World of Eternia: The Complete Collection (7 page)

“Roger that,” the
mage salutes and goes over to examine the door.
I
wasted more than enough time on that dumb jock
, he thinks
as Lucious shines his staff light on the solid iron door.

Diana quickly follows
him holding the torch, but the mage waves her away. She decides to
stand back to give him the space that he asks for.

Wesley grabs Conrad's
arm, and draws the bigger man to the edge of the illuminated area of
the foyer. “What was that all about?” the ex-Marine looks up at
the big man's face and whispers in a harsh tone.

Conrad grins. “Just
messing with the little kid,” he whispers back.

The cavalier crosses
his arms. “Mess with him after we finish this mission. The kid is
ultra sensitive and high strung, and he also seems to have some
self-confidence issues too,” he shares his observation candidly.
“His mind wanders and he gets distracted easily by seemingly
innocuous things,” Wesley continues to rattle off Lucious' mental
deficiencies. “Regardless of whether you like him personally or
not, he is a part of The Strangers, and a valuable member to boot.
Our party's success in making out of this castle will heavily depend
on him. Think of Lucious as your baseball team's star pitcher, the
quirky but talented type. Think about how you deal with guys like
him, and handle Lucious in a similar fashion. Okay?” he asks.

Conrad nods in
agreement. “Yes sir!” he salutes.
I
guess I did go too far in messing with the poor kid
, he
admits.

* * *

Lucious digs his hand
around his enchanted Bag of Holding for the spell component that he
needs for a Detect Trap spell.
One
of these days, I have to ask the seamstress in Starter Town to line
the inside of my cloak with pockets so that I could easily pull out
spell components
, Lucious makes a mental note to himself.
It would be a lot faster than
switching over to the item menu on my player screen to pick the item
I want in-game.
He sits cross-legged on the floor in front
of the door. Holding the powdery substance in his right hand, he puts
his left hand on the door and slowly mutters the arcane words of the
Detect Trap spell: “haff-folu-porg-wist.”

He stares at the door
through his magic screen view as the spell takes effect. He sees
purple tendrils of magical power extend from his left hand, and
slowly caress the door. His magic searches for traps on the door and
the doorway, and such traps discovered by the spell are highlighted
in purple under the magic screen view. However, the strands do not
change color to delineate the discovery of any traps. Confident that
the door is not trapped, the mage finally releases the spell,
returning to normal player view.

“Well?” Diana asks,
after a moment.

“Looks clean,” the
mage answers casually. Lucious slowly rises off the dusty ground and
gets back on his feet.

“Are we good to go?”
Wesley asks when Lucious is standing before the door again.

“I believe so,” the
battle mage answers. “My detect trap spell did not catch anything
on the door itself, or in the doorway. Whether there are traps beyond
the door are anyone's guess,” the spell caster shrugs. “The game
designers are fully aware of our magical capabilities, and they could
easily come up with nasty surprises to get around my trap detection
spell,” he cautions. “There is no way to catch whatever is behind
the door until we open the door first and I have visual contact.”

“In that case, let's
proceed in our customary party formation and line up in single file.
When that is accomplished
I
will open the door,” the
cavalier answers.

Lucious nods in
acquiescence. The heavily armored knight is the best person to lead
this party through the dungeons. Ideally you would want a thief or
ranger class character to take the lead, because either class could
detect hidden traps. Unfortunately, a party of four players could
bring only limited skill sets to each campaign. Part of the challenge
or fun in playing these role playing games is figuring out how to
cover for the party’s deficits in a creative manner. As far as The
Strangers are concerned, Wesley’s steel plate armor and shield
provide adequate protection to fend off most mobs and traps.

The rest of the party
follows his order, and lines up in single file in the order of
Wesley, Lucious, Diana, and Conrad.

Satisfied with the
team's response to his order, the cavalier cautiously opens the door
before him. The door opens outward, away from the party, and reveals
an enclosed, narrow set of winding, descending steps. A light stone
embedded within the wall provides some illumination of the stairwell.

