William Oh once came across a city of ghosts, and exorcised them all, freeing them to move on to the Great Beyond by doing the ancient traditional dance of their people, a solemn ritual known as…twerking.

-          Jason Salazar

Clomp, clomp, clomp. Will trudged along, acclimating to the platforms.

“People wear these? Willingly?” Will asked, resolving to buy a sweet pair of boots at the next possible opportunity.

“Mostly young women and male actors who need to appear taller on stage,” Carrie admitted.

Whatever. I’ll just buy a better set when I get where I’m going…unless they try to rob me.

Will’s paranoia began measuring him up against their traveling companions, entirely without his consent.

Let’s see, there’s two of them, two of us, and Bri is a wild card. Although, I did save her life, so it’s unlikely she’s playing a long con. They’re both average at fighting…I beat them both at the same time…unless that was what they wanted me to think!

Then again, if they were going to try and kill me to take the money back, they would’ve just tried to kill me for the boots.

His paranoia at least mildly satisfied, Will refocused on their mission: Make it to the Stronghold, then start pushing into the 3rd Floor from a position of safety.

And to do that…he just needed to put one clomping foot in front of another.

Increases potency of charges and kicks by 25%? I wonder if a charge that ends in a kick activates both 25% bonuses, or just one? Would that 25% bonus offset the fact that I was using my feet instead of the mask’s horns?

Does it increase the acceleration of Gravity Charge, or just the oomph at the end?

This requires testing.

Unfortunately, they were trudging through the middle of the wilderness at about half Charge, and there was no telling when a fight would take all his Charge to win or escape from, so there was no sense playing around with his Abilities.

I can target a section of wall with Gravity Charge and use it to fly up to the ceiling. Can Gravity Charge target anything? What about a ball or a rock? Just cock it back and throw it, then target it and go along for the ride. I already know it can track moving targets, because it worked when Steve was running away from me, and I know it can target inanimate objects.

…Can I fly?

Of course, to Will, it was the gut-twisting experience of free fall, intensified by the extra gravity, but to everyone else? It was flight.

And Gravity Charge lasted for seconds equal to his Resistance. That was thirty seconds of falling, which could cover a pretty vast distance, not even including inertia carrying him through after the Ability cut out.

That would keep me flying way longer than I could get a thrown ball to fly. Maybe an arrow? Or…does it even have to be thrown at all?

What if he held something in his hand and used it as the target? Would he then fly towards the object while simultaneously pushing it forward in his hand? Something about that didn’t feel right, like he was going to run into some weirdness if he tried, but Will couldn’t try it out until he had the leeway to experiment.

“There it is!” Travis said, pointing out the distant Stronghold. The optics of the 3rd Floor weren’t good for viewing things from a distance, and all any of them could make out was a smudge on the horizon.

“Oh, you’ll be impressed when you see my family’s Stronghold,” Travis said. “I’m told the entire city is built around a giant corkscrew that pumps oil straight out of the ground using steam power.”

“Where do they get the water?” Will asked.

“Abilities, mostly,” Travis said with a shrug. “The Third Floor pays Climbers with water-creating Abilities rather well. My family especially.”

“…Have you ever been there?” Will asked, wondering how on Earth someone could be proud of a screw, let alone build a city around a screw.

“This is going to be my first visit. Unannounced, of course.” Travis preened annoyingly. “I find it’s best to catch the commoners unawares, so you can get an accurate evaluation of their work ethic.”

Pretty much everything Travis did was annoying, but Will tried not to hold it against him. He was starting to suspect it was a passive Ability.

“This is the same family whose plan you want nothing to do with?” Will asked.

“It’s…complicated,” Travis admitted. “They’ve got other children better-suited to Leadership Classes, though. I won’t be missed.”

“I’ll bet,” Carrie said with a shrug.

“Anyway! I can see the road from here. Let’s get on it,” Travis said, tucking away his map and pointing.

