Sera sighed. “You barely pass for Corin Cadence, let alone anyone else.”
“Ouch.” I raised my free hand over my heart. “I’ll have you know that I almost considered participating in a play once. I’m practically a professional.”
“Clearly. In the meantime, let’s focus that professionalism on actually finishing this?”
I bowed at the waist. “Your wish is my command.”
She jerked a thumb toward the open door. “Get a glance at that.”
I walked over to the now-open door to an adjacent chamber. A long, red carpet trailed across the center of the thin room. My eyes narrowed at the style. It brought back unwelcome memories of the tower room where Katashi had appeared.
The carpet served as a trail, leading directly to a throne woven from vines. The throne was far too big for a human. It looked like it was designed to accommodate something on the scale of an ogre, but no creature sat atop it. Instead, a golden crown glittered in the center.
The path to the throne was maybe sixty feet — much longer than the distance across our current room. The room was thinner, however, maybe fifteen feet in width.
The sides of the room — basically the whole area off of the red-carpeted path — were enshrouded in vines covered in thorns the size of my fist. I ground my jaw just looking at them. They weren’t moving, but I could imagine them writhing around like snakes.
The danger seemed pretty straightforward. Something in that room would trigger the vines to attack.
Narrowing my eyes, I thought I could see a couple more glimmering objects within the vines somewhere. Possibly secondary objectives, or maybe the true objective, if the crown was a decoy.
Is there a key anywhere?
I didn’t see one, but maybe it was in that tangle of vines somewhere.
Interestingly, I didn’t see any doors within the chamber. Maybe there was one hidden behind the vines? Or maybe this direction just didn’t go any further and our objective was to obtain something inside.
I turned my head back to Sera. “Seems likely the vines are designed to attack.”
Sera chuckled. “Obviously. Anything more creative to contribute?”
I shrugged, turning back toward the room. Nervously, I glanced at my necklace. I hadn’t used any mana yet, but I had an obsessive need to check. 46/46. I was fine.
I turned on my attunement, just for a moment.
Everything glowed.
I’d almost forgotten that virtually this whole place was some kind of magical construct or illusion. After a blinding moment, I shook my head and focused, filtering out the ambient glow to focus on the things with significance.
The crown glowed brighter — and so did a spot on the rear wall, to the left side of the throne. A false wall, maybe?
The floor directly in front of the throne was also glowing. A trap, perhaps, or a passage into another room.
I spotted three glowing objects within the vines. All the way in the back right corner, a huge greatsword was propped up against the wall. It was about as far from the entrance as it was possible to get.
Toward the middle of the room on the left side, something small was glowing on the floor. A key, if I had to guess.
Another glowing object was just inside the door, sitting on the floor just inside a layer of vines. I couldn’t quite make it out, but it was roughly dagger sized.
I turned off my attunement, turned back to Sera, and relayed my findings.
I checked my mana again. 45/46.
I need to stop being so obsessive about checking my mental mana. I’m not in any danger using it a few minutes here or there.
I told myself that routinely, but it didn’t help.
Sera raised a hand to brush a stray hair out of her vision. “Okay, that’s actually pretty good to know, because we’re going to have to make some choices. As soon as you step in there, the vines start moving in. They grow an inch or so every time you take a step. I bet it’s designed so we can’t get everything before the room fills up with vines.”
I folded my arms. “How much did you test that already?”
“Don’t look so irritated. We only took a couple steps in there. They didn’t reset after we left the room, but they haven’t grown any further, either.”
I scratched my chin. “You try setting the vines on fire?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. We had a feeling attacking the vines might make them get worse, but it’s probably going to be necessary if we want to get those items you noticed.”
“Do we actually want those things? They could all be traps. Classic temptation strategy. The real reward is the crown right in front of us, but if we step off the trail, we get eaten.”
She shrugged. “Problem is, we don’t exactly have a label on the room to tell us the intent. It could be a virtue test like you’re describing, or it could be a test to see if we’re easily distracted by the obvious solution and miss the thing we really need — the key. Or the glowing wall.”
“Why’d you try to get Mara?”
Sera waved toward the throne. “The vines grow when they detect a step, as far as we could tell. A Guardian like Marissa could jump half way across the room and it’d probably only count as one step.”
I scratched my chin. “Not a bad idea. Can we do something similar with just the two of us?”
Sera winced. “I thought about summoning my karvensi and having him fly across the room, but I’ve been trying to hold off on summoning anything in here. Both because I don’t know how they’d react to a fake tower and because I want to conserve my mana.”
I didn’t know much about summoned monster behavior, but that sounded like a reasonable concern. Still, we didn’t have a lot of good options available. “I think we should try it. I don’t have a better solution, unless you want me to try to blast you across the room with my gauntlet.”
“Funny, but no. All right, I’ll take a shot at this.”
Sera took a deep breath, glancing from side-to-side.