The marble columns drew closer as they walked. It didn’t matter which direction the due walked towards, for all roads led to the center of this astral/mental space, and indeed as the pillars of white stone became taller and more imposing, sparse vegetation began to also appear. It was not green, but a sick and mutated brown with hints of red, lit by distant crimson lightning that rumbled in the distance. The sky, barely visible, was a sphere of dull red rust up above.
The lightning intensified. Cold air whipped at the duo’s clothes, the damp wind and the heavy air conspired together to make their breath come in short, ragged inhalations that cost more effort than normal. Albert felt oppressed, and Scrappy even more so as her mental defenses were not as strong as his, and her body was still underdeveloped. She did have magical skills, but no class to sustain her outside of their actual use, meaning that she had to withstand the brunt of the environmental assault with barely any protection.
It was hard to divine or deduce the passage of time in this strange space, short of employing some version of Albert’s Power, nor was it easy to judge distances. The duo kept walking in silence, each minding their own discomforts, watching the landscape slowly change around them. Albert’s mind spun with permutations and combinations of things, mulling over the nature of magic, what this place might be, and how to get Lina out once they found her.
He did not mention out loud the fact that they could leave at any time they wanted, because doing so would doom Lina to die, and he didn’t want Scrappy to have to bear that burden of choice. If things ever became too much, he would pull them out himself, but not before having exhausted every other possibility. Was he being too naïve? Perhaps. Too idealistic? Also, yes.
Had he not met Scrappy, he was sure that he would not only have left Lina to die on her own without a thought, but he might have even killed her when they first met by simple virtue of her being a possible threat. Kainen’s betrayal was still fresh in his mind, and his earlier scuffles with other mages had not been any less harsh a lesson either.
The memory of PsyOps briefly crossed his mind before he literally asked Jeff to get rid of it. The AI complied, not even asking for clarifications. Not that Jeff needed any. They both knew the mental landscape they were traversing was sensitive to stimuli, especially if they came from Albert, and the last thing he wanted was a psychic enemy to fight.
The sky had all but disappeared after barely a few hours. The marble pillars were close enough now that they marked a sort of corridor of free space while everywhere else they dominated the landscape.
The vegetation was wilder and more untamed. But even though it looked like it might have once been vibrant and alive, now it was barely a memory of what it once was. A fragment desperately clinging to life, sick and rotting. The red light of the clouds and the flashes of crimson seemed to attack the plants, making them wither ever quicker, until a twisted version of their own original form lashed out at Albert and the girl with malicious intent.
The plants were no danger alone, but they were many. Before long Albert was forced to swing a newly formed battle axe, this one too wrought in shadow, to cut them apart and allow the duo to proceed.
“It means we are going in the right direction.” He told Scrappy during one of their moments of rest.
Even though his power was heightened here, and even though this was only a mental space, he was growing increasingly tired. The echo of his headache had transformed into a migraine, and he often had to stop walking to rest.
At times, apparently at random, his nose bled and it took considerable power to just stem the bleeding. His shirt was stained, the already ruined fabric thick with clotted blood that had turned black and clung to his skin.
The marble pillars grew distant once again. The plants gave way to a polished marble floor, large white tiles devoid of any dust or blemish. Scrappy’s mood soured, the girl feeling as if they had returned to where they had started, all their efforts in twain. Albert was not so sure. His eyes were looking at something in the distance, some sort of shadow where the crimson energy was stronger. Scrappy did not seem able to see what he was seeing, but when he walked towards the area with conviction she followed him in silence.
When the monster attacked, they had the confirmation they were looking for. They were indeed going the right way. This monster was similar to the one they had defeated, a large gem surrounded by decorated gold and precious metal, a decadent mockery of baroque art and sculpture.
They tried to dispatch of it much the same way as the first. Albert – although hurting – was somewhat rested now, his Power rating higher than ever, and Scrappy had also left the previous fight empowered. The real problem had been the foul air of the place, saturated with Doom energy so thick it was noxious to both Albert and the girl. At the beginning, it had been the opposite. She had just gained a skill made almost entirely from Doom energy salvaged from the ruby monster, and the thick air had helped her consolidate the skill.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
But once the process ended she found herself in the same predicament as Albert, where the energies all around them tried to twist their very nature against them. So far, they had resisted, but they were paying a price for this temporary safety.
