His first few runs were fruitless. The soft sound of something wet sliding over the ground kept him on edge, checking the light of the cube every few moments, kicking along a backup cube just in case he lost track of time. He set a cube on the edge of the circle to mark the directions he’d already checked, filling up almost half of the circle before he managed to find something. But it wasn’t what he’d hoped.
A section of the wall was frozen mid-birth, an outstretched arm with four elbows ending in a hand with eight fingers grasping at thin air. It’s head was fairly person-like from the upper jaw down, but above that it split into two long, bull-like horns that then split once more a few inches from the tip into two. Elach didn’t manage to stifle the instinctual scream that escaped from his throat as the hand invaded his bubble of light, fumbling the cube multiple times until he managed to get a hold of it. When it became obvious the thing wasn’t going to kill him through the light, Elach reached out a probing hand to feel along the thing’s arm, expecting to feel the same wet slickness but instead it felt more like a hard resin. He placed a hand on the wall next to it to make sure the wall itself hadn’t changed texture, but it still felt like it had before. The goop around the creature petrified if the cube’s light touched it, but not the wall itself.
Elach shuddered as he stepped back from the wall, a wet slapping and the screeching of metal on metal following him as he half-jogged back to the circle. He hadn’t even used up half of the charge from the cube, but he held onto it with shaking hands until it dimmed and cracked. The things were multiplying the longer he took to complete this. It was only a matter of time until they filled the room to the brim, leaving him no space to walk even with the protection of the cubes. The thought of getting trapped in the middle of a horde of steel monsters, unable to shove his way through a wall of petrified flesh as his cube slowly lost the last of it’s light flashed into Elach’s mind for the shortest of moments, making him fall to his knees and double over in anxiety as the strange attack did it’s work.
He’d never felt anything like that before. But before he could so much as wonder about what the hell just happened a loud snap, like a whip being cracked, started in the center of his mind and he blanked out. When it struck his headspace the sound dampened just the smallest amount, leaving Elach a little disoriented when he found himself standing and unable to focus on what had just happened. It was just like back at the inn, when…. Did something happen at the inn? Elach shook his head. It didn’t matter. When he blinked once more he had completely forgotten everything that he’d just felt, thought, and remembered; washed away like blood on the sand.
Elach placed down the cube that had somehow already lost all of it’s light in the direction he’d just finished exploring, moving another one out of the pile in the middle with his foot and picking up the one he’d been using as a backup to set out into the dark once more.
It took him two thirds of the circle’s radius and twenty cubes worth of light to find his first clue. It looked like a mixture between a spiderweb and a toddler’s scribbles, random swirls and loops that connected together to form the most bizarre looking net Elach had ever seen. It was engraved into the floor not fifteen paces away from the main circle, and as Elach kneeled down over it to get a better look he recognized a small section of the pattern. It was staring him in the face twice over; the cube he was using for light had the exact same tiny looping junction on one of its sides as the engraving below him. Elach moved to place the cube he was holding on it’s matching pattern, and as it touched the ground it was welded fast with grinding noise until it was indistinguishable from the rest of the floor, save that a small portion of the pattern now glowed white.
Elach picked up the other cube and looked back at the glowing safety circle and all the cubes within. Except there was no circle. There was just a pile of pinpricks. And with the sound of metal grinding on metal a circle etched itself around the scribble web, illuminating just like the other one had. Elach nearly dropped his cube in a panic, his fingers shaking as he gently placed the little light down in the circle. He needed to go back and get all the others. He needed to light up the rest of the pattern, and probably find another one or two to light up as well; this one looked like it would take twenty cubes at most to complete, and he’d counted eighty in total while he was rationing his light. So maybe not one or two. Three more, if they were this size.
Elach took one last look at the pattern as if he’d be able to memorize it, taking off his shirt to more easily carry all of the cubes at once. As long as the cube wasn’t directly touching his skin it wouldn’t let out as much light. Elach tied the bottom off so they couldn’t fall out even if he ran at full sprint, which was the plan at this point. He picked up the last cube, the bubble of light washing over him, and Elach dashed off to collect his puzzle pieces.
It wasn’t very hard to get the right cubes for the pattern. What it was, however, was long and frustration inducing. After what felt like close to an hour of meticulous working and searching, Elach was down to one piece left, and he held that same piece in his hand as he searched in the void for other patterns. He’d done the same with all the other pieces once he’d gotten past the three quarters mark, since seeing his stash of light growing scarcer and scarcer by the moment had made him desperate for every cube he could use. He’d found one more symbol just a few cubes before the one he was holding, a propagating jagged triangle like lightning coursing through broken glass, and he’d marked it with a cube he knew wouldn’t fit into the scribble web for later.
