Yet this cube was distinct from that which came before.
In fact, it wasn’t much of a cube, at all, the ceiling far lower, and its length far greater than the prior room, such that, from the outside, it no doubt appeared as a giant, long rectangle. It disappeared into the distance, spreading so far in front of me that I couldn’t make out its end, even the bright green lighting insufficient to grant my enhanced vision view of what lay at the passage’s inevitable termination.
And it was empty.
Completely empty, in fact. Sterile. So far as I could see, at least. Neither my conventional senses nor the song itself revealed anything untoward. Just a long, huge, hollow hallway, perhaps thirty feet in height, and close to one hundred in width.
Frowning, I began to make my way forward.
Every step I took was tense. Every distant shudder, or imagined sound made me flinch. Every moment, I kept ethereal hands poised over the intangible form of Bullet Time, ever-ready to call my newest Blessing to arms.
The harsh, too-bright lighting reflected unnervingly off of the too-white walls to give the place a confusing, dimensionless appearance. There were hardly shadows in the massive corridor, making it near impossible to tell where wall met ground, or ceiling, turning the hallway’s confines into a sea of white.
Fang paced anxiously back and forth, his real form twitching every so often in my hands, as if responding to invisible threats. Each moment that passed, I expected something, anything, to happen. I anticipated spikes to emerge from the walls, or monsters to rise up from beneath the white-plated flooring. I predicted the ground itself to draw back, revealing a bottomless chasm, or the air above me to grow thick with the same abhorrent bugs as infested the corrupted jungle.
But they didn’t.
Which only made my traverse all the more eerie.
As I forged the path onwards, white hallway transformed into…more white hallway. White hallway passed behind me, giving way to white hallway, up in front. I walked until I could scarcely see the entrance door behind me, then–stopped.
I looked back and, on a whim, glanced down to the black-gold band on my wrist, the timepiece given to us all by the Coterie.
1:16:43
One day, sixteen hours, and forty three minutes had passed. Just over a day and a half, since the beginning of our delve. I shook my head back and forth, absently. It was difficult to accept. In the depths of the World Titan time seemed to lose all meaning. Even in an ecosystem such as the jungle, graced by the cycles of night and day, I never quite felt awake, or asleep.
Nevertheless, I committed the time to memory, and continued.
All too soon, the entry door dropped out of view. Still, I crept forward slowly, taking my time. Even with access to all my Blessings, I didn’t want to be rash. Exotic Dungeons clearly subscribed to none of the World Titan’s typical niceties, and I had to imagine that this floor would turn out even more dangerous than the first.
So I walked.
It was an odd sensation, wandering this place. An uncomfortable one. Though the space was physically not so large, in depth and width, at least, the absence of all color save for green and white made its confines just sort of…fall away. It felt akin to drifting motionlessly in an ocean of white, except one you couldn’t feel, or smell, or see.
The absolute stillness made my own breath and heartbeat echo heavily in my ears. My sphere of awareness in the song was the only thing that saved me from running repeatedly into the walls of the giant corridor. Without it, I could have even seen myself getting turned around, so completely uniform were my surroundings.
And still, I walked.
Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes to an hour, then two, then three. When finally I discerned the corridor’s end, far, far in the distance, I whooped with joy. But I didn’t race towards it. I wouldn’t have put it past the Dungeon to hide a trap here, after miles of nothingness had worn down a delver’s wits.
So I made my way, just as slowly and cautiously as ever, to the wall that served as the hallway’s termination. Upon it, much like the last, was a symbol. In fact, it was almost identical to the last. Nine squares, arranged in a three-by-three pattern.
Except that one square blinking last time had now turned solid green. Seven were red, and another, just above the now-solid square, flashed intermittently with green light.
My brow furrowed.
On its surface, this was good news. The room had ended, and I was to progress to the next, no doubt through the same manner as before. Even the symbol itself became more comprehensible to me, likely a representation of what I’d have to do to exit the floor, to escape the Warren. I’d just cleared one room, passed one test. If I was interpreting the symbolic lattice correctly, eight more awaited me.
But–what was the test?
I glanced over my shoulder. The white hallway looked just as empty and featureless as ever. I turned back towards the blinking square. Was that…it? Had I gotten lucky? Was this meant to test those without some means to orient themselves, perhaps?
Frowning, and with little other choice, I placed my hand upon the symbol, once more.
