Chapter 063: Bear

I woke up in the pitch black darkness, lying on the ground while entangled with something squishy, whose shapes I knew well enough to recognize even in that position. Simea. She didn’t dematerialize so she was obviously alive.

I tried to disentangle, but to no avail. Ugh. Finally I pinched her in a rather vulnerable place, which woke her up… and cost me a bit of Inhuman Resilience, because she accidentally struck my face with an elbow.

I guess I deserved it.

“It’s me, Avhar, don’t fight me!” She stopped struggling.

“Where are we?”

Well, we fell down into darkness full of magical power. I knew of only a single place like that beneath the Stone Throne, unless you hit the Labyrinth. But I doubt that we fell for almost two kilometers without a scratch.

This is going to be a pain.

***

After we stood up, I called my familiar. The magnificent feast I subjected him to when I abandoned my old hexes and unneeded skills elevated him into a Silver I daemon ‘Jewel of the White Sky’, that according to the description meant that it was a being born under the White Sun, that began to ‘reflect’ the ‘White Light’.

I fucking hate cryptic descriptions.

It looked like a marquise cut white jewel. Not only did he now have several mean hexes that could cause major pain to any spellcaster (including an ability to shut down a low level spell while also DISALLOWING ITS USER TO USE IT AGAIN WITHIN 24h), he also projected a lot of light. Good for illuminating the place.

Once we managed to take a look around, we discovered that we had fallen into a torture room, filled with various torture implements - including an iron maiden.

Ugh. There was a scent of the Pentagram. It seemed to come from them. Agony. Again. Why didn’t I feel it when I was outside?

“Uhm, I don’t think I like the decor.” Simea commented. “I think we should go.”

I wasn’t even in a mood to joke about ‘playing’ around with the equipment for a while. Ugh. This place is giving me the creeps. Fucking Pentagram. They would ruin even the best sex dungeon.

Then I noticed more details. Weird details. The iron maiden was partially closed, and inside… wait a fucking minute, is that a rather colourful… TEDDY BEAR?

What the heck is going on.

It took me a while to notice ALL the details. Rather bad lighting didn’t help (I’m sorry Jewel, but that’s the truth). Some of the torture items were… colourful. Iron maiden’s surface was covered in painting full of lovely, cartoon-like looking animals playing with children.

I don’t like the implications.

“Ok, now I’m really sure we have to leave.” Simea saw the same thing as me. And probably had similar thoughts.

We found the door and proceed into the corridor, the Jewel floating slightly above our heads.

***

We walked through the corridor for a while. There was a complete lack of doors for like fifty meters. Yeah, this certainly doesn’t make sense from an architectural point of view. We are obviously in a different dimension. There are a lot of them, some being small domains of the Dark written into the Light, others being a place in the Dark merely connected with the Light.

Shereazhyra’s domain was the latter type, while this was most likely the former. After all, we ‘fell’ underground before showing up here. Which means moving through the Light. Unless we unconsciously passed through a portal while falling down… but no, that wouldn’t make sense, as you could also access the dimension normally. It was almost unheard off for a hidden dimension like that to have more than entrance.

I quickly checked Nexus. Offline. So, Nexus doesn’t extend to different dimensions. Good to know.

However it was, we were in trouble. Such dimensions in most cases had some sort of ruler, analogous to what that ruin elemental was for the fortress above. Worst case scenario was that we would have to fight it to get out. Though even then, there had to be an unblocked way out (because every place had to have a way out and in, such logic was a natural law for the Dark). But as long as we were far away from it, a sufficiently strong being could twist the corridors however it wanted. Our points of view only anchored Reality locally.

It could also be an abandoned place. It happened sometimes. A lich builds his own small fortress of Death in the Dark, gets murdered by adventurers seeking riches, but for example Bonehead (Imperial God of Undeath) decides that he has a business in keeping the place in existence so it stays. But I could feel some sort of overarching but faint presence in this place, so I was almost sure that it wasn’t the case.

Finally a door. The corridor ended with them. Simea entered first, and…

Oh. My. God.

This time it was better lit. So I could see a torture room designed to look like a kindergarten. Toys, pastel colours, even the sharp edges seemed covered in something sponge-like that made it less visible (even if still deadly).

Alright, this is BEYOND weird (Beyond, heh). It’s so idiotically crazy that I’m almost sure that the damnable explanation that comes to my mind (magic of Agony, torture rooms, children, etc.) is wrong. But…

The door on the other side opened. A lone Torturer came. So, daemons of Agony.

