Chapter 14

  A Jagged, Bloody Grin

  Nik pressed forward, straining every muscle in his body just to take one more step. Crystal-blue eyes, the color of ice, pierced deep into the dark-gray eyes of the king as he said, “I keep getting stronger. How much stronger can you get? I might not be enough today, but in a week, a month, a year—come for my friends and find out how strong I am when you get to them. This is the only warning I will give to you. I don’t want your crown. Come for my friends, and I will loot it from what is left of you.”

  A scream struck Nik like a physical blast of wind. His feet slid back, leaving grooves in the dirt-covered floor. He struggled to maintain an upright position. Another set of the heartbeats flooded over him like a river, sweeping him off of his feet and in the direction of a wall that he’d already become well acquainted with.

  * * *

  Before the bones of his back could be snapped against the brickwork once again, Nik blinked, and his eyes opened to the ceiling of their prison cell. The feeling of flying through the air and then finding himself suddenly stopped made his stomach twist as he tried to regain his bearings. There were healers swarming him, but he couldn’t see Pearl or Ryan. There were too many goblins blocking his vision.

  There on the ground behind them, she was holding the dragon back from rushing the healers. The little guy looked fierce as he’d ever seen him as he bared his tiny fangs at the goblins. They were okay, the king wasn’t in this place.

  The dizzying sensation of jumping from one place to another was starting to ease. He took his time to stand, against the wishes of the healers who begged him to stay lying down. Once he’d managed to get to his feet, he said, “Let me go to my friends first, then you can check on me and ask your questions.”

  Feeling like he’d just crawled out from under a pile of rubble, he walked on shaky feet to meet them halfway as they rushed to him. He fell to his knees as the three of them broke against each other in a crumpled pile of hugs.

  “I can’t go to sleep again, Pearl. Not until I’m a lot stronger, or until I can stop myself from going to where he is. He wants to come for us. I stood against him, Pearl. I stood against him and I told him that if he came for you, then I would come for his crown. We need to get stronger, and we need to do it now.”

  After all of his stats had gone up by one with his new level, he placed his free stat point into intelligence. That brought it up to 10, and he got another notification.

  Stat Level 10!

  First double-digit stat!

  Can you even count that high? Pro-tip, use fingers and toes.

  Bonuses Received

  Intelligence Level 10:

  Elemental Skill Growth Boost

  With the healers already trying to wring answers from him while he was actively embracing his friends, Nik looked at his Regeneration ability and explained its effects to them all.

  “This new ability gives me natural healing over time, and increased healing from abilities that are used on me. Also, I guess I owe you all my thanks for keeping me alive. So, thank you for saving my life. I am in your debt, healers.”

  “It is what we do. There is no debt,” said Loffka.

  “I can feel that I am already healed, but I am tired. Do you know of anything that can keep me awake or keep me from dreaming?”

  “I don’t, but I will look into it on your behalf. Preventin’ harm is tangential to healin’ after all.” The healer gave him a soft smile before heading up the stairs and out the door behind the rest of the healers.

  Nik looked into the eyes of his friends and thought, I am so much more lucky to have you than you realize, and more than any luck stat could ever make me.

  After going over the rest of the details of his system notifications with Pearl, they decided that the best course of action for now was to continue training their 0 mana cost abilities. They would train what they could while saving their mana for whatever Lord Cril had in store. Pearl did not have a system, but she could tell that she was on the verge of leveling her wind skill. Unfortunately for Nik, he didn’t have an innate sense for when his skills were getting closer to leveling.

  The training lasted less than an hour before being interrupted by a member of the lowerguard who entered the prison.

  “It is time for your trials, kobold,” said the guard as he unlocked the cell.

  The lowerguards walked them back to the same building where they’d been granted an audience with the Burrow Lord. However, this time, at every single staircase, they took the side that led them deeper underground.

  Deep below the dwellings of the goblin burrow, they came to what looked like a large oval that sank below the seating that surrounded it. Members of the clan they had saved, including the now recovered warriors, were already sitting in attendance. The Burrow Lord and her guards sat in an elevated position above the rest.

  “Your friends may take their seats among the others. This trial is for you alone, kobold,” Lord Cril commanded.

  Nik woke Ryan from sleeping in his hood and sat him down on a seat next to Pearl. With his friends in their places, Nik was ushered down one last set of stairs and into the oval below. Alone in the center of the chamber, he started counting the leaves as they fell in his imagined scene.

  The Burrow Lord spoke again, breaking his moment of meditation and pulling him back to the present.