Once more, the room blurred and twisted, and I was teleported away.
And when my new surroundings revealed themselves, I was, once more, surprised. This time, the room I’d been deposited in was truly identical to the last. I ran back and forth to place my hands upon the walls, coasted on eddies of Entropy to touch the ceiling.
The dimensions were identical. I was sure of it.
The same white floors, and walls, and ceiling. The same green lighting. Flummoxed, still floating tens of feet in the air, I started to descend.
That’s when I noticed it.
“That’s…impossible!”
The first sound I’d heard in hours made me freeze. It was a soft, rhythmic noise, a gentle, peaceful tapping. A sound that, by all rights, I shouldn’t have even recognized, but one I’d heard time and time again from within the deepest recesses of my soul.
The placid lapping of waves against the seashore.
I looked out from on high, and saw the hallway’s floor drop away beneath me, replaced by a deep, blue sea. My jaw dropped, and I shot towards it, coming to a stop just above the barely noticeable waves. Small as they were, by all rights they shouldn’t have existed at all. Logically, the pool beneath me couldn’t be connected to anything producing a current.
Cautiously, warily, I dipped a toe into the waters, half-expecting the Sea Titan itself to breach the surface and devour me.
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The water was cool. Calm. Refreshing, even. Raising my eyebrows, I shrugged, and plunged inside.
Crystal-clear water enveloped me in an instant. My clothes were Entropic, regenerating and self-cleaning, but only cleansed what they covered, and I moaned in pleasure as the pristine waters removed what felt like years worth of dirt and grime and stench of decaying jungle from my sorry pores.
The water was so pure that I didn’t even need to squint, and looked just as empty as the hallway above it. The song was made no weaker immersed in liquid, so, throwing some small measure of caution to the wind, I dove.
Bubbles streamed off my skin-tight wear as I shot through the waves like a cannonball, threads of Entropy propelling me along. Fang cavorted alongside me with raucous abandon, just as home here as he’d be on solid ground.
We twisted and turned below the surf, pirouetting gaily around one another, performing underwater acrobatics that would’ve made me lose my lunch if I’d been limited to mundane senses. Alongside me, Fang’s sword-form shimmered and shivered, and for a split second he was no longer a weapon at all.
For a moment, his true form manifested; a massive, silver wolf.
His legs blurred, chest heaving as we turned, and made for the open air once more. In a massive spray of sea and steel, we broke through the glassy surface as one. Fang howled at me, canines glinting, claws flashing. I howled right back. Momentum propelled us high into the sky, easily scratching the ceiling of the all-white corridor.
And then the moment was over, and he was nothing but a sword, once more.
I tumbled to the ground, landing heavily. I laughed, panting slightly, exhilarated by the dive. It felt so much better to be clean, and it felt so much better to be able to actually use the song, freely, once more. Blessings were a rush, to be sure, but they weren’t near enough.
The song was so much more than them.
I closed my eyes, and breathed. In, and out.
The song connected me to everything.
Just as it always had. It was the bridge to all that surrounded me. It had been with me as long as I could remember. When I’d tread the forest path, a lifetime ago, it’d whispered to me secrets of world, secrets that none knew save for it, and it was still speaking to me now.
It wanted me to do something. It wanted me to say its name.
“Shardsong.”
The tones, and letters, and music spilled from my mouth like formless water, causing something unknowable deep, deep within my soul to thrum and pulse with recognition.
But I was wrong.
My knowledge was insufficient. My word, beautiful though it was, was incomplete. An overture, malformed. A magnum opus, half-finished. Somehow, even now, I’d failed to grasp its true meaning. What was it, that escaped me?
I furrowed my brow, grit my teeth, and pushed harder. I felt something warm, and wet, and slightly salty begin to drip from my nose, and pour out of my tear ducts.
It was purity, and light, and life.
It was debauchery, and strength, and chaos.
It was beauty, and purpose, and truth.
It was music pulsing through my veins, power pounding in my heart, primal knowledge making my skull throb and my mind swim. My vision was fading, the all-white, well-lit hallway flickering, reality’s frail edges beginning to fray before my desperate need to know.