Will could see a winding brown line drifting through the ash-cloaked valleys below, heading towards the smudge. Roads weren’t perfectly safe, but it was well understood that if there was enough traffic to make a road, then the risk of travel was evenly split by all of the Climbers on that road, lowering the danger when taken as a whole.

It was as good a plan as any.

They made it to the road and followed its winding path north, the Key Site fading into the distance behind them. The road itself was covered with a thin coating of ash from the drifts that were occasionally pushed around by the wind.

The wind was dead-still, though.

Will frowned as something nagged at him.

About half an hour into their trek along the road, Will realized what was giving him the bad feeling.

“How come there aren’t any people on the road?” Will asked. Their prints in the ash were the only sign of anyone passing through.

Travis looked at him, then up and down the road, his gaze finally settling on their lonely footprints in the thin layer of ash.

The group settled into foreboding silence.

Loth held a finger up to his lips and pointed up the side of the hill they’d been winding around.

Will and the other three nodded.

Silently, the five of them left the road, climbing up the nearby hill to perch at the top. Concealed in the heat-cracked boulders, they peered down at the road ahead of them.

There were no travelers on the road. Seemingly no monsters either.

“Something’s wrong,” Travis whispered. “Maybe they’re under attack? I can’t think of any other reason for the roads to be empty. Merchants with big tankers full of oil follow these roads day and night…or so I’m told.”

“Should we avoid it?” Brianna asked.

“We’re on the Stronghold’s doorstep already,” Will said, as much to himself as everyone else. “We should at least verify what’s going on with our own eyes, in case it’s something we can handle. Because the alternative is another dangerous trek, while also trying to dodge those bandits.”

The others nodded, and they set off.

They didn’t follow the road exactly anymore, instead skipping from hilltop to hilltop. It was much more effort than simply following the road, but it allowed them to get a good view of their path before they committed to it.

No ambushes, no monsters, no people.

Strange.

They finally reached the top of the last hill, cautiously crawling to the summit and peering over.

In the distance, the Stronghold loomed large, a massive plume of steam rising above the city. Will could pick out the faintest sound of grinding at an ultra-low pitch, as if the very earth was sliding against itself.

“Looks like the pump is still working,” Travis mused. “That’s gotta be a good sign. The lights too.”

Man-sized flames burned bright on the walls, shedding light on the area around the Stronghold’s walls. They must’ve been fed by the endless oil that was being pumped out of the earth.

“Nobody on the walls,” Loth said.

…

……

There weren’t.

The hairs on Will’s neck stood on end. The swirling paranoia in his stomach was telling him that this could be very dangerous…and very lucrative.

“Bad air, maybe?” Carrie asked. “Sometimes people suffocate when they keep fires going inside a contained environment?”

“But some people would’ve gotten out and warned others about it,” Travis pointed out. “Besides, they’ve got tons of safety features in place. You see those towers?” He pointed.

“Those harvest fresh air from up high, concentrate it and funnel it down into the earth, where it flows across the water supply for the boiler, cooling it down and pre-heating the water. There shouldn’t be any issue with bad air.”

“We’re just going to have to see,” Will said, scanning the silent Stronghold.

“Well, no time like the present—” Travis said, aiming to rise to his feet. Loth caught his elbow.

“Let’s wait until nightfall,” Loth said, looking up at him. “If something did this, it might be nocturnal. We might be able to spot it before it sees us. And if the Stronghold is occupied, night may well conceal our approach.”

“Like I’ll take a command from—”

“From what?” Will interjected before Travis could finish his ill-advised sentence.

“S-someone who isn’t my Party leader,” Travis finished, stumbling over the words at Will’s expression.

Will’s shoulders relaxed, Carrie let out a breath, and Bri glanced between them curiously.

“When I work with Loth, we like to put his skill with traps to good use. Do you think you could set up that hill over there as a fallback point?” Will asked, pointing to a hill off to the east, a little to the right of the city and somewhat close to its walls.

