The infinity dungeon 209

Chapter 209

There was only darkness inside the hatch. Michael descended, storing the Force Lance in his spatial ring with a flash of wasteful magic, crudely imitating Qi he did not have. As the darkness deepened, shadows appeared all around, shrouding the faint light that still came from the outside and hiding even the rusted steps of the ladder leading down into the depths of the earth.

With a snap of his fingers, Michael summoned his trusty magical light, but it did little to dispel the gloom, which stuck to the walls and the steps, thick and solid. The shadows were all too alive for his tastes, malignant entities that clawed at the air around the magical light and dimmed it with every swipe of their taloned fingers.

Then he was through. The shadows hung above him like thunderclouds, a smokescreen hiding the top of the ladder, while below, a gigantic empty space opened up. The cavern was easily a thousand feet tall, and the ladder descended from its ceiling all the way down to the base without support—a rail of thin, rusted metal tubes and slimy steps overgrown with moss and lichen.

Michael descended, carefully placing one foot below the other, looking straight ahead while doing his best to focus his sight on his hands rather than the enormous landscape that surrounded him. Below, a dark forest glowed with iridescent phosphorescence, and above, the vault of the ceiling was dotted with multicolored points of light where little stones and giant boulders alike thrummed with magic.

Halfway down his descent, Michael realized that the stones did not glow in a random pattern. Rather, they were arranged in a mirror image of the spiral he had seen in the city above.

Reaching the bottom, the forest swallowed everything. Leaves bigger than he was surrounded him, each one of them glowing with the same spiral pattern of the ceiling. The strange design was everywhere, pulsing in the trunks of giant trees, tattooed on thin strands of black grass, wrapping the round shapes of strange fruit hanging from knotted branches.

Each pulse brought momentary brightness to the forest in a myriad of magical lights, but when the light faded, the forest seemed darker than it was before, the shadows deeper, the air heavier.

Here and there, the thick foliage opened up, and Michael could look above and see the spiral pattern on the cavern's ceiling. He followed it, wading his way through the wet and dark undergrowth towards the center.

He passed by a few buildings until he finally decided to explore one of them. There was almost nothing inside, save for a few scattered diagrams rendered illegible by time and yellowed posters on the walls. On them, patches of mold had grown in strange patterns, resembling spirals themselves.

He stopped for a moment to examine one such poster. With a snap of his fingers, magic flowed out of him and attacked the mold, seeking to restore the parchment to a semblance of legibility. It worked for a moment, the parchment becoming whiter and the mold flaking off like dry paint. But then came the hum of the forest with its brightening followed by a dimming, and the dimming stole the magic from the parchment, halting the restoring effect.

Still, Michael could see the diagram of a planet, its surface divided into three megacontinents surrounded by a single ocean. The continents were mostly forest, with a megalopolis in the center of each of them and scattered settlements covering the rest of the continents.

What he saw next made him pause. Squinting, he thought he could almost see the spiral pattern yet again, in the disposition of settlements and in the shape of the rivers. Then he saw it in the oceans, surrounding the continents, and it filled him with dread.

Text in a language he did not understand filled the page, and with a snap of his finger, and more magic than Michael had intended to spend, knowledge flowed into him.

“Topology and geography of the known world,” said the text. “3 years after the cataclysm rewrote the face of our planet.”

Michael left the squat concrete building deeply unsettled, venturing into the forest once more. Magic grew brighter around him, and the pulse of the spiral pattern grew stronger with it. Now, he could almost feel the spiral within himself, trying to dig its way into his Inner Space, eyeing the collectors and magical batteries that hung in the strange not-void around his star like a wolf eyeing its prey. Then the spiral followed Michael’s gaze, noticed the star itself, and went rabid.

Pain radiated through his body as something attacked him. Icarus immediately went on high alert, recalling the mining drone and manning the artillery weapon, seeking the attacker.

“Michael, something is moving towards us,” the AI said.

“Can you defend?” croaked Michael, fighting through the pain. The spirals around him, in the trees and in the soil, in the stones and in the leaves, burned with an intensity that seared his retinas.

He felt the energy of his Artillery Station inside his Inner Space as it gathered magic to accelerate the deadly projectile. He felt it when the projectile was shot at immense speed towards something just outside the current boundaries of the Inner Space.

Only to vanish into nothingness.

Then the pain redoubled. He collapsed on the damp ground, feeling the light of a spiral all around him. It was around him, and inside him. The pain exploded, and then he knew. Something had just pierced the boundary of his Inner Space, tearing its edges and forcing its way inside.

Icarus shot many times at the approaching thing, but it was like launching boulders at a cloud of darkness, and they all vanished inside the strange dark nebula. Minutes later, the nebula reached one of the asteroids as it made a beeline for Michael’s base and Icarus’s planetoid. The asteroid was swallowed, torn to dust and particles; then it was gone forever.

Icarus kept shooting, but it was useless.

In the real world, Michael had managed to drag himself back to the building he had just left. Panting and shivering, he collapsed on the bare concrete, the light of the glowing spirals spilling in from the windows and the broken ceiling, but most of the room was dark. He found the darkest spot, and felt the pull of the spiral lessen and his pain become almost bearable.

“Icarus, what’s the situation?” he asked.

“I can’t stop the thing from approaching!” the AI said, panic in his voice. “Michael, you need to come in here. Now!”

Closing his eyes, Michael joined the AI in the Inner Space. A titanic cloud of dark dust and debris approached, looming. Its maw was shrouded by lightning that lit its insides violet and blue, winding around the body of the thundercloud in a spiral.

Watching the cloud approach, a sense of panic threatened to overtake Michael. Only a strange presence distracted him for a moment, and he realized that he was still wearing his spatial ring inside the Inner Space.

He sighed in relief, mentally searching for the Force Lance that was in the ring and pulling it out. He aimed at the cloud, and pulled the trigger.

The Inner Space trembled and quaked; the approaching thundercloud, larger than a star, stopped in its tracks for a moment, eyeing the weapon with wariness. The moment of stillness dragged on for several seconds.

The Force Lance was quiet. Michael pulled the trigger again, and this time there weren’t even quakes and strange effects.

“Fuck!” he cursed, pulling the trigger again and again, thinking that this had to be how the Tree-Alfyr had felt back on the Seedship when the elf had tried to take the weapon and use it only to fail.

The cloud, realizing there was no danger, resumed its terrible approach.

“Why is it not working?”

“I don’t think your Inner Space would survive a shot from the Force Lance,” Icarus said.

“I won’t survive if that thing reaches me either!” Michael said quickly, panicking. “It’s going to drain me dry, leave nothing behind.”

“Then you need to stop it,” Icarus said.

“How?!” Michael shot back.

“What do you mean how?” the AI said angrily. “YOU are the lord of this place. No, you are the GOD of this place. Will you stop panicking and being an idiot and start acting like your usual self? Get the fuck out there and stop that thing before it kills us.”

Michael felt like he had been slapped in the face. He frantically looked around, searching for solutions. His eyes landed on his devices, the collectors and the batteries, the Foundry and even the Artillery looking like fragile little toys before the approaching calamity. Barely scrap metal scavenged and barely coerced into shape.

He looked at the Elven Temple, made of bricks and moss and vines and trees. It sat still, its orbit frozen by the lack of motion that the Inner Space imposed on all things.

Then he looked at the Nuclear Manifestation, far away at the other edge of the boundary between the Inner Space and whatever hid behind the veil.

“Wait a minute,” he muttered as his gaze returned to the Temple. “That’s it! Stillness!”