juniper didn’t speak much as we looted the bodies of the fallen machines. None of us did. It had been a heavy couple of days, and we all had our own thoughts holding us captive in that moment. So, we just set about the task of checking each automaton for loot, collecting it, and moving on. I did a quick scan of the area with Environmental Mapping, just to make sure we weren’t leaving anything behind or missing hidden opportunities. Nothing popped up in my cursory sweep of the hall, though, so we settled in at the boss room door. I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out the stoat.
“Where has that thing been for the last few hours?” Shrek grumbled, irritably. He was clearly frustrated that he hadn’t been able to do more against the larger, more durable opponents on this floor. Smashing things was kind of his thing, and he wasn’t able to just bash his way through these metal golems. I understood how that could throw a guy…being good at something your whole life and then suddenly thrown into a situation where that thing is completely useless? Yeah. I knew that feeling, alright.
“In my pocket. The lil fella might be ferocious, but it isn’t stupid. It knew that its abilities wouldn’t have helped against those behemoths, so it just hung out in my pocket.”
I nuzzled the stoat to my face, ostensibly just getting a quick cuddle in. I set it on the floor and started to figure out what I was going to make for lunch. The stoat watched me for a moment and then went over to Juniper, crawled up onto her lap, and nestled in. Juniper stroked its ember-toned back affectionately and I smiled. I’d have to give the stoat some extra treats, later, when no one was looking.
We decided that we would just head straight into the boss room after lunch. We cleared the previous section quite a bit faster than we’d anticipated, and none of us really needed a full night of recuperation to get back to full strength. We would be without Juniper’s Foreman ability, sure, but we also would never ask her to use it two days in a row, anyway. So, we ate a quick lunch, waited an hour or so for our HP and abilities to reload, then we headed inside.
The second level boss room was a round factory floor, with overhead catwalks leading to a control room that was a semi-circular overhang jutting out of the back wall. On the right side of the control room, another catwalk led to a massive forge which took up the majority of the wall opposite the entrance we’d just stepped through. Beneath that connective catwalk between the forge and the control room was a giant golden statue of a dwarf with a forging hammer in one gnarled hand. I immediately clocked it as the boss we were likely going to be forced to fight, based on years of gaming and understanding that if a dungeon floor has a theme the boss fight is likely not to stray too far from it. That was just game design 101, really. I used Threat Assessment on it, just to double check that my gamer sense wasn’t tricking me.
I groaned. The mobster voice was one thing, but I was not prepared to deal with dad jokes and puns from The System. The joke immediately made me picture The System as my uncle Ralph with his derby hat making terrible jokes and immediately following it up with “Eh? Eh?? Yageddit??”
I shook the image from my head as we fanned out, and the Forge Wraith seemed to power up in recognition of the pending battle. It looked down at us with blank, undetailed eyes and black smoke began to billow out of its nostrils. The smoke seemed to solidify a bit as it coalesced into the same basic shape as the statue, at maybe half the size and a fraction of the density. The thing was like a sleep paralysis demon brought to life, assuming said demon was the size of King Kong, of course. The original King Kong, not the more recent remakes where he’s Godzilla sized. The old one where he had to climb the Empire State building. Whatever the case, the thing freaked me right the fuck out. So, the moment its HP was visible to me, I panic-fired an entire magazine into it…and every single bullet just passed straight through the thing and ricocheted off the statue behind it. The entire magazine did maybe a single point of damage.
“Ohhhh, that is not good,” I said, mostly to myself as I reloaded.
“What is its weakness?” Juniper asked.
“I’m not sure. My ability just said that we should ‘follow the links’, whatever that means.”
Shrek had begun hurling metal ingots at the wraith, drawing its attention but doing similar damage as my pistol, which is to say: almost zero. I scanned the room again with Environmental Mapping, triggered Advanced Schematics. Unfortunately, the statue was just that – a statue. It had no mechanics or internal workings to analyze. I looked around the room, and there was very little of use. It was only when I glanced back at the Forge Wraith that I noticed there was a line of energy that seemed to be tethering the wraith to the statue and the statue to the control room.
“Wow. Vrk’shryk wasn’t kidding when he said your eyes caught fire. I thought it might have just been a figure of speech or something…but no. Your eyes are on fire,” Juniper said, providing insight which was super helpful and not at all distracting in that moment.
“Thanks, June.”
