Pledge of Tyranny (updated November 13)

[genshou]

The ancient wizard led them through the door in which he had entered the room. Evendur and Shirl gasped as they noticed the hallway seeming to get longer and longer until it seemed of infinite length. Evendur looked behind them and wished he hadn’t. There was no door behind them, only an infinite expanse of hallway. He looked in front of him and the old wizard was gone. “Umm… Shirl?” She had been walking beside him, but suddenly he couldn’t see her anywhere. “What the hell kind of magic is he using?” he shouted, but it was futile, as there was no one there to hear him.

Shirl turned to the side in panic when she heard Evendur talk to her, but couldn’t see him. “Evendur? Evendur, where did you go?! I can’t see you anywhere! And what’s with this hallway stretching out all of a sudden?”

Evendur focused on Shirl’s voice. It sounded like it was coming from right next to him. “I don’t know… some form of magic or another. But why can we hear each other but not see each other?”

Shirl paced back and forth. “I don’t know. I’m not exactly an expert on such powerful magic as this. Maybe we could reason through this to figure out how to get out of here.” She reached out her arm to where Evendur’s voice had come from, but there was nothing there to touch.

Evendur lowered his head in thought for a moment. “Start walking toward the end of the hallway opposite where we entered.” He paused as she raised a sound of confusion. “Don’t worry, I have an idea...”

 

[Eltharon]

I just finished reading, great job! Keep it up.

And hurry with the next the installment!

 

[genshou]

I just finished reading, great job! Keep it up.

And hurry with the next the installment!

This is what I like to see.

Thanks for your compliment! I was going to update tonight but am getting sick, and I don't enjoy writing puzzles when that happens.

Hopefully I'll get better before work this morning, and I'll probably write the update on my lunch and upload it after work.

 

[Eltharon]

huzzah

 

[genshou]

Evendur and Shirl are in quite a fix right now. But exactly what has happened to them, and how do they escape? I challenge my readers to try to figure out on their own as I post somewhat smaller updates than usual!

 

[genshou]

Evendur turned to face the source of sound where Shirl was, even though he couldn’t see her there. “As far as I can tell, you are not standing right next to me, because I can reach out and feel only empty space there. And yet your voice is coming from right there. What I want you to do is start walking toward the door opposite our entry to this hallway, and keep your eyes focused on where my voice currently indicates I am standing. As you walk, keep talking to me.”

Shirl reached out next to herself. “Hmm, you’re right. If you’re really there I should be able to feel you standing there. What’s going on?”

Evendur nodded, even though he knew Shirl couldn’t see him. “I have a theory. Just do as I ask and start walking.”

Shirl shrugged and turned to begin walking down the apparently endless hallway. Keeping her eye on one of the flagstones on the floor where she thought it sounded like Evendur’s voice had roughly been, she shrugged. “All right, I’m walking. What’s the point of this whole exercise?” Evendur didn’t respond. “Fine, keep your secrets.” She kept walking, keeping her eye on that spot on the floor. After a few more seconds, she stopped again. “You know, you could say something to,” she snipped. “How am I to know something hasn’t happened to you?” Evendur still didn’t respond, and she started to worry. Her footsteps echoed loudly off the flagstones on the floor as she turned around and ran back toward his apparent location. “Evendur?!” she cried out into the emptiness of the endless hallway.

Evendur’s voice came from right beside her. “Yes, I’m right here. I didn’t say anything because I wanted you to go a little further before showing you something. Just keep on walking again until you can barely make out the location where I’m standing, and then I’ll demonstrate…”

 

[genshou]

Shirl walked forward until she was certain she was far away from Evendur. She could no longer distinguish where exactly it was he was supposed to be standing. Turning slightly in the direction she came from, she lifted her hands to her mouth and raised her voice. “OKAY, NOW WHAT?” She listened to the silence of the empty hall, straining her ears for any reply. “Evendur?! Evendur!” She spun and began to run back down the hallway.

“Where do you think you are going?” Evendur’s voice resounded firmly from right beside Shirl. Her feet skidded on the stone as she came to a sudden stop. Evendur chuckled somewhat condescendingly. “What, you mean you still haven’t figured it out? You never went anywhere. This is all an illusion. We’ve been standing right next to each other all along. There seems to be something more to this illusion, however.”

Shirl realized she was holding her mouth agape. “Wait… this is an illusion?! But that’d be… that’d be a ridiculously powerful one. Are you trying to suggest that—“

Evendur nodded as he interrupted. “Yes. I think Melthym is that powerful of a Mage. I don’t know whether or not he intended us to be trapped in this hallway. It could be a challenge… or just an old man forgetting to warn us about a bad step on his porch.”

Shirl shook her head. “I still don’t get it… even a visual illusion would not prevent a person from walking out of its area, even if there was a fake wall right in front of you. How can I walk forward and never leave your side?”

