In the vain hope that I could distract myself from my present reality, I tried my best to be optimistic. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as I was making it out to be. Sure, it wasn’t looking good -- quite literally, as my surroundings were pretty much as dismal and depressing as possible. It wasn’t like there was no hope, though, right? I’d been in some unthinkably bleak situations before, and I’d made it out of all of them alive.
I wasn’t the only one here. If I just held on long enough, maybe Cal or Verin would figure something out? I was pretty sure Verin had mentioned something about high nobles getting some training to resist mental influences. Maybe Cal had too? And what about Mental Resistance? Verin definitely didn’t have the prerequisite stats to unlock it, but Cal might by now, right?
My brief attempt at optimism was quickly slapped down by reality as I followed that line of thought.
And then what? Even supposing Cal or Verin somehow did the unthinkable and woke up on their own, what happened next? Neither of them had any offensive mental attacks. It wasn’t as if they’d be freeing me. With Tal’Ket’s summoning plate still in my storage, they couldn’t bring me back to Sett, either.
No, on the off chance that one of the others beat their mind spawns, the most likely outcome was that the mind reaper would kick their mental asses. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of one remotely realistic scenario where the others saved me here. The realization hit me hard. For all that Cal’s and Verin’s bodies were lying right next to mine, I was on my own.
That’s… still… fine. I was great at resisting mental attacks! Stellar! Sure, my Mental Resistance was a little preoccupied right now, and my Stygian Citadel was largely reduced to rubble, but otherwise, the skill was one of my best! Between the slight boosts I’d grabbed from my Intelligence threshold, God’s Mind, and my Mental Resistance augment, I was as much of a mental fortress as could be expected for my level.
Which isn’t going to help if you can’t get out of here.
No matter how many different directions I tackled the issue from, it kept coming back to that one thought. I was stuck. Stuck here in my ruined mind. The one, singular place that I tried to avoid. Why did it have to be here, of all places?
Figuring that doing anything would be better than just sitting there, I tried to escape in a more hands-on way, running towards the reaper’s barrier. Well before I reached it, however, I came up against a steadily increasing pressure pushing me back. While I pushed back with as much force as I could muster, it was pointless. A can-do-it attitude wasn’t enough to break through, and I wasn’t sure I had even that.
Having only a single mental spell, I then tried to cast Sense Minds. The ripple of magic spread out before crashing into the barrier where it was promptly consumed, accomplishing a sum total of nothing.
Actually, it accomplished worse than nothing: Evidently having used my spell to lock in on my location, the reaper finally managed to push past my stygian shroud. A questing tendril of chaotic, wrathful energy peeled off from the barrier, reaching out for my mental avatar.
It wasn’t particularly fast, but it didn’t need to be. I tried to dodge it, but when I moved to the side, it followed, perfectly homing in on me no matter where I went. In the confined space of my mind, there was no permanent escape.
Hit it. Fight. I tried to conjure a spear of mental mana, only for the skill to utterly fail. Which, of course it would -- this wasn’t the real world. My class was useless here, as were the vast majority of my skills and spells.
For the first time, I honestly, truly regretted not leaning more into mental magic outside of defense. Who cared if it felt evil? So was fire magic if you used it to burn someone. So was frost magic if you froze someone alive. I hated feeling weak and pitiful, and my past squeamishness meant that now I was going to feel dead instead.
It was funny, in a way. I’d spent so long worrying about how empty I felt. How little drive I had. How little desire I was able to dredge up for living.
But as that damnable tendril crept closer, rather than lay down and accept my death, I felt a spark of true rage light up within me.
“I was doing well!” I had been! Right after I’d been healed by Sett, it had taken me days before I did anything but stare forward and mutely scarf down my half-raw meals. Simple actions would utterly drain me, sending me to bed for days at a time.
Sure, I wasn’t great now. I wasn’t the poster girl for recovery or a shining example of being well adjusted. But I’d gotten better!
I could smile. On rare occasions, I could laugh. If pressed, I could hold a conversation, and I didn’t mind sitting on the sidelines, basking in the second-hand warmth as others were social in front of me.
And I had things I liked! I enjoyed my cooking. My humble herb garden. My story time with Arbor and the subsequent playing with new ingredients.
I wanted to make our cabin better. Craft new furniture, build new rooms, get good enough at enchanting to make some basic appliances. Make Verin some clothes that actually suited her, so that she could stop looking sad whenever she remembered her limited wardrobe. Craft some better one-player games for Cal to help her deal with the long, boring nights she was stuck with as we slept.
I wanted all of that, and with each day, I grew to want more. And even if I didn’t feel right -- even if I didn’t feel at all like the old Tess had -- day by day, the act of being human felt a little bit less like an act.
