Aj felt like a nugget as he lay there in the vine nest he and Kit had created. Each of his limbs felt numb and stinging as if he had somehow slept with his body weight on each of them. His inability to move and the presence of murderous mantises beneath him gave him the sensation of being in the worst sleep paralysis ever.
“It’s gonna be okay man, I think we’re pretty well hidden and Mig’s on the lookout” Kit said mentally to Aj.
“Hihgm” Aj tried to respond
“Yeah man, you can’t even mentally talk right now. You need to take it easy”
Aj grit his teeth in frustration, he needed to figure out something to help cope with the torture he was experiencing. He focused on the only normal sensation he had left, the beating of his heart. Aj focused in and tried to drown out everything that was happening to him. Slowly but surely he felt the sensation of his heart beating, growing stronger and stronger. As the world around him faded away, Aj got very intimate with the beating of his own heart. In slow motion, he felt the chambers of his heart fill with blood and pass it along to the next chamber. Twice his blood left his heart in a single beat, once to go to his lungs and once to go to the rest of his body. As his heart ejected his blood out into his body he followed it out riding the sensation like a wave. He felt himself flow and separate as his arteries carried himself deeper into his body, with each split he felt his awareness grow and grow. Soon he flowed all over his body in thousands of thousands of small channels. As he reached the ends of his body he began to come back, inward towards his heart. Slowly and surely his veins carried him back toward his heart reconnecting himself back together into a single piece
Then as simply as it began he was back, right at the start of it all. He entered his heart and repeated the process. He repeated the process over and over and over. He was completely lost in finding himself.
“Aj”
Aj opened his eyes and saw Mig, his hands were on Aj’s shoulders shaking him as if he was trying to wake him up. As they made eye contact Mig let go of Aj and let out a relieved exhale.
“Thank god man, I wasn’t sure that you were gonna wake up”
“Sorry about that” Aj shook his head trying to wake up, he felt extremely relaxed. Until he remembered the killer mantises.
“Are the mantises down there?” Aj frantically whispered, now completely out of his zen moment.
“They left, about 10 minutes ago they left through the portal they entered from” Mig replied
“So we’re good?” Aj asked, looking around at the dark green nest in disbelief. “This actually worked?”
“Yeah, they skittered around in here for a few minutes searching around and then left the way we entered, after about an hour they came back and left through the portal. It looked like they had given up.” Mig’s eyes were wide as he explained what happened, as if he too barely believed that their tactic had worked. Mentally, Aj raised his fist and gave Kit a fist bump, Aj could tell that he had a big smile on his face. In Aj’s eyes, he’d earned it.
“I think I figured out what generation this dungeon is too,” Mig said with a proud smile on his face. “It’s a 2nd Generation Predecessor Stronghold”
“Woah” Aj said, like he had any idea what that meant. “How’d you figure that out?”
“The portal that the mantises came through was the giveaway. If you really look behind the broken door there's no hallway or room behind it, a few feet of empty space. Just enough to fit the portal. I think all of these doors in this room are the same way.”
“Ok, so the 2nd gen. were big fans of portals?” Mig asked. Aj cocked his head in response.
“Portals and teleportation are really advanced powers, only the elite amongst the higher levels and arbiters can use them and even they can’t set up permanent ones,” Mig explained as if it was basic information.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
“2nd Generation Predecessors were masters of space and movement, their strongholds are the only ones known to have permanent portals. This is actually really good news, their strongholds are known for being less dangerous and full of loot.”
“So the mantises and everything we’ve experienced… was supposed to be easy?” Aj asked, feeling overwhelmed.
“Uhhhhh, I don’t think so,” Mig said, unconfidently “I think that the mantises aren’t supposed to be in here, but I’m not sure”
“Okay, before we get too deep into it. If you think it's safe let's get back down.” Aj said.
Aj and Mig skirted to the edge of the vine nest and climbed down using the sconces on the doors as assistance. As they hit the ground Aj looked up and took a good look at the nest from below. It actually blended in incredibly well into the dark stone walls and it seemed pretty sturdy. It was still holding up and it didn’t even bend as they climbed down it.
“Pretty solid engineering,” Aj remarked to Kit mentally.
“Thankya much” Kit responded mentally with a cowboy accent. He even gave Aj the mental image of him tipping a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Aj smiled and shook his head.
“So we try the puzzle again?” Mig said, eager to keep moving.
“Do we think that’s a good idea?” Aj asked, posing his question to both Mig and Kit.
“It’s our only move right now and our best bet I think” Mig responded.
