The infinity dungeon 211

Chapter 211

Infy looked just like he remembered her from her projection. Except, now she was naked and pale. Dark bangs hid her eyes, but the pain on her face was readable in the lines on her brow and the tightness of her lips. She looked hollow, taut skin covering malnourished flesh.

The fluid around her swirled, bubbles disturbing the green, viscous substance. Tubes ran from the top of the vat and disappeared behind the woman, digging into her flesh, feeding her and keeping her alive. Lines of magic traced the shape of the veins under her skin, pulsing with each pulse of the spiral pattern.

Michael tore his eyes away from the sight, feeling an almost physical pain as he did so. The Renegade was standing a few feet away from the vat, leaning backwards with his thin body covered by flowing robes of gold and crimson. His aquiline face was serene, his nose almost too sharp to belong to a man. His eyes, however, were different.

In them, reflected in the depths of the soul they hid, Michael could see the deep hatred the man harbored for the creature before him.

“To think that the entity had been here all along. Thank you, new Champion. Without you, I could have never reached it. That had been my mistake. Without a Champion, one cannot reach the entity,” the Renegade said. “This place had been a lure for so long, but the worm was real.”

Looking up, he beheld the spiral, which seemed to have no power over him. Its sinister light illuminated his face, casting a long shadow over one eye.

He spoke with the calm fury of someone trained to patience by time itself.

“I spent my whole life looking for the key.

It was on the bridge of the nose I have always looked over to see the lock.”

The attack was sudden. One moment the man was looking at the vat and the spiral reflection on the cylindrical glass, the next he was inches away from Michael’s face. Renegade energy shone on his fist as it descended on Michael, blinding both mundane and magical sight. The spiral up above, as well as the spirals in the ground, in the leaves, in the stones, and on Infy’s vat lit up, eager, yearning.

Yet where they touched his energy the spirals burned, as if Renegade power was too much for them to handle. The man laughed at this, hatred transforming into mirth, displaying so much raw emotion that his eyes were shedding tears and his face had contorted into a mockery of humanity.

“You will not do upon me what you made befall the planet, ENTITY!” he bellowed. “So long have I spent gathering the power. Tell me, wench, what is light?

It is–”

Before he could finish his cryptic koan, however, the spirals all pulsed in unison. The light from his fist, which was so close to Michael’s face he could taste the foreign magic, dimmed. Michael had found himself utterly unable to react, cursing the damned spiral for taking the Force Lance away from him, but now the very same spiral was the only thing between him and certain death.

The pulse deepened, and the light of the spirals soon outgrew the light of the Renegade, sapping his energy. Behind him, in the vat, Infy’s complexion brightened as the fluid bubbled and the tubes fed her more energy.

Michael reached for his inner space, his consciousness rummaging through it like a careless hand in an overfilled purse searching for something at the bottom. Like the hand, his consciousness grasped all sorts of things, but not what it looked for. He couldn’t sink his whole being inside the inner space, which left him blindly searching, but the Demiurge Particles were like an overheating phone battery in the too-full purse and soon his metaphorical hand grasped them.

He was about to pull them out, to dismantle the cage keeping the spiral-cloud contained so that he could end the much more immediate threat of the Renegade, when the light of man’s fist sputtered and died.

The man looked at Infy with hatred. “I see…” he said. “I will not have you feed upon my magic for your nefarious purposes. I don’t need it to end you.”

He slowly walked towards the vat. Michael tried to react, but a single look from the man was enough to stop him. Even when not looking directly at him, the Renegade was aware of him at all times, much like Michael himself had been aware of many things around him before losing his powers.

He muttered a silent curse, but did not move. The Renegade stalked the vat with feline fluidity, eyeing it up and down, humming and sneering.

“Now you understand how it has come to this, I hope,” he said. “For a lifetime, the man could scoop the shore with his bare hands, making a hollow for his head to escape the sound of the tide.

Today, the shore is only rock. And the ocean is in his throat.”

“No!” Michael cried in outrage, “I don’t understand! Why? Why are you doing this? Why did you imprison Johanne and why do you want to kill Infy now?”

“Infy?” the man repeated, perking up. “Is this what you call the entity?” he spat the last word. “How endearing. Do you now know that it will be the end of all you know and love? Don’t you see its twisted nature? Don't. You. See. it???”

“She is just the spirit,” Michael began. “It’s not her who controls the dungeon, not really.”

The Renegade silenced him with a glare. He circled around the clearing, sniffing the trees and the air like a predator, eyes never leaving the vat or Michael. He plucked a leaf from the underbrush, studying the spiral pattern painted on its surface. Bringing it closer to his eyes, the man watched the pattern repeat over and over again like a fractal, down to the very cells and atoms of the leaf.

“My world, Johanne’s world,” he began, stomping the leaf with his foot and reducing it to mush. Even then, a faint spiral outline glowed. “It didn’t look like it does now, you know? It was… better.”

“Do you mean before the dungeon arrived?”

The man smiled, showing his perfectly straight teeth like a feline. “And the man knew of no answer, so he only asked questions.”

He shook his head, continuing. “It once was a lush land, full of vibrant colors, life and magic and towers and barely the memory of far-away times when scarcity had been a thing. We had no worldly needs, and thus occupied our time with philosophy, art and life lived at the fullest.

“Then the THING came. After I imprisoned its champion, I tried to end the dungeon’s ruin. I tried to kill the entity, which was its mind, its immobile engine, its fulcrum and its anchor. I succeeded, and in doing so I failed.”

He sighed. “In its dying throes, the entity brought upon us even more ruin,” he said. “It started sucking all the magic from the world, collapsing an entire civilization in a futile attempt to save itself. The age of prosperity ended, and with magic collapsing, I led the new generations in search of new avenues to survive. We discovered machines, demonic engines eating coal and spitting black smoke. The skies darkened, but we survived.”

He looked up, the spiral glowing on the ceiling reflected on his wet eyes. “Then the dungeon’s pull intensified. The plants were no longer vibrant, the sky always grey. It was not our doing; it was the entity. It was clear to me, and to all of us, that more than just magic had been taken away. We endured, but eventually only I remained. Strong enough to survive, strong enough to be the last of my kind. Strong enough to feel all the pain of a dead world and still persevere.”

He stared at Michael. “I fought with magic!” he roared. “I fought with industry!” Spit flew from his mouth as his words were propelled by the force of conviction, “I fought with all that I had and did not win! The entity hid, and my world, my precious home, was reduced to this. To… this.”

His words became quiet whispers as his rage died and was replaced by immense sadness.

“I searched far and wide, seeking revenge,” he said sotto voce. “I never knew the entity had been here all along.”

Then life returned to his eyes, as well as a tide of emotions and thirst for blood that drowned everything else. “No more,” he said with finality in his voice.