"If the truth shall kill them, let them die."
― Immanuel Kant
Rafe stood on the uneven surface of the tunnel's ceiling. Gravity did not affect the halfling or his clothes. He crouched behind a cluster of stalactites, gaze locked on the ground below. The unusual creature that called itself Ven was crouched there, surrounded by a dozen malformed horrors.
Vendak's new clothing was drenched in gore, and his breath came in heavy gasps. A small pile of bloody crystal lay at his feet, the spoils of this most recent battle.
This guy is certainly a monster... Rafe had followed Ven for the last fourteen hours, and the man had progressed deeper and deeper into the labyrinth, a machine that fueled itself with the blood of its enemies.
He's been cutting through the Semi-Divines far more quickly than I expected. Even this larger group had fallen to Vendak's claws and fangs. The shadow-man had some kind of natural ability, and he vaporized the sturdy bodies of the shamblers without much effort.
As Rafe leaned out from behind his cover for a better look, Ven reached down and seized a handful of cores. He lifted his mask and tossed them in like candies. Rafe lost sight as a rush of steam billowed off of the man's body.
"I can't believe he can eat those things..." Inner worlds, or cores, contained vast amounts of energy, but it was attuned to the one who created the core. Directly absorbing the power inside them should be impossible, but Vendak ignored this logic. With each core he ate, Ven grew bolder, and Rafe worried Ven pushed his limits too far.
The temperature of the large tunnel skyrocketed, driven to uncomfortable heights by the heat that radiated off of Vendak. Rafe wiped his forehead and squinted into the fog below. Master left instructions that I was supposed to train this guy, but... Vendak didn't seem to need much guidance. The masked horror was already familiar with combat, with every fight he appeared more confident in his movements.
The mist cleared, and Vendak stood. The pile of cores had vanished. Rafe frowned as Ven walked on. They were close to the boundary between the layers, soon the creatures would not be so simple to handle.
Rafe darted out from his hiding place, glued to the ceiling as he followed the relentless predator. This Vendak was extremely single-minded. In the beginning, he'd cursed at Rafe under his breath, but now he mindlessly pressed forward.
If I left him alone down here the hunters would probably kill him. The guild cleared the first few layers of the labyrinth regularly, and Ven would be easy to mistake for a new variety of monster.
Rafe shook his head and focused on the task at hand. Ven was about to open the gateway that connected to the second layer. Rafe wanted to see how he dealt with more advanced opponents.
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Ven reached out, both hands placed on the huge stone doors. The leftover energy from his last feast crawled under his skin. His aura had adapted well to the energy from the cores. He almost craved them. The rush of strength Ven got from each inner world was a hearty meal, one that filled his cores far faster than sunlight.
I need to thank Rafe. This place was a foul-smelling blessing. These creatures were slow and stupid and had no defense against his aura. They were too mindless to gather the power of their cores, or too untrained. I'm lucky to have my natural aura. Ven couldn't use his inner worlds, but the shadowy mantle grew as his cores did.
Ven pressed against the stone gates. They grated backward several feet before they ground to a halt. The gap between the doors, just wide enough for Ven to pass, radiated a sulfurous haze. Yellow-tinted smoke billowed into the tunnel and carried a thousand rotten eggs with it.
The stench blinded Ven, and he exhaled all the air in his lungs. "Thank god I don't need to breathe!" Ven smiled as he ignored his urge to inhale. He turned sideways and squeezed through the narrow opening. He flattened himself as much as possible, and pressed through the other side, into a completely different world.
Vast towers of yellow earth rose out of sight, lost in the smoky haze. Large spheres of honeycombed rock floated between the spires. From within the many holes across their surface, the reflective glint of large compound eyes created the illusion of stars.
The ground was covered in broken fragments of the same yellowed stone and writhed with a nauseating pulse. Uncountable numbers of fat, white grubs squirmed over the crushed rock. Their mouths gapped, circular maws, ringed with flint-black teeth.
