Tower of Legend (Patreon)

AN: Sorry it took so long to get started on the next stories. I've been churning through a lot of ideas and a lot of prototype chapters. I've settled on three that I really like. I'm posting the first chapter of each and will post a poll afterwards. I'll make my decision on which story to continue based in large part on audience feedback.

This is the first of three. For all of them, the bit in italics at the beginning is the story blurb.

The Tower is a myth. A place beyond space, beyond time, where any adventurer can become a legend. Finding it is a matter of destiny.

Troy was a young adventurer, just happy to get a chance to set foot in any dungeon at all. When his team stumbled on a once in a lifetime chance, he was ecstatic.

He should have known. Greatness always comes at a price.

—-

Exploring dungeons was a dangerous business. Exploring unregulated dungeons, even more so. Still, human beings were adaptable creatures. After enough excursions, nervous anticipation turned into calm acceptance of the risks. So it was that a veteran team in the middle of a dungeon dive could be found tending to their business as though they were camping out in a forest clearing rather than an underground cavern.

One woman sat on a conveniently placed rock, reading a book. Next to her, another woman sat cross-legged on the ground, deep in meditation. Her brother lounged against the wall nearby, idly checking over his sword. The oldest two men in the group were busy tending to a small cookfire.

Exploring dungeons was dangerous work. It also worked up an appetite.

The peaceful scene was broken when a teenage boy sprinted into the room. A sack was thrown over his shoulder and terror was written all over his face.

Troy was the youngest and least experienced member of the group. The chance to tag along and learn from a veteran band of adventurers had been the opportunity of a lifetime. It was out of gratitude as much as a need to catch his breath that he paused for a moment to call out a warning.

"Dungeon shift!"

A thrill of shock raced through the group. Where before they had been wondering what sort of trouble Troy might have gotten himself into, now they leapt into action. Troy didn't pause to admire the sight, instead racing through the room and out the door leading to the exit as soon as he finished delivering the warning.

Dungeons changed and evolved over time. It made for fresh new dangers with every trip. It was even more dangerous to the poor souls caught inside during a major shift. In a managed and regulated dungeon, officials would keep track of the local mana density and shut down access when a shift was imminent. In a wildcat dungeon, explorers were on their own.

The sack thumped against Troy's back as he raced pell mell through the next corridor. The rhythm was just out of sync with the thud of his boots against the rocky ground. His back would be a mess of bruises. Troy grit his teeth and tightened his grip. If he lived long enough to form bruises, he would count himself lucky.

He was carrying the loot he'd harvested from the dungeon after the rest of the team had finished killing all of the nearby monsters. If everybody made it out of the dungeon shift all right, then the rest of the team would appreciate him holding on to their prize. If he was the only one... well, at least he'd have some funds to help him start all over again.

The ground beneath his feet trembled, an ominous sign of what was to come. He'd been able to outrun the early effects of the dungeon shift, but that could change in a heartbeat.

A petite form zipped past him. He stumbled, only regaining his balance after a few panicked steps. Up ahead he could see Patricia, a shimmer surrounding her body as her legs moved with unnatural speed. The party's wizard usually specialized in bombarding dungeon monsters from afar, but she had other tricks up her sleeve that she could use in an emergency.

Another form blurred past Troy a heartbeat later. Peter, Patricia's brother, his body covered in the same shimmering glow. It would have been nice if she could have spared a magical boost for the rest of the party, but in a dungeon shift it was always every man for himself. It was already impressive that she'd paused to help her brother.

Troy pressed forward, ignoring the stitch in his side. There would be no safe place to rest until he escaped from the dungeon. He scraped his side against the stone wall of the tunnel as he tried to round a corner without slowing down. He stumbled, but was lucky enough to keep his feet. He could only hope that his luck held.

Another figure moved past him. Mark, the party's second in command. He wasn't moving with any magical boost to his speed, but he still glided right past Troy. He'd seen the man move fast before, wielding his two daggers as he weaved in and out of groups of monsters. Now his weapons were put away and all of his focus was on moving in a straight line toward the exit.

The ground rumbled beneath his feet, sending Troy stumbling once more. Only grim determination kept him on his feet. The dungeon might grind him into bloody chunks at any moment, but as long as there was any chance that he'd survive then Troy was going to grab on to it.

He rounded another corner, outright bouncing off the wall. He found himself racing down a long straightaway, lit by the eerie glow of the phosphorescent moss that thrived in the mana-rich dungeon environment. The figures of his companions were dimly visible in the distance. If he remembered right, there was a stairway and then two more corridors to go before he reached the exit. He ignored the side passages as he pelted forward, grateful for the laborious task of picking up dungeon treasures that had left him with such a good mental map of the area.