Evendur placed a curled hand on his chin. “I said there was something more to it, didn’t I? Hmm… Is there some kind of illusory magic that distorts spatial sense?”

Shirl turned to face the source of Evendur’s voice. “Spatial sense? What the heck is that supposed to mean?”

Evendur dropped his arms to his sides. “You know, sensing where different things are in relation to yourself and other things. Like seeing whether one wall is closer to you than another.”

Shirl clapped her hands. ‘Of course! “Spatial” as in “Space”! That is one of the elements into which the forces of magic are separated! If there is an illusory effect that relies on that element, surely it would distort distances like this. So the hallway is actually as short as before, but we think it’s a lot further! That still doesn’t explain why I can’t see you, though.”

Evendur smiled. “I was a foot or two behind you when we triggered the illusion, wasn’t I? That distance must be extremely far away after distortion. But this illusion does not distort sound, thus creating the misperception that our voices are coming from somewhere we aren’t actually standing.” He tapped his foot on the floor impatiently. “But knowing what the illusion is doesn’t seem to have allowed me to overcome it. Perhaps there is even more to it than I thought… I think I’m going to meditate on this. Maybe you should sit down for a while, too.”

He turned to face the far end of the hallway, their goal, and sat cross-legged on the floor. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing and began to notice something very peculiar about the world around him…

 

[genshou]

Shirl stood up and sighed. Sitting around for such a long period with nothing to do and nothing to look at was really wearing on her. “Why hasn’t he come back and gotten us out of here or something? If this is his idea of a prank, I am not amused.” Only the silence of an empty hall greeted her. “Evendur, I know you were gonna meditate and all, but you could answer me, you know.” She tilted her head to the left, listening to see if she could even hear him breathing. “Evendur, you there? Helloooo?”

She gasped as she felt an arm behind her kneecaps, and another arm behind her shoulders. She was being tilted backwards at though someone were picking her up to carry her in their arms. After she was fully supported, she could feel that someone was definitely carrying her, and she thought it was Evendur. “What’s going—aaaaaaaaah!” She screamed as the corridor began flying by at an astounding speed. The doorway at the end of the tunnel came rapidly into view and approached faster and faster…

Shirl realized she was squinting and opened her eyes. She found herself in Evendur’s arms just beyond the doorway, in a room full of all manner of beakers and flasks containing more concoctions than the Five Flagons Inn claimed to stock. Despite their suspect translucent colors spanning the breadth of the visible spectrum, a few of them were probably safer than some of the drinks at that establishment. She looked up at Evendur’s face and noticed he was looking at an open trapdoor on the floor near them. “Uh… do I even want to know what just happened?”

Evendur looked down at her face, seeming surprised to hear her speak. “Oh, so the illusion did break when you passed the threshold of the door! That’s good. Are you all right? You raised quite a scream when I picked you up. Sorry, it was faster than explaining everything to you.”

Shirl shook her head and blinked again. “Sorry… Yeah, I’m fine… you want to explain how it is that you got out of there? And where’s Melthym?”

Evendur used his head to indicate the trapdoor below. “He went down there… he didn’t say what he was doing, but I think he was just going down to get something while he waited for you to get through the hallway.”

Shirl leaned her head back. “So, wait… he stood there all that time it took for you to get out of the illusion, and then was too impatient to wait a few more seconds for me?”

Evendur grinned. “Ah, but you see, that was the final secret of the illusion that I had to figure out to pierce it. We weren’t in that hallway for several minutes. Our sense of time was being thrown off. We were actually only in that hallway for about a minute, just long enough to say all our dialogue. The rest was only perception.”

Shirl’s mouth hung open for a moment. “I didn’t know magic could do that… and how exactly did you figure this out? All you did was start meditating, and then somehow you just… escaped it?”

Evendur chuckled. “That, my dear, I will leave a mystery for now. I wouldn’t want to spoil the answer for you.” He winked slightly and rotated to face the trapdoor, swinging Shirl around along with him.

Shirl looked at Evendur and began to flush slightly. “Uh, E-Evendur…”

He looked down at her slightly confused. “You ok? You look like you’re coming down with something.”

She shook her head. “Well, I mean, it’s…” She turned her gaze from his, uncomfortable looking directly at him while attempting to speak. “You’re still… you can…” She swallowed. “You don’t have to hold me anymore.”

Evendur coughed. “Erm! Sorry. I-I didn’t mean to—“ He sighed and set her down. “Sorry,” he offered again inelegantly.

The two turned to face away from each other as an awkward moment of silence passed. Melthym’s aged frame appeared in the room below as he came slowly back up the steep stair. “Sorry about that, I haven’t had a visitor in almost a hundred years, so I forgot I even had that defense there! Looks like you made your way out of it eventually, though. Eh, no matter.” He held up a small book upon which the same symbol as the buckler out front and Evendur’s amulet was inscribed on the front cover. “Now then, I owe you an explanation of what this item is, and its significance to me..."