Lucious raises his
magical staff, and the light from his staff’s orb shines down on
the top portion of the staircase. “Why did the game designers
install these stairs leading downward?” he groans. The Wall Street
trader once got stuck in an elevator at work, and over time the
experience developed into claustrophobia.

“Because there aren't
enough space around the foyer to house monsters?” Diana offers a
helpful hypothesis.

“Oh, I'm sure the WoE
dungeon designers have some awesome monsters in store for us,”
Conrad chimes in cheerfully as he peers over Wesley’s shoulder to
look at the stairs. It looks just wide enough for the adventurers to
descend one at a time. He turns around quickly to see if any monster
is creeping up on the party, and sees nothing in front of him beyond
the open doorway.

“Enough chitchat,
lady and gentlemen. We have to keep moving,” Wesley reminds them,
as he tries to get the party refocused on the mission. He pulls his
long sword out of his scabbard, and points his weapon at the
descending stairs. “Onward!” he declares and starts marching down
the steps.

“Let's get this over
with,” the mage tells the priestess, and walks quickly to catch up
to their leader.
What’s the
worst that could happen? Monsters appear at the bottom of the steps
to block our path?
He raises his staff to illuminate the
long, winding staircase.

Diana turns to look at
the rear guard. “Let's keep up, Conrad!” she says with a smile
for Conrad as she hurries down the stairs.

The barbarian closes
the door, to prevent any lingering giant spiders from following them.
Click! He freezes for a split second, dreading the source of the
unexpected sound. Suddenly, he hears screams from his teammates.
“WOOOAAAHHHHH!” “OHMIGOD!”

Turning around quickly,
Conrad looks down and sees that the steps have dropped, turning the
winding staircase into a steep, sloping chute belonging in an
amusement park! Conrad realizes that he has no choice but to go after
them before the party members get separated even more. He lowers
himself to the ground and approaches the chute slowly. “Here we
go!” the big man yells aloud as he sits at the edge of the floor
and uses his hands to push off the ground to slide, feet first, down
the chute.

“Hee-hee-ha-haw!”
the big man roars in approval of his unexpected ride down the dark,
winding chute. Keeping his head up despite the whirling turns down
the pipe, he finally sees the opening and gets ready to extend his
limbs to prevent his body from dropping through the opening.
Ready,
ready, now!
Conrad times his impromptu, manual brake
perfectly, and manages to catch himself at the edge of the chute's
opening without falling out of the tunnel. “You guys okay?” he
asks aloud.

Wesley groans under a
pile of limbs on the hard ground. “When people get off me, yes,”
he wheezes out from under the dog pile.

“C'mon, Diana, you
heard the old man. As soon as you roll your butt off me, I can get
off our ageless leader. I would try to push you off, but I'm lying
face down, and my avatar is still a bit dizzy from smacking my face
into his armor, if the blurry vision in my screen view means
anything,” Lucious replies.

Her face flushing with
embarrassment, Diana wills her avatar’s body to move, and the
character slowly rolls off the pile. “Here we go,” she replies as
she sits cross-legged on the floor, to the right of the human dog
pile. She blinks her eyes several times inside the visor to adjust
her eyes to the dim illumination coming from glowing stones embedded
within the walls.
At least my
avatar is no longer dizzy
, she thinks happily.

“Thank you for your
cooperation,” the mage says sarcastically as he rolls to the left,
and lies down flat on his back. The player allows his avatar to stare
straight up at the ceiling until the player’s blurry vision is
cleared up.

The knight puts his
hands under his chest, and slowly pushes himself off the ground. He
is almost afraid to look at his avatar's health bar. After a moment's
hesitation, he looks and sees that his health is down only 10% from
the fall. He breathes a sigh of relief.

Conrad slowly leans his
torso forward, and his head pokes out of the chute's opening. He
looks down and sees that the other party members are alive and
conscious, despite the steep ten foot drop from the chute's opening.
“As soon as you guys move out of the way, I can jump down,” he
says.