It was material, and ethereal. It was all things, and people, and places. It had existed since time immemorial, and after the last star had dimmed to nothingness, still, it would remain. It was the language of the Gods, the speech of stars and species, the forgotten tongue of antediluvian monsters, it was the MUSIC OF THE UNIVERSE, IT–
Fang’s warning growl brought me back to reality, and I shuddered, stemming the flow.
Reluctantly, grudgingly, the song receded.
My hands had clenched into fists, curling around the all-white flooring I’d thought impenetrable, pulling up handfuls of the stuff and crushing it to dust. Entropy had flooded my every cell, filling me with a power far beyond my own control. Painfully, with teeth clenched tight, I directed it back into my soul.
For a while, I sat there, gasping for breath on the edge of an impossible sea.
Fang hovered vigilantly beside me, ever faithful.
“…um, thanks,” I said eventually, glancing somewhat in his direction and feeling more than a little silly for attempting to verbally converse with a half-animate sword. Fang, unbothered as ever, simply danced back and forth in the air, in what I gathered was his version of waving off my apology.
I still couldn’t really communicate with my Shards, only able to roughly piece together what I imagined their motivations to be thanks to the emotions they shared with me in the song. And Fang, more so than any of my other Blessings, took his responsibilities very seriously.
Perhaps his fierce obsequiousness was a feature hard-wired into Soulbound Weapon, or perhaps it was simply a quirk of his personality. I wouldn’t really know unless I ran into another with the power, and right now I wasn’t sure if two people could even be granted the same Blessing.
Regardless, right now I could sense Fang’s emotions plain as day. He was sending outrage and disdain, but not at me. No, he was angry at what he likely considered a fellow servant, a keen ethereal eye watching for any further signs of disobedience.
I sighed, and got to my feet.
Fang hopped happily back into my waiting palm. His devotion was adorable, but my sword was wrong. The Shardsong wasn’t like my other Blessings. Though simple, they clearly possessed some manner of intelligence. Some manner of agency, of intention and will.
The song didn’t. It wasn’t a Blessing at all.
It was a difficult thing to describe, the song. It wasn’t concrete. Could a language have form? Could a feeling be given flesh? It was all those things, and more. So much more. More a concept, like Fire, or Blood, or Lightning, but–more, even, than them. The Blessings seemed to use it, to speak it, but it wasn’t native to them. Not a creation. It seemed…older. Grander.
More powerful, even, than ADMINISTRATION itself.
And made all the more confounding by the fact that, somehow, I’d been able to use it before triggering. I’d heard the Shardsong as a mundy.
Even thinking back on it now, such a thing seemed impossible. Of all the things I’d read and learned of Blessed and Blessings, the Shardsong was never mentioned. Not once. Even Akashic, that omniscient being, whoever or whatever it was, hadn’t written of it. How could I, then, hear it as nothing more than a mortal, mundane, child?
Pushing the whirling thoughts from my mind, I considered the path ahead.
The confined sea spread out before me, just as seemingly limitless as the corridor had been, before. Was there some challenge hidden somewhere, deeper within it? Or, would it turn out just as empty and harmless as its forebear? There was only one way to find out.
I called on the song once more, a good deal more reservedly this time. It responded instantly, eagerly, all prior hesitance apparently forgotten, wrapping around my body and gleefully spiriting me into the air.
I could fly at more or less a sprint without expending too much Entropy, and so, without another word, I was off.
The twinkling ocean blurred beneath me as I soared through the air. Somewhat ironically, my passage through the corridor, this time, was a much more pleasant one. Thirty feet of space provided me a comfortable buffer zone from whatever threats might have lurked below the ocean’s surface, and its presence as a consistent landmark in the hallway effectively eliminated what confounding, distorting effects had plagued me in the past.
The wind provided a pleasant chill as I cruised briskly forth, making good time towards where the long room’s end should have been. Despite what worries I might have harbored, nothing at all disturbed my passage, the entire bizarre corridor just as featureless and empty as before.
At my advanced pace, I made it to the end in less than an hour, this time, and, sure enough, saw that same symbol for a third time.
A green, three-by-three lattice. As expected, now two squares were solid green, six were red, and a third blinked steadily. When I placed my hand upon the symbol this time, I did so with a cautious smile.
Perhaps I’d overestimated the danger of the Dungeon. Perhaps I’d underestimated my own strength. The Labyrinth was somewhat random, after all. Perhaps this floor really would be smooth sailing, for once.
The world dissolved around me, and I was teleported away.