“Mm,” Loth said, nodding. “Over the wall?” He pointed a single talon at the nearby stone wall, seemingly eyeing the distance between it and the fallback point.

“Why on Earth would I ever go through the front door?” Will asked before turning back to their guests. “You three are more than welcome to go through the front door right now. Loth and I are going to wait until night.”

“I’m coming with you guys,” Bri said, shuffling over to Will.

“Seconded,” Carrie said.

“…Fine,” Travis muttered, his gaze lingering on the lifeless Stronghold.

The five of them circled around to the side of the Stronghold, setting up a camp on the opposite side of the hill, resting and drinking as necessary, watching the sun pass over their heads to fall on the opposite side.

No matter how many times Will saw it, a sun that moved was unnatural. Give me a stationary light in the sky any day.

The dark closed in around the Stronghold, pressing in against it until only tiny pools of light at the very edge of the city remained, kept alive by the man-sized beacons burning on the walls.

There were a few pools of darkness here and there. In particular, there was a spot nearby where a small portion of the wall was cast in shadow at the base.

At the top, it was well-lit, but an enterprising individual could at least make it to the base and start climbing without being spotted.

Loth pulled out a scrap of paper and jotted down a note with a piece of charcoal. “Adding a spyglass to my shopping list,” he said upon seeing Will’s curious gaze. “Right after fire-beetle larvae.”

After he put the paper away, he closed one eye and used his fingers to block out the light from the beacons on the wall.

“I don’t see any activity, neither on the wall nor inside the city. If there is something in there, it’s not moving overtly.”

“Great, we wasted our time, can we go?” Travis demanded.

Carrie and Will shared a glance at the Decoy’s eagerness to put his head on the chopping block.

“It’s his family,” she said with a shrug.

“And he doesn’t wanna punch them?” Will asked. What a weird family dynamic.

“Sometimes, but right now, I just need to know,” Travis said, beginning to march towards the wall.

“Knotted rope,” Loth said, handing it over to Will.

“Much obliged.”

“Take this too. If there’s danger, throw this in the fire,” Loth said, handing him a pack of what felt like sand.

Will frowned.

“It burns green.”

“Ah. Will you be swooping in to our rescue?”

“It’ll warn me not to. Anything you can’t escape, I can’t escape,” Loth pointed out.

“Fair enough,” Will said, shouldering the rope.

“I’ll stay,” Carrie said with a shrug. “I’m curious, but I’m not enter-a-dead-city-in-the-middle-of-the-night curious.”

Brianna hesitantly raised her hand.

“Yes, you can stay too,” Will said.

With his boots and cloak, Travis was nearly as good at getting out of tight spots as Will.

Will and Loth had their misgivings about Bri’s ‘Baker’ Class, but she seemed normal enough, and though she took to Climbing well, it was fairly obvious that she hadn’t been raised to it.

The girl was an enigma, but at least she was sane, with a healthy respect for the danger involved.

“No, I want to go,” Bri said, shaking her head.

“Bwah?” Will asked eloquently.

“I haven’t cleaned my clothes since I started getting bussed two weeks ago.”

Carrie winced in sympathetic pain.

Loth and Will just glanced at each other and shrugged. Clothes always felt greasy and itchy and hardened in place by oils and dead skin, didn’t they?

“I haven’t eaten anything except grubs in three days, and I NEED to eat something else, or I will literally break down crying. No offense, Loth,” she said, glancing down at the kobold.

“They’re emergency rations, not the ‘dish of my people.’ I don’t care,” Loth said with a shrug.

“Right, so to summarize: I would kill every last one of you for a bar of soap, and brave a dead Stronghold for just a pinch of salt.”

I should’ve gotten that endless bag of salt, Will thought.

“Okay, but I want to make sure you’ll be able to get away if we run into trouble,” Will said. “Jump as high as you can.”

