The Tower's Treasure

Roche swore as she climbed up a set of stairs, one of seemingly hundreds in the massive, sky-piercing 'Tower of Poloskis'. Her plate-mail was covered in blood, soot, trace remains of acid, was dinged and scratched beyond serviceability, and was squeaking uncomfortably with every step she took. Her shield had been swallowed long ago by a sticky worm-monster. Her sword was heavily notched and the magic on it may have been running out; it was failing to cut as sharply as before. Most of her supplies had been depleted. She had no food, no alcohol, barely any water, no lantern oil, and she had thrown every caltrop, hurled every vial of firepowder, and chucked her maps in frustration. But she'll be damned if she wasn't going to ascend to the top of the tower and get the prize there!

A thousand years ago, the Tower of Poloskis was made by the arch-mage Poloskis to keep his most valued treasure safe. It, strictly speaking, wasn't meant to keep people out. It was meant to be a gauntlet, filled with constructs, traps, undying monsters, weird curses, and more, all placed one on top of the other in a gigantic spire. Roche had heard descriptions of hell from other adventurers. She had thought, repeatedly, that this was close as you could get on the mortal coil.

She climbed to a landing lit with a glowing stone and a door leading inside the tower. The stairs behind her were almost straight; the tower was curved so that each flight was like that, leading to huge rooms. Roche placed a hand against the door, raised her sword, and swung the door open.

The room was colossal, as big as some castle grounds, with a high ceiling and four gigantic columns holding the roof up. Meaningless scrawls hovered off of the columns, glowing with ancient arcane power and illuminating the contents of the room; a single signpost. There were no more doors in the room other than the one she had opened.

Roche squinted at the sign, not wanting to get to close. Not readable from here, but the general shape looked to be Sylvanic, a high-class, ancient language used frequently in some of the riddles in rooms far, far below.

Gently scooting out into the room and sweeping her sword side to side, Roche crouched low to check for raised plates in the stony floor. None that she could see. Her danger-sensing lens had been eaten by a purple ooze, drained of its magic, and had been spat back at her. Roche so wished she had it now.

She'd have to go in on blind faith alone, then. Walking up to the trap by the side, to avoid anything placed on the simplest of routes, Roche read the sign. 'This is the end of your journey. I spent the entire treasury on building this tower. There is no treasure. Your prize is the fame of surviving everything I spent my money on. Congratulations on your determination."

Fuck that! She came here for solid goods, not some title! Enraged, Roche kicked the sign, punting it to the far wall. Instead of careening off the stonework, it passed through. Roche paused, then grinned wickedly to herself. She was going to be filthy rich.

Sword in front, Roche walked to the illusory patch of wall and poked at it with her sword. The tip passed through, and Roche felt no resistance whatsoever. She tapped it against the floor. Sounded like solid stone. A few more taps established enough to stand on. Putting a hand in front of her as if she was blind, Roche stepped through.

In front of her, another set of stairs turned off and ascended upwards. Roche cursed.

Roche would have damned the name Poloskis with every step, but she needed the energy. Each stone upwards was a drag on her patience, every bent knee a reminder of just how absurd this was. But damned if there wasn't going to be something good at the end of this!

Roche's legs were groaning with exhaustion by the time she got to the last landing. Taking a moment to catch her breath, she looked up at the door. It was solid gold, fine metalwork leaves crawling around the frame, with red wooden plating and silver door knockers. Thank the gods, finally!

Roche reached out to the door, and then paused. It could still be a trap. She poked the other two walls with her sword. Solid as their stony construction looked to be. She poked the door. The sword scratched some gold off, and it clinked when it hit the floor.

Taking a deep breath, Roche grasped a knocker and pulled it open. After a moment of incredible resistance, as if she was pulling on a mountain, the door swung open, and Roche collapsed against the opposite wall as it gave way. Grinning enough to be almost giggling, Roche stepped in with her sword held high.

There was no gleaming gold. There was no shining silver. There were no iron-wrought boxes, no armor lying around, no weapons placed on racks. There wasn't the glint of gems. Roche couldn't even see a hint of copper in the room. But at least the room itself was very different.

Plants grew everywhere, clinging to the ceiling, groping raised stone blocks, and holding fast to the floor. Many chunks of stone bricks had been replaced by dirt, where the plants spilled from. Few had flowers, instead leafy vines overrode the place. A square moat surrounded the center of the room, lilypads growing on the surface of the clear water sporadically and a small rock bridge arching over it. In the center stood a raised stone platform, where a cloth covered a long, lumpy shape. A circle of sunlight shone above the shape, cut into the ceiling and looking like it penetrated it.

