Chapter 350: The Toll of Ages

Chapter 349 — The Toll of Ages

I keep looking down into the gallery.

Veric asked a simple question. Whether I know how to solve this.

The answer is more complicated than I’d like.

"The mechanics still look the same," I say. "What changed is the layout."

Freya moves a little closer to the edge of the elevated channel, careful not to push her body past the stone. From here we can see almost the entire gallery. The Brinekin move between the pillars, cross the lower walkways, and drop into the streams ringing the arena, surfacing again at uneven intervals. Some stay near the statues. Others haul the remains of something from one small opening in the wall to another.

I point at the central area.

"First, those five statues."

Rhayne follows my finger.

At this distance the pattern is easier to catch. The first figure is small, clearly a child, an oar propped against its body. The second already has adolescent features. Each one after that is older than the last, until the final figure shows a bent old man, his face lined, a long beard carved down over his chest.

Only the first one holds an oar. The four after it hold spears.

"They’re getting older," Rhayne says.

"Exactly. This is an age puzzle."

Veric looks at the figures again.

"What do they do?"

"Nothing yet. And I want to keep it that way until we’ve cleared this hall."

I show them the chains coiled at the base of each statue. Even from up here you can make out the metal rings fixed to the ends.

"Every statue has a chain. When we start, one person has to lock one of them around their waist. The chain creates an OXI link between the user and the dungeon’s mechanism. Once we’re connected, our OXI starts draining, the floodgates start working, and the streams around us begin to rise."

Rhayne looks at the channels spread across the gallery.

"It’s going to flood everything?"

"Gradually. At first you can walk. After that it gets complicated."

I point at the six larger pillars distributed among the statues.

Now that I know what to look for, I can recognize elements of the version I faced three years in the future. Each pillar has its own color band and occupies a specific position relative to the statues and the channels. Small niches in the stone hold the coins the mechanism uses.

Except none of them is where I remember it.

"There are six pillars and five statues. One of those pillars is false."

Freya counts fast.

"And how do we find out which?"

I gesture at the Brinekin.

"By killing them."

She looks at me.

"Convenient."

"Some of them carry the clue that identifies the false pillar. Others show the exact match for each statue. We need every clue. The positions changed from what I remember, so I can’t just point at the right ones."

I choose my words carefully.

I don’t need to explain every detail of why it changed. It barely matters, since we’d have to work the whole puzzle carefully either way. Even so, the Causal Dissonance message is still sitting at the back of my head.

The course of my choices has been rewritten.

This looks like a very concrete demonstration.

"Once we take the false one out of the equation, five valid pillars are left," I continue. "Each statue has to receive coins from the correct pillar. If we take coins from the false one, or pair a pillar with the wrong statue, it counts as a failure."

Zhang Xi has been studying the sculptures for a while.

"And the age determines the statue?"

"The order."

I point at the child with the oar again.

"That one is always first. The youngest person in the group starts there. Puts as many coins in the vessel as their own age, then works the oar. After that, the dungeon moves on to the next person."

Veric frowns.

"How do we know who it picked?"

"It doesn’t tell us."

He turns his face toward me.

"Nothing?"

"Nothing. The system reads each person’s chronological age through the OXI in the chains, and it knows exactly who should go next. We need to know too."

That makes Rhayne look at the statues with a lot more attention.

It’s the detail that makes this room dangerous even for strong groups. Five people can understand the mechanism perfectly and still lose, because they never talked about something as basic as who was born first.

"That’s why we’re settling the order now," I say. "I want everyone’s chronological age."

I look at Rhayne first.

"Seventeen."

I already assumed as much, but I want it confirmed.

Veric answers next.

"Nineteen."

Freya crosses her arms.

"Eighteen."

Zhang Xi speaks without any change in expression.

"Thirty-nine."

My eyes go to her for a second.

She notices.

"Is there a problem?"

"None."

Staying alive seems better than complimenting a monk who looks twenty-five.

"I’m eighteen too."

Freya looks at me. There’s a tie.

"Which of us was born first?"

"February," she says.

"And I’m April."

"Then I’m two months older."

I nod and sort it out in my head.

"So the order is Rhayne, me, Freya, Veric, Zhang Xi."

I run my eyes over the group to make sure everyone is following.

