This Quest is Bullshit - Chapter 145

Chapter 145 - What’s Behind Door Number Two?

Ar-iron letter opener and little girl’s diary tucked away, the party made their way back to the open entry hall to find Reginald had decidedly not waited for them by the door. Instead, he and Lumy had embarked on some particularly intense game of cat and mouse in the exact opposite manner one would think.

The large, winged drake bounded across the wide chamber, leaping and darting to and fro as the phantasmal remnant doggedly pursued. Every once in a while, one of Lumy’s lights would clip through Reginald’s tail, but she proved otherwise unable to catch up to him.

“Well, at least they’re having a good time,” Preston said as the party stopped to watch the two at play.

“That makes two of us,” Wes muttered.

“Speak for yourself,” Eve said. “I’m having a great time. C’mon, let’s see what’s behind door number two.”

The center of the three important-looking doors was, thankfully, unlocked, sparing Eve the effort—and the enjoyment—of kicking it down. They proceeded with caution. An unlocked door, convenient as it might’ve been, presented the opportunity for a certain Unique tank to be lurking behind it.

While Eve doubted Alex had the skill necessary to break into the royal suites without damaging the door, she was fairly confident the Defender was capable of opening an unlocked door. Luckily, or unluckily, depending on one’s perspective, the room behind the door offered little in the way of hiding spots.

Immediately past the doorway, the walls of the space fanned outward, matching the sidewards arcs of the hallways on either side. No furniture cluttered the open floor, no columns supported the ceiling, and no sentries stood on guard. Two piles of rubble informed the adventurers exactly what had happened to those last.

Interestingly enough, neither of the fallen constructs showed signs of roots or Mana explosions, which left Eve wondering if had actually been Alex that had taken them down. They were, of course, covered in a thick layer of dust, but the act of shattering stone tended to generate such without necessitating the passing of years. Whether Alex had destroyed them or their mysterious looter or some as of yet unknown party, Eve could only guess, not that it really mattered.

Someone had been there before them, and unless they were somehow invisible, inaudible, odorless, and completely immune to telepathy, said individual wasn’t there anymore.

So instead of stopping too long to ponder the fate of the two constructs, Eve turned her gaze to the large room’s only other feature of note.

The enchantments on the floor didn’t follow the same stonework pattern as most others, instead swirling about in a labyrinthine web, jutting out from every corner of chamber all to coalesce at the base of a raised dais just short of the far wall. There, they entered a strangely industrial-looking mess of pipework and stone, all inscribed so densely even Eve’s enhanced eyes couldn’t make out any detail.

It all culminated in a ridiculously heavily enchanted open space with a short staircase on either side leading up to an also heavily enchanted stone chair carved with enough intricate patterns to seem distinctly uncomfortable to sit in.

They’d found the throne room.

“Welp, looks like we’ve found the throne room,” Wes said.

“I don’t know,” Eve countered. “That could be anyone’s chair. Probably somebody short given how high up it is. I bet they’re compensating for something.”

Preston rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Eve, the ruling family of one of the greatest historical empires known to man were not compensating for something.”

“Well of course they weren’t,” Eve said. “Just the king was.”

Wes scratched the back of his head as he scowled up at the throne. “Maybe it’s so tall so they could fit all those enchantments underneath it. I bet the court didn’t appreciate having to crane their necks just to look at the king.”

“You might have a point,” Eve said. “That thing is enchanted up to the tits.”

Preston blinked. “What? It’s a chair. It doesn’t have tits.”

“Yeah, Eve,” Wes added. “Unless your tits are higher up than I thought, that thing’s enchanted way past the tits.”

“I’m gonna sit on it.”

Preston froze. “Eve, no.”

Eve was already walking forward. “Eve, yes.”

“Eve,” the healer argued, “we don’t know what those enchantments do. This is a bad idea.”

She stepped onto the side stairs. “It’s just Mana. I’m Mana. If something goes wrong, I can always just drain the enchantments. What’s the worst that can happen?”

Wes blinked. “Horrible death?”

“Yeah, but besides that. With how enchanted this thing is, it’s gotta have something to do with controlling the enchantments, right? Maybe sitting on the throne is what it takes.”

Eve ascended up to stand next to the throne, casually resting hand atop the backrest. “I will say, climbing this thing isn’t exactly a dignified activity. I wonder what they do when the king or queen gets too old to handle all these stairs every day.” Her mind conjured an image of old Gregory in his bathrobe and eldritch fuzzy slippers trying to maneuver his way onto the throne. It might’ve been possible, but it sure as hells wouldn’t have looked regal.

“Eve,” Preston tried one more time to get her to stop, “we should explore more first. At the very least we should check the third door. There’s no reason to take this kind of risk without all of the information first.”

“I can think of one reason,” Eve said. “It’s a throne, and I wanna sit in it.”

Wes chuckled. Preston groaned.

“Besides, if it is how to control the enchantments, that sounds like a valuable tool that we’re going to want for the rest of this dungeon, and especially for any potential encounter with Alex. If she’s in that next room, I want the enchantments on our side when we find out.”

Preston sighed. “Let the record show I was against this.”

Wes turned to him. “We’re keeping a record?”

“Gods, no. Who would give any sort of fuck about our lives?”

