Rob X Punzel ~ Thirty-Six!

Reaching the base of the ladder, Goldie leaped upward, grasping onto the rungs and hauling herself up as quickly as possible. Her hands and feet flew as she climbed, her breath coming in ragged gasps as she did everything possible to put distance between herself and the chaos below. Projectiles swarmed up at her, only to embed themselves in her hair and vanish into storage. Though she was gasping for air, she still managed to bark out her thanks: “Good job, hair! That's a fantastic way to deal with that kind of attack.”

Even at the halfway point of her ascension, claws snapped at her heels, a vicious combination of crab and wolf leaping higher than the rest. Goldie refused to grasp defeat from the jaws of victory, swinging herself out and around the ladder as necessary, sometimes only her hair grasping at the metal rungs keeping her from falling. Only as she crossed the last few hand spans did the attacks relent, though again the monsters and creatures went berserk, venting their fury on the ladies who hadn’t yet managed to make the climb.

Goldie reached the top and shoved the trapdoor above her open, hauling herself up and through before slapping the thin barrier shut to cut off the sights and sounds of the melee still raging. Breathing heavily, she collapsed and simply sat for a moment; looking cautiously around the room before allowing herself to fractionally relax. The only other person in the small antechamber with her was a single guard who sat on a rickety stool. A book rested in his hand, the cover mostly closed over his finger, which he had pressed to the pages to mark where he had left off.

“Hey, there. You are the…” he called over, giving her an appraising glance as she slowly got to her feet, “tenth person in your cohort to make it up. Probably the last as well. I'd be very surprised if there was an eleventh, as the spells being pumped into the creatures make them more vicious with each person that gets out. Thus far, there's about an eighty-percent fail rate in each cohort, so… you're probably the last one? Congratulations.”

Tottering over to the guard, she simply accepted what he said with a shake of her head, then spoke as calmly as she could manage, “That's an absolutely horrifying fact, thank you. What's next?”

Casting a last, longing look at his book, the guard stood to his full height and motioned for Goldie to follow him. “You have two options. Take a rest in a protected room or start the next trial immediately. There’s already been a contender in your cohort who took the pardon, so you must climb. What's it going to be?”

As she was absolutely trembling with fatigue, and her arm was burning hot enough around the wound that Goldie feared it had become infected and inflamed, so it was an easy choice for her. “I need to rest. How long do I get before I have to go?”

“You get four hours from the time the door closes before I'll open it. I'll give you one warning before I just walk away from the door and whatever happens… happens.” The man didn't seem particularly intimidating, but there was a hardness to his stare that spoke of a man who’d seen intense combat. 

Not a trace of empathy could be found on his face as he waited for her to step through the door that he threw open, revealing what was essentially a closet with a cot in it. “In case you want to know, the first person to come up, ruthless killer type, took the pardon and ran off laughing. Didn't even look back. Four of the others took the offer of rest, and the others continued right away.”

 Goldie hesitated, wondering if she should rush forward while she had the chance to get ahead of some of the competition. Still, eventually, she shook her head and slowly walked into the room. “Before you lock me in… what is the next challenge? Do I get any information?”

“Yeah.” He swung the door shut, pausing just before it closed all the way. “But I can only tell you when you’re ready to continue.”

Moments later, he opened the door once again. “That's four hours, door is open.”

Goldie blinked at him in confusion, the echoes of the corrupted hyena's laughter fading from her mind as she snapped back to reality and wondered blearily why he seemed so much taller than he had just moments before. Only then did she realize she’d collapsed onto the cot immediately upon reaching it, sleeping like the dead, thanks to the extremely long time she’d been awake.

Forcing herself to her feet, she realized that she had indeed slept, though the length of time was decidedly insufficient for her needs. “Ughhh.”