The worms were at war. Focused, they wriggled next to their closest neighbor, and ripped into their flesh. A competition to devour each other that often ended with the death of both. Several of the grubs around Vendak reared up. They stood slightly taller than his naval and huffed at the air like a pack of wolves.
"They're all Semi-Divines..." Every single worm in sight radiated the same mouth-watering energy that he now associated with a powerful inner world. These slow, relatively helpless worms represented an endless harvest of power.
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Saliva dripped from behind his mask as Ven lunged into the witless creatures. Within seconds, his hands were filled with a dozen cores, and the wave of worms still pressed in, a steady flow of flesh. Ven reduced them to a foul mist as he shoved their cores down his throat.
It was a massacre. Ven marched forward, away from the gate, and cut a wide swath through the field of worms. They popped as he touched them, vapor-filled melons that left behind a delicious seed. He shoved their cores into his bag. The pressure on his body reached its limit for now, and he only tossed a few into his mouth as he worked.
I've gotten ten times the cores since I arrived here, this level is much better! He could farm here endlessly, no need to run down empty halls in search of small pockets of monsters.
With a grin beneath his mask, Ven bounced around. Each random step brought him several cores, and the results were the same no matter where he went. This is like a candy store! If he collected enough cores, he could return to the surface and slowly eat them. He could journey down whenever he ran low, and harvest a new batch of grubs!
A droning buzz ruined his thoughts. Ven turned to the yellow sky. From the many hollowed rocks that filled the air, a vast black wave arose. A cloud of darkness replaced the smoke and obscured the world above. It spiraled around, Ven's position the center of a vast storm.
The hum grew in volume as the mass pressed closer, a thousand hammers that laid rivets on his eardrums. Ven squinted into the air as the uniform mob closed in, close enough to reveal their forms.
Horse-sized flies, mouth parts twisted into vicious spears, smarmed toward him. They packed the skies full of their bodies, the sound of their wings against the air was like a sonic attack. Emotionless eyes glared back at him, cold and alien, yet identical from one insect to the next.
His face reflected back at him, mirrored mask and silver robes duplicated in the eyes of the hoard. An endless number of smaller Ven's closed in on a wave of horrendous sound.
Vendak ground his teeth and expanded his aura. It reached out and filled several meters with thick, black fog. With every core, his range grew, and it had become this oversized cloud in just a short time.
"Now this is a real test"
Ven was disappointed by the monsters above, and the grubs had been even less imposing. One-on-one, these flies were not much better, but they replaced the sky. Each one emitted a power that compared to Kalina's pet snake, but he doubted they had the same intelligence.
Ven closed his eyes, guided the wisps of shadow around him, twisted them into a vortex that rebelled against the oncoming storm. He lost himself in the structure of his aura, the patterns of energy that turned the dark cloud into a thresher of flesh.
The vast tide of flies slammed into the boundary of shadows, converted into an upswell of vapor that buoyed up the hoard, pressed them back with the remains of their fellows. Ven frowned as his eyelids fluttered, glad he'd held back on eating more cores. The swarm constricted, the buzz of their wings multiplied in volume as the flies cannoned into the void.
His aura sagged under the pressure, pressed closer and closer to his body by the constant wave of flesh. The vaporized liquid, formed from the endless flies, no longer had a path of escape. It condensed above, an oily rain of liquid rot, a deluge that filled the ground and rose above his knees. It hissed and boiled, returned to steam, then replaced by the newest downpour.
This is going to be a problem...
Ven had no idea what would happen once there was no room for the liquid to expand, but it was draining his energy rapidly by adding more and more matter into his aura. The burden leaned onto his will, until Ven found himself pressed to one knee. The boiling soup of flies rose and touched his chin, while the rain cascaded into his skull from above.