“How does it not burn your eyebrows off?”
“I don’t know, June. Look, I think I have a plan here. Can we focus for two seconds on something other than my dollar store penance stare?”
The plan was simple: Shrek and I would distract the wraith and try real, real hard not to get ourselves killed while Juniper investigated the link that led up to the control room. I’d originally argued that I should be the one to check it out, being that I had the mapping skills and the tool kit, but Juniper insisted that she should be the one to go. She was of the opinion that the wraith was a spiritual monster and that meant it was in her wheelhouse more than mine. We ended up just playing Rock Paper Scissors while Shrek fought the wraith. Juniper won. I joined Shrek while she floated up to the catwalk between the forge and the control room.
Once she landed on the catwalk, Juniper peered down at the fighting from several stories above the skirmish. A quick glance let her know the boys were doing alright without her. Even the stoat had gotten in on the action to harass the wraith with quick attacks before darting out of range again. From above, she could see that the wraith seemed to be tethered to the statue in a way that limited its movement. It was like an angry dog who was chained to a tree. She was sure the party would figure that out on their own before anyone got seriously hurt.
Turning away from the fight, she walked over to the control room and passed through the door without opening it. She didn’t really have a need for doorknobs, these days, but she’d kept that information more or less to herself. No need to make the others uncomfortable knowing she could just enter any room she wanted, unimpeded. The control room itself was relatively bare. There was a panel along the front of the room which overlooked the forge, but aside from that there was nothing else inside other than a fan and two chairs. She decided to investigate the panel, since that’s where Rocky suggested she’d find the wraith’s power source. It only took a few moments of looking before she felt an odd…pull. Something was tugging at her from within the panel. She pried the top of the panel loose and set it aside.
There, lying in a nest of wires and circuitry, was a glowing, pulsing crystal. She wished Rocky were there to use his abilities on it and tell her what it was. Alas, she was alone in this particular endeavor, so she’d just have to figure it out. She tentatively ran a finger along the length of the crystal’s edge and felt the tugging sensation intensify. She frowned and then made maybe the dumbest decision of her life – she grabbed the crystal fully in her fist and yanked. It didn’t budge, but something inside it did. Juniper’s eyes went blank and rolled back in their sockets as she lost consciousness.
When she opened her eyes, a short, bearded man stood before her who she instantly recognized as the inspiration for the statue in the forge room. The space surrounding them was a wash of misty colors that looked as though someone had coated a cloud in oil and set them inside it. Juniper admired the serenity of it before she looked back at the man and gave him a small curtsy.
“Hello,” she said, “my name is Juniper.”
The stocky dwarf watched her, appraisingly, and then nodded. She seemed to have passed whatever mental evaluations the man had been performing.
“G’day, lass. I am Therin Oreclaw. If you don’t mind my askin’, how did a pretty young spirit such as yourself end up in my crystal?”
“I…that’s a good question, actually. I’m not sure. I just grabbed it and it kind of sucked me in. How did you get in here?”
The dwarf looked away and let out a long breath. As he did, the space around them warped and rearranged until she was looking at the forge room again – not as it is, but as it was thousands of years ago. The forge was bustling with robots and dwarves all working together as they went about their business of taking inbound ore from the mines and refining it into ingots of dwarven metal. At the forge itself, was Therin. He was wearing a golden gauntlet on one hand as he worked the forge, occasionally stopping to give directions to his workers.
“I was the Master Smith of this place,” he said, standing beside her and watching the scene unfold around them. “The best of any generation past or present, they said. Aye, so they did. I took the raw materials the minefolk brought me and made entirely new materials nobody had ever seen before. The elders foresaw a golden age of dwarf prosperity, once the metals were sold to the kingdoms of the outside world. What they could not have foreseen, however, was the greed of the mine’s foreman – not for gold or power, mind ye, but for time. He was obsessed with it, so he was.”
“Earl,” Juniper said plainly.
“Ye’ve met him?”
“My party killed him, when we came through the mines to reach this place.”
Therin nodded in approval and the scene before them changed once more. The workers were revolting, in both action and appearance. They threw the worker machines into the forge, melting them down as though they were mere scrap. The workers themselves wore expressions of rage and misery on their pale, scabby faces. Juniper covered her mouth with one hand as she watched, tears welling in her eyes.
