World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (10 page)

“Let's keep moving,”
Wesley orders.

The mage quickly steps
behind the leader, and raises his staff in the air to illuminate the
grounds in front of the cavalier.

“Hey! You see that?”
Lucious asks while pointing the glowing orb at the end of the long
passageway.

“Yeah, I see the wall
ahead,” Wesley confirms. The damn place is like a labyrinth! The
player expected nothing less from the game designers, and sure enough
the fine folks at WoE managed to squeeze a maze into a castle. The
cavalier continues his march forward until he finally reaches the
wall at the end of the corridor.

“So this is it?”
Diana asks with a mix of disappointment and relief. After the
tripwire encounter, the healer expected to be busy casting healing
prayers. “Did we miss a turn somewhere?” she eyes the wall in
puzzlement.

“There must be a
hidden trigger nearby. Let's split into two groups, and search the
walls,” Conrad suggests.
If
there is nothing here, then we will need to back track along the
passageway until we find whatever the dungeon designers wanted us to
discover in the first place.

“I'm with ya,” the
priestess replies, quickly grouping with Conrad and starting to
search along the left wall. She seems to get along great with the
fine stud of a man, for whatever reason. But something in Lucious
also draws her interest as well, and she can’t discount him either.

“Let's check the wall
in front of us,” Wesley tells Lucious.

In response, the mage
raises his orb to illuminate the very top of the wall. “Let's start
from the top of this wall,” he suggests. The spell caster would
have preferred to search with Diana, because she seems to respect his
personal privacy a bit more than Wesley. The old man seems to see
Lucious as a surrogate son, and treating Lucious that way. However,
it appears that Diana likes Conrad the most out of the three men
present, much to the spell caster’s chagrin.

The cavalier starts
from the upper left corner of the wall and his gaze slows scans the
smooth, stone surface of the wall. About a foot down and from the
left, he notices a concealed button, painted to look like a part of
the wall from a distance away. “I think I got something,” Wesley
says aloud to alert the others.

The other search team
abandons its search along the adjacent wall, and draws closer to
Wesley.

“What did you find?”
Lucious asks with annoyance.
Is
this guy just lucky or what? That’s twice today that I lost out,
he
sulks as the battle mage stands besides Wesley. Even though the two
men are on the same team, he feels like he has fallen behind.

Wesley points at the
tiny button, the size of a dollar coin, on the wall in front of
Lucious. “You see that?” he asks the spell caster.

Lucious squint his eyes
and shakes his head. “No, I can't see it. Should I get closer?”
he asks.

“Me neither,” Diana
adds.

“Yes, I see it,”
Conrad replies after a brief moment to focus his superior 20/10
vision on the upper left portion of the wall where the leader is
pointing at.

Wesley shakes his head
at the young man. “I think you should remain behind me, Lucious,”
he replies. He turns to look at the other two. “This is obviously
the trigger to move the wall somehow. But we don't know what's on the
other side, or how the wall will move – the wall panel could slide
to the side, rise up, or drop down. Regardless, I think it would be
best if I am the one to press that button,” he proposes.

The barbarian nods in
agreement. “It would be awkward, even for me, to press that button,
and protect myself with my shield at the same time. I'll defer to
your judgment,” he says.

The cavalier turns to
the battle mage. “Can I ask for a favor?” Wesley asks.

Lucious narrows his
eyes in suspicion. “What kind of favor?” The old man doesn’t
ask the mage for favors usually.

Wesley points at the
long staff, which Lucious is holding in the spell caster’s left
hand. “I want to borrow that staff of yours to press the button on
the wall. I don't want to stand right next to the wall when I hit the
trigger,” he explains.

The battle mage shakes
his head. “I'm not sure about that,” he starts to decline the
unexpected request.

