EMI

Emi stared in shock at the spot several stories below where Zed had inexplicably vanished, her hair plastered to her skull with blood, sweat, and grime. The flagstones looked mundane, solid. There was nothing to swallow him up, and yet he was gone. Her knuckles stood out bright white against the stone balustrade. Despite her bloodline, she looked every bit a Wraith.

“But how?” she hissed desperately to herself, tears welling up in the corners of her eyes. “Why?”

She slid to the floor, rubbing a hand absentmindedly over the transference tattoo on her chest. She felt nothing through their divine soulbind, but the mark remained. Nothingness, it seemed, took her master away. But it did not deign to answer her desperate pleas.

“Not dead,” she whispered, over and over again. Her master, her angel, couldn't be dead if the tattoo remained. But Emi was not comforted. She couldn't feel anything. Why couldn't she feel anything?

The rage-filled roar of the golem and subsequent crash of the stone sword below did nothing to affect the High Priestess as she struggled to pull herself together, one hand still pressed to her chest. She had to temper this outburst. Zed was gone, not dead. He would most assuredly return, and when he did she had to be ready to assist him at a moment's notice. He needed her.

Curiously, the golem continued to bellow its gravelly abuses into the chamber. It stormed over to the thrown weapon and wrenched it from the deep gash in the floor. From the moment Zed stepped up to the holy knight statue it behaved most strangely. The knight was meant to be a guardian of these halls, both protector and proctor of this room's challenge. Its all-out assault against him was incomprehensible.

Alas, there was nothing she could do. Ordinarily, if a challenger received assistance or was defeated by any of the trials in the Catacombs, they would fail. All acts of scrimmage would cease and the chamber locks would disengage. The challenger would be delivered from the depths and not permitted reentry until the eve of the next purple eclipse, an event that only occurred once every five revolutions.

The challenger was gone; however, the room remained sealed and the golem's violence only intensified. The trial was still in progress. Why? How? Nothing about this expedition had gone according to plan. She couldn't interfere with Zed's divine quest. Not after they had come so far.

But the Catacombs had been compromised. The advance party was dead, reptilian monstrosities were running amok, and Zed lost an arm in an attack that should never have happened. The floor guardian had clearly gone rogue. This could only mean the sacred dungeon was malfunctioning. How, she wasn't sure. The only way to salvage anything and preserve the sanctity of the Catacombs –no, the entire Ebonblade Order– was to purge it.

And she would start with that infernal knight golem.

Emi perched herself at the top of the balustrade, calculating the drop and necessary force to cull the rogue abomination. Without warning, she gasped as the tightness in her chest lifted and her lungs fully expanded. The all-encompassing emptiness she had felt was gone. Instead, it was replaced by the sensation of a gentle yet insistent tug coming from the tattoo on her chest. Like an unseen thread, it pulled her attention toward the far side of the chamber.

ZED

It's going to fucking work this time.

Breathing heavily, Zed felt the weight of his own words as he teetered on the edge of despair. He watched as the knight golem raged, his expression strange and unreadable. Its torso and shoulder continued to crumble away as it exerted itself, revealing a not-insubstantial fleshy body underneath its stony exterior. In fact, the golem now appeared to be more flesh than stone. Corded muscles jerked and strained mechanically against the remnants of the compromised armor, a cruel mimicry of life.

Just a doll inside a doll. I will break you.

Zed staggered onto the empty plinth. That act, it seemed, was all it took to capture the knight golem's attention. It raised its stone sword, a promise of swift deliverance, and Zed raised his arm overhead in return, fingers taut and splayed wide.

“Come on then, you bastard,” he said, taking a deep breath. “You want me? Here I am!”

It charged. He waited.

The golem had only just passed the first of the three remaining standing columns when Zed snapped his fist shut. The would-be assassin stopped in its tracks, bound tightly from helm to boot by hundreds upon hundreds of nearly invisible threads that appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

“Eat this!” he screamed.

Zed snapped his newly reattached arm forward in a vicious gesture, activating his trap. The act released three different colored fireballs from their holding positions behind the last of the standing columns.

Each Fireball was a completely new evolution from his first attempt some weeks previous: the first, a volatile blood-red orb of monstrous proportions; the second, a smaller concentration of sickly green hellfire; the third, a wobbly, misshapen ball of brilliant blue flames that glowed brightly.

They shot forward into a tight orbit around the imprisoned golem. Spinning up faster and faster, they transformed into a hellish prismatic blur that obstructed their target entirely from view. Zed grunted, clenching his fingers tightly as the strain against his threads threatened to rip his fist open. An ominous creak emanated from the center of the licking flames.