Just when he was starting to get his hopes up, the ground rumbled again. This time it was no temporary disruption. The shaking continued on and intensified. Troy heard the crashing of rock from up ahead and groaned in dismay. The shaking forced him to slow to a walk. He came to a stop when he saw what was up ahead.

When the rumbling subsided, it was only a temporary respite. Sure, the whole floor hadn't come crashing down around him, grinding up his body to serve as raw material for the newly renovated dungeon. Still, what had happened was bad enough.

A chasm had opened up in what had been a smooth tunnel floor. It was wider across than he was tall, and Troy couldn't see the bottom. Not that the depth really mattered. Even if he could survive the drop, being stuck inside the dungeon during a shift would be fatal anyways.

Troy stared at the chasm, eyeballing the distance. It was too far for him to jump. Even if he dropped the sack of loot, even if he was completely fresh and got a good run up at it, there was just no way he could make it across. He'd been allowed to fight a few dungeon monsters under supervised circumstances, but he was nowhere near his first level up, let alone a class selection. Right now, he was no more superhuman than he'd been when he'd first stepped foot in a dungeon.

Troy was on the verge of giving in to despair when he felt an iron band clamp around his midsection.

"Hup!"

After the first shock of impact there was a moment where Troy felt strangely weightless. He looked down and saw the chasm beneath his feet, flying by faster than he'd ever moved before. They landed on the other side with a soft thud and Troy heard a familiar grunt.

Brock, the party's leader and a veteran front line warrior. Normally he didn't move very fast, as there was no need. He simply planted himself between the most dangerous monsters and the rest of the party, and waited for them to come to him. In an emergency, though, his inhuman strength could be turned to impressive ends, as evidenced by the fact that he had leapt over the chasm with a person tucked under his arm.

Two people, actually. As Troy turned to look at his savior, he caught a glimpse of another figure on the other side of the man's body. It was Evangeline, the party healer and the final member of their party. If she'd been startled by the dungeon shift, there was no sign of it on her face. She was accepting her position as a glorified tote bag with remarkable poise.

Brock had paused for only a moment on landing in order to absorb the shock before breaking into a sprint. He made no motion to put down either piece of human cargo, and Troy wasn't inclined to say anything about it. Even weighed down, Brock was making better time than Troy would be able to on his own two feet.

They rounded another corner and came face to face with the stairway up to the first floor. They also caught up with the rest of the party. Not because Brock had been moving so quickly, but because the three of them had come to a halt. Patricia had her staff outstretched, mana pouring off of it in waves that even Troy could feel. In front of her a glowing forcefield held back a pile of rocks.

Brock set Troy and Evangeline down on their feet before making his way forward.

"We need to keep moving!"

"I know," Patricia replied through gritted teeth. "If you know a way through, I'll be right there with you.

Brock frowned. He stepped up to the barrier and put his shoulder into it. He took some of the strain off of Patricia, judging by her sigh of relief, but that was about all. He couldn't take a step forward, even as his face went red with the effort.

"It's like pushing against a mountain," he said. "Is there another way up?"

"All the paths run through this stairway," Troy said. He could have navigated them around an obstacle on either of the dungeon floors, given time, but this stairway was the only connection between floors.

"I can try to cut a way up," Peter said, drawing his sword and eyeing the ceiling.

"No!" Brock said. "If this is what's up above, cutting a path will see us all crushed."

Troy frowned. Mark was right. Dungeon shifts usually caused chaos starting from the lowest levels of the dungeon and moving up from there, but there were no hard and fast rules to such things. If the upper floor was already a meat grinder, then they were already doomed. It was just a matter of how the dungeon would finish them off.

"It might not be so bad," Mark said. He did his best to affect a positive tone, but Troy could still hear the stress in his voice. Not to mention that his hands were resting on the hilts of his daggers. "We might be able to ride out the shift here, as long as the dungeon leaves the stairway alone."

At that moment the ground rumbled. The tremors didn't fade with time, instead amplifying to the point that Troy felt like his teeth were about to chatter out of his head. The bottom stair cracked and fell away.

Peter yelped and moved up the stairway. The rest of the party did the same, soon huddling up against the magical wall that Patricia was maintaining with all her might. All the while, the stairs below kept cracking and falling away.

Troy screwed up his courage and looked back. He wanted to see what was waiting for them down below, but it wasn't meant to be. For all that he could tell, the stairs were simply vanishing into the abyss.

"If I drop the shield," Patricia said, screaming to be heard above the rumble of earth, "I might be able to levitate-"

Before she could finish, the last few steps vanished all at once. Troy's stomach leapt up into his throat as the ground vanished out from under him.