“That's what they all said.” For the first time, a slight twist appeared in the royal guard's smile, though it vanished as quickly as it had appeared. “The next floor is a ‘test of leadership’. Pay attention, ‘cuz I'm only going to tell you this once. When you move into the next room, you're going to be assigned a group of twenty people. There's two ways to get to the third floor. The fastest way is to find two other groups and eliminate ‘em. If even one person from a group gets away, the elimination doesn't count. Then there's the slow way… you go around finding tokens hidden all over the place. You need two for every person in your group, including yourself. That’s forty-two, in case you don't know math.”

“Thanks.” Goldie snorted at his clear insinuation. “Then what?”

“Then you take your group to the exit point and hold it long enough to open the door and get yourself out of there. Most likely going to have plenty of people set up around the exit ready to attack you as soon as you are working on the door. No one else can help you with it. You need to open it yourself, which means you have to rely on your group to keep you safe until you're out of there.”

“They come with me?”

Goldie’s question was met by a shrug, which made her stomach churn until he glibly answered, “That's up to you. The longer you hold the door open, the more likely it is you get stabbed in the back. If they get out with you, they get a sack of gold for their trouble and sent home. Anyway, that's all I'm allowed to tell you, so go on your way.”

Before leaving her small room, Goldie glanced to the side and found some basic provisions: a pitcher of water and a cold sandwich. She hesitated for a moment, wondering how long the food had been sitting there—at least the four hours she’d been sleeping—then shrugged and scarfed it down. Living in the slums, she had eaten far worse over the years. As refreshed as she could be with a severely lacking amount of sleep, she strolled through the doorway the guard had indicated, scissors at the ready.

Immediately, she found herself the center of attention as a group of people looked at her with expressions varying from relief to disdain as they saw her clearly system-enhanced hair. Each of them was armed with either a knife or a cudgel, and every single one of them was male—clearly whatever women they had rounded up had taken advantage of the queen's proclamation and used the chance to test their luck against the tower, instead of being a prop used on one of its floors. 

“Great, a hairdresser. We're dead.” The first of the group to speak threw his hands in the air and turned away, shaking his head sadly. 

Goldie swept her gaze around the room, jaw firming as she recognized the familiar signs of hard living. “Are all of you from the slums?”

“Not like they're going to round up tax-paying citizens, are they?” came a disdainful retort from the back of the group, though no one stepped forward to claim the words as their own. 

Acting as a counterpoint to these glum individuals, one of the men caught her eye and gave her a nervous smile. “We’re supposed to be your soldiers or something. Right? What do we gotta do to get outta this alive?”

Anger slowly trickled through Goldie’s heart as she saw the slum dwellers standing there, exhausted and already on the edge of giving up. Her voice came out as a whisper, “They can't do this to us.”

“Now that's where you're wrong, lady,” another called out resignedly. “They already did. Here we are. Our only chance of surviving this is… you. Betraying you means we die, so you have our utmost loyalty. Now what?”

His words were thickly tainted with sarcasm, but that was fine. Goldie’s head bobbed as she considered her next course of action. “Let's get out there. Prepare to be ambushed. Then, as soon as we have a little more information, we can figure out what happens next. How do we-”

“They gave us this.” One of the men held up a shiny triangular token. “This is what all of the tokens look like that we need to find, and we use this one to open the door to get in there.”

“Really? Then this is…” Goldie took the offered token, a plan already forming in her mind. Her lips curled in a smile as she looked around at the others, “...gonna be easy.” 

“Really?” 

She nodded solemnly, doing her best to not extinguish the spark of hope in his voice. “Here's what we're going to do. As soon as we get in there, all I want all of you to do is stay away from everyone else and rest up as much as possible. This is a twisted game. We're going to play by the rules exactly, so there’s no way they can take it away from us unless they want to prove themselves to be liars in front of everyone. I'm going to go around, alone, and gather up every token we need. When I come back, everyone needs to be ready to hold strong against people trying to stop us.”

“What guarantee do we have that you're not just going to step through the door and leave us all here?” One of the men, rightfully suspicious of the contenders, called out.

Goldie wanted to just bark at him that he needed to trust her but realized that would simply fall on deaf ears. Then she remembered exactly who she was speaking with, “I'm from the slums, just like the rest of you-”

“Sure, lady!” A man barked out a laugh. “I've got a fancy set of duds like that in my closet, too.”