Simea was about to leap at him, but I grabbed her at the last moment.

The Torturer lacked arms. And was obviously barely walking straight. 5% of HP. He made a few steps, before its legs gave up. It fell on the ground, losing rest of his HP and dissolving.

What the…

My jaw dropped to the ground when another thing came inside, walking through the doors the Torturer used.

It was a massive teddy bear. Two and a half meters at least, almost reaching the ceiling. An old school one, with eyes made of buttons, and some reddish bow as his only clothing. It held another Torturer by the neck, in his giant, plushy hand. That one was severely lacking in terms of body mass as well, and had merely 3% of HP left.

Mr. Cuddles

Unique

Category: Anthropogenic

Type: Daemon/Wild

Threat Grade: Platinum I

A daemon ruling over the dungeons beneath the Stone Throne Castle.

Oh God, an anthropogenic daemon.

I used my hand to silence Simea (no noise, NO NOISE DAMMIT) and immediately called off the Jewel. Mr. Cuddles seemed to have gotten bored by the wriggling remnant of the Pentagram daemon and simply squashed its head in his other hand.

Then he walked past us and disappeared behind the door we came through.

I stopped silencing Simea.

“What the heck was that?!” Yes, understandable.

“An anthropogenic daemon.” I answered quickly. “Normally you need a lot of belief to manifest a daemon, but sometimes… sometimes it isn’t the case. When a single person creates a daemon on its own, we call them anthropogenic daemons. Though it’s almost completely random, as there are hundreds of factors included.”

How could it be here? This… this actually starts making sense. Puzzles are falling in their places. I’ll still need a while to figure details out, but...

“Factors? Like?” Simea was obviously in need of some additional answers.

“Like, the creator being a person with a heightened connection to the Dark… which means more potent imagination. Children or madmen, in most cases. The correct alignment of stars. The existence of ley lines beneath you. Having a Chosen One in your family tree. Being in a place with its natural laws sufficiently disturbed, in most cases by a lot of suffering and pain, though anomalies can work as well.” Unfortunately, the latter wasn’t the case here.

I had a single explanation for it. Quite terrifying, but I still had to figure out details to be sure I haven’t missed anything.

“We need to move.” I said to Simea, interrupting her thinking. “It will be back soon. It’s probably blind, as otherwise the place would be better lit, but I’m almost sure it will detect us using magic. Or any daemon.” Thankfully I called off Jewel before it detected us.

***

This place was a twisted labirynt, filled with cute looking torture rooms.

“You have a theory?” Simea whispered to me after maybe ten minutes of wandering around in darkness.

“More or less.” I answered her. “I’m 75% sure that the old lord of the Stone Throne served Pentagram. Agony, most likely. And this dungeon was his playground, where he tortured people to death for fun.” All Agony worshipers were the same. All of them. With exception of those that preferred to be on the receiving side.

Something seemed to hit the nearby door with great strength from the other side. I thought I could hear a muffled scream. Another daemon caught by Mr. Cuddles?

Jesus, I almost had a heart attack. After my heart calmed, we moved further.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

“So, what happened to the Throne?” Simea whispered, urging me to continue my explanations.

“Well, one part of this world I really love is that karma here is laser guided.” I chuckled silently. “When you are a bad guy, you are going to pay for that. No exceptions. Sometimes it’s instant, sometimes it will take an eternity and will happen only after a good outcome of the End Times. But you will. In this case…” I shrugged. “I can’t be sure of details. It’s too late to find any. But… either the Lord’s atrocities brought the attention of something terrible, making most of the inhabitants die and for him resort to desperate measures… or he planned to open a dimensional tear into the Rift, the domain of the Agony. In both cases, something went horribly wrong. Quite possible that one of the Gods of the lightside threw a wrench into his plan.”

I didn’t have to add that opening such a tear would be tantamount to apocalypse. Regional one, but still. Sooner or later locals would push the daemons back, but I doubt that a lot would be left from Vanvyra and the surrounding countryside at this point. Heck, even Ambryxis might fall, at least unless Tyranny of Ashkar, Imperium or Northern Aevaria would decide to bomb the area with archspells.

“Ok, so I presume that this wrench was the… Mr. Cuddles?” She said. I, in the same time, stopped suddenly and chuckled. Oh boy, I think I know the culprit.

“Well, not quite. I think that it’s Inri’s work.” I could tell she looked at me weird, even in darkness. I know her too well at this point.

“Inri? How’s local Jesus connected to that?”

