Troubling Heaven

As Hollowstar regenerated, Gresholm found himself in his bedroom, in his house, which wasn't connected to the palace. But his had to report to the Gold King. Gresholm climbed down the stairs and headed to the empty lot next to his house, where the Gold Palace sat when it happened to be on the ground. He walked over to a rectangular depression made by the drawbridge and called out, "Hello! Yellow strawberry victory orb of ultraviolet ancestor swallow king emerald hat -" Wham! Apparently one of those keywords had gotten the attention of the guest-receiving computer that Algen had set up. A smaller boom sounded as the drawbridge came down, combined with the sound of rushing water as a moat filled up beneath the drawbridge. Gresholm walked across the drawbridge, then stared at a blank wall until someone on the other side pressed the button to make it disintegrate. Gresholm thanked the servant who had let him in and headed for the master conrol room.

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"I told you, it's the Wall of Pins. Now that we've wasted all this time looking for the Orb of Needles, can't we go look under WP?"

"It's an orb. I know it's an orb. It must be the Orb of Spikes."

"You idiot, not everything round has to be an orb!"

"Who ever heard of a round wall?"

"Maybe the same king who decided getting - hey, who's this?" One of the palace workers, a tall, thin man holding a white cylinder in his left hand, had sighted Lance.

"He doesn't look like a native. Hey wall, who is this?" The other worker, a stocky man of medium height holding a computer accessory, struck the wall behind him with his fist.

The two workers had left the artifact list open, so the first screen Lance accessed read "Orb of Aftershock: Causes attacks to repeat their effects more weakly. Emad." This message occupied the entire screen, with buttons for "Next," "Previous," "Main Menu," and, mysteriously, "Nedemu."

"Bing!" A computer across the room attracted janem's attention wiht an insistent noise, and Janem headed over to investigate. The display mystified him, however - it was a black-and-white sheet of scrolling text that ended in "genaram efuded emad." These blasted computers love that language, Janem thought in disgust. "Gresholm!"

Gresholm appeared in the center of the room. "Yes?" he asked tiredly.

"What does this mean?"

Gresholm walked over to the screen and began scanning it from the top down. "Let's see... Forty years ago, Gerold Finn purchased the Blade of Subsize. This is the artifact events screen... it tells everything happening in the storage rooms."

"This computer beeped. Doesn't it say something important?"

Gresholm's eyes dropped to the bottom of the screen. "Genaram efuded emad... This very hour, the most recent guest to enter the palace entered an artifact storage room. I don't remember which artifact Emad is. The guest was never invited, and entered through the fourteenth-story window. You know the one. Ram... ram... I think you can look up everywhere else he's gone on some other computers."

Research. Janem despised Algen's systems. It seemed the king was supposed to be omniscient, but every little tidbit of information required half an hour to dig up. "Uninvited guest? Kill him. Why did the computer let hi min in the first place?"

"Algen was very hospitable. The entire computer system is hard-coded to treat any outsider as a guest."

"I don't care what Algen thinks. Kill that burglar!"

"Emad... emad... Uh, type Emad into the guard system."

Janem walekd over to the guard system computer. "E... m... WHERE'S A?" Gresholm walked over and pointed to it. Janem punched it impatiently, then bumped the S. "AHHH! What do I do now?"

The speaker above the computer crackled ot life. "Yes, sir?"

Gresholm punched the backspace key. The speaker went dead. Janem carefully pressed the D key, and the computer crackled to life. "Yes, sir?"

"Someone's in that storage room! Kill him!"

"Yes, sir." The speaker went dead.

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Mogue Sapin was an average Hollowstar guard, still equipped in Algen's teamwork-oriented style. However, he had gotten used to Janem's mad rule, and knew where to equip himself for single combat. Mogue charged into the EM storage room and scooped two artifacts off the wall, whipping another one off his belt. Orb of ghost motion, orb of afterthought, rod of clearing. "OK, you poor innocent wretch, I don't know why you came here but Hollowstar isn't what it used to be!" There's no one here. Or rather, he's invisible... let's see, the code was Emad. Mogue made a beeline for the Orb of Aftershock, swinging the Rod of Clearing in front of him like a club.

((Not light years. That would take years. ))

Iban scanned the message twice, taking a full second to both realize that it was writing and decipher the unfamiliar human tongue. Once he understood the message, he grabbed the orb, absorbing it to throw himself into the planet Satersphere. Iban ricocheted off the planet, expending a good ton of water to change direction and head back to Hollowstar at practically lightspeed. The water boiled for miles.

Iban had taken five minutes to reach Satersphere, and the trip back to Hollowstar took only a quarter second more. Iban's computer mind carefully registered this fact and didn't care. After giving the force field the same treatment as before, Iban hovered a mile above the ground and considered why Hollowstar had not been destroyed. It must have been the deathless arena. To destroy Hollowstar, I must disable the deathless arena. Only the king can do that. Therefore, the solution is in the Gold Palace.

Iban looked down at Ethian. "Can't you escape?"

"I don't mind killing innocents." Iban looked in the direction of the Gold Palace, which was approximately back the way that they had come. "It's the Deathless Arena. Apparently it covers more land than I thought. We could spend a few years destroying pieces of Hollowstar and figuring out what's protected, but the fastest way would be to shut off the deathless arena. The master control panel is somewhere in the Gold palace."

EDIT: I said something embarassing. It was easy to type, but I couldn't stand to look at it.

((Oh, that's where my post went... Now I'm embarassed again.

Now, we have a big misunderstanding... Lance is in a storage room, but Ethian and Iban are outdoors. Lance is under attack by a guard who can't see him, but knows what he's looking for. But it is high time we got inside the palace.))

Iban shot off, not bothering to respond to Ethian's question. He wanted to get on with the mission, and he knew that his words would be terribly distorted at high speeds.