Goldie unconsciously reached for the soft fabric of her shirt, wincing as she realized that it was doing her no favors at this moment. “Yeah, well, I can prove it. I grew up in the orphanage ruled by headmistress Schule-Tyrant. There's no way we all know each other, but I had a reputation. For years now, I've been unloading every coin I made into food, clothes, and apprenticeships for the orphans there.”

Most of the people seemed skeptical, but a few looked at her with renewed interest, comparing her golden hair against memories of conversations they’d had in the past. Finally, one of them spoke up. “You’re the thief!” 

Immediately, another dozen of them looked at her with interest, their own eyes going wide with recognition. “Finally got pinched? Or are you in here going after the ultimate theft, trying to steal the prince's heart?” 

That earned a round of laughter, and Goldie was relieved to see that she now had everyone’s rapt attention. “If you know who I am, you know that I go out of my way to take care of people. Work with me on this, and I'll get every last one of you out of here.”

A few of the people still grumbled, but eventually even the most vocal naysayer simply scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Might as well hold out hope; otherwise it's just death on the other end.”

Knowing she had as much of their loyalty as she could earn at this point, Goldie placed the token in a triangular slot, and the door popped open with a blaring alarm announcing their entry. Pulling their knives and cudgels into a ready position, the group slipped through the door and spread out, carefully stepping on to the second floor proper. 

The thief looked around with a practiced eye, uncomfortable with how large this space was, compared to how big she expected it to be. “Something strange is going on here… this floor of the tower shouldn't have this much room in it.”

“Magic, obviously,” the most cheery of the group responded to her, coming to stand by her side as she looked around the room filled with small hills and densely coated in foliage. “If they put as much care into this as the rest of the place, the expanded space is going to collapse as soon as they're done with it. Wouldn't want to be trapped in here when that happens.”

Goldie glanced at him, wondering how he knew all this, and he quickly looked away. “You won't be in here. You're all coming out with me. I guarantee it.”

The expected ambush didn't collapse on them, so Goldie moved the group to the top of one of the low hills and had them set up a perimeter, carefully keeping watch on all sides. Then, taking a deep breath, she swirled her head side to side, covering herself in her ever-increasing length of hair. Staring at the plants around her, she adjusted the coloration of the light coming off her hair until it matched as closely as possible. Shifting her stance, the young woman quickly began covering ground, moving through the enlarged space as quickly and carefully as she could.

Any noise she generated was eradicated by her hair, and her basic camouflage was enough for Goldie to avoid the nine other groups of people as they rampaged through the floor looking for opponents—or actively fighting when they stumbled upon each other.

Every few minutes, a flash of silver shifted in front of her eyes as her hair lifted a token from under a loose stone, out of a false leaf of a plant, or wedged into dozens of other hidden spaces. An hour into her quiet circling, she already had two-thirds of the tokens she needed, so Goldie adjusted her direction and began crisscrossing the center of the room. Each of the small, glittering objects were quickly stashed away in her tresses, and by the end of the second hour, she was making her way back to her resting team—a surplus of tokens tucked away, just in case. 

When she popped her head out of the leaves next to her group, she nearly took a club to the face for her troubles as one of her men let out a strangled shout. “Knock that off! I have all the tokens we need; let's go!”

“Wait, that's it?” one of the men grumbled, disconcerted by her successful hunt. “All we had to do was hang around for a little while?” 

“No, that's all you've had to do so far.” Goldie lifted her hands, showing a pile of the triangular tokens to the group. “Now we need to go unlock the door and get out of here.”

During her wandering, Goldie had found the exit: a large, stone door in the center of the floor. More specifically, it was a large standing stone archway which didn't seem to go anywhere. It was a completely indefensible location and had scores of triangular indents covering it where the tokens needed to be slotted in. Doing her best to keep the group as stealthy as possible, she led them in a straight line to the exit.