Eve grinned, stepping in front of the throne. “It’ll be fine.”

“I’m putting that on your gravestone,” Preston said.

“Don’t be overdramatic,” Eve said. “That’s my job.” Without waiting for a reply, Eve winked at the boys and sat down.

Nothing happened.

The throne was roughly as uncomfortable as it looked, which was to say, extremely. The various ridges and points of the decorative carving dug into Eve’s spine even through her dragonhide armor, forcing her to shift back and forth to try and find anything resembling a comfortable spot. She failed.

“Well?” Wes called up from down below. “Anything?”

“Nope.” Eve shook her head. “I guess the enchantments are—”

[Alert!] Court Opening Procedure Engaged.

“What the shit?”

The room went dark.

From nowhere, trumpets blared their heraldry, the music deafeningly loud as it echoed back and forth across the empty throne room. The fanfare felt somehow familiar and not to Eve, as if whatever instruments played weren’t quite the equal of those she’d heard back in Pyrindel.

“Wait!” Preston shouted over the din. “Something’s happening!”

Sure enough, the light of the enchantments along the floor had returned, dim enough for the circular pattern to glow in the dark room without illuminating much of anything. Visible pulses of Mana traveled along the design, each making their way to the base of the throne where they disappeared into the mechanism there.

Seconds passed. The fanfare grew louder, more triumphant. The pulses of Mana grew more frequent. The enchantments grew brighter.

Almost painfully slowly given the volume of the whole affair, light began to coalesce at the base of the platform, gradually creeping up the mess of stone and iron pipes towards the throne itself. For a moment Eve considered leaving the chair, but the display of light and sound so far hadn’t actually done anything. For all she knew this was an essential part of taking control of the enchantments, though she doubted the trumpets played much a role in that.

Nearly a full minute later, something beneath her rumbled to life. The Mana had reached the throne itself. Still, Eve noticed nothing new, and the ongoing heraldry implied there was more to come.

The pattern on the floor brightened further still, reaching the point that Art, Wes, and Preston all had to look away. The throne itself whirred and hummed as Mana raced through it, populating whatever complexities lay within.

At the peak of its tension, the music stopped.

The throne roared with power.

A spark of pure Mana flashed into the chamber.

The chair itself quaked with force, rubbing and bumping the already-uncomfortable carvings against Eve’s back.

Then, in a burst of brilliant light and energy, something came to life in the open space just below the throne. As it did, the heraldry made its triumphant return, completing its crescendo in energetic fanfare that could’ve given even the most talented bard a run for his money.

Eve stopped over to peer between her legs at the space beneath the chair.

“Ayla’s tits.”

There, raging with a power she knew all too well, was a small, comparatively weak, yet indistinguishable torrent of Mana flowing from one side of the opening to the other.

Preston’s eyes might as well have bulged out of their sockets. “I-is that a fucking leyline?”

“Yep,” Eve called back. “They redirected part of a leyline. That explains the um…” She looked down at the contraption on which she sat. “…all this.”

“I don’t like it,” the healer said. “Anything that needs that much power can’t be good.”

Eve sat back, trying her best to sense the throne beneath her or otherwise access the enchantments. Nothing happened.

Instead, the fanfare wound down, the enchantments on the floor returned to a more palatable brightness, and a notification appeared before her eyes.

[Alert!] Court is now in session.

Eve blinked. “No fucking way.”

“What?” Wes asked. “What’s happening?”

“Nothing.” Eve couldn’t keep the grin from her face. “It feels like the Mana is just passing through and returning to the leyline.”

Preston scowled. “What does that mean? What’re you smiling about?”

“It means,” Eve laughed, spreading her arms wide to indicate the room around her, “that all this, is to put on a fucking light show.”

Wes shook his head. “No way.”

Eve laughed harder. “Oh, it is. It all fits, the dimming of the lights, the music, everything. Even the notifications make sense. Those overdramatic bitches. I love it.”

Preston looked up at her. “Are you absolutely certain the enchantments don’t do anything else?”

“Oh yeah,” she chimed. “This is it. Fuck, I need to tell Emily about this. The royal court at Pyrindel needs to be this level of overdramatic.”

Her curiosity sated, Eve placed both palms firmly on the armrests to push herself from the throne.

“Eve, wait,” Preston tried to stop her.

She stood.

[Alert!] Court Closing Procedure Engaged.

The trumpets returned, louder than ever. Eve slammed her hands over her ears to deafen the sound as she scurried down the stairs to watch from below. In a brilliant flash, the redirected leyline vanished, and a single pulse of Mana shot from the throne across the floor in all directions. Moments later, the room had returned to the state in which they’d found it.

“I cannot believe they do that every time,” Eve commented. “Are they trying to go deaf?”

“Maybe that’s why it’s so loud,” Wes offered. “So they all can hear it after all the hearing loss from spending time near leylines.”

“Okay,” Preston breathed, “we’ve determined the throne room doesn’t do anything.”

Eve opened her mouth to protest.

“Doesn’t do anything useful,” Preston corrected. “On to the third door?”

Um, guys? Art interrupted. You might want to see this.

Wes turned to him. “What’s up?”

It’s um… one of the side doors back in the entry hall. Lumy says it’s changed.

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