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“And with this, later is now.” Elach said to himself as he returned to the light, gathering up the rest of the cubes in his shirt sack save for one he’d use as a light. He then pressed the last cube whose light he’d just fully expended into its spot, sinking in just like all the others, and then the engraving flashed a crimson red.
The room started to shake as the circle rose out of the ground, and Elach stepped backwards to watch the new pillar take shape, a dark red stain against the void that grew taller and taller until it slammed into the ceiling with a sickening crunch. Shards of red crystal rained down on Elach, bouncing off of his skin and plinking against the metal floor as the pillar took on a deep crimson hue, shooting out a beam of light to the center of the room that he could see like a shadow on a shadow through the void. He turned away without waiting to see if more would happen; Elach was on a timer, and he knew he still had more to do. He’d only had seven hours to begin with, and a conservative estimate on how long he’d taken left him with less than half that remaining. He ignored the growing sounds of squishing and metal shrieking as he walked, settling down on the new symbol and dumping out his shirt full of cubes. He needed to find a match before he used up too much light.
Elach finished up the second circle, which was raised as an abyssal blue pillar, and found the third circle in just over thirty minutes. It was in a portion of the room he could have sworn he’d checked before, which meant it had only shown up after he started on the second symbol. So he’d have to check the entire room for the last one. Elach grumbled to himself in frustration as he fumbled through his bag of cubes, finding a match much quicker now that he was down to half as many as when he’d started. The new pattern was a series of interlocking circles with a single line slashed through at a forty five degree angle, and finding the correct pieces in general was simple. But finding a match for those pieces was an ordeal in and of itself. The pattern was so much more uniform than all of the others, so just finding the correct side for each cube was difficult, never mind where it matched on the pattern.
Teeth clamped down on Elach’s shoulder, and for a moment he didn’t recognize that something was trying to kill him. He dumbly raised a hand to his shoulder and felt at the warm goopy muzzle of a wolf-like Issi beast that was shaking its head in an attempt to tear his flesh from bone, and he tenderly caressed it for a moment before his body registered that it was under attack. He threw himself backwards to try and crush the beast with its own weight, and a crunch sounded that would have been far more satisfying if it hadn’t come with the loosening of steel jaws that set free a river of blood to drip down his shoulder. He sprung to his feet while clutching at his wounded shoulder, getting a good look at the beast that had attacked him.
It looked like the metal skeleton of an earthen aspected Issi wolf, it’s bones sporting knots and buds where branches or vines would have broken through a barken carapace if the creature was actually alive. Instead its form was filled in by the goop from the walls, but this stuff wasn’t clear like the other goop he’d seen. This stuff was tinged dark red like the first pillar he’d raised, and it bubbled and stretched in the light as if trying to resist it’s petrifying glare. The thing’s lips rumbled soundlessly as if it was trying to let out an intimidating growl before lunging at Elach once more, but this time it didn’t have the element of surprise. This was his every day for two weeks, twice a year, for six years. And that wasn’t including the times he’d gotten attacked outside of chaperoning kids to their wisps.
The wolf’s lunge went wide as Elach ducked to the side, and he reached down to get a grip on the thing’s leg. With a heave that would have barely stumbled the real thing Elach whirled the wolf onto its side. Then he stomped down on its front leg. Hard. It splintered so easily, like rotting wood, the leg detaching completely in a spray of goop. The wolf twisted around to bite Elach on the leg, but it’s fangs clanged against the clawed hand that remained lodged in his calf from earlier. As the beast reeled from it’s botched attack Elach stomped on it’s spine, his leg sinking up to the knee in goop as his foot broke clean through and split the wolf into two pieces. That would have been enough to kill a normal Issi beast, but then again he couldn’t stomp straight through a normal beast or shake one off if it bit into his shoulder. A trade off he’d accept any day of the week.
The wolf dragged it’s useless hind legs back into the void, it’s red goop giving it a very slight glow through the void. Elach had to squint and focus only on the small part of the room where he thought the wolf was to see it, and even then it was barely distinguishable against the nothing of the rest of the room. Elach stared unblinking into the void until he was sure the wolf wasn’t going to attack again any time soon, picking up the severed leg that it had left behind and scraping off the red goop to smear all over his shredded shoulder. The relief was immediate, but it didn’t seem to be healing his wound. It was like it was suspending the wound in time, waiting to be removed once he could get actual help.
The steel bones had the strength of pencils while they were engulfed by the goop, but when it had all been scraped off it was just like a normal steel rod. Elach placed the bone back down within arms’ reach as he went back to the symbol, now taking glances up and into the void every so often to watch for anything else that might attack him.