After a few tense seconds the fireballs connected rapid-fire with its chest, one after another in a series of deafening explosions that vaporized the central column and reduced the others to so much rubble. His threads went slack before they dematerialized.

“Fucking finally,” he rasped.

Zed waited, gingerly massaging his shoulder back into place. His arm felt a little too long and oddly elastic; the shadowy sinew that connected his arm to his body seemed somehow separate and alive. There was so much he didn't understand, but now was not the time. The dust cleared, revealing a broken stone corpse, but the quest completion notification did not come. The golem had been annihilated, so why?

He approached the remains, with no small amount of reticence. Up close, he realized he had been wrong from the start: the glowing blue lines tracing along the golem's limbs were not veins, but runes engraved into its armored shell. Three runes ran up the length of both arms. He watched as they glowed brighter before the energy withdrew into the fractured torso.

“Of course!” he spat, jerking away and taking several quick steps backward. “Don't make it easy. Don't ever make anything easy. Let's just make everything as difficult as poss—hurk!”

His rant was abruptly cut short as a large desiccated hand shot out from the remains, closed around his throat, and lifted him in the air. The body that followed was nothing short of a horror show. Standing a full seven-plus-feet-tall, the ravaged undead dwarfed even Zed. Its leathery skin was mottled and grey, and though it seemed ancient, it was strong. He screamed without air, his eyes wide and darting back and forth. His frantic kicks connected only with the empty air.

The sneering undead drew close, its breath rank and rotting. It spoke a single word: “Unworthy.”

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Zed clawed desperately at its leathery forearm to no avail; it didn't even flinch. He gurgled wetly, his strength beginning to wane. Before the world could fade to black, however, the undead hissed and drew back sharply.

Skill Acquired: Abyssal Bind LVL. 1

Zed collapsed in a heap at the undead's feet. Scrambling quickly away, he snapped his head up to see a whiplike tendril of shadow wrapping around the undead's wrist. He could hear the pop and crackle of the monster's flesh as it seared under the insidious band. But the reprieve was short-lived as the tendril dispersed, and the undead lunged at him with renewed ferocity.

He reflexively brought his arms up in an X, bracing for impact. The block at least saved his face and neck; he barely managed to drive the undead to one side as they went down together. Zed's skull cracked painfully off the stone floor a moment later. In his daze he could hear the gnashing of teeth dangerously close to his ear.

Pushing past the pain, he kicked out at his attacker. He heard a crunch not unlike dry leaves as his foot connected with the undead's body but he didn't dare wait. Instead, he blindly threw himself backward and away. He came up in a roll and rocked on the balls of his feet, dismissing multiple alerts as they popped up.

No time. Get distracted, get dead.

It set upon him almost immediately, dragging its right leg somewhat. So he had managed to damage it after all. Good. His jubilation, however, was short-lived; the undead knight delivered a sharp jab to the center of his chest and he felt his body go flying.

Bemused, Zed had just enough time to wonder what minor deity he had pissed off in a past life before his body slammed into the wall on the far side of the chamber. As he collided with the wall, agony exploded through his ribs, stealing his breath.

He slid down the wall, coughing and wheezing. His vision doubled, blurring the harsh lines of shadow and light. The metallic tang of unwashed pennies filled his mouth and he gagged. No sooner did he turn his head to spit out a gob of blood than his attacker surged across the chamber, halving the distance between the two in a moment. Even hobbled, the undead knight was impossibly fast.

Zed pushed off the wall, his momentum sending his repaired shoulder into the undead's hardened torso. Grimacing, he spun away, landing a nasty cross on the back of the monstrosity's skull in the process. It turned and let out an indignant snarl, pushing off the wall in turn and smashing a fist into his jaw.

Stumbling backward, his mind raced for a solution. The undead knight's attacks came in a blur of motion, each strike fueled by supernatural speed. Zed struggled to maintain a makeshift defense, barely managing to parry the flurry of blows. Shadowy threads were snapped mid-cast. He wasn't gaining an edge; hell, he wasn't even keeping up. At the rate he was going, Zed was in serious danger of succumbing to exhaustion.

Despite his best efforts to evade, his opponent didn't merely match his movements; it outpaced him with uncanny speed as if it had the ability to anticipate every dodge. It countered with ruthless efficiency. Exactly once he managed to get lucky, ducking just before the undead knight swung. Its claws tore through the air with deadly precision.

Now.

As if possessed, Zed viciously brought his knee up into its desiccated stomach while simultaneously driving his elbow into the back of its neck. Unfortunately, this act didn't have nearly the effect he had envisioned. Not only was the undead knight faster, it was much stronger. The monstrosity went down, taking Zed with it. Their limbs tangled together as they fell and they grappled on the cold stone floor. Another notification pinged.

NOTICE: Skill: Shadow Puppet is now available.