“Oh come on!” Diana
interrupts. “It's not like Wesley will take your precious staff and
never give it back to you. He's not a mage. He's a knight who
specializes in the block-and-slash fighting technique. Your staff is
practically useless in his hands. There is no reason for him not to
return the staff to you once he uses it to press the trigger on the
wall. That is ALL he will use the staff for. You will be watching him
handle your staff the entire time. Now if you prefer to blow your
mana reserve on another Move Earth spell to create a hole in this
wall, go right ahead. Otherwise, stop being a big baby and let him
borrow your staff!” she yells at him.

“She's got a point
there, man,” Conrad joins in, keeping the pressure on the reluctant
mage. “It would be extremely foolish for Wesley to press the
trigger button with his hand, and take whatever punishment that the
sadistic dungeon designers will mete out. Besides, the mate's not
tall enough to reach that button. He needs to borrow your staff,”
Conrad tries to reason with the young man.

“Why not use his long
sword instead?” the battle mage points out stubbornly.

“Because your staff
is a lot longer than his sword,” the priestess answers quickly,
fully anticipating the response. “He will use the bottom end of
your staff to press the button, and he won't even scratch your
precious orb,” she adds with reassurance.

Lucious turns his head
slowly and looks at all three.
It’s
totally unfair for them to gang up on me like this
, he
thinks. The staff owner turns away from them, and holds out his
staff. “Here,” he offers gruffly.

“Thank you,” the
cavalier says. “I'll give it right back. I promise.” Wesley turns
to the other two party members. “You guys should stand back a bit,
just in case there's a monster on the other side. Keep your eyes
peeled for me,” he orders.

“Will do,” the
priestess replies as she back tracks until she is standing next to
the mage.

Wesley holds the smooth
but unfamiliar staff in his right hand, and turns it upside down.
“Here I go,” he says as he uses the flat portion of the borrowed
staff to press on the trigger button.

Click!
Without warning, the wall blocking the passageway drops!
Boom! A split second later, the ground underneath the armored knight
gives way as well! Crash!

“Whoooah!” Wesley
starts to yell as he feels his body being pulled down by the
unforgiving force of gravity. Purely out of desperation, he thrusts
the staff forward, just beyond the space where the wall stood a
moment ago. Clang! The metallic staff hits the ground on both sides
of the sudden gap, and the cavalier hangs on with just his right
hand.

The other Strangers are
paralyzed with surprise for a moment before they spring into action!

Moving forward with the
grace of a gazelle, Conrad reaches the gap first, and peers down with
his torch. From the slight howling sound that he hears, the barbarian
realizes that the bottom of the pit is far beyond the range of his
torchlight.
There's no telling
how far down the bottom is
, he thinks.
We
need to pull Wesley back up before he loses his grip on the staff.
“Hold on, mack. We'll get you up in a jiffy,” he reassures
Wesley.

The cavalier stays
perfectly still, to prevent the staff from inadvertently shifting off
the edge of the ground. “Check to make sure there are no monsters
coming down the pipe first. Rescue me afterward,” he orders.

Conrad looks up, and
sees nothing coming through the passageway beyond the gap. He stands
ready to jump over to the gap to defend his leader if necessary.
After the passage of a few tense seconds, the barbarian looks down at
his leader. “I don't see a welcoming party waiting on the other
side. This seems to be just a continuation of the long tunnel,” he
reports. He turns back to look at the mage. “Can you make him fly
or something?” he asks Lucious. “I’m not expecting a miracle
from ya, but surely you could make pull Wesley back up somehow,” he
adds. “Otherwise, I could try to pull him back up. However, there
is nothing here for me to hold onto,” Conrad notes.

The battle mage stands
on the edge of the solid ground. “I don't think there's enough air
current in this tunnel for a Flight spell,” he answers the
barbarian as the spell caster shakes his head. He holds out his hand
as the big man opens his mouth for a retort. “I have a better spell
in mind: Levitation,” he suggests.

“Let's get him out of
there already!” Diana prods the mage, and pokes him in the rib.

