Miriam's finger slowly traced the rim of her goblet. It was the physical action that she used to interact with her arcane implement when her move earth magic was on. The physical acts used to manifest the magic of mage-classed hunters were fairly removed from the magical effects they generated. When Sophie used her raven's strike, she physically swung a sword's blade into her target. The association between Sophie striking with her sword and invoking the raven's strike magic to inflict more damage was still fairly arbitrary and obscure. The Valkyrie knew which of her sword swings would do catastrophic damage to severely injured enemies, but the exact things she did to make that happen would be different from what another Valkyrie did to accomplish that effect. The arbitrary nature of the skill activations was simply more
obvious
for the mages. Miriam had a magic cup as her implement, and running her finger around the rim was the physical action she performed to make the stone platform they were on detach from the wall and descend slowly. Another Geomancer would probably do something else entirely with a cup to get that to happen, and if Miriam got a wand or orb she'd have to learn a whole new set of physical gestures to make the magic happen. With the implement she had, grasping mud required her to hold the goblet over her head, hands of stone required her to put her hand into the cup, and their current travel was being provided by a single finger tracing the rim of Miriam's goblet.
They moved at the speed of a slow walk. An elevator from Earth would have been much faster, but the entire tower structure was not unreasonably tall by North American standards. It was tall for Max, because the whole thing seemed to be about twice as tall as the Albuquerque Plaza office building from back home, but those members of his party who had spent some time in Los Angeles knew sky scrapers that were
three
times the height of that building and more. They'd started in the middle, and even at the slow walking pace their Geomancer could provide, getting to the bottom would take less than two minutes of actual travel. The time savings over running around on the stairs and picking their way through the maze of steps was very large. Even so, they were more than twenty minutes getting to the bottom because Miriam stopped the train eight times.
Avoiding the stairs as they were, the traps and dead ends affected them not at all. Seen from the vantage point of the platform, many traps were quite apparent, the mechanisms hidden beneath the steps only from the view of those on the staircases themselves. It seemed that there were trip wires set in some places that would cause blades, or weights, or fluids of some kind to come into the hunters' path. The most devious traps seemed to be that some of the steps were not held up by whatever magical force kept the rest of the steps suspended in the air. Attached to the blocks ahead and behind by wedges, a force such as the step of a hunter would likely cause them to come loose and crash down into the darkness. Hunters were much more durable than humans without magic, but Max still thought a fall from such a height would go poorly for him. And with the expected monsters at the bottom, becoming separated from the rest of the party to such a degree would likely be a death sentence. Perhaps even for a hunter as powerful as Sophie.
Monsters were the reason for the frequent stops. Their party's goal wasn't merely to get to the end and open the gateway home, the goal was to eliminate the monsters in the dungeon. Monsters that escaped their culling could someday still produce a dungeonbreak and find their way to one of the home worlds. Every one of them was an aspiring mass murderer, just trying to find the road that would lead them to innocent civilians they could victimize. When they saw nightmares, Miriam would stop the platform so that Kaitlin and Oscar could kill them from afar. They seemed like they'd be extremely dangerous in close combat, but given the stone boat upon which they rode, there was little reason to give them such an opportunity.
While Patala and Jotunheim had a great many kinds of monsters, Mictlan and Tartarus did not. Tartarus only brought three kinds of creatures: the imps, the nightmares, and the Tartarians themselves. But while they were limited in the number of species they brought to battle, every one of them had been bio-sculpted into something uniquely terrifying. The actual Tartarians were supposedly Earth-origin hominids before they were changed into hideous beasts, but it wasn't clear what the original form of the nightmares even was. Were the eight limbed nightmares ones which had had clawed appendages added, or were the four limbed nightmares ones which had had limbs taken away? Without going to their world and seeing their warbeasts in early stages of transformation, it wasn't a question the Space Force was prepared to answer. The standard size of a nightmare was about two hundred kilograms, but that could as easily represent the usual size of the Tartarians' bio-sculpting tools as the natural size of whatever dog, horse, or lizard the nightmares were made out of.
These particular nightmares seemed optimized for climbing. They had long limbs like gibbons or spiders, and they ended in gripping claws like those of a bird. They clung to the bottoms of the stairs, waiting for hunters to pass over them so that they ambush them with claws and fangs and spiky tails. Oscar's dummy arrows pierced their flesh. Some tried to take cover behind the stone slabs, but they were too large to be protected from Kaitlin's sight. Her powers did not require her to see the enemy's entire body to coagulate their brain. As they lost their grip upon the stairs one by one, they fell into the darkness. Their bodies did not look like natural animals, which of course they were not. The impression they gave was of puppets whose articulations had been severed from their strings. The lasting image Max had was of their faces. While he knew that anthropomorphizing literal aliens was a dangerous thing to do, he couldn't help thinking that the final expression of the nightmares was one of... disappointment.
Imps were able to shoot back, as many of them had glowing runes on their gremlinish bodies that imparted them the ability to attack at range with elemental magic. Imps were otherwise the physically weakest creatures in the Tartarian army, and were not prepared to go claw to blade with front line hunters. Imps generally tried to act as the second line of Tartarian forces, keeping out of close combat by using terrain or nightmares to prevent the hunters from closing. That was probably their plan for the tower dungeon as well, they stood on stairs and landings that enjoyed wide gulfs of empty space protecting them from hunters on other staircases and paths. However, with Sophie's ability to run on the air, the chasm provided no protection at all. Danny intercepted various snowballs and flame bolts with his shield while Sophie ran around blenderizing the imps.
