“I can't believe you're still level twenty-five,” Blackbinder said, as their footsteps echoed through the enormous stone halls of the dungeon.

“Voice down,” Suzy hissed.

“Come on. There's no way we're not being heard right now. Large-o Mcdragony has all the stealth of an avalanche.”

“I'm level twenty-five because I can't decide which job to advance,” Rich confessed. “They've both been equally useful. And honestly, because it won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. If what I expect to happen happens, then one level more or less won't make a difference.”

“And what do you expect to happen?” WorldwarpR asked.

Suzy stewed in her armor as they talked. Rich could tell by the way that her sword quivered, that she was on edge and this wasn't helping. But there was truth in BlackBinder's words; he wasn't stealthy at all. If there was anything in this tomb to hear them, then they had already tipped their hand.

Rich spoke the lie that was the party line. “What's going to happen is that we're going to lock down the glitch that the Bharstool Warmers are using to cheat. With that gone, and our guild getting stronger, they'll lose power until enough other guilds are motivated to join in and we'll grind them down. Given enough time they lose. We just have to make sure the glitch is gone, and we'll eventually win.”

Like any good lie, it had elements of truth. The “glitch” in here might be useful to the Warmers, but the task wasn't to eliminate it, just confirm that it was a breach into Konol's plane of existance, or whatever dragonspace truly was.

But WorldwarpR and the others had no frame of reference to identify the lie as an untruth, so they nodded their understanding and kept their eyes peeled as they marched through the old stone corridors.

“We should have hit something by now,” Blackbinder muttered. “What is this? The eighth turn?”

“Seventh,” WorldwarpR confirmed. “My minimap shows that we're basically going int a circle. Well, an octagon, but still we should be ending up back at the start in a turn or so.”

“You're sure there aren't any secret doors?” Suzy's helm turned to consider Rich.

“I've been looking. And with that blessing, my perception's good enough that I probably would have seen something. I guess it might require more than a five hundred to spot, but still...”

“Shh!” Blackbinder hissed, and they all froze.

The next turn was just visible, and from it came a pulsing, green light.

Green. Green is significant. Green is the color of the magic behind everything, green in the darkenss, Rich thought, and couldn't tell if that was his own memory or Rotgoriel's.

“That wasn't there when we entered the place,” Suzy whispered.

“Let me lead,” Rich offered, and no one objected.

They took the last turn, and stared at the corridor ahead. Midway down it, a large gate broke the surface of the stone wall. It was opening as they watched, metal doors sliding back into the stone. That was the source of the light... green at first, but shifting to blue as the doors vanished into the walls. And then scarlet, a few seconds later.

“I think we should hurry!” Suzy said, as from the open gate, a gong or a bell or something seemed to reverberate, overwhelmingly loud in the silence.

Rich didn't spare a second to answer, running ahead as fast as he could shift his bulk. The corridors were long, and the gate grew larger as they approached. The light slowly turned yellow, and the deep ringing kept sounding, something between a heartbeat and an alarm.

The others hot on his heels, Rich skidded to a stop in front of the archway, leaving deep clawmarks in the stone...

...and stared at what lay before him.

A field of green grass waved gently in a vast, octagonal room. Terracotta statues of cows stood motionless among the weeds, posed as if they were grazing. The walls arched up an impossible distance, opening to the sky above, with a golden sun overlooking it all.

Then words flashed in front of his eyes, and judging by the whispers and surprised curses of his colleagues, he wasn't the only one to see them.

FIRST TRIGRAM: EARTH

CHALLENGE STARTING IN 10...

9...

8...

“Get in there!” Suzy bellowed, and Rich hurried through the door. It closed behind them with an echoing BOOM, far swifter than it had opened.

For a moment nothing happened.

“Challenge, huh? What kind of challenge? Cow tipping?” Blackbinder asked. “What do you think, big guy?”

“I think those cattle are charging us!” Rich said, and curled his body to shield his surprised party.

It worked far better than he'd hoped. The cows and bulls weren't big enough to slam him out of the way, and to his gleeful surprise, his earth resistance counted their attacks as earth-based. Roughly ninety-five percent of the damage they dealt him was instantly negated, and his armored scales dealt with the rest. He didn't have to look up to know that the red numbers coming out of his head were a combination of zeroes and ones.

Clambering up on his back and shoulders, his three party mates laid into the statues with abandon, and broken terracotta flew about them in a crushed heap of parts. Rich moved to keep the cattle shifting, unable to bring their full force on any particular direction. And as he did so, he glanced over the herd, looking at them more carefully.