"The dungeon uses our exact age to determine the sequence, so those two months put Freya after me. But the vessels only count full years. I put in eighteen coins and so does she." ℯℯ𝘭.

Rhayne raises a finger, still looking at the child statue.

"So I put in seventeen and use the oar."

"Right. Then I put eighteen in the next one and pull the spear. Freya does the same with eighteen, Veric puts in nineteen, and Zhang Xi finishes with thirty-nine."

Zhang Xi looks at the statue of the old man, and so do I.

Thirty-nine coins on the last stage, when the water will already be much higher.

’Excellent. And that’s being generous.’

"The statues know who should act," I continue. "They just won’t help us remember. If anyone moves out of order, puts in the wrong amount, or uses coins from the wrong pillar, the room counts it as an error."

Freya keeps her eyes on the Brinekin below.

"And what happens when we make one?"

"The water rises faster and one of the side gates opens."

She searches the structures on the walls.

There are heavy grates at several points in the gallery, some almost hidden in shadow.

"More Brinekin?"

"More Brinekin."

She lets out a breath through her nose.

"Great."

Veric is studying another part of the room.

"The ducts?"

I point at the large drainage openings near the bottom. Even with the water this low, you can see the current heading that way.

"That’s the other problem. Once the level passes certain marks on the pillars, the pressure in those channels goes up. The water will start pulling anything that loses its footing."

I look straight at him.

"That’s where you come in, Veric. If someone gets dragged, use Undertow immediately. Don’t wait for them to get near the duct."

Veric measures the distance from the elevated passage down to the lower section.

"I can pull someone back."

"As long as you move early. If the current pins someone against one of those grates, I wouldn’t bet on it."

He nods.

He doesn’t need more than that. Veric understands his own gear better than I do, and now he knows what role he takes the moment the water starts controlling the field.

Zhang Xi points at a few ridges on the pillars.

"Those marks show the level?"

"Yes. The first one is easy. At the second, the current already starts interfering with movement. After that, every mistake gets a lot more expensive."

Freya keeps reading the room in silence before she finally asks.

"How long do we have after we connect?"

That’s the part I’ve been waiting for someone to ask.

"Less than fifteen minutes."

The group spends a few seconds looking out over the gallery.

Fifteen minutes might sound like a lot to anyone who’s never done this. It isn’t.

We have to lock five people into the system, identify the five valid pillars, move coins across a room that will be filling with water, respect a chronological sequence the dungeon won’t announce, and finish all of it while our OXI drains. A single mistake speeds up the flooding and adds new enemies on top of it.

And that assumes the fundamental mechanics really are unchanged.

Causal Dissonance rearranged this room. I still don’t know how far it went.

"Which is why we don’t start the puzzle while there’s anything alive down there trying to kill us," I say. "First we clear the gallery. The Brinekin give us the clue for the false pillar and for the correct pairs. Once we’re certain about the configuration, we move to the statues."

Rhayne looks at the number of creatures.

"Do we have to kill all of them?"

"I’d rather not find out with water at my chest and my OXI dropping that we left one hiding behind a pillar."

That seems to be answer enough.

Veric starts working out the lower routes. Zhang Xi watches the points where the water offers access between levels, while Freya tracks the groups of Brinekin closest to our position. Rhayne squeezes the Battle Ribbon between her fingers and starts measuring distances too.

I let the four of them look.

There’s no advantage in rushing.

The clock on the Soul Tickets keeps running, but starting this room without a plan would be an even more efficient way to waste them.

I point at the order of the statues one last time.

"Rhayne, me, Freya, Veric, Zhang Xi. Seventeen, eighteen, eighteen, nineteen, thirty-nine. Any questions?"

Nobody answers.

’That’s good.’

I turn my attention back to the six pillars. The same colors I remember are there, the same sculptures, the same channels, the same coins. Every component of this puzzle is still familiar, while the arrangement as a whole tells me my memory no longer works as an answer key.

Maybe that’s what Causal Dissonance wanted to show me.

Knowing the rules still helps.

Knowing the future no longer guarantees the solution.

I draw Kraken slowly.

We haven’t touched a single chain yet, and the adrenaline is already climbing. Before we can solve the first puzzle of the Ferryman’s Toll, we need to earn the space to try.

I look over the Brinekin scattered between the pillars and start dividing them into groups by position.

"All right. We clear the gallery first. Go."