  “You will be subjected to the same trials that our upperguards must pass through in order to be promoted to lowerguard positions. You will be judged based on what is witnessed here by all who are present. Initiate the trials.”

  A heavy metallic sound reverberated through the room. A lever that Nik hadn't noticed before had been pulled by a guard he didn’t recognize. Shining refracted light from the mana torches as it descended, a massive crystal half of the size of the oval came to a stop, hanging from the ceiling above him. Metal grates slid open along the walls, and a light purple haze with a silver edge began flooding in from every side of the pit.

  His scales felt tighter and breath quickened as it drew closer, then he held his breath. It swirled around him, tinting everything in sight with an amethyst hue.

  His ribs squeezed his lungs as he fought to hold his breath. A dull ache was forming in his head and his vision started to go black. He failed then with a sharp inhale.

  The sickly sweet taste of the substance felt as though it had filled his entire body. Nik folded over gagging on the smoke. The room around him blurred further into a haze of silvery-purple void. Nothing existed beyond the edge of the smoke. It was gone. Everything was gone, and he was alone. So, with his throat burning and with legs that felt like they were made out of mud, he started walking.

  I should have found the edge by now. What am I even supposed to be doing here?

  He’d been walking for several minutes with nothing in his view changing. It was always just more of the colorful smoke.

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  “Wait, please. Is there anyone there? Please, be there…” whimpered a voice in the distance.

  “Hello? I’m here. Where are you?”

  “I’m here! Please, I’m here…” they called back to him.

  Nik followed the direction of the voice, but paused as he noticed something. That voice sounds familiar. No, not just familiar. I know that voice.

  Hesitantly, he proceeded until he found the source of his own voice. On the floor, curled in on himself and hugging his own knees, was another Nik. The other him had sat on the dirt, covered his face with his hands, and rocked himself back and forth as he cried.

  “Hello, what are you doing here?” asked Nik

  Nik nearly tripped on his own foot as they crawled forward to grasp at his leg. They clung to him as they spoke.

  “Oh, thank the tower, I thought nobody would find me here,” said the other Nik.

  “I’m here, but I don’t understand. Are you part of my trial?”

  “Black Tower! The trial! It was so long ago… Please, don’t leave me here. I don’t want to be alone anymore. The trial is an endless nothing. There is only us and the smoke. The others leave me alone.”

  “What others? Who else is here?” Nik asked the strange reflection of himself.

  “Us, Nik. We are all that is here. Yet, I am alone. Always, I leave me here. Every time, every one of us leaves me, just like everyone else… But I am still here.”

  “I don’t understand, what are you?”

  “You’re going to leave me, too. I can see it, you’re going to abandon me. Just like our parents did, just like the goblins left us abandoned when they refused to actually take us into their home.”

  He grimaced as the other Nik’s claws dug into his thigh. He pushed the fearful version of himself away as they grew more manic and unpredictable. The weak Nik just dropped onto their side, once again curling into a ball and crying.

  What about this is supposed to be a trial? What does Cril want me to do with this? he thought as claws scratched on the dirt at the edge of the fog. A small figure was watching from just out of sight. Then it came for them. Nik readied himself for whatever manner of beast the creature turned out to be.

  Nik shook. He fell to his knees at the sight of a second alternate self. This Nik was only six years old, and the age he was when he’d been left at the castle. His red blanket was wrapped around him, the length of it dragging on the floor behind him. He hadn’t turned it into a cloak yet. The child-Nik walked over to the scared one and tried to comfort the scared older kobold.

  “It’s okay, don’t be scared. Mom and dad will come back, and we’ll go back to our den. You’ll see,” the child said with a warm and hopeful smile.

  These are parts of me, that’s what I’m seeing. I’m coming face to face with the parts of myself I don’t even want to acknowledge. The fear of loneliness and isolation. The child-like innocence; hope that all will return to what it was, and the fear that it never will. But what do I do to pass the trial?

  “I need to move forward, but I don’t know how. Do either of you know the way?” Nik asked the others.

  Child-Nik pointed beyond the two of them, and a path forward revealed itself as a bridge formed before his eyes. Nik tried to walk around the other versions of himself, but his steps were cut short by scared-Nik. They scrambled to block his way, begging just as they had before.

  “Please, don’t leave us. This one is just a child, and you would abandon even him. You can’t go, for all that is good within the tower's shadow, you have to stay with us.”

  “No, I can’t stay here. This isn’t the end of my journey. It’s more than just me that needs a safe place to call home. I can’t be held back by my fears, or by hoping that everything will return to what it was before.”