Roche was running out of curses to use. This was a lot like the room with the man-eating plants, but she had had firepowder to deal with those. She only had her sword here. Looking past the cloth, she saw that there wasn't a door. She didn't want to go back down for supplies. She wouldn't survive it. She'd get hungry, collapse, and then starve to death. She didn't trust the water in this entire tower, and she didn't want to go into the room much.

Well, if she was dead either way, she may as well die going forwards. One hesitant, clanking boot into the room, then the other. None of the plants stirred. Another few steps, and still nothing else moved. She had to admit, it smelled fresh in here. The rest of the dungeon was stale with age and old, spilled blood. Here, it was as fresh as a forest.

Roche made it to the bridge. Nothing moved, but the shape under the cloth was huge, as big as four people easily, and spread around lazily. Holding her sword high, ready to chop, Roche pulled back the cover.

Gold! Shining gold! And rubies too! Sapphires, emeralds, even a few errant silver! Roche felt revitalized, looking at the shining expanse before her. No, hold on, it wasn't gold. It was all too smooth, the dots of shining color connected to each other like scales on a snake, the surface rounded like a tube.

Roche muttered what may be her last swear word as she tensed. The snake-like tube didn't move at all. Was it dead? She tore off the rest of the cloth, looking for a head. Instead, the she followed the coils up until they transitioned into a golden human body. Joined at the waist, the being was a young woman, with lapis-lazuli hair down to her 'waist', the connection between human and serpent, curled up and sleeping. Her hands were clutched over her breasts, holding on to something.

Roche reached across and fumbled the item out of the woman's hands. A small scroll! She unrolled it. Idly, she read the sylvanic words aloud, "Wake Up, Princess." Huh? Oh dear.

Roche jumped back as the coils began to tremble. The woman's body turned upright, exposing her perky nude breasts and dark blue nipples, before she stretched her back and mumbled to herself.

The woman's eyes fluttered open, revealing sapphire irises, and she closed them again as she stretched her arms above her head. The woman leaned up, scratching her disarrayed hair, then looked at Roche. Roche's sword pointed to her throat.

The woman's eyes widened, and she shuffled away to the opposite end of the platform. Looking down at her naked body, her tail whipped the cloth back at her, and she held it in front of her like a curtain. "Er, um, congratulations, brave warrior, you have bested my father's tower. Now you can claim your prize," the woman said, speaking in Sylvanic. Her voice was high and soft, but it squeaked a bit in fear.

"Hold on, father?" Roche demanded in Sylvanic, pressing for answers. Poloskis had been single! Never married, never had kids! It was something wizards did.

The woman looked even more alarmed, looked closely at Roche, then breathed a sigh of relief. Wait, did this snake-woman take her to be a man at first? Roche was wearing all-encompassing plate armor, even the head, so it wouldn't be that odd.

"Yes, I am Cotil, daughter of Poloskis and the goddess Xochicoatl," the woman replied. She couldn't be older than 20, Roche decided, or at least, that's how it looked. She was thin, even with her snakey lengths, except for her curves at the waist and breasts, with a gentle face. Her nose was a bit large, but her lips were brilliantly blue and remarkably full. It was a lot like how Roche expected a demigoddess to look, save for the snake part.

"Where's this prize?" Roche asked. She was getting tired of being denied her loot.

"Um, it's me." Cotil sheepishly replied, pointing at herself.

"You?"

"Me."

"What? Why? I was promised fabulous treasure!"

"Daddy really liked me. He made this tower as a gauntlet for potential suitors. The plan was to marry me off to a hero or demigod of some kind. I'm just glad that won't happen. You are a woman, right?"

"Oh bloody hell." Roche tore the helmet off her head and threw it to the floor. Her skin was tanned from fighting in the sun, and her black hair was tied back. She had a few scars along her right eyebrow, but no kind of other blemish. Her ears had slight points to them, not really noticeable if her hair was down, but her yellow eyes gleamed with ferocity.

Cotil looked deeply at her, studying her face. "You're...part orc?" she asked, almost sounding appalled.

"Distantly, father's side." Roche groused back.

"No godliness, no holiness, not a man, not even a noble heritage!" Cotil cried out, throwing herself to the floor, before bursting out in a mad fit of giggling. "Oh, daddy's going to be so pissed!"

"Poloskis' been dead for a thousand years," Roche informed Cotil.

"What?" Cotil squeaked, thrusting herself back up. "That's not how it's supposed to go. He told me that if there was a mysterious dangerous tower out there, people would flock to it, and I'd be asleep for 5 years at most! Daddy'd be there for the wedding! What went wrong?"

"Poloskis made a damn good tower. Thousand years go by, hundreds of adventuring parties, traps go off, monsters die, but there's still hundreds of rooms to get through. I got lucky."

"Oh. Oh oh." Cotil had thrown herself down again, and was in the process of beginning to cry.

"Hey, what's this 'Xochicoatl' goddess about, anyways?" Roche had never even heard of her.

"Mommy? She's the serpent goddess. Daddy destroyed her cult and got her attention. Had me." Cotil replied, sniffling, before resuming her wailing.

A pang of guilt overrode Roche's lust for money and her already-dwindling paranoia. It was kind of her fault Cotil had awoken just now. Casting aside her sword, Roche kneeled down and put a hand on Cotil's shoulder. Struggling for words, she said, "There, there, it'll be all right."

"How do you know?" Cotil wailed.

"Dad abandoned mum early on. Got forced into military 'cause orc blood's good for soldiers. Got out, went adventurin'. Been on my lonesome for years. If I can manage, you can too. You're a demigod, after all."

"But I'm treasure! You see these scales? I'm a trophy!" Cotil protested. "Don't you have a home?"

"Nope. Don't need one."

"Can you at least help me?"

"Dunno. You're the one with a god-mum."

Cotil fell into silence, then shivered. "Do you mind if I close the door? I'm getting cold."

"It's the way down, but as long as it don't lock and you don't eat me, I'm fine," Roche replied.

Cotil gave her a weird look as she skirted around Roche, scales rasping on the stone, gliding over to the door and pulling it shut. "Better," she mumbled to herself, wrapping the cloth around her body as a makeshift dress.

"Do you have anything to eat around here, or anything to drink?" Roche asked. She may be here a while as she and Cotil figured things out.

"Oh! Yes, I can make that happen," Cotil squeaked. She slithered over to a thick branch. Her fingers traced along its thick, woody length. Where her fingers touched it, plant stems burst out, spiraling into buds, then flowers, then swelling into rainbow-colored fruit. She tore off a few plants on one of the stone blocks to reveal some simple stone chalices.

"I can make plants that bloom into fruit that I want. It's useful, but there's no kind of meat or anything like that," Cotil explained.

Roche shrugged. She'd miss it, but having food was better than nothing at all.

Cotil returned to the central platform with the fruit and the chalices. She offered a reddish pear-like thing to Roche, before dipping the chalices into the moat.

"You sure that's good to drink?" Roche asked.

"Daddy assured me, and if it was harmful, I'd know. Perks of being a demigoddess," Cotil said as she handed a filled chalice to Roche. It was more a stylized bowl, sculpted to be drunk from, with painted images of primordial water on the sides, and it was surprisingly light for being made of rock.

Roche watched Cotil bite into an orange apple, its juices dribbling down her throat, and saw her swallow without ill effect before Roche bit into her fruit. It was the sweetest damned thing she ever had! If a rainbow could be tasted, her tongue was at the very least on the red bits of one. Its sweet juices ran down her chin as she chewed the soft flesh of the fruit, absorbing the light of its taste. When she swallowed it, she immediately took another bite. Probably wasn't poisonous, and if it was, she'd die happy.

After she had finished the fruit, gnawing it down to the hard, unpalatable core, Roche drank from the goblet. It was just water, sadly. No secret wine, no special sanctity like the fruit, just water.

Roche wiped off her mouth and looked at Cotil. She was propped up on her elbows, looking at Roche. "What's the big deal?" Roche asked.

"Well, you're the first person I've seen in, well, now it's a millennium. I was kind of expecting Prince Charming, no offense," Cotil responded.

"Hey, your dad puts up a sign for big money, you get folks like me."

"Why did you risk your life for me, or the treasure, anyways?" Cotil asked.