The eerie sensation of free fall only lasted for a few panicked heartbeats before a protruding rock slammed into his ribcage. Troy bounced off, his hiss of pain drowned out by the chaos around him as he continued to tumble. It was pitch black. He wasn't sure when the lights had gone out or when he had fallen out of the illuminated area.

His world had narrowed down to the sensation of tumbling ever downward, punctuated by the occasional impact against hard rock or, once, hard armor. When he finally fetched up on flat ground he simply lay where he had fallen for a long moment, content to let the world spin around him in the dark. He would have thought he had died if he weren't in so much pain.

He was pulled out of his thoughts by the appearance of a ball of light. He hissed and brought up a hand to shield his eyes. Patricia had taken the fall with more grace, judging by her appearance. Thanks to the illumination she provided, Troy was able to see that the rest of the party had landed more or less safely. They were all scattered around the floor of an enormous cavern, together with rocks ranging from the size of his fist to over twice the size of his body. Troy spared a brief moment of thankful prayer for the fact that he hadn't been crushed at the end of his tumble.

"Is everybody alive?" Brock asked. The giant man looked like he had taken quite a battering on the way down, but he still looked game for a fight as he climbed to his feet.

A chorus of responses came back. Troy was relieved to find that everybody had made it.

The only person who didn't say anything was Patricia. After creating the ball of light, she had taken only a quick glance around before fixing her gaze on the back wall of the cavern. Troy groaned as he hauled himself upright. After making sure he wasn't losing a dangerous amount of blood, he followed her gaze to the back wall.

"What is that?"

He could see why it had held her attention. The entire wall was covered in angular carvings. Rows and rows of alien letters, regular in form but nothing like the alphabet that Troy knew, stretched from the ceiling to the floor.

"It's ancient," Patricia said. She moved closer to the wall to get a better look, the rest of the party trailing in her wake. "The forms resemble old Valosian carvings, though it's not quite right... it could be an even older script."

"Can you tell what it says?" Brock asked. "This could be the key to getting out of here."

Now that he mentioned it, Troy realized that while the cavern they were in was quite large, there were no obvious entrances or exits. Well, there was a hole near the ceiling that they must have fallen through, but climbing back up that way would be impossible. If they couldn't come up with a way out, this would be their tomb.

Patricia didn't answer right away. She stopped about a dozen paces from the wall, craning her neck to get a better look at the carvings. Troy moved past her, getting right up close to the wall itself. He couldn't read the carvings anyways, so he figured he might as well try looking for a way out. If somebody had gone to the trouble to decorate the wall, surely they would have prepared a stairway in and out of the room. He didn't know how such a structure would survive for so long in a dungeon, but he had no idea how the wall could have survived either.

"I can read a little bit," Patricia said. "It's describing the legend of the Tower."

Troy turned away from the wall at that. He could see the excitement in Patricia's expression, mirroring the grin that he could feel breaking across his own face.

Adventurers were only as good as the dungeons they explored. It was a truism, but came with a chilling corollary: if you couldn't get access to dungeons that were at or above your level, then your progress was stuck.

Stable dungeons in general were under tight control. Ruinous access fees were just the start. Getting access to a high level dungeon wasn't just a matter of money. At that level the asking price started at years of service in a national army or as part of a guild's enforcement arm.

Brock and his group specialized in exploring wild dungeons. Temporary, unstable, and dangerous, the only real draw was the lure of the unknown. Not just the treasures, but the chance to fight relatively high level monsters without signing your life away was a reward in itself.

The Tower was a legend. A myth. A bedtime story told to aspiring young adventurers.

According to the stories, it was a dungeon without end. The further you ascended, the tougher the monsters. It was a place beyond time, beyond national borders. A place where any adventurer would have the chance to reach their full potential.

Troy knew there had to be a grain of truth to the stories. After all, Trevathan the Conqueror hadn't come from any of the established dungeons. Neither had Sandra the Crimson Flame. Any time an extraordinarily powerful adventurer arose without going through any of the known dungeons, it fueled the rumors. Of course, such things happened once a lifetime, if you were lucky. Sandra was the most recent, making a name for herself when Troy was just learning how to walk.

If he could get access to the Tower... Troy turned back to the wall of the cave, looking at the mysterious writing with more reverence. Now that he looked at it, the bottom right hand corner of the carvings didn't look like writing at all. If he squinted a little bit, it looked like a stylized drawing of a tower. Of the Tower.

He reached out and rested his hand on the drawing. If this was the closest he got to the Tower, well, it was closer than most ever managed.

He felt a chill on his palm. The places where he'd scraped himself during the fall, where blood had been beading on his skin, were so cold it burned.

"What-"

Before he could finish his startled shout, a shimmer of magic rose up from the drawing of the Tower and swept over him. In a flash, he was gone.