“The spells Earl cast did not have immediate effects. They unleashed a pernicious rot of the spirit of this place and everyone in it. The decay on my kin’s faces wasn’t a symptom of any physical ailment. It was a spiritual decay as their mana was siphoned off to feed Earl’s immortality.”
The scene changed again, this time showing Earl as Juniper had known him. He was skeletal and bedraggled, clothed in rags as he stood over Therin. He held a crystal in his hand that Juniper recognized from inside the control room panel. She watched as Therin’s soul was torn from his body by Earl the would-be lich king and stuffed into the tiny crystal. The foreman then summoned a wraith and bound it to the crystal.
“He said he could not allow me to die. I was too useful. Too knowledgeable. So he stored me in here, and in the crystal I’ve remained with naught but the memories of my fallen kin and the work of the forge to keep me sane.”
Juniper wiped tears from her face as she locked eyes with Therin.
“We should get you out of here,” she said.
Therin laughed. The sound startled her.
“That would be a miracle indeed, lass. I’m afraid, however, that the only way either of us can escape this place is for the crystal to be broken. That would be fine, for you…ye’d simply return to your body. I have no body to return to, however, so I would just dissipate into nothingness.” He paused. “I suppose that would still be preferable to this wee prison, but the point is moot. Neither of us can smash the crystal from inside the blasted thing. Believe me, I’ve tried.”
“I have friends outside,” she said. “My party is fighting the wraith right now.”
The scene shifted once more and they were watching Rocky and Shrek and the stoat sitting against the far wall, completely ignoring the biting, slashing wraith. It struggled against its tether, but regardless of how it contorted, its attacks could not reach them. She squinted at the three of them. Were they playing cards? They were! Worse still, the stoat appeared to be winning. She shook her head and hoped with everything in her that the message she just sent to Rocky would make it to him.
“Aye, a vicious brawl if ever I’ve seen one,” Therin said sardonically.
“I just sent a message, telling my friends about our situation. Assuming it passes through the crystal, they will come to free us. If…if I had a way for you to survive the smashing of the crystal, would you take it?”
“What?”
“I’m asking, Therin, if you want to live. I know what it’s like to be alone for centuries on end. The man I just sent that message to is the one who snapped me out of my solitude. Let him do the same for you.” She paused, then amended, “Let me do the same for you.”
I looked around the room for any means of reaching the catwalks. Ladders would have been great, but the dwarves didn’t seem to believe in them, for some reason. I didn’t want to try to scale the walls, so, in the end, I hatched the stupidest scheme of all time. My Pathfinder Treads reduced fall damage, so the best way I could think to get to the catwalk was for Shrek to just toss me up there…which he was very excited for. As soon as I’d suggested the idea, he’d picked me up by the collar and the seat of my pants and hurled me like a javelin. I flew in a long arc across the room and slammed into the side of the catwalk. I barely managed to grab hold of the thing’s guardrails, preventing what would have been a nasty slip straight on top of the wraith. I pulled myself up and got into the control room.
Immediately, my eyes landed on Juniper who was standing there looking like she was in the middle of some sort of spooky seizure. I hurried over to her and fished around in her pocket for a moment to find the crystal she’d mentioned. Once I had that, I pulled out the Blade of Seredh and smashed the crystal within the control panel, as she’d instructed. A bright flash of sparks and magical energy blinded me for a moment. The crystal in my hand grew hot to the point that I nearly dropped the thing. I could hear the flesh on my palm sizzle as I gritted my teeth against the pain. Then, a familiar hand touched my shoulder. Juniper was awake again. She held out her hand for the crystal and I handed it to her, its heat rapidly dissipating. Or maybe my nerve endings had all been fried by that point. It was difficult to say one way or the other.
A kill notification appeared, letting us know that the Forge Wraith was dead and the level was complete. I looked down to the forge floor, over the panel and gave Shrek a thumbs up. He returned the gesture and then immediately fell over backwards as the stoat sneak-attacked his face. Juniper giggled and gave me a hug. When she pulled back, she was blushing.
“I…may have volunteered you for a few things while I was away.”
I shook my head in mock annoyance.
“My father always said if you give a woman an inch, she’ll take a mile.”
“I don’t know what that means, but it makes me want to punch both you and your father.”
“That’s probably fair. Let’s talk as we try to figure out how to get down from here and save Shrek from a 10 ounce ball of fur and fury.”