They weren't that impressive, to tell the truth. Most of their names were the same:

Cow of the Earth – 5

Looking past them, he saw that barely a fourth of the herd had engaged. The rest were arranging into small packs, that resolved into three rows and two columns.

Curious, and with room to experiment, he tried a rapid dash to the side of the hexagonal room, only to find the packs reorienting so that they were ahead of him and flanking him.

“Fuck me, I remember what trigrams mean!” said WorldWarpR.

“What?” Rich called back, swatting away an aggressive bull, then backpedaling as two of its cows tried to pin his hand to the ground.

“It's a Chinese thing! No surprise since the Porcelain Kingdoms are kind of an analogue, there. One of them, anyway—”

“Get to the point!” Suzy bellowed, smashing a cow's head to bits with a pommel strike, then kicking another before hopping further up on Rich's spine.

“Ah.. okay, I don't remember all the details but there's eight of them. They're like mystical shit. Big occult symbols or something. I know you can use them to tell fortunes and stuff.”

“Okay, how does this help us?” Rich asked, lashing with his tail and destroying the first wave of an incoming pack.

“Damned if I know,” WorldwarpR shrugged. “But if my suspicions are correct, this is gonna get hairy.”

Then he shut up and fought, hauling out a flintlock pistol and putting lead through terracotta heads as Blackbinder hurled knives, and Suzy chopped and bashed with blade and shield.

They didn't use many skills; they didn't have to. Rotgoriel could and did plow through them like a scaly wrecking ball, and soon all six packs were lying in pieces around the muddy and torn field, with grass drifting down from the last major work of violence they'd enacted on the pottery-based bovines.

“Always bring a dragon to a cattle battle,” Blackbinder said, catching knives out of the air as they flew back to him, and stowing them in bandoliers hidden under his clothing. “Now what?”

As if in reply, bells sounded again, ringing seven times in a row. And with a grinding sound, the earth begin to crumble and fall away under Rich's feet.

“Scaly Wings,” he muttered. “Everyone take hold!” And with a few beats, he flew into the air.

Most of the ground in the chamber crumbled and receded, sinking into the depths. But the far side of the room thrust upward instead, stone breaching through as the earth fell away until a jagged shelf of rock was heading up to the sun.

Rich landed on the shelf, and did a double-take as the sun shifted too. The golden light from it darkened, flashing scarlet before mixing with a cooling blue. In the space of moments the sun turned a murky purple, and the light pulsing from it cast the chamber in a sort of twilight.

And once more came the words.

SECOND TRIGRAM: MOUNTAIN

CHALLENGE STARTING IN 9...

8...

7...

More of the edge crumbled away, leaving a thirty foot wide platform that expanded as it got lower. They were indeed on the peak of a mountain.

Rich glanced up, as the numbers ran down. The sun still appeared to be the same distance away.

“Okay, so there's gonna be eight of these,” WorldwarpR said into the silence, as the grinding halted and the last tones of the unseen bell faded. “And if my guess is right...”

“We have contact!” Suzy shouted, pointing at forms below, moving through the purple twilight. Four-legged forms, leaping up the mountain with ease. Terracotta forms with names, that Rich read as they clawed their way to the top.

Wolf of the Mountain – 10

“Yep!” WorldwarpR said, cocking his flintlock. “They're gonna get five levels tougher every time, bet you anything!”

“Shit...” Blackbinder whispered. “Maybe it won't go down like that.”

“Focus on the now!” Suzzy snapped. “We'll worry about the forties when we get there!”

“Get on my back. If they want to play king of the mountain, they can try to get past me,” Rich snarled.

The first wave of wolves hit all at once, and to Rich's relief, the statues still counted as earth, as far as his earth resistance was confirmed. The skill paid its bills as he smashed them down, hurled them into the darkness, and crushed them to pieces between his jaws.

But it was definitely more work this time around. The cows had been heavy and tanky, but too slow to be a real threat. The wolves were agile and used tactics, harrying and distracting on one side while their packmates charged in on another.

If they hadn't been attacking from below, Rich thought that they might be a serious threat to his partymates.

Fortunately, their position at the top of the mountain gave them the advantage. And though it was slower, the four of them ground through the wolves as they had the cows. It also didn't hurt that there were fewer wolves than cows.

If there are fewer creatures with each wave, this might not be so bad.

The last surge came with four smaller packs hitting all at once. And Rotgoriel saw that there was no way they were getting through this without casualties.

“Hold on!” he called, and without waiting he pumped his wings, and flew straight up.