“Yes, yes, milady,”
Lucious turns and bows with a flourish before the priestess, who
rolls her eyes. He closes his eyes, and utters the arcane words of
the Levitation spell: “biro-lurt-qipe-tode.” As he pronounces
each word of power, his hands move in a free flowing manner similar
to the ancient Chinese art of Tai Chi. His arms slowly rise in the
air with his palms facing down, then move in unison until they are
horizontal to his body with his palms still facing down, then slowly
come together in front of his torso, then the hands gently move up
and down for a few repetitions, and finally the hands meet in a loud
“CLAP!”

While his avatar is
performing the spell, the player switches over to magic screen view,
and use his virtual reality gloves to choose the knight as the target
of his spell. The spell caster directs the knight to rise straight up
in the air until the recipient's feet is at ground level. Lucious
clicks on the “Enter” icon to confirm the spell, and switches
back to normal screen view. Once his avatar's in-game verbal and
gestural components have been provided, a purple glow slowly envelops
the armored knight, who begins to rise. “Hold onto my staff!” the
mage quickly yells out to remind the cavalier.

“How do I move?”
Wesley asks as he tries to adjust his balance to the spell effect,
while maintaining his grip on the precious staff.

“Normally, of
course,” Lucious replies in a tongue-in-check manner. “The spell
allows your avatar to ignore the natural law of gravity. So you can
move up and down in thin air, and also horizontally. However, I would
advise you to move quickly and get yourself back on solid ground
before my levitation spell expires; the duration is only ten
seconds,” he explains in depth.

“Oh, okay,” the
cavalier answers as he obeys the spell caster's warning, and quickly
makes his way to the other side of the gap. Wesley moves deeper into
the passageway on the other side of the gap, and sees a continuation.
He avoids verbalizing his groan at his discovery.

The mage looks back at
the other two party members. “So . . . who's next?” he grins.

Conrad looks at the
battle mage as if he is insane. The big man takes a few steps away
from the edge. Turning around to face the gap, he runs at full sprint
and leaps in the air like a majestic, powerful lion. He easily makes
it across the three foot gap, with room to spare, and lands on his
feet.

Wesley sees the crazy
leap towards him, and quickly backs away from the edge to make space
for the athletic man to land on the cavalier's side of the gap.

“Show off,” Lucious
mutters under his breath as he begins his arcane chant again to
levitate himself and the priestess across the gap.

Diana hears the remark,
and covers her mouth to stifle a giggle threatening to escape from
her lips.

* * *

“Man, does EDE want
to entertain us or torture us?” Lucious moans. The party has been
slowly navigating the seemingly never ending passageway for the past
hour. Given the likelihood of more booby traps, the pace has slowed
to a baby's crawl.

“Probably both,”
Conrad replies. He is equally unhappy with this turn of events, but
handles the tedium much better than the younger man.
If
only I had my mp3 player
, he thinks wistfully as he
reminds the endless bus trips for baseball games as a minor league
player. “Oh, by the way, let me ask you something man. When you
were casting the levitation spells, you were doing some weird Tai Chi
thing with your hands. What was that all about?” he asks out of
curiosity.

The two spell casters
look at each other, as if asking who should answer the unenlightened
question.

Diana sighs and decides
to oblige the barbarian. “To answer your question, you need to
understand a bit about magic,” she begins.

“Magic? What about
it?” Conrad interrupts.

“That's I'm trying to
explain! Hold off your questions until I finish,” she shoots him an
annoyed look.

He offers her an
apologetic smile.

“As I was saying,
magic for spell casters require two components: verbal and physical.
It's really a balance of the two in WoE. Clerical prayers have a
longer verbal component, but very minute physical component,” she
explains.

“Like your cross!”
Conrad blurts out.

Diana puts her hips to
her hips, and glowers at him for a few seconds until he pantomimes
zipping his lips. She sighs and continues. “Yes, like my cross,
which serve as a conduit to the Gods of Eternia.” She turns to the
bemused mage. “Your turn, partner.”

Lucious taps his staff
on the floor, and offers her an elaborate bow. “As our scholarly
priestess here said, magic requires a verbal and a physical
component. For mages, the focus for our magic is our staff or wand.
When I was casting those levitation spells, I didn't have my staff
with me,” he reminds the curious barbarian.