It had only been a dream, I knew, and an unreasonable one at that, but I’d entertained the notion that I might -- one day, eventually, far from now and in the distant future -- feel normal again.
And for this to be how everything ended, “not fair” didn’t cover it. Not in the least bit. With more emotion than I’d been able to summon in ages, I felt as a broken, bitter rage enveloped me.
When I lashed out at the tendril closing in on me, there was no real plan there. No rational thought or hope of success. The only thing I had was a nearly animal-like desire to tear it apart. To attack, to strike, to crush it.
My hands swung down in what I knew to be a foolish and futile act, but if this was how it ended, so be it. I would impotently claw and tear and bite at the reaper, heedless of any dignity or pride. Here, at this final juncture, I had realized I wanted to live, and I would go out fighting my hardest to stay alive.
Even with my newfound resolve, when the reaper’s probe jerked back, deformed and shrinking away from me, I didn’t understand at first.
Did I… did I hurt it? Part of my anger evaporated from sheer stupefaction. Heightened emotions or not, certainly I hadn’t been able to harm something that powerful with my bare hands.
But as I glanced down, I discovered, much to my shock, that I was not empty-handed.
Resting there, as if it had been there all along, was a hammer. Black as night and with craggy veins of purple shooting across it, the weapon looked right at home in my mental space.
But then, of course it does. Back when I’d created it, I’d been given the opportunity to imprint the hammer with a single skill. I’d chosen my Stygian Citadel skill, which meant, in a way, the weapon was based on the space around me.
Is this a power I didn’t know about? Experimentally, I tried to summon any of my other weapons, but as expected, none heeded my call. It seemed that something about the skill imprint let the hammer -- and only the hammer -- appear with me here.
Then maybe… I tried running some mana through the weapon, and much to my shock, it actually worked. I knew I had access to my mana here, or else I wouldn’t have been able to cast Sense Minds. By all rights, my class skills shouldn’t have functioned here, though.
Having gotten over its temporary wariness, the reaper went with a more aggressive approach this time. While the original probe retracted back into the dome, three replacements came shooting out, intent on running me through. What would happen if they succeeded, I wasn’t actually sure, nor was I intent on finding out.
This time, as the jagged tendrils approached, I stood my ground. After all, I had no reason to run.
Flooding my hammer with mental mana, I went on the offensive. My first attack used the sharp end of my warhammer, gouging out a piece of the reaper’s mind. Redirecting the bulky weapon to the side, I smashed into the other two probes with the flat end, crushing them.
If the hammer by itself had wounded the first tendril, then the hammer augmented with mental mana utterly savaged them. The pressure all around me intensified as a rapidfire series of pulses vibrated off of the dome, and with a start, I realized the reaper was crying out in pain.
In response, all I could do was laugh.
“Good! Come try again!” I wanted to live, and I had a way to fight back. Nothing else needed to be said.
Either understanding my taunt or simply seeking revenge, the reaper sent out thick limbs of energy, one after another. No matter how many it sent or how quick they came for me, however, I was ready.
Seeming to shed some of its physical weight while here in my mental space, my warhammer was a blur in my hands. Brightly glowing with a steady purple light, it flowed effortlessly between the reaper’s attacks, batting them aside. Each time it connected, the monster let out another cry, its pain only spurring me on further.
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One minute blurred into two, until I realized that I’d lost track of the time. Something about my mental space made each moment blend together. With my mental avatar not depending on stamina or Endurance, I felt just as fresh now as I did at the start, raring to go.
Throwing myself fully into the battle, I barely registered it as the system sent me a few notifications, only belatedly reading them as the fight grew notably easier.
Hammers has reached level 19!
It was surprising that the mental battle even counted towards the weapon skill, but that was far less important than what followed, a level I’d been waiting on for ages.
Mental Resistance has reached level 20!
Congratulations! You have reached the Apprentice rank in Mental Resistance.
Based on your actions, you have been granted a skill augment for achieving a new skill rank.
Augment of Active Involvement
The effects of Mental Resistance are greatly heightened when you actively aid them from within your mental space. This includes fighting with your avatar, or actively repairing your mind from within.
With the unexpected boost, what before had been a rage-fueled slog quickly transformed into a thing of ease. The reaper sent forth more and more of its mental attacks, but I was untouchable. Here in my own mind, no matter how broken it might have been, I held sovereignty. Not an inch of ground would be yielded.
And in this, it seemed that the reaper agreed. It certainly took a while, but at last, the mental monstrosity was forced to see reason. Suffering from wound after wound, it grew less and less willing to expose itself, until, after some unknowable amount of time, it finally stopped.