He smirked. With that, he shoved his fist into the undead's face, manifesting a quick Fireball right in its snapping maw. It was just enough.

The knight recoiled from the fiery blast, and Zed, channeling an extra surge of mana, unleashed another Fireball high above him. It erupted from his hand in a swirling spiral, casting countless shadows that surged forth from his exhausted form, twisting and shaping into existence.

“SHADOW PUPPET!” he roared.

This time, he didn't just draw from his reserves; he tapped into the very core of his being, unleashing an unstoppable torrent of mana. He staggered backward, his spirit reeling as the mana flowed out from him as fast as it was being replenished. Shadows twisted, multiplying and taking form as the Fireball danced in the rafters. They manifested into dozens of shadowy doppelgangers of Zed himself.

Skill Created: Shadow Army LVL. MAX

Another box popped up, notifying Zed that he had leveled up. He swayed on his feet and brushed that particular notification aside.

“Fuck... that shit up,” he croaked, pointing to the now-slavering undead knight.

With that eloquent command they moved as one, descending upon their newly identified enemy.

The monstrosity roared, or it attempted to: its lower jaw was conspicuously absent. Fetid gore dripped obscenely from the ragged, blood-caked hole. It leapt to its feet, already shaking off the shadowy summons. Relentless, they piled on the mad undead. It thrashed and tore at whatever limbs came into range. More than one of his puppets were thrown off; exploding into dark smoke when they struck the walls.

Bizarrely, his remaining puppets withdrew from their target. However, they did not flee in terror. They waited in a perfect circle, fixated on the knight with black, rage-filled eyes. They seemed to assess their opponent for a few tense seconds.

And then the first threads flew. With no small amount of horror, Zed heard the sizzle and pop of decayed flesh as what looked like his own Abyssal Bind wrapped around the undead's bicep.

ERROR: Shadow Puppets cannot-

More threads. More casts. Not from Zed, but from the dozens of un-Zeds he had summoned. They didn't just—

ERROR.

ERROR.

ERROR.

His puppets—no, his army—began casting their own offensive threads. They sought to bind, to maim—

CRITICAL ERROR: An unexpected anomaly has occurred in the System. Administrator has been contacted.

NOTE: User Zed, please consume the Eldritch Breadfruit in your personal inventory.

“The fuck...?” Zed stammered, staring blankly at the note. It shimmered insistently, demanding him to take notice. “Am I being watched?”

He watched with a strange combination of fascination and horror as the chamber around him seemed to fade out. It was as if a bell jar descended over Zed, blurring the sights and sounds of the culminating battle a short distance away. The air around him grew heavy and oppressive; his head started pounding as an an insidious low thrumming filled his ears. Bile rose in the back of his throat.

A single mud-colored eye blinked into existence within the lightless, limitless void that surrounded Zed. Then another. And another. Within seconds he felt his very flesh crawl under the unsettling gaze of thousands upon thousands of wide, staring eyes of all different shapes, sizes, and colors. He had to force himself to look away.

Without warning, his Item Box was opened for him.

A familiar oversized black-skinned fruit toppled out. He recalled setting the breadfruit aside due to its completely alien nature; he didn't know how to eat it then, and he didn't know how to eat it now. Feeling a sense of urgency and dread, he turned the unwieldy fruit over in his hands, nearly dropping it. Instead, his fingertips sank into the bumpy outer skin of the fruit. Odd... he didn't remember the fruit feeling quite so soft when he had first received it. He pushed a little harder, pulled the fruit apart, and blinked.

“Am I a joke to you?” he grumbled under his breath. “Whoever... whatever you are?”

In a more ordinary existence, Zed might have wondered if he was hallucinating. But this wouldn't be the first time reality warped to this unseen, unknowable force's whims. The exposed fruit—if you could even call it that—was pure white, fluffy, and... rather bread-like in appearance. Even more strangely, the center of the fruit was smooth, not unlike custard. He scooped out a bit of the suspicious contents, screwed his eyes shut, and opened his mouth.

Cheesecake?!

Smooth, creamy, and tangy, the Eldritch Breadfruit tasted every bit like the best New York cheesecake Zed ever had in his life. Rich and not too sweet, he found himself scooping more and more of the decadent fruit until it filled his mouth, coating his tongue like the most luxurious velvet. The heavy atmosphere lessened around him until the last of the unpleasant symptoms dissolved. The thousands of eyes started to blink and coalesce as he ate; thousands merged into hundreds, into tens, then finally into a single pair of brilliantly dappled eyes.

Finally they, too, blinked and disappeared, replaced by one last bizarre notification:

THE ADMINISTRATOR APPROACHES.

4573:42:701:2:5:896

The incomprehensible timer began to run.