Brianna jumped nine feet in the air. While wearing armor. She obviously hadn’t expected to go that high, as she let out a little squeak and began flailing as she went back down, only barely managing to stick the landing.

She slammed back down to the ground, creating a puff of ash around her landing point.

“Was that high enough?” she asked as she straightened, innocent of the fact that she’d just revealed her Strength.

“…Yeah,” Will said, nodding.

This girl’s got somewhere around 40 Strength. She just got to the Third Floor, so unless she was secretly a veteran from a higher floor—unlikely, given her clothing, age, and inexperience—her Strength growth was four.

Which was prime Warrior material. Neither Carrie nor Travis had that kind of muscle.

What kind of Baker Class requires four Strength growth? Will thought, frowning.

“So, are we going now…or…?” she asked, fidgeting awkwardly.

“Mm, yep.” Will nodded, motioning for her to follow.

Together, they caught up with Travis and walked through the shadows to the base of the city wall.

“When we get in there, remember to always, always, ALWAYS keep your mind on your path of retreat,” Will said, mostly for Brianna’s benefit.

Brianna nodded with a serious expression, but Travis just crossed his arms and waited impatiently.

“Alright, let’s go find Travis’s dead family,” Will said.

“They’re not dead!”

“They’re one hundred percent dead,” Will said, grabbing Travis’s collar and hauling him in close. “And no amount of magical thinking or suicidal bravado is going to change that. You know what you can do for your family? Don’t fuck up William Oh’s day by forcing him to rescue your ass.”

“I got it.” Travis shoved Will away. “Just climb the damned wall, Climber.”

“Can do,” Will said before scampering up the side of the wall. It was rough-hewn stone quarried from the Third Floor. The imperfections jutted out to support Will’s hand and feet, allowing him to make it to the top in a matter of seconds.

When he arrived, he was bathed in the light of the beacons.

Will froze at the top of the wall, waiting for any sign that he’d been noticed.

Nothing. In either direction, the wall was empty save for the massive fires.

Will grabbed hold of the end of the rope and tossed the rest down, holding it in place as Travis and Brianna climbed up.

Together, they crept towards the inner edge of the wall and peered down into the Stronghold.

Will didn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe an empty void, or the ghosts of all the previous inhabitants carrying about their business. Fungal zombies chasing a young woman and an older man?

Instead, corpses.

Lots and lots of corpses.

The streets were lined with bodies, all of whom appeared to have suffered various levels of physical damage.

No indication that whatever had done it had used weapons of any kind. There were smashed-in heads, twisted spines, and ripped-out chunks of flesh, but no stab or slash marks.

“Well, that’s a relief,” Will said with a sigh.

‘URK.’

Will didn’t turn to look as he heard the telltale sound of vomit hitting stone.

Once it ended, Brianna arrived behind him.

“Why is that a relief?” Brianna said, her voice trembling.

“Because they died through physical violence, which means it’s something with a form. Something you can run from. Something that isn’t here right now. Can you imagine how much scarier it would be if the bodies had no damage, or we didn’t find any bodies at all?”

“That really doesn’t make me feel any better,” Bri muttered.

“Well, it’s good news,” Will said.

“I think that’s the Lord’s castle,” Travis said, pointing at a taller building near the center of the city. “Let’s go.”

“One second,” Will said, pulling out his sling and sending a bullet into the alleyway in the distance, striking the metal sign of a shop.

Clang! Clatter!

“Why did you do that?” Travis hissed, ducking down.

“Because I’d rather see whatever did this before it sees us,” Will whispered back. “Even if it means we have to turn back now because we kicked the hornet’s nest. I would rather know that there is a hornet’s nest. Right now, we have the luxury of running, but once we get inside that wall…”

“Fine…” Travis said, hunkering down.

A minute went by, but nothing came sniffing around the alleyway.

“Okay,” Will said, nodding. “Let’s go check out the Lord’s castle.”