Not even one fly has pierced my aura, but... It didn't matter. The sheer number of them was beyond him. He could only sit and defend, a turtle that slowly drowned in blood. Well, I won't drown, but he couldn't keep his aura going like this forever.
The 'water' rose above his head, his vision lost in the black goop as he pressed his fists into the ground. The liquid deepened. As less and less space remained, it grew thicker, yet it still rushed and boiled. A cyclic stream of vapor and liquid that soon reached a tipping point.
Ven's aura filled completely, a twisting orb of gore that resisted the tide of flies. The 'water' trembled, pressed tight by the hoard of insects. This vibration grew, until it rivaled the constant drone of the swarm, then washed it away. An ear-splitting whistle, super-compressed steam that forced its way between the flies. It drove Ven face-down into the ground.
The liquid thickened, until Ven was encased in an obsidian mass. The black crystal keened, loud enough that the closest flies turned to mush, forced back by the wave of sound. The orb stood alone, an outline of space between it at the swarm. Then it rushed to fill the void, an expansion that cleared the sky.
Ven hung, suspended between the concussive waves, locked at the epicenter while the steam obliterated the world around him. His aura had collapsed, its work done, as the violent explosion laid waste to the swarm. The maelstrom faded, and Ven flopped to the earth, boneless and exhausted.
"I guess you can only compress bug juice so much..." Ven rolled over and faced the forcefully cleared sky. The many honeycombed rocks had been pushed back, and the smoke was long gone. Wrapped in the yellow-toned backdrop that framed everything in this world, a mighty gas giant hung, suspended above the clouds.
Sweeping rings covered most of his vision, from one horizon to the other. Peaceful swaths of icy rock, locked in orbit around the blue-green orb. The distance was great, but if Ven strained, large, rocky worms could be seen. They swam through the rings as if they were water, mouths wide as they feasted on the huge stones.
"This is another world..." Ven gazed in awe as the massive lifeforms gorged their way across the sky. The gap in the yellow clouds, forced open by his accidental attack, rushed closed. The vast layer reformed, shrouded the world, and blocked his sight of the unusual void beasts.
The silence, which had reigned since shortly after the explosion, was interrupted once more. A buzz returned, quieter than the last, but higher in frequency. Ven looked around to find himself surrounded. Hundreds of pure white flies hovered in the air, spaced evenly around him, motionless except for their wings.
"Hey there…" Ven stepped back over the shattered ground, toward the abandoned gateway that he'd entered from. These flies were different. The white aura that covered their bodies showed they could control their power. He could fight them one on one, but combined he wasn't too sure.
"I feel like we got off on the wrong foot," Ven continued as he stumbled backward. "This has all been a big misunderstanding, I'll see myself out!" He turned and ran toward the gate, each step faster than the last.
The flies maintained their distance, a silent escort punctuated only by the hum of their wings. Maybe they'll just let me go? He was a lot of trouble, so maybe they just wanted to cut their losses? Ven didn't care, as long as he could get to the door before they made up their minds.
He lurched forward, the crack between the doors only a foot away, when an ominous whistle slipped up behind him. A blow found the back of his head and Ven careened past the doorway, his vision blotted by dark spots and vivid stars. Standing tall on six thick legs, positioned between Ven and his escape, was a corpulent gold-green fly.
Its carapace seemed inspired by a wasp, but its features made it clear that this was yet another member of the previous species. Its head was small on its swollen body, and its abdomen was larger than a dozen regular members of the swarm. The long, straw-like jaws beneath its stunted eyes reached over twice its body length, a spear that gave it a dangerous reach.
Ven raised his weary limbs and forced himself to his feet. I can barely stand... The only way he could fight this thing was with his aura, and it barely fluttered at his commands, exhausted from the strain of battle.
"I'll kill Rafe when I find the stunted bastard," Ven cursed the air and prepared to rush the false hornet. "He threw me in here with no information at all."
"Oh stop complaining!" Rafe's voice sounded out from directly behind him. "You did just fine up until now!"