For a moment, I felt ecstatic. Giddy. Alive! I’d done it! I’d defended myself.
Slowly, however, the truth of the situation sunk in.
What now?
With my newly strengthened Mental Resistance and my hammer in hand, I tried running towards the dome again. I managed to get a bit closer this time around, but just as before, I ran into a steadily increasing force, pushing me back until I couldn’t fight it off. At one point, I got so fed up that I chucked my hammer, hoping to hit the reaper with a half-assed ranged attack. Just like my body, though, the hammer was repelled, impotently falling from the air.
I yelled. I taunted. I cast Sense Minds over and over again, hoping to goad the reaper into some sort of action.
Nothing worked.
And to be fair, why would it respond? Sure, its attacks had failed, but I was still trapped here. As long as it didn’t let me out, it had already won.
I sat down amidst the rubble of my mind, trying to think of any way out. Try as I might, though, no solution presented itself.
With no signs of anything changing any time soon, time slowly continued to drag on.
----------------------------------------
Though time was hard to track inside my mind, at least subjectively, it felt like entire days passed by.
By the second day, I was still feeling energized. I had renewed my lease on life. I wanted to live, I had my trust hammer, and I would find a way out. Somehow.
By the third, some of that enthusiasm began to wane. How much time was passing outside? The mind spawns’ descriptions stated that they provided their hosts with sustenance. Did the reaper? Was my body being cared for, or was I slowly wasting away?
And which was worse? The latter meant that I was on a clock before I died, but the former? That would mean that I was trapped here indefinitely. Could I imagine being stuck here for weeks? Months? Years, even?
I’d never had any illusions about my chances of making it out of the dungeon. The odds were stacked against us, and gods only knew how many times I’d already come close to death. Still, I’d always assumed that I’d go out relatively painlessly.
Like with the hydra. A brief flash of fear as it sank its teeth into me, and then I’d pass out, and it would be over. Maybe there’d be a bit of physical pain beforehand, but that’s what Pain Resistance was for.
Here, though, it was hard to think of a worse way to go out. My current sanity was already in question, but what would it even look like for me to spend a year here? A year in what was essentially solitary confinement, coupled with a constant reminder of my own shattered mind.
You don’t know, though. Maybe it’ll get bored. If it can’t reach you, it has to leave eventually, right?
But did it? What else did it have to do with its time? For all I knew, mind reapers loved sitting still for a century. And if it was directly spawned by the dungeon, this might have been the most exciting thing to ever happen to it.
By day four, whatever positive energy I’d discovered had fully run dry. I spent the entire day letting my darker thoughts run wild, painting worse and worse pictures of what my future would look like.
Bit by bit, I could feel whatever healing I’d undergone slowly regressing. This wouldn’t have hurt so much if I still felt like I had right after meeting Sett. Back then, I could have stared at a wall for days without a care in the world. Wouldn’t it be so much nicer if I could get that feeling back?
No. It wasn’t worth it.
I remembered all the pained, sidelong glances from Cal and Verin. The ones they thought that I didn’t notice. The hushed whispers whenever they talked about me, thinking I couldn’t hear them. They’d put on brave faces and done well by me, but it was always clear as day how much my old state had worried them. One way or another, I wasn’t going back.
Although, if and by the time any of us get out here, they might be just as bad. The descriptions for the mind spawns had mentioned mental scarring. It would be all three of us, irrevocably messed up.
More than anything else, that thought hurt. I wanted to make it out of here. I wanted to get better. Sure. True. Even more than that, though, I needed the two of them to be okay. They were only in this mess because of me in the first place. I owed it to them to protect them as best I could.
Which, of course, I couldn’t. Because I wasn’t strong enough.
I turned about, really taking everything in, seeing just how impossibly large the hills of shattered mental fragments were. The sight tended to make me feel small. Empty. Dead.
But on this occasion, reminded -- once again -- that my own failures could put those I cared about in danger, it wasn’t emptiness I felt.
It was anger. Rage. Bitterness.
Emin. Oachin. Very possibly Alara and Nella for all I knew. And now Cal and Verin, too. Was I really that much of a fuck-up that everyone who got involved with me died? Was this all that my second life amounted to?
I felt my skin prickle with heat as that anger coursed through me, and suddenly, I was on my feet, hefting up my hammer.
“Why? Why all this? Why me?” Just plain dumb bad luck that I’d gotten into that car crash? Happenstance and coincidence that delayed one bad death to bring me another?