The monster attacked. An octagon of deep, resplendent blue like the depth of the ocean. It spun in place, hovering a few feet from the ground, and from its edges shards of ice deep like the bluest glacier shot forward at great speed.
“They are not targeted.” Albert said after dodging the first few. “It’s shooting them at random! Scrappy, get some distance and do the same strat!”
It was like a bullet hell game, but Albert was not a video game character and could not see himself from a third person perspective. And, besides, there was the unexpected added difficulty of a third spatial dimension. Bullets flew everywhere, shards of ice flying in a straight line from the vertices of the octagon. The crystal was the fulcrum of a storm of ice, projectiles whistling in the air, specks of azure against the crimson clouds. They exploded in shards when they hit the ground or the pillars, freezing a small area. When they hit multiple times, the ice grew thicker and made navigating the area harder by the second.
Albert jumped, weaved in and out of the streams of icicles, sliding and ducking and contorting in a complex dance. He moved with preternatural grace, pushing well beyond what even his enhanced body could do. It was thanks to his Power, and the predicting abilities of his AI who used every scrap of data he could salvage to draw patterns and safe zones.
At the edge of his perception, Albert felt Scrappy stalk the shadows. The marble pillars were far away, making the space into a small arena where the boss fight – if it could be called as such – was being fought, but they were still close enough for her to use them. Far away from the boss monster the projectiles were not as concentrated, and Scrappy could move around with much less danger than Albert could.
It didn’t matter. They were at a stalemate. Albert was dodging, but his ability to read patterns and to act upon them was not infallible, chief among all reasons the fact that this was not a video games and the monster did not follow the patterns to the letter. Every hit he sustained cost him dearly, the ice robbing him of the very heat of his body and making him more sluggish, his mind slower, his body stiffer. He could not land a hit of his own. Scrappy couldn’t either. The monster was too far up in the air, and protected by a hail of bullets that grew ever denser the close you got to its main body.
Albert deflected yet another icicle he could not dodge. It exploded on his axe, making the weapon grow heavier and colder, the sound of shattering lost in the endless expanse of the mental space. There was no echo and the only sounds of the fight were the icicles exploding and the faint sound of Albert’s unnaturally graceful footsteps. Scrappy made no sound. The monster made no sound. A faint whistling of air was all that was left of the gale force wind from the crimson thunderstorm.
It was easy to fall into a rhythm, a slowly decaying orbit that would take many revolutions before eventually Albert would fall and be destroyed.
That’s when the situation turned from bad to worse. A whole new phase of the fight began, and the octagon’s attack patterns changed suddenly. There was a brief moment of respite, and the air stilled. Silence reigned supreme, the only sound being Albert’s labored breathing.
Then the monster glowed and a statue of ice appeared, summoned out of thin air right between Albert and Scrappy.
Nothing moved. Albert looked at the statue, then at Scrappy. Then at the crystal octagon. The monster was unprotected. It was not shooting icicles anymore.
Things happened quickly after that. Albert sprang to action, lunging for the monster. The octagonal piece of crystal screeched and began to fly away, spinning ever faster and shooting ice in whole new ways never seen before. Behind, Albert was aware that the statue of ice had animated, and was now looking for something to hit.
Except, that something was Scrappy. He could not let it find the girl. He spun around, expending precious energy to redirect one of the icicles that would have hit him, and swung his axe at the ice statue’s legs.
It bounced back, barely chipping the frozen armor of the thing. The statue turned around, the sound of ice grinding reminding Albert of the ice monster in the cave in the real world outside. Twin orbs of ice, azure and deep, stared at Albert from five meters of height. Then the construct raised its oversized sword.
“Shit.”
The hail of bullets hadn’t stopped. Albert raised his own weapon to deflect the hit, but it left him wide open. Three icicles embedded themselves into his back, missing his spine by inches, and a numb cold immediately began to spread.
Albert, you should stop playing around.
I’m not playing around! Where’s Scrappy?
Albert sublimated the icicles with a wave of his hand, feinting and then hitting the statue with his axe and spinning in place to take a look at the battlefield. He didn’t see her at first, not until he invested some Power into it.
There! What is she doing?
He jumped, weaving around the streams of ice and wind. He leaped in the air, using it as a platform even though it should have been impossible, and changed his own momentum midflight. However, second after second, he grew weaker. His body moved more slowly. His mind clouded. His nose bled freely. His vision began to tunnel, dark edges intruding from all directions and robbing him of clarity. Blood loss? Hypothermia? Albert couldn’t focus.