The leaping wolves missed him by inches.

“Sandblast!” he roared, and bellowed black obsidian dust down upon the peak of the mountain.

He held the breath as long as he could, a good seven seconds of scouring sand beating down at gale force.

And then he dropped to the scratched and now-clean peak of the mountain once more.

The last wolf fell, visible only by its name as it plummeted down into the darkness before a faint 'crunch' echoed back.

“Shit,” Blackbinder said, from out of Rich's view. “Not half bad, bo... big guy.”

“How many shots of that do you have? Do you need a potion?” Suzy asked.

“I'm good for now,” Rich reassured her. “Talk to me around trigram six or so.”

“If we get that far,” Blackbinder muttered. “That was what, half as many wolves as there were cows? If they stick to the same patterns, it's gonna get bad.”

“Rich, can you cover me through this next part?” WorldwarpR asked. “I'm going to pull up a browser and try to read up on trigrams. Maybe get us some hints for the later challenges.”

Rich opened his mouth to respond, and the bells chimed again. With a slam, another mountain rose across the chamber..

...and then water spewed out of the mountain peaks, cascading in great waterfalls.

Rich dug in and braced as it washed around him, and Suzy yelled as she toppled, and almost fell. Blackbinder grabbed her and almost went with her, but the shadowcaster gave Rich enough time to grab them both, and hold them tight to his flank.

“Is Warper secure?” he called back, as clear, cold water spewed out and around him, down into the gorge between mountains.

A gorge that filled with unnatural speed, as the light weakened and disappeared entirely. Rich looked up to see a sun blacker than the darkness around it. Fortunately his Dragon's Eye buff had plenty of time before it ran out.

“Warper's fine!” Blackbinder shouted. “He's stuck to you with Wizard bullshit or something!”

“Yay for Wizard bullshit,” Rich muttered, as the water around him rose to the height of his shoulders, and the two in his grasp wriggled up and clung to his wings.

Eventually the water was high enough that he could let go of the mountain beneath him, and risk paddling instead. It was that or submerge the players on his back, and he didn't know how prepared they were for a water level.

THIRD TRIGRAM: WATER

CHALLENGE STARTING IN 9...

8...

7...

“Wonder what kind of critter it's going to be this time,” Blackbinder muttered.

“I don't know. Fish? Be prepared for—”

Rich never finished the sentence.

With a roar, the water in the middle of the room, from one side of the chamber to the other, fell away.

Both the portion of the ocean that Rich and his party were in and the patch across the way turned into waterfalls.

And Rich found himself paddling, desperately trying to keep from going over the edge.

Your Swim skill is now level 3!

Your Swim skill is now level 4!

Your Swim skill is now level 5!

“Shit!” Suzy screamed. “Look out behind you!”

Rich turned to look, but it was too late.

Something slammed into him from behind, something that felt like stone, and crunched like terracotta against his hide.

The damage was minimal.

But it disrupted his paddling, and the players on his back yelled as he bobbled and headed toward the edge of the falls.

Spinning around a bit, aided by the momentum of the thing that had rammed him, Rich saw names just above the water, names and bulky shapes, something like manatees.

Pig of the Water – 15

Rich dodged as one came in, then readied to strike it with his tail...

...but it passed on by him, following the water down into the gorge, down out of sight.

Others were passing on far to either side.

“They're not trying to attack us!” Suzy shouted. “We're just in their way!”

“This is a bullet hell level and a water level? Great, two of my favorite things,” Blackbinder shrieked, a note of hysteria in his voice.

“Well then hang on and let me work!” Rich bellowed back. “Blessing of agility 100!”

The strength let him swim against the current, and his skill steadily grew.

And now that he knew that the sea pigs, or whatever they were, wouldn't circle back around to hit him, he focused on dodging as best he could. A few skill levels later, the worst of it seemed to be done.

That feeling of relief lasted up until he saw the last wave.

Two solid lines approaching from the corners of the chamber rushed him, and Rich knew with a sick feeling that he couldn't dodge them all. Enough would hit him that he'd be hurled over the edge.

Fortunately, the others saw the problem as well.

“Binder!” Suzy yelled. “Walls!”

“You're sure? There's a lot of those—”

“Do it! Now!”

“Shape Shadow!”

The room was dark.

Blackbinder had plenty of shadows to work with.

Vast wedges of solid shadow rose in the water, forming an arrowhead shape in front of Rich.

And with a sound like a bull in a china shop, the terracotta manatees slammed into them, and either broke or slid along the angles of the wall until they were past Rich.