“Well, Robinson’s approach to God is slightly weird and represented in Inri. Or the other way around, if that world’s real. It can be summed up to ‘God is really into humility and loves trolling people with it.’ So, you know, Jews expected God to return to them as a great king and conqueror, but instead he came as a son of a carpenter. They expected him to destroy Rome and make them great again, but instead he made the old Jewish Laws no longer necessary amongst his flock, and his followers converted the pagans to his faith. They expected him to be, well, God, their king on earth, but he let himself be crucified.” I stopped for a while to make her catch up. “Now, Inri is pretty much this vision of God personified. He can go all flashy, and he often does. But most of the time, he absolutely loves such… humiliating irony.”

Inri had Chosen Ones but they were even more rare than average. Few in written history. I don’t think there have been any since the last days of Apostasy, when Alyah the Lightbringer helped liberate inrithian countries from the local, admittedly less genocidal decemvire equivalents.

He still had a lot of Saints, monotheistic equivalent of Demigods. But rather than few powerful heroes and descendants of Gods, they were mostly people that simply lived a decent life or got willingly martyred for him. Kings and war heroes were surprisingly underrepresented.

“And?” Simea didn’t jab me, probably to avoid me suddenly jumping around in fear that I was attacked. What a lovely woman.

“And there was a child here. A child who had a teddy bear called Mr. Cuddles. Caught and imprisoned in this death maze, it imagined a mighty defender. One strong without any comparison, and able to defend the child from the pain. When the ritual was close to fruition and the dungeons collapsed into an alternate dimension, the place was filled with so much magic that his beliefs ended up warping Reality and made Mr. Cuddles ascend to daemonhood. Thwarting a localized apocalyptic scheme of Pentagram with nothing but a child’s love of its teddy bear sounds exactly like Inri’s modus operandi.”

I was interrupted by a loud crashing noise. We entered large, pitch black hall and it wasn’t until the sound came that we realized we almost walked into ambush.

Three torturers waited there, probably wanting to attack us once we got closer. They were, however, unaware that Mr. Cuddles had snuck upon them. That is, at least until he suddenly ripped off one of their heads. The others tried to lash him, but he was invulnerable to the pain. He managed to grab one of them by the hand and pull him closer. The torturer screamed… and then with one, swift motion, Mr. Cuddles grabbed him by his jaw and ripped his head of.

It flew all the way up to us. It almost hit my face.

The torturer wasn’t finished, so Mr. Cuddles used his hand to grab him by the leg. I understood what he was planning a second before it happened.

One arm on the torturer’s left arm but also grabbing his body. His second arm held the torturer’s right leg. Then He raised him up… and pulled him in both directions at once.

Ouch.

The third Torturer fled. Mr. Cuddles ran after him.

“Anthropodaemons are weird. Period.” I sighed. “Well, since the kid probably spent a lot of time here, his vision of Mr. Cuddles was ‘written’ him into this particular place. Into the dungeons of the Stone Throne. Because of that, rather than changing into Rift’s antechamber after the ritual concluded, it ended up a contested ground. Mr. Cuddles is to them what the ruin elemental was to the ruins above, and because of that actually defeating him is… not that easy. His presence probably suppressed the dimensional tear itself, so only relatively weak daemons come. Since he is a goddamn Platinum, it’s nothing he can’t handle.”

His presence also changed the torturous decor into one in between what Agony intended and a kindergarten. If he started losing ground for some reason, the place would slip deeper and deeper into the torture part. Conversely, if Agony’s influence started diminishing, it would start changing into a supernatural kindergarten.

Anthropodaemons had their own procedures. When their maker was still alive, they made for perfect familiars, absolutely loyal and attuned to the point that they had a substantially larger manapool compared to normal daemons. So the best idea was to bring its creator (especially if it was a child, madmen were more troublesome) under a magicians tutelage. Such people were overrepresented amongst archmagicians and simple magicians with great achievements.

Here it wasn’t the case, as the kid’s soul was already in the afterlife. I had no idea which one, but inrithian Paradise was the most probable place. Inri generally took responsibility during such heists. It wasn’t hard to have the child dream few times of a ‘friend’ that introduced him to inrithism enough to qualify for the inrithian… and thus, to the afterlife.

His body was probably still laying here somewhere, in the very middle of the place, serving as an anchor for Mr. Cuddles. He still defended him from harm. According to procedures (at least imperial ones, I had no idea for the local approach) we should, if possible, defeat and bind the daemon into something, and then lay him to rest together with its maker.

