I quickly went through all my Abilities to check for any changed, but all I could see was the new stuff about ranks and levels. Only my new System Ability had neither, the rest had at least one, if not both. Interestingly enough, only my Dungeon abilities had both. Likewise, they were also the only ones not at level 1.
Be that all as it may, my status check was good for at least one thing. I was reminded of one Ability which had, quite frankly, completely slipped my mind. Final Stop. None are immune to you, it says, and yet I can’t seem to kill this abomination that’s invaded my Dungeon.
Then I remember something Faellen told me at the beginning of the last loop. That I should learn to consciously control my Endless End. Could something similar be needed here? That there’s a passive effect that’s always active, but still more for me to do actively?
Only one way to find out.
I’ve never really done anything I’d consider proper magic until now. It was all either instincts or facilitated by the System. So it takes me a little while to reach within myself and grasp whatever the End is.
Most likely, I don’t do a very good job of it, but something does still get dragged along when I surface. The advantages of a Primary Aspect, I imagine.
With no direct attacks, I Create another stone spear, but channel some of (what I think is) the End into it. The resulting weapon doesn’t look much different, except that there’s a certain metaphysical weight to it now.
One of my thrower constructs grabs the spear and chucks it at the caged monstrosity. And it wails.
Oh, how it wails. It screamed before, yes, but those were more shouts of outrage and anger than anything else. But these, these are undeniably outcries of pain. Yes, this is how I can properly damage it.
I throw myself into a frenzy of creation, making one spear after another, infusing each with the End. With each of the new spears thrown, the creature becomes more and more enraged, which only encourages me to Create more and faster.
Finally, after maybe a dozen more minutes, the abomination stills and moves no more.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I relax and lower the shield around Faellen. Just in case, I retain the cage around the monster’s corpse.
“So,” I address my assistant, “ready to answer some questions?”
With the sheepish look of someone who knows they haven’t been fully honest, it speaks, “Yes, and I’m sorry. Where should I start?”
“How about with explaining what exactly that thing was.”
“Right, yes, makes sense.” It takes a deep breath. “That is, technically, me. It’s… difficult to explain entirely, but basically I’m not a normal Dungeon Fairy. My, um, bloodline would be the closest word for non-fae. Long ago, some ancient ancestor of my bloodline was Bound to a Dungeon. A special Dungeon, sort of similar to you, but not really. The exact details have been lost to time, but they must’ve done something really bad, or at least extremely esoteric, because our entire bloodline was marked by it. They basically created a whole new species of fae, even if nothing else can tell the difference, not even things like the System.
And other than some unique bloodline memories – that’s how I know about all that weird time travel and energy creation knowledge – and some other minor stuff, that,” it gestures at the corpse of the monster, “is the main major difference. It doesn’t happen often – as I said, the only reason I even know about it is inborn memories – but apparently we’re especially vulnerable to… this sort of stuff. I’m not sure what to call it, time breaks? Causality? Paradoxes? I don’t know. But while normal beings would, more or less, be able to go about their days normally, we seem to combat any discrepancies directly, willing or not. This seems to be the unwilling part, by the way. I’m not sure, but it looks like the transformation isn’t necessarily a part of it.”
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“So, let me make sure I understand. Long ago someone did something that changed your family which gave you some knowledge. Then, when my time loop brought you back and there were about to be two of you, that same change caused non time loop you to go crazy monster mode. Anything else?”
“That… should be more or less it, yes,” Faellen says hesitantly.
“Alright, what can you tell me about energy creation and time travel? What do you memories tell you?” I ask next.
“Well, those two topics are sort of the very edge of my knowledge,” it cringes a bit, “you have to understand, I haven’t actually encountered any of this stuff beforehand. All I know about making energy is that something very bad could happen. As for time travel, there seems to be a group that controls it, makes sure people aren’t messing with the time-stream too much. Like, for example, making time loops and things. I don’t know much more than to not mess with it. I have no idea why they haven’t come busting our asses for this time loop we’re in.”
There, I interrupt for a second, “Probably because they aren’t around anymore. Can’t imagine they stuck around to the very End.”
“That could be, maybe.” Faellen seems uncertain, “But if someone wants to supervise time, they’d have to be able to control it. So then, why can’t they come here from the past?”
To that I have no answer, so I remain silent.
“Either way, if we ever manage to survive the End, we should be careful about those guys. Maybe they’re no longer here, but that doesn’t tell us anything about elsewhere.”
Hold on, this is interesting, “Elsewhere? Like the Wyld?”
“No, not the Wyld. That place is not for living in, as I’m sure you noticed when we went there.”
“Oh, yes. Hold that thought, I also wanted to ask about the thing you said just before I passed out and the loop reset. You mentioned something about us not being able to stay in the Wyld? Then we can come back to how there could be something else after the End.”
“Ah, those two are actually related. And not actually unique to my bloodline knowledge, most fae know at least a bit about it.
Imagine a Universe as an island, with the surrounding sea being the Void. Now, you may have already noticed I said a Universe and not the Universe. That’s because just like you can have many islands, there are also many Universe’s out there. So, all we have to do to survive the End, or the sinking of the island, is make a your Dungeon act like a Void-vessel, a ship to sail the ocean between islands. There are a bunch of other details, like clusters of islands and archipelagoes forming Multiverses, but something more important right now is elsewhere. Down. The sea may be large and seemingly infinite, but the islands are still connected under it. That is what the Wyld and realms similar to it are, the earth connecting islands beneath the sea.”
“Why can’t we go through the Wyld then? Based on what you’re saying nothing should be stopping us.”
“Three things. One, I originally intended to do so, it is much easier to cross through the Wyld than making a Void-vessel, even if it brings dangers of its own. Two, not every island collapse is the same. I think this Universe is collapsing into a trench, which makes it much more difficult to enter the connecting realms like the Wyld. And three, not every metaphor is perfect. The Wyld ‘beneath’ our Universe is collapsing as well and may even completely vanish.”
“Right, so making a Void-vessel it is. Unless you can figure out Wyld traversal in spite of the new difficulty,” at Faellen’s head shake I continued, “So, the Void… Is that the same one I was stuck in before the System found me?”
“Possibly, but it’s unlikely. Not much can survive there without a Void-vessel, so it’s much more likely you were stuck in some kind of reincarnation realms or something. Those are another category of connecting realms.”
Well, that was a lot to take in. It’s good to know, but now my mind is a bit overloaded. I may be forgetting something, but I can always ask later. For now, there’s just one last thing.
“So, Faellen… how do I absorb your monster doppelganger to get the pattern?”
And then, to my surprise:
Quest notification:
New Quest [Special]