“I agree with Mig, but I think we’re missing something. That portal only opened earlier after you started messing with the maze. Is it because we did it wrong, or not fast enough?” Kit said mentally scratching his chin.
“I don’t know I feel like we’re missing something about the puzzle,” Aj said responding to both of them. Mig nodded in response.
“Let's take a better look at the doors,” Mig said.
The three of them began to desperately look at each of the doors in the room searching for any clue that they could find. They noticed quickly that both the left and right door had the exact same maze on it from top to bottom. This prompted Aj to take a good look at the broken down door as well while looking at the fallen chunks on the ground. Aj found a bigger chunk with clear etchings of the maze.
“So the maze is the same on each door, even on the broken one. What does that tell us?” Mig asked brainstorming.
“Uhhh, I’m not sure. Maybe we need to complete the maze on all three doors at the same time” Aj said thinking outloud “Wait, wait, wait these 2nd gens or whatever they were all about space and stuff right?”
“Yeah,” Mig said
“Could they be in two or three places at once?”
“Uhhh maybe, I think I remember Trace saying something about that”
“So then, what if that’s actually the right answer? We need to complete the maze on all the doors at the same time.” Aj said excitedly optimistic.
“What about the broken door?” Kit asked mentally, as Mig asked the exact question verbally.
“I guess we try it in the same spot that the other mazes are in. Like, try to put our fingers at the same depth of the door and move in along the maze as close to the other mazes as possible.” Aj replied
“Okay, but you’re logic is hinging all on one Predecessor doing this all at once right? Their movements along the maze would be perfectly synced. The two of us can’t replicate that and even if we could, we can’t even be at more than two doors at once in the first place.” Mig said. Aj was stumped at that. Mig was right he was getting ahead of himself.
“We could do it,” Kit said devoid of emotion in his full-on thinking voice. The same voice that Aj had heard many times when theorizing the best move for the guild raids in Ascending Divinity, the MMO they used to play. Hearing Kit speak like that, caused Aj to really lock in.
“Explain,” Aj said.
“You’ll do the same thing, help me make a grouping of vines and I’ll reach out with those vines to each door. Then at the same time, I’ll move each tipped vine along each maze at exactly the same time.” Kit said
“That’s smart,” Aj said, “You think you really could have that much control? What if it doesn’t register your vines?”
“I think it’s our best bet regardless. If it doesn’t work we can always go hide back up in the vines again”
Aj couldn’t find any holes in Kit's logic and thought that he was right. This was their best shot at doing this. There was no way that they’d be able to get each door without using Kit’s vines. Aj explained the concept to Mig and after a quick discussion, Mig climbed up into the nest just in case something bad happened. Aj waited for him to climb and take a position near the edge of the nest in case Aj needed help up. Mig gave Aj the thumbs up and Aj began focusing again on the beating of his heart. Quickly he fell back into his rhythm and felt himself disperse and recollect at his heart over and over.
ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum
He felt Kit enter into the wave of his blood and join it. What he once felt as an echo, he now felt building with his flow of blood and self. Together they flowed and separated towards the edges of Aj’s body. Aj tried to take note at how and where Kit diverged from his flow, separating and leaving his body, but it was too much. He had to give up and focus on his next heartbeat so that he would once again meld it with Kit’s flow.
This time, Aj managed to keep their eyes open and witness the thick vines sprouting from his body. At first, the three vines coiled around himself for support before going out to each door. With little pause, the vines began traveling through the mazes and tracing it on the empty space of the broken door. The mazes began to glow with a soft green light as they were traced. Including the broken door as well its maze now clearly illuminated by floating green light. Painstakingly Kit traced the mazes focusing his entire being into making sure that he traced each maze at exactly the same moment and time, none quicker or slower than the others.
As Kit finished the maze, suddenly the light of each maze shifted to a dark orange and then dissipated. As the color changed Kit and Aj both froze waiting for something awful to happen. After a few seconds, Aj leaned his head and peered past the broken door. Looking to see if a portal would appear with more homicidal mantises. No such portal appeared.
What did appear was a floating orange symbol of two overlapping circles on the right side of each door, about four inches wide. Aj looked up at Mig and cocked his eyebrows, trying to communicate without speaking. Mig took a quick look around and shrugged his shoulders in response.
“Orange is probably good, right?” Kit asked Aj mentally, before pushing one of his outstretched vines against the symbol on the leftmost door.
“Maybe we should have talked about this part,” Aj said. As the left door began to rumble and open in front of him.