In the meantime, the
party's scout uses his vantage point to look around the room. He
realizes that the party has dropped into a big, rectangular pit. The
area is approximately twenty foot across and easily doubles that in
length. The walls are smooth and curve straight up; the walls
eventually meet as a spire. He focuses his superb 20/10 vision on the
other side of the room, and notes the cross-barred gate at the far
side of the room. Suddenly, he sees the gate ascend into an archway,
and a massive number of undead skeletons slowly walk through the
gate. “Guys, we have company!” he yells as he points to the other
side of the room.

The three grounded
party members heed the warning and turn their heads in unison. They
can’t help but stare at the slowly approaching platoon of skeletal
warriors. The front row numbers eight warriors across; each warrior
is carrying a massive tower shield strapped to their left forearms.
The next row comprises of an equal number of spearmen, and the row
behind that the same number of archers. In total, there are twenty
four skeleton warriors slowly advancing toward the position of The
Strangers, and the adventurers have nowhere to run!

The barbarian positions
his body so that his legs are dangling at the edge of the chute's
opening. He pushes off with his arms, and land squarely on his feet.
He rejoins his party, and stands next to the cavalier.

“Easy-peasy,” the
battle mage quips. He is utterly unimpressed by the lowly skeletal
minions slowly bridging the gap across the floor. He brushes the
melee fighters' shoulders as he squeezes past them to stand in front
of the party. Raising his magical staff high in the air, Lucious
starts chanting the arcane words for the Fireball spell:
“fuss-toyu-toji-veko-kurt-hoge.” Switching over to the magic
screen view, the player directs the fireball to land in the middle of
the mob. Lucious switches back to normal player screen view again to
watch his spell take effect. A small ball of flame appears next to
the staff's orb, and slowly grows in size as the mage feeds his mana
into the hot, burning ball. Suddenly, Lucious slams down his staff,
triggering the spell.

Whoosh! The hot
fireball quickly flies across the room towards the skeletal minions.
Right before the fireball reaches the front line of monsters the
shield bearers drop down to one knee in unison and collectively raise
their massive tower shields.

Lucious' eyes widen in
disbelief as he watches the fireball bounce off these shields, and
fly back towards him! “What the hell!” he blurts out as the
fireball quickly crosses the room, and is just a few feet in front of
him.

“Down!” the
cavalier knocks the stunned battle mage down to the ground, and
covers the young man with his armored body.

Diana and Conrad
instinctively dive to their right, and roll on the ground.

BOOOMMMM!
The fireball lands on the party's former position, and
the ground shudders from the fiery impact.

Wesley looks back, and
sees the ground is charred, with thick smoke lingering in the air. He
rolls off his charge, and rises to his feet. “You okay, man?” he
asks.

“Yeah,” Lucious
breathes out weakly as the knight had knocked the breath out of the
spell caster. Retrieving his staff, the battle mage stands back up
again.

“So what happened?”
Conrad asks as he positions himself in front of the party, and keeps
a worried eye on the slowly advancing undead warriors.

“What happened is
another lovely surprise from our game designers. Those shields are
enchanted, and imbued with Reflect as a constant effect,” Lucious
huffs in anger. “That really bites.” He stomps the ground to
emphasize his displeasure.
How
the heck is a spell caster supposed to beat these skeletons if he
cannot throw magic spells at them?

The barbarian whistles
in appreciation as he eyes the shields greedily.

The mage notices the
big man's stare at the magic shields and says, “Yes, once we defeat
these guys, you could take one of these reflecting shields as booty,
if we manage to beat them somehow. Any suggestions?” Lucious
crosses his arms with a scowl on his face hidden by his purple hood.

Wesley peers over
Conrad's shoulder and tries to judge the distance between their
position and the approaching undead. “We have to figure something
out before that last row of archers get in range to use their bows,”
he says. He narrows his eyes and stares hard at one of the bows. “It
looks like the last row is carrying crossbows. That means shorter
range, but greater damage from the bolts,” he observes. “So the
set up for the lines of skeletons are to defend, attack, and support.
It is going to be difficult going toe-to-toe with them. It seems like
these lines were programmed to work in unison. We will be shot full
of bolts before we could even get in range with our melee weapons,”
he assesses with admiration for the designers' apparent tactics. The
cavalier turns to look at the spell casters. “It's your show.”