The closer they got, the more nervous the group became, eyes darting left and right as they waited for someone to pop out of nowhere and start swinging knives. When they got to the door, Goldie motioned for the men to spread out in a ring around the archway and lifted the first token into its slot.

Bwaaaa! 

An alarm immediately blared directly above the doorway, the sound striking the group almost as a physical blow. Each of them let out vile curses as Goldie tossed the tokens into the air, directing her hair to grab them and push them into their holes. One after another they clicked into place, but even so she wasn't fast enough to complete the task before a group of men charged over a hill and rushed them—led by a woman wielding a blazing sword.

Bwaaaa!

Bwaaaa!

The alarm went off twice more as the stone doors shivered, a rain of dust floating from where it met the frame. Goldie pounded on the terribly slow-moving stone. “Come on!”

“You think you can just waltz through?” The swordswoman laughed with no trace of humor in her voice. “Heidi tasked me with keeping everyone back; I'm not going to fail her twice! I’m gonna be a duchess!”

The woman swung her sword, too far away for the metal to cut into anyone. Even so, the ghostly flames covering the blade collected into a thin bar of light, flying forward at Goldie's defensive line. Scrambling out of the way of the attack, the slum dwellers barely managed to avoid the superheated air—though the clothes of two of them lit on fire as the attack passed overhead. Just then, the door opened wide enough for Goldie to slip through, and… 

…she considered it.

The flame splashed against the stone archway, dealing no damage to its surface, but flowing down the side as though it were a burning liquid. Goldie edged forward, freezing in place as one of her men let out a hoarse shout of pain. 

All she needed to do was go through, and she’d be able to continue upward. Instead, the thief grit her teeth and turned, rushing at the attackers as she shouted over her shoulder, “Get through the doorway! Go, go!”

Her battle scissors clicked together, and a heartbeat later, she held a long pair of shears in a double-handed grip. The swordswoman let out a laugh as she swung at the golden-haired impediment, only for the mirth to die on her lips as the scissors deflected the flaming blade without any apparent damage.

“How? This should’ve cut through that like a hot knife through your neck!” 

“Why does everyone use such violent analogies?” Goldie grunted as she swung her shears, activating the magic of them as she did so. With all of her strength, combined with the heightened force, and the additional pressure imbuement… she managed to just barely bring her opponent’s sword to a standstill as they locked blades. “What happened to ‘a hot knife through butter’?”

“We stepped into the real world!” The swordswoman shifted her stance, lashing out and kicking Goldie in the knee. The thief managed to shift her stance at the last moment, causing her to merely collapse to the ground instead of allowing the attack to shatter and invert her knee. Even so, it was a painful blow, and she was unable to struggle to her feet before her opponent rushed forward, sword lifted to deliver a coup de gras… only for a cudgel to bounce off the aggressor’s face, thrown by one of Goldie's teammates. 

The woman stumbled back—disoriented by the tears streaming from her eyes and the blood trickling from her nose. Goldie let out a sharp gasp and nearly struggled as she felt strong hands clamp on her shoulders, only to relax as she recognized two of the men from her group pulling her along.

Upon their yanking her through the stone archway, the slow-moving door violently slammed closed, leaving Goldie and her entire group in a darkened chamber on the other side. The air was filled with the sound of twenty-one people gasping for air as their hearts raced. 

Ever so slowly she turned to look at her rescuers. “You came back for me?”

“At any point, you could’ve just left us there,” one of them gruffly stated, not meeting her eyes. “But ya didn't. You save me, I save you. Fair is fair.”

“Fair is fair.” A few of the others agreed readily, as though he was a sage spouting wisdom.

“Line up!” a voice called out as a royal guard made his presence known. Unlike the people introducing the other floors, this one looked at Goldie with something akin to hope… as if he was debating whether to introduce himself, maybe help her out a little extra, all in hopes of rewards in the future. 

“Rapunzel, I have information on the next floor for you. If you would be so kind, join me at the front of the room. The rest of you? Get over there, take your sack of coins, and get out.”