Rich let out a sigh of relief as the last of them fell into the watery abyss.

And with a burbling, the water slackened.

Rich watched as the gorge widened. He scrambled onto the shadow walls, waiting until the mountain reappeared.

But as the seconds went by and the water level dropped, the mountain didn't reappear.

“Uh... guys?” Rich said, not knowing what would come next.

“I'm back,” WorldwarpR said. “Whoa. Okay, I guess I missed the water trigram. Or lake. Was this a lake?”

“I don't know!” Rich said, doing his best to stay balanced on the intersection of the two shadow walls. “What did you learn?”

“A lot and it's confusing. I don't have enough of a Chinese or Taoist background to be an authority here. The trigrams are all either gonna be elements or geographical features. Except for heaven. I think heaven might be the last one.”

“Great, so we'll be fighting level forty angels?” Blackbinder asked.

“I don't see any ground at all down there,” Suzy said, as the last of the water fell away. “Nothing but void.”

“I can work with void,” Blackbinder called. “As long as there are shadows I'm good.”

No sooner had he spoken, when the sun reignited. It flickered between yellow and red, as the shadowy walls wisped and started to crumble.

“You had to open your mouth!” Suzy groused. “Well fortunately we brought a dragon.”

Rich knew his cue, and flapped his wings, ascending as the shadow walls fell away. A gentle orange light suffused the chamber, whose walls were now decorated with clouds. And as a breeze picked up out of nowhere and started blowing harder and harder, words appeared.

FOURTH TRIGRAM: WIND

CHALLENGE STARTING IN 9...

8...

7...

“I don't know if it's useful, but the animal associated with the wind trigram is Fowl. Also this trigram is sometimes associated with wood instead of wind,” mused WorldwarpR.”

“Foul? Like rotten?” Blackbinder asked.

“No, like chicken. Or—”

“Geese,” said Rotgoriel, staring ahead.

“Yeah, like geese.” WorldwarpR clapped his back. “Now you're getting it— oh shit geese!”

The flock swarmed over them, the names above their heads proclaiming a danger incongruous to their honking, clacking little bodies.

Wind Goose 20

A quick “Chomp!” and some frantic chewing led Rich to the unpleasant discovery that they were made of lacquered wood, and the doubly-unpleasant feeling of splinters between his teeth.

Screams from his back told him that his party-mates weren't faring so good, either.

Folding his wings Rich dropped out of the cloud, then spread them again, trying for a rising turn.

All the while his party-mates hurled magic from his back, chanting skills and drinking potions, trying desperately to thin out the wooden flock as the birds wheeled in unison and gave chase across the chamber. They were like a pack of piranhas given wings, and splintery, sharpened beaks. Given time, they would kill his party. Given more time, they could even nibble through him, grinding him down like tree roots breaking rocks.

But they were made of wood, and Rich knew how he could use that.

“Burninate!”

Your Burninate skill is now level 23!

Your Burninate skill is now level 24!

Your Burninate skill is now level 25!

Flaming, honking, wooden goose golems fell from the sky as Rich split the central pack with his superheated breath, sending them down to where they disappeared beyond sight in this endless sky.

That bought them a moment's respite.

But soon they reformed, two smaller flocks in front to either side, and two larger flocks in two rows behind them, coming in for a final approach.

And seeing no other way around it, Rich flew above them and led them up, breathing fire as he went, pouring out minutes worth of breath until the last one fell.

“You okay?” Suzy shrieked over the howling wind. It had gotten worse as he flew, and now he focused on that, circling and compensating... but to no need, as the wind slackened.

“I'm low on moxie,” he admitted. “Potion me?”

She clambered up his neck and pushed a bottle into his mouth without opening it. A quick crunch and gulp, and a relief that glass counted as earth-based damage, and he felt his energy replenish a bit. “Got another?”

She complied, then shimmied back down his neck, as the wind died entirely and storm clouds rolled in overhead.

The orange light darkened, and became a bilious green, as the bells chimed, and then were replaced by the rumbles of thunder, and flashes of distant lightning.

“I don't like where this is going,” Blackbinder said, as the clouds burst and rain began to fall down.

“Oh it's worse than that,” WordlwarpR said, as words appeared before them.

FIFTH TRIGRAM: THUNDER

CHALLENGE STARTING IN 9...

8...

7...

“How is it worse?” Rich asked. “Got any info we can use?”

“The animal associated with the thunder trigram is Dragon!”

And the first bellow split the sky as a glowing form tore the clouds asunder and plummeted toward them.