At midnight on the dot, the Battletower rumbled.

  The front archway alone was open, offering passage to the hinterlands. It was bright enough to read by, even from the furthest reaches of the annex, just from this mini-flare-powered lighthouse.

  No signs of rot were present within view of the tower. They had not yet sent out a party to investigate, and for good reason.

  An interior chime from ornate clockwork contraptions echoed through the tower. The rumbling started, then grew louder.

  “Is this an earthquake?” Zilara asked, struggling for balance.

  The bright glare from outside shut off, casting the hinterlands into a moonless night once more.

  “All that work just for something to snuff ‘em out?” Zilara asked now.

  Gael shook his head. “Listen.”

  A terrible grinding noise emanated from every wall and ceiling. The top half of the Battletower’s ‘hourglass’ shape was twisting at its midpoint!

  The archway offered a partial view of this phenomenon. The southern point of the tower was tilting anticlockwise to the east. The western point soon twisted southward to become the new southern point of the Battletower. Still, there was no renewed light from on high.

  “If we go back up the tower…” Jelena began.

  Gael nodded in advance. “You’ll find every trap reset; every chimera respawned. And the top of the Battletower, every lens and every astrolabe is reset. As if rolled back in time.”

  “Why didn’t we just wait until the reset?” Zilara asked.

  “Because one team was already in place,” Gael said, referring to himself. “And anyone trapped in the tower at midnight is lost in the reset.”

  What it meant to be ‘lost in the reset’ remained unelaborated.

  The gestalt lighthouse was unlit. While no renewed fungal horde stirred in the dusty hinterlands, not even the church guards wanted to go investigate without the blaring second sun overhead.

  “It will take far more than just one night to cleanse the rot,” Gael said, looking ever-warily out the door. “Quarantine will remain overnight for some time. We don’t want to risk even a possibility of this entity reaching another city. Why, imagine if a fungus-addled dire-badger made it onto the streets of the Olde Capital.”

  It was a distinct possibility, with the Battletower offering easy transit to basically anywhere.

  “Battletower has a long and storied history,” Gael explained while leading the crew through a trophy room.

  The walls were lined with the heads of various dire-beasts slain through the ages. Each had an interactive label. Calaf realized after a moment that this was not the Brand, typically removed when mages on the hunt took the headhunter trophy, but a plaque beneath each beast.

  That dating system was nothing Calaf had ever heard of. Some pre-Menu, pre-Demon age method of timekeeping. Whatever the year signified, this creature was long extinct in these lands.

  There were more recent examples.

  Whatever was the difference between a Battlemonk and a Battlemage? The plaques did not say. There was a dire-mantis, a dire-moose, and a dire-sabertooth. Many smaller trophies represented more common fare. That last one was likewise extinct in these lands. Numerous swords and mallets were on display along the far wall, above an unlit fireplace.

  Calaf eyed the severed trophy heads warily as he passed. Their eyes appeared to track him across the room, a common visual illusion.

  There were untold rooms of libraries. Research halls, and observatory rooms more easily reachable than the observation deck on the roof. All forms of natural philosophy were represented in this institute of learning. By far the most common field of research was in the Brand and the Menu.

  “Scholars of magery have long studied the Interface as an object of Natural Philosophy,” Gael said. “This field of study has fallen out of favor for a more clerical approach to the Menu as divine weapon.”

  The party knew from the hidden gospels that the Menu was not obtained via miraculous means, though its origin was yet unknown.

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  All these rooms of research and learning were empty or occupied only by a skeleton crew. The late unpleasantness and the violence of last year had depopulated the mage’s college.

  The group passed through a research hall full of partially dissected dire-beasts. They came in pairs: one branded, one not. At least the beasts appeared to have already been dead, rather than vivisected. A scent of formaldehyde persisted even as they returned to a subterranean room with an archway in that same lockdown ‘static’ pattern. Gael described this as representing some kind of universal background radiation, whatever that was.