Only half consciously, I began to channel fire mana through the weapon, its many cracks coming alive with a red-hot glow. Before I knew what I was doing, I moved closer to the nearest of the miniature mountains of broken rubble, swinging my hammer down for all I was worth.
“WHY?” The shout drowned out the sound of the hammer’s fall as I screamed into a very literal void. “Why does everything keep going to shit?” I could have lived a perfectly fine life as some magical chef. A woodworker. An alchemist. Hells, even a miner. But I’d never had the chance. Even when I laid low and just took classes, some psychopath decided he needed to kill me. I’d been set up from day one. Anything but fighting over and over and over again would see me dead.
“One of you gods! Any of you! Dex! Can you fuckers hear me in here? I want to know why!” Bang, bang, bang. I smashed into my broken mental space over and over again, as if to stir up a din loud enough to reach the gods. “Can you see me right now? Because I was hunted down for being chosen by one of you! The least you can do is tell me why. Was there a point? Was it just a whim? Just for fun? Dex, are you up there enjoying the show?” Or was it somehow worse if he wasn’t? Was it even more sad if he’d picked me and then forgotten about it immediately afterwards.
Try as I might, though, I couldn’t maintain my anger for the gods. Instead, that resentment quickly shifted targets, turning back towards myself. What had Dex really done to me that I could be angry for? Save me from dying a painful death? Give me a mark that people would literally kill to have?
No, if I was being reasonable, I was mostly in this situation because of myself. Sure, once or twice, the deck had been stacked against me, but there were so many ways I could have ended up somewhere else. If I’d been smarter, more proactive, less naive, or just more realistic in general, none of this would have had to happen in the first place.
I stewed in that potent mixture of self-resentment and general rage until it slowly burned away, leaving me feeling nothing but empty and defeated once again. Even so, long after my emotions subsided, I continued to hammer away at whatever I could find. Ever since my mind had snapped, I’d always hated this place. Even if it wouldn’t do any good, there was something cathartic about going to town on it.
Except, when finally I came to my senses and dropped the hammer, the sight that greeted me might have been even worse than what had been there before.
The intense heat from my hammer had turned everything it touched to slag. Pieces of my citadel wall had mixed with chunks of my palace and shards from my dungeon doors, all melted together in one amorphous mass. Cooling down, the soupy mixture solidified, likely making the change permanent.
Would Sett even be able to heal me if I came back like this, with all the pieces of my mind fused together? Was it even possible to put me back together now?
Something about that thought tickled my mind as I stared, suddenly transfixed on the solidifying puddle of heterogeneous mental mass.
Since when did I want to be put back just like I was before? That Tess had been a failure, and I’d already accepted that she was gone for good. I didn’t want to be restored. I wanted to rebuild anew. Different. Better. I just hadn’t had a way to do that without Sett’s help.
As I continued to stare blank-faced at the scene of devastation in front of me, and as the black and purple molten material finally lost the last of its heat, settling down, it all finally clicked.
I thought I needed to wait for Sett to fix me. I thought there was nothing I could do on my own.
But what if… What if I’d been wrong?
It felt as though I’d stumbled upon an oasis while wandering through the desert. Such a thing just didn’t happen, did it? It had to be a mirage. A bout of wishful thinking. But on that off chance that I was well and truly saved, I found myself lurching forward to take a drink.
Once more, fire roared through my hammer, and I reduced the nearest mound to a hunk of slag. Only, this time, I didn’t leave it to expand into a puddle. Sometimes using my hammer as a poor man’s shovel, sometimes using the still-solid fragments of my mind to corral the molten liquid, I did my best to keep it in some semblance of a rectangular shape.
As it began to cool, I handled it directly, ignoring the pain in my fingertips as I gathered it beneath me and began to hammer it once again. Like metal, the strange substance proved malleable in this heated state, and I shaped it as best I could.
Without me noticing, my unwieldy warhammer began to shrink, morphing with my intent until it was less of a weapon and more of a tool. Now in the form of a blacksmith’s hammer, it slowly beat the lump of superheated metal into a clean, rectangular block.
When that block eventually cooled down, it was remarkable. The pattern was a bit different. So was the coloration. It would never be exactly the same as it had been before. But otherwise, one could have mistaken it for any of the bricks which had made up my citadel walls, or even the palace itself.
As I held that singular, cooling brick, a wellspring of emotions began to burst up and out of me, and I began to cry.
I can. I can rebuild. Maybe even enough to get out of here.
And with that realization, and just as the brick in my hands completely settled, the system offered me its own gift. The deluge of notifications was longer than expected, matching my steady deluge of tears.
Through watery eyes, I managed to catch a single line that made me pull up short.
Congratulations! You have learned a Legendary skill!