Max considered his contribution to be holding Miriam's mana tether. It wasn't glamorous. He didn't get any kills or whatsoever. The accomplishment of getting the party quickly and safely to the bottom of the stairs where it met an imposing door belonged to Miriam. Max just saved her mana by holding the leash attached to her neck. Her contribution was very important, and Max was content to know that he had a hand in it.
Alex, on the other hand, was fuming all the way down. Unable to reach his foes, he raged. "Drive me closer," the Executioner suggested to Miriam, "I want to hit them with my sword!" He was out-voted by the other members of the party, and he was very angry.
####
Fiona looked at the board. Vertical and horizontal lines meeting at right angles. Her immediate thought was that it was like a Chess board. But when she discovered that the red and white playing pieces were placed at the corners rather than within the squares, she changed her assessment to consider that the game was like Go. One could easily
play
Go with the board and playing pieces provided, but this particular set had been made for a game from another world entirely. A game called Vuhshahk.
"You place stone each turn." Ulzhari was explaining the rules of this ancient game. Apparently the Berserker was considered quite good on her home planet, and even had an official ranking that was three-moon, which was better than four-moon. "If you can't place stone, you lose." The orc began placing some playing pieces into positions to better explain things. "Each stone is soldier. Soldiers are cowards. They will go where you tell them, but they will not go where they can see an enemy unless they can hear a friend. Soldier
sees
in straight line, but can
hear
around corners." She pointed to a stone, and then pointed to the intersections in each cardinal direction. "There is soldier here. These are the eight spots that alone enemy is too afraid to enter." Then she traced a box around the stone. "These are the eight spots soldier can support a friend. Can place stone here even if see enemy."
The game seemed similar enough to Go that the Night Caller could probably play. Although she assumed that she'd lose embarrassingly badly against a ranked opponent like Ulzhari. "How do the soldiers fight?" The pieces were called
soldiers
, Fiona knew that they'd come into conflict somehow. If they didn't fight, they'd be called like
farmers
or something.
"Soldiers are cowards." While that seemed like a fairly contentious thing for a member of the military to say, but the orc said it like she was describing the weather or the time of day. "If they are surrounded and cannot see empty land, they will be captured." She demonstrated capturing a stone with four stones, capturing a stone on the edge with three stones, and capturing two stones with six stones. That part looked very much like Go to Fiona. Ulzhari then put down a block of nine stones, there by three. "If there many soldiers and some can hear only friends," she pointed to the one in the middle, "then no can be captured. Important for late in the game."
"What do the captured pieces do?" Fiona recalled that captured chess pieces reduced tactical choices, while captured Go pieces were simply worth points at the end.
"On turn, you can place captured soldier instead of your soldier. Mostly that is done end of game to fill enemy territory, but sometimes you can make them traitors to capture other soldiers." She demonstrated infilling some pieces such that all the pieces were surrounded. "Sometimes capture can put the board to how it was before. When happens, the captives die and the disputed spaces cannot be entered by any soldiers." She placed 4 red stones and three white stones. Then she placed a fourth white stone and captured one of the red stones. Then she placed a red stone to capture the white stone that had just been placed and left it in the original state with four red and three white. Then she took the newly placed red stone, the captured red stone, and the captured white stone back to their bowls. "These two spaces were fought over, and soldiers won't go into them. Because they are afraid."
Feeling that she now knew the game well enough to still get completely thrashed by a serious player, Fiona decided to change the subject. "How can you be so OK about being Max's sex slave? You're joining a
harem
, you're going to belong to him."
Ulzhari thought about what the human was asking. "I feel like there is language barrier. Of course I join harem. What else would I do?"
"You're a hunter!" Fiona yelled at the Berserker, aware on some level that she was really yelling at herself. "You're powerful and important. You don't need to accept a man being above you. Max has no right to be lording it over us. We're not his harem slaves." She hadn't got through her invectives before she'd lost count of her pronouns.
"If man survives hunter life," Ulzhari mused, "he will return in triumph. He will have honor, and stories, and strength, and wealth. He will join harem. Women of wealth and status and beauty and strength will want to be in harem with him. He will have easy life. His children will want for nothing." She made an expansive hand gesture. "If woman survives hunter life," Ulzhari continued with an accusatory tone, "she will return in triumph. She will have honor, and stories, and strength, and wealth. She will join harem. Men and women of wealth and status and beauty and strength will want to be in harem with her. She will have easy life. Her children will want for nothing." The orc made an expression where her lower lip pulled up, making her tusks look shorter.
Unsure of what several of the gestures and turns of phrase meant, Fiona retreated to more familiar ground. "We're going to be in high demand. As sought after as the men. Why should we submit to being in a harem? Why should Max dominate all the women? We can be in charge of things ourselves."
Letting out a heavy sigh, Ulzhari began explaining like she was talking to a small child. "I hear in North America you have too many men, your harems are very small. But for me, there not too many men. My harem will have one man and several women, because that's how it
is