  The tour over, Gael brought Calaf and company back to the ground floor, walking through a grand library. The room was circular, built around a hefty, load-bearing pillar.

  “Yae wanted a heretical testament?” Gael asked. “Look at this.”

  Calaf examined a hefty tome.

  A simple description. They’d have to examine (or read manually) the tome to discover more. The book binding was pristine and relatively new, evidence of a recent transcription. This would not be the raw testament as seen in ancient scrolls.

  “How did you hide this?” Jelena asked.

  “The tower has many hidden passageways,” Enkidu said, deadpan. “It wouldn’t be that hard.”

  “The wild man has it, aye,” said Gael.

  The group gathered around.

  “Go on and read it, honey,” Jelena told Calaf.

  The Squire cleared his throat. He second-guessed each movement, as he so often did when trying to impress Jelena. Calaf selected the item and chose [Use].

  Book of Aldia.

  And so did the party carry on through the deep woods, treating with many a settlement along the way. Throngs of Branded refugees and many a curious non-branded joined in their march.

  It was a full fortnight before the group reached the edge of the wood, and would be many a fortnight more before the group reached the Autumnlands and its marches, where outland crusaders did near-constant battle with the demon hordes. In need of allies, the crew took heed of their newest member, Aldia the wayfaring Battlemage, and did travel north through arid badlands. They encountered many a settlement of runaway brand-slaves, and spent another half-week…

  (The gospel continued for one hundred sixty pages testifying to miracles performed at every village and farmstead between Twelfthnight and the Battletower. Calaf skipped ahead.)

  Followers and refugees stayed in a grove hidden in a deep wood cospe as the heroes ventured forth. They were greeted by Battlemages, an order of ancient and legendary slayers of monsters. Long had these warrior-scholars voluntarily took the Shackle to better harness the natural world.

  It was here that the Holy Priestess did spy equations upon the clay wall-boards of the scholars. Cleric Mia did see that level 92 would be half of the experience required for level 99, should any mortal possibly reach such lofty heights. Battlemage Aldia did teach the cleric the derived formula for effect resistance, and many other formulas of damage and defense both.

  The Battletower was perpetually under construction, for funding and materials were hard to come by in the Demon Age. The heroes collected what Battlmages were willing to join them in their quest and returned to the deep wood grove.

  It was there that Cleric Mia did chisel these derived formulas into Deepwood bark, and did teach the myriad Shackled and their unbranded sympathetic allies the blessed equations. Paladin Roland did teach the basics of melee combat to escaped brand-slaves, so that they could defend themselves from wandering demons that did roam the land and the unbranded slave hunters that did work in their employ. Many a sermon was had, and many a convert did vow to join their cause.

  And lo, did the Holy Priestess carve into Deepwood bark the Divine Calculation: 'Ninety-two is halfway to ninety-nine'

  The people and System-branded from all around did marvel in awe at this doctrine, for they saw that it was truth.

  (The gospel continued on for many hundred pages.)

  “It’s… different,” Calaf said after a time.

  They’d set a fire in the trophy room by which to read.

  Calaf skimmed through the previous few pages. “It changes the context of the holy equations. Rather than being imparted upon Mia by divine miracle, she learned them at the Battletower. The equations at Deepwood were just relayed from there.”

  Jelena nodded understandably.

  What this did was secularize the founding moment of the rebellious movement that would become the prototypical Church of the Menu. That alone would explain why the church considered Aldia’s testament non-canonical. But the Battlemage-authored, Battlemage-maintained holy book casting the Battlemages as the true origins of Menucraft in the land was a bit too convenient. Still, it was a massive book. A more impartial recounting of the events detailing the party’s flight from Riverglen through to their army’s encounter with the Demon King would prove invaluable.

  “One thing I’m not noticing.” Calaf rapidly flipped through the hefty tome in his Interface. “Nothing about the rot.”

  “Maybe things didn’t rot in the Demon Age?” Zilara asked.

  “Or some evil necromancer hadn’t yet cast the spell to reanimate the dead,” Jelena guessed.