Procedures, however, were mostly general guidance rather than strict set of rules. As long as the anthropodaemon wasn’t a threat, it was common sense for people to leave him be and at best monitor if possible. Here it was even more troublesome, since making a proper grave for the kid’s body would probably break the anchor, and without Mr. Cuddles’ constant battle, Agony would retake the beachhead and unleash an invasion into Reality.

Locals might have been major dicks, but unleashing Pentagram daemons on them was an overkill. Especially one of Agony. Besides, there were also innocents, not to mention slaves. So it was a major nope.

“We should get out.” I concluded the talk. “As soon as possible. Without the kid to differentiate between friends and foes, Mr. Cuddles is probably treating everything that moves to be the enemy that he has to protect his maker from.”

Easier said than done. Especially when the place keeps changing.

If only we had a thread to lead to us to our destination…

***

We were wandering for an hour or two already. More and more Agony servants. Torturers and Pain Adherents. We ran into Mr. Cuddles a few times, which let us observe his breathtaking achievements in the difficult art of making fear personified flee from battle.

They were probably very busy trying to figure out where exactly the kid’s body was. There was no use fighting against Mr. Cuddles, since he was simply too strong. The problem was that his control over local Reality was strong as well, and whenever the enemy seemed to get close to the child, it just so happened that Mr. Cuddles was there as well.

Daemons are patient. The being commanding them - probably some higher ranked Agony daemon, an Eviscerator or even weaker Executioner - was going to keep sending more and more of them into the breach. Forever, if he had to. They were merely banished back into the Rift, so what’s the problem? If Mr. Cuddles makes a mistake, however…

I don’t understand one thing. Why is Pentagram so strong in the area? This isn’t natural. Having a cult here and there was normal, stupid people were everywhere, but such a daemonic presence in Reality? For some reason the area surrounding Ambryxis had them massively overrepresented. It didn’t matter where we went, we kept tripping over those assholes. Tyrant’s Hold. Descent. Most likely Black Woods, especially if Nyrathzm really was a Pentagram corrupted former archdaemon of Locust. Red Mist and her bunch of crazies. Now this.

Normally there shouldn’t be much more of them in an area the size of Dragonspine Mountains. But as far as I knew, Starfall Tower (another anomaly near Ambryxis) had their presence as well, and recently people started running into stray Pentagram daemons in the countryside. It was likely a side effect of Red Mist’s Revelation that strengthened the preexisting presence, but…

I have a strange feeling that I’m on to something… but I lack the information required to figure the truth. Maybe… what if the Overtyrant’s given mission - that he relayed through post-Revelation Leria’s feelings - to discover the truth behind the Descent and Black Woods was connected to that?

The more I think about it, the more I’m sure that there is some terrible secret connected to Ambryxis. Why would Overtyrant want us to discover the truth about the presence of Pentagram in the region BEFORE slaying this deity?

“I would kick you in the groin for overthinking again… if I knew where it was. Could you light the place up a little, dearest husband?” Ugh.

“How do you even know I’m overthinking if you can’t see me?”

“I don’t need to see you. If you are silent for ten minutes and are not reading book, you are obviously doing this.” Loud sigh. “Just… tell me what you think off, ok? After we got out.”

“Alright.” A little brainstorm should be helpful. Though I doubt we’ll figure anything out.

***

Curiously enough, it wasn’t that long before the cavalry arrived.

Damn, I was never more happy to see Leria.

“Oh, there you are.” Leria obviously commanded the rest while I was gone. “How goes your sweet little date? The interior design looks… interesting, I must say.”

Very fucking funny.

“It’s a long story. Seriously, let’s get the fuck out, preferably before we run into murderous, platinum-ranked daemonic teddy bears. Again.” She looked at me like she started questioning my sanity. “Long story. Lead the way.”

***

After we got out - thanks to Leria’s device for anomaly navigation - we had a moment to catch up.

It turned out that Leria decided to stay true to her image as my elder sister. And to her image as elder sister of us all. Not exactly believing our ability to stay alive for more than twenty seconds without her guidance, she paid some money for locator items. That she then hid in our backpacks and pouches or whatever non-supernatural storage equipment we had.

According to her, to avoid the temptations of violating our privacy, she had the localization device that was used to track the rest hidden. Normally she stored it with the Hold’s inrithian priest (that was supposed to question her each time she wanted to use it). While on the long missions like that…

Heh. I’m not even angry. That’s precisely the type of constructive paranoia I actually encourage. While it went crazy after the whole in the ground had swallowed us, they figured out that we had to fall into the dungeons beