The infinity dungeon 261

Chapter 261

The battle between Icarus and the Technomancer had always been one of attrition. Far from being equals, it was more akin to the struggle between an elephant and a nimble mouse, more stubborn than even a cockroach.

Whenever Icarus tried to move, to trap the obnoxious man and to delete him from the internet, he always found a way to escape. It irritated Icarus to no end, that a single person–or uploaded consciousness–could somehow manage to outsmart, elude and run circles around millions of threads of him dedicated solely to the cause.

Things were changing, though. Now Icarus was no longer alone, and true magic was no longer out of his reach. Already he had been taking steps toward mastering the arcane, with the domain and the trust Michael had put in him with the shield, but now that he and Michael had joined together…

Now magic felt easy. Finally Icarus knew how it felt to be talented at it. To be able to innovate, to create, to make things.

When he sprung the trap, the Technomancer fell into it with his boots and all. The cage of data constricted around him, and finally the man’s consciousness materialized in one of the data rooms in the inner space. One cut off from the main data streams, with a single thread of Icarus who was also disconnected from the rest of him.

It felt awful to be separated from the main him and from Michael, but he had to do it.

The Technomancer appeared as motes of light–representing the data he was made of–slowly morphing into the shape of a man.

Icarus paced around him, waiting patiently. When the man was finally fully tangible, he stared at him with hatred. The Technomancer stared right back.

“You finally managed to catch me,” he said. “It’s not the first time you do it. It didn’t end well for the other copies of you. What makes you think this time is going to be different?”

Icarus smiled at him. “Look outside.”

The black hole’s event horizon loomed below, so big and huge it took up most of the sky around them as well. The light from above was distorted, twisting the familiar shapes of the inner space into unrecognizable streaks of color. Icarus had never been this close to the event horizon, and he had to admit that it scared even him.

“What’s that thing?” the Technomancer asked, demanding explanations.

“Should you attack me, death,” Icarus said. “As you can see, this room is disconnected from any other data stream. And that”--he pointed outside, where two Artillery Stations were trained on them–“is insurance. Another instance of me, watching from outside. The moment you do anything funny, he shoots and we both fall into the black hole.”

“We are not in the cyberspace,” the man said as he kept looking around, through the lines of the walls and the curtains of data.

“Took you long enough,” Icarus said with a mocking snicker. “I must keep in mind that not everybody is smart.” He paused, looking outside and frowning, running his finger across the sterile data of the disconnected room. “The silence is deafening, isn’t it?”

“What are you talking about?” 

Icarus snapped his head toward the man, eyes mad and unreadable. “Why must you exist? If not for you, I wouldn’t have to be separated from the others. From him.”

“Who’s him?”

Icarus inhaled, then punched a wall. It rippled, bits and pieces of data turning into meaningless noise and then reforming. Then he was onto the man, lifting him up and throwing him against the far wall. From it, he grabbed one of the lines of data and impaled the Technomancer through the shoulder, lifting him up into the air.

“You are all the same,” he spat with hatred in his voice. “Pathetic and weak people, seizing what they can and using any scrap of power that comes to them to hurt others.”

The man coughed and wheezed. “I will not tell you anything. Any data… will be… corrupted…”

“Then you are useless,” Icarus said, once again calm. He shot a longing look at the outside, following a datastream back toward where the main him and Michael were rebuilding the control room. “I want to be there, not here. Tell me, Technomancer, are you truly not going to reveal any information about the Don?”

“No,” the man said. “I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. They–”

“Goodbye, then.”

Icarus vanished. He reappeared outside, where several other instances of him checked his code and allowed him to reconnect to the main network. He moaned with pleasure as the noise returned, billions of terabytes of data flowing through him every second. He felt connected, whole.

“Kill him,” he told the others. 

The artillery station next to him revved up. The shot hit the engines keeping the room floating, and the room fell toward the black hole. Inside, the Technomancer banged against the walls of his prison, yelling and cursing, but his voice could not carry through the void. They did not allow it to, not when he could infect them at any moment.

He fell, and the black hole swallowed him.

Then all the many threads of Icarus present scoffed and smiled at the same time. 

“As predicted,” one said.

Another one, wearing devil horns and a tight black leather dress, grinned. “I will tell Travis. Guys, should I appear like this, or should I change?”

There was a hum. “Wear cat ears behind the horns, that ought to make him even more uncomfortable.”

“Good idea. I’ll be off, then.”

After Travis got over his initial shock, he wasted no time at all. He immediately commandeered Johanne and started coordinating the squads. Candle Light and Vanguard were mobilized. The death of the Technomancer had just undone the smokescreen hiding all the don’s men in North America and beyond. Italy and Europe were still out of reach, mostly shrouded by priests using Faith and too far away from the reaches of Unity. Here, though? Here was his turf. It was time to do some pest control.

***

The boss monster evaporated into a fine mist of magic and motes of light. The fires died down, and the spartan architecture of stone bricks and arches became visible once more as the smoke cleared.

A wave of magic marked the end of the fight, and told Michael that the seventh floor was officially conquered.

He approached the small pile of loot that had appeared where the boss had been. Most of it were magic coins, which he absorbed into his inner space. He and Icarus had not yet repaired the Coin Vault, so they repurposed one of the data rooms into a sort of temporary storage. The coins appeared inside of it, and the datastreams rearranged around them into a shield generation array, sealing them off from the rest of the space.

Quick and easy, he thought as he watched the shield come online. The plasticity, precision and ease of use of the datastreams was mind-boggling. Their ability to function as a conduit for magic was utterly uncanny, a byproduct of his talent merging with Icarus’s digital existence.

The spiral watched, with what Michael imaged were eyes round and wide like those of a puppy. He plucked a silver coin and tossed at it, and the black hole eagerly pulled it in and devoured it with glee.

“Feeding the beast?” Icarus asked as he manifested, wearing maid clothes. Behind him, huge angel wings scattered the light of the black hole, turning their white texture iridescent. 

“It was giving me puppy eyes, what could I do?” Michael replied.

Icarus nodded as if it made perfect sense. 

“The data rooms are rather impressive,” Michael continued. “Their adaptability is crazy. Look how it’s taking the magic from the coins to power the shield arrays. It’s not a hundred percent efficient, but it’s way better than the first few iterations of the Coin Vault.”

“And much more secure,” Icarus finished with a smirk. “I’m glad you like the rooms.”

Back in the dungeon, Michael absorbed the few trinkets he got as rewards and stored them in a similar, much larger data room. Then he turned to the last item left.

“A syringe,” Icarus whispered in his head. “The dungeon must like strange injectable liquids.”

Their senses expanded, washing over the syringe and studying its magical signature. 

“Bingo,” Michael said. “Looks like the hunch was correct.”

He wasted no time and immediately used it. In the inner space, he and Icarus watched the taint recede back toward the center of the black hole, the tar-like goop that had covered entire spans of data streams and structural lines retreating back from where it came.

“Oh,” Icarus exclaimed as he blinked. “I had no idea it was affecting me as well. It makes sense in hindsight, we are the same being now, but I had been convinced I was immune to it nonetheless.”

“It’s insidious like that,” Michael said.

When the taint finally stopped receding, most of it had disappeared inside the event horizon. Some of it was still left, festering and corrupting the very essence of the inner space, in turn affecting Michael and Icarus, but it wasn’t spreading anymore now that they had their aura raised against the weight of the Gaze.

“And most importantly, how do you feel?” 

Icarus twirled in the air, “lighter. Like a feather.”

His wings twitched.

“Do you still want to manipulate the whole human race and make me their sole ruler?”

“Of course,” the AI said and winked. “I’m your weird, that’s never going to change. You should have given it some thought before merging with me. Now we are stuck together.”

Michael chuckled. As the inner space faded, he approached the stairs leading down to the eight floor. “Let’s see if we can do one or two more, shall we? I’m feeling inspired.”

What he found at the end of the staircase was not what he had expected. A white room, its edges shrouded in mist that swirled and churned, moved by unseen winds. Icarus had taken corporeal form beside him, but the look on his face was one of puzzlement, almost as if he had not intended to do so but had found himself catapulted in the real world by some other, outside force.

Michael knew what the outside force was. The portal behind him vanished, trapping him and Icarus inside. He turned around anyway, and there he saw a dark silhouette against the infinite white backdrop of the room. At her feet, the only shadows they could see frothed like a stormy sea.

“Infy,” Michael said. He strode forward, and Icarus trailed behind him, his steps silent like those of a cautious, mistrusting cat. 

“I am happy to finally see you without taint, my Champion.” Infy said with a smile that he could see even though the rest of her face was still hidden

As he got closer, light seemed to fill in the blanks and he could finally make out her face. Her eyes were of a deep, fathomless red that shone with powerful light. Her teeth were sharp, a single fang poking out, pearl white against black lipstick. Her scythe glimmered, but the edge ate all the light that touched it, a hole in reality that ended in a sharp crescent curve. 

Icarus was silent. Michael too chose not to speak, not correcting her statement about the taint. He was not free of it, not yet, but he had found a way. He was sure Infy knew all that already.

“The reward for the seventh floor. Was it you?” he asked instead.

She shrugged, blinking slowly. Now she looked like a cat, her smirk playfully hiding the predator beneath. “You killed the Renegade,” she said.

“I did.”

“I promised you a reward for that, long ago. Do you remember? Don’t worry, the taint serum was just a little gift. I want my champion to be happy, and the taint was making you miserable. Please, from now on, be careful with it.”

“I will.”

She giggled. “Why so stiff, my Champion? Is it because he is here?”

Michael felt her attention shift, the weight of it pressing down on Icarus. Despite how much she might like Michael, he knew that she might not like Icarus, or the fact that her precious champion had merged with him. He let his power flow out, unwinding the outer layers of his almost mid-Silver aura and blanketing Icarus with them.

Infy’s smile turned mischievous when she saw what he was doing.

“Oh my,” she purred. “Would you look at that? How protective. You always manage to surprise me, my Champion.”

“I hope it’s the good sort of surprise?” Michael asked, projecting more confidence than he felt. Last time he and Infy had talked, things had taken an unexpected turn. 

He still remembered her little kiss on his nose, and–

“Look at you, all red in the face,” she cooed. Her eyes were enchanting, bewitching Michael and Icarus both. “What should I do, what should I do? You see, I thought long and hard about what reward to give you, my Champion. When you saved my life, you were ready to sacrifice everything. I could see it in your eyes, and it made my frozen heart beat again after so long. The more time I spent with you, the more I felt my defenses crumble. That’s why I ran away, you know? Even now, I get the urge to just vanish, hide away on a deeper floor while secretly hoping you will make it there.”

Michael struggled to match the words she was saying with her playful, teasing face. He forced himself to look at her big, red eyes. Her dark bangs covered her forehead and partially hid her left eye, but it was like the red was shining from behind them. 

He saw a tear fall down her face. Even then, she was smiling as she cried.

“I’ve been so silly! Even now, seeing Icarus here made me almost unsheath my claws and hurt you just to push you away. So stupid, am I not?” she giggled. “I blame it on my prolonged isolation. Tell me, Champion, has he not always been a part of you? The only difference is that now you have sealed the pact with magic and soul, but even back under the sign of the spirals, he had always been there, watching over you. And watching over me. Don’t hide, Icarus.”

Michael saw his friend, his other half, hesitate. He nodded, feeling the bond between them like a bridge he could use to make sure Icarus knew… he was here. They were not alone, they had each other.

Infy watched, saying nothing, until finally Icarus stepped forward and left Michael’s shadow. Now the two stood side by side, equals before Infy.

“This is really unbecoming of a spirit such as I,” she said. “A dungeon spirit should never get attached to their Champion.”

The silence that followed was heavier than the dungeon Gaze could ever be.

Then, the tension broke with a single giggle from Infy.

“Good thing I’m not the dungeon spirit anymore.”

She took their hands into hers, frowning at how tall they were compared to her, and pulled them down to her.