Roche leaned back in thought. "Last chance, I guess. Sooner or later, I'm gonna die, probably horribly. First soldier, then adventurer. You don't get old in either case. I figured, get me legendary loot, then settle down and I dunno, start up a tavern or summthin'. Or it could just be finally doin' somethin' notable, put my name in a big book of history. I mean, a year or two back I tried raiding an evil cult. When I got there, the cult god's avatar asked me if I wanted to convert so that he'd have a cultist, on account of all the previous ones being killed by an adventuring party the week before. Bein' the first to do somethin' big would be nice.

"But you have nothing for supplies!" Cotil pointed out, her tail jabbing at the lightness of Roche's remaining equipment. "If I wasn't here, what would you have done?"

"Die. Or if ol' Poloskis actually put treasure here, hopefully find somethin' that made food and make my way back down."

"That's risky."

"That's what you gotta do, if you're adventurin'."

Cotil continued to ask Roche about her adventures for hours. She covered everything from driving out mutant rats in sewers to fighting off marauding orcs. She even went through a few of the floors of Poloskis' Tower, something which Cotil did not apparently know the contents of. Cotil was thoroughly shocked at the brutality of some of the traps, particularly the one that dissected a person alive. Roche was glad that one was already triggered when she got to its room.

The day turned to evening, and the light in the ceiling turned from bright to dimmer purples. Roche could feel the weariness seep into her bones. Cotil seemed entirely innocent, which surprised Roche. Cotil show no inclination to eat, curse, transform, maim, torture, or otherwise do unspeakably unpleasant things to Roche.

Furthermore, Cotil was beautiful! Something about those snaking lengths of her body were just curves added to her form, not a repulsive worm. The scales glittering like gold! Those shining patches, iridescent like gems. Her sapphire eyes, lips, and hair were finer than any known material. It had been a long, long time since Roche had been with another woman, and she was feeling a bit of want now. The last time saw her discharged from the army.

Finally, night's grasp was creeping in on Roche. Weeks spent climbing the tower forced her to sleep in the safety of stairwells or in rooms devoid of danger. She would appreciate it if, for once, she wouldn't have a paranoia-filled sleep. Roche started unbuckling her armor, removing plated gloves and linked curved parts of armor.

"Um, why are you removing your armor?" Cotil asked naively.

"It's getting towards night. You've had a thousand-year sleep, I've had walking up a thousand flight of stairs, if not more," Roche said, removing her breast-plate and revealing the cloth padding beneath it. She removed the metal skirt and leggings from her legs, then proceeded to remove the padded leggings and shirt that prevented the armor from pinching her.

Left in just a simple cloth shirt, pants, and boots, Roche organized her armor for ease of wearing. Cotil watched her intently. She could almost feel herself reflected in those blue eyes of Cotil's.

Underneath the armor, Roche was strong in body. She had to be, tramping about in metal armor and swinging a sword about. Yet a layer of fat rounded it out into appreciable curves. Her distant orcish traces gave her a certain firmness to her traits, her breasts still standing proud.

"Won't you be uncomfortable?" Cotil asked.

"I've slept on worse," Roche said, sliding her boots off. Cotil was studying a long scar down Roche's arm. It was just a scratch when she got it. Nothing remotely crippling, but the long cut's mark had remained none the less. "If you're concerned for me, you're welcome to snuggle with me."

Roche caught Cotil's bluish blush. "A-are you serious?" Cotil stammered out.

"Yeah, totally. I don't mind."

Roche set her pack and bunched it to form a makeshift pillow and settled down to sleep. Soon, the light from above vanished entirely, plunging the forested room into a night-like blackness that Roche's eyes adjusted to.

The only sounds that pervaded the darkness was the gentle scraping of Cotil's scales. It made sense. If Roche was asleep for as long as Cotil was, she wouldn't be sleepy for years. Still, if Cotil had decided to settle herself down to Roche, she would not have minded those long, shimmering coils.

Something warm pressed against her back and a cloth was thrown over her body like a blanket. Roche mumbled something in protest, and the scrape of scales on stone carried around her. Roche heard Cotil whisper, "Sorry, I was cold."

"S'all right'" Roche mumbled back.

It wasn't long before Roche felt two soft orbs press into the back of her shirt. A hip-like section of serpent body followed soon after, pressing against Roche's butt. If she wiggled her toes, then she could tickle the smooth scales of a length of coil, or, with some maneuvering, Roche could use a coil as another pillow. Finally, a restless, worrying arm crossed over her waist, as if to hug her.

Roche waited before saying, "Yer lonely?"