  Enkidu only grumbled. He sniffed at the air, then wrinkled his nose, disgusted.

  “Something so important ought to have some kind of precedent in Natural Philosophy or church texts. If it were some lasting curse from the Demon King, for instance. But instead all texts from everyone are quiet about it.”

  The fire roared at their back. Calaf yawned. It proved infectious.

  “I’m retiring,” Jelena said as she finished her yawn.

  “Me too, Hoss.” Zilara stretched her arms.

  They weren’t allowed to take the book with them, as it was a relic essential for the portal network and general function of the dungeon. But they could sleep and investigate in the light of day.

  “I’ll join you all in a bit,” Calaf said, still examining the relic. “Oh, before I forget.”

  He used his interface to place the object on the table, then selected [Item] and thumbed down to a seldom-used section.

  “Just lowered the level range of enemies in the dungeon by thirty,” he said. “Will help when the time comes to light the beacons again tomorrow night.”

  “Good thinking,” Jelena said with a wink of her good eye.

  ‘A bit’ turned out to be several hours yet. Calaf read through Aldia’s rendition of the heroes’ journey from Deepwood through towards the plains, and port town beyond.

  A relatively secular retelling of the old gospels had some advantages. This was much more concerned with the heroes’ march as a nascent military campaign. Likely how Roland would have primarily thought of it, and Aldia too.

  There were lengthy expository segments regarding the nature of Battlemages. They’d operated from this tower, then more of a pyramidal structure, for ages. Before the first demon was ever seen in the skies. They’d developed many tricks and traps to slay dire-beasts in the pre-Interface past, yes. They’d ‘volunteered’ for the Shackle, whatever that meant, to enhance their monster-slaying capabilities. Why, the Shackle was a common terminology throughout the gospels that didn’t make it to contemporary times. Could it mean…

  “Still no rot,” he said to himself.

  Calaf sighed, too tired to do a proper analysis or to focus on any one thing. Shackles, rot. He wasn’t going to find the answers on this night.

  Surely Jelena was right about the rot. Some evil necromancer’s plot, possibly outliving him by centuries. Or an infection, spread by contact.

  He kept the book out of his Inventory and on the table so a scholar could return it to the central library when needed. The book’s internal Interface data controlled both monster levels and governance of the Battletower’s archway portals. The portals, like the dungeon, were another part of the tower that had not existed when Cleric Mia and Paladin Roland stopped by some four hundred-plus years ago.

  Regardless, Calaf rested his eyes. Just one minute should be enough. His head drooped down towards the pages.

  “Continue reading the holy tome.” The voice, spoken by multitudes but without echo, shook the walls of the trophy room.

  Calaf’s head shot up. He looked around, nearly falling out of his chair.

  “Continue. It is answers you seek.”

  The wall of trophies writhed. Stuffed heads craned to stare at Calaf. Those eyes really were following him, this time.

  “Continue. Read the tome,” implored the wall of heads. “Or are you held back by bodily fatigue? We have no such limitations.”

  Calaf blinked thrice. The illusion of writhing trophy heads did not abate.

  “Okay, been asleep too long. I’m seeing things.”

  “Close to the truth. Read about the demons. About their containment measures, and despair.”

  And hearing things. Jelena would no doubt call this out for the parlor trick that it was. But not Calaf. Calaf turned on his heel, leaving the book where it was, and took a step for the door.

  The door opened of its own accord. A figure stood in a lightless corridor. Mage’s robes slunk to the floor, ill-fitting.

  A Battlemage scholar, one of the skeleton crew who’d been working in the dissection chamber, came into focus. His name, rank, and levels were standard and unremarkable. But he had negative-ten HP.

  The mage took a step forward. A leathery stalk emerging from a split-open skull came into view.

  Back on the wall, the head of the extinct dire-griffin opened its beak:

  “… life unbridled,” the voice was inhumanly guttural and raspy, befitting a creature without vocal chords for centuries. “Choir unending. The old lord could not stop us. What chance have you, Calaf of Riverglen?”