  “We are you! You can’t just leave us behind!"

  “No, you’re right. You are a part of me, as much as I wish I could just deny the parts of myself that are hard to accept. I need to move forward. I’ll take you with me, but I won’t let you hold me back.”

  As Nik walked past the reflections of himself, they merged together and flowed into him. So, this is the trial facing the darkest parts of my own soul, or at least revealing them. With an idea of what this trial might be, he moved toward the bridge. The bridge looked like it was made of the same substance as the smoke, only it had been solidified into blocks.

  He took a deep breath in and took his first steps onto the amethyst bricks of the bridge. Heavy metal steps boomed from the other side of the bridge, but Nik continued moving to meet it.

  A looming shadow stepped through the smoke ahead and let loose a hearty laugh.

  “Ha, this is what you are, Nik? Still the weak little Kobold? I pity the memory of you,” said the towering, adventurer-sized and heavily-armored kobold in front of him.

  “You, don’t exist. The others were memories and aspects of myself. I don’t understand who you are.”

  “Isn’t it obvious? I am what you could be. I am stronger than anything that could possibly stand against me. We need only to follow our ambition, and then this is what we can become. I am strong, fast, enduring, and more skilled than any opponent.”

  “So what are you then, my future or just a representation of my ambitions?”

  “Ambition? You think that alone could make us into this? You think things are that simple? I am so much more than that, I am possibility and power. I am your potential, if only you would stop wasting your time on other things or people. Go out to do battle, train, level, and grow beyond any limitations.”

  “Wasting my time on other things or people? That is how I should get stronger? Who did you protect on your way to gaining that strength? Would you abandon the fae, or the goblins? What about other kobolds? If they were in danger, would you ignore their plights on your path to power?”

  “Yes. That is the price of power. In order for you to gain strength for yourself, you must do everything you can to rid yourself of distractions.” The crystalline bricks of the bridge chipped under the feet of the other him.

  “I don’t want to gain power only for myself anymore. I need the strength to protect those around me. Even those who are simply in my path. I refuse to let ambition blind me to the needs of others.”

  He realized that he had meant those words, too. I’m not just fighting for myself anymore, and I want to help them to get stronger for themselves. This world is bigger than just my struggles.

  “So you would choose weakness over the solitude of true strength?”

  “No. I just have a different idea of what true strength looks like. I will save others along the way to gaining the strength required to keep them that way.”

  “For the sake of our survival, I hope you prove me wrong, but it will take more than moral convictions for you to survive the last one of us here.”

  Nik’s eyes snapped up at that. “Wait. Survive?”

  The other Nik chuckled and said, “Survive. Prove me wrong.”

  The larger version of him shrank down and flew into Nik, like the others had, and was absorbed into his body. Nik felt a rush of warmth and rolled his shoulders. He stretched and flexed his muscles, preparing himself for the danger that the ambitious-Nik had warned him of.

  He had crossed about a third of the way over the bridge based on how far he’d gone past its peak, but he still couldn’t see the other side. His footsteps echoed off of the bricks and into the void of the purple smoke. The bridge went on longer than it should have. Maybe it was somehow lower on the other side than the one he’d come from? Shadows again appeared in the haze, but this time they were static. Unmoving, they lay heaped against the raised sides of the path at the bridge’s end.

  Red pools glistened under each of the sprawled figures. They were dead. The first creatures he’d seen here that weren't some form of alternate self, and they were dead. What in the tower is going on here? What is the point of showing me this?

  The sticky blood clung to the underside of his feet as his claws scraped through the viscous liquid with each step. He avoided the bodies as best he could as he continued onward.

  His inventory popped up and vanished just as quickly as he withdrew his shield and spear. The smoke curled around the corners of the purple structures that served as a bouncing board for the echoing scratch of rapidly moving claws.

  “Come on out, I know you are there. The last Nik warned me about—”

  A spear shot into view. Nik leaned to the side as it missed his chest by the width of a hand. The last reflection of himself had laughed, but the sound this one made turned his gut. It was cruel, and delighted in its violent revelry. It revealed itself to him then, running on all fours, its mouth a jagged, bloody grin as it rushed towards him from the smoke.

  It slammed against Nik's shield with enough force to knock him to the ground. He rolled back to his feet as it sped into the alley opposite from the side where it had appeared. The cackling laughter resumed. It echoed around the buildings with the scrape of its clawed hands and feet.

  “Khhhk-hhhhk-khhhk, this is going to be so… so… much… fun…”

  The words echoed at him from all directions as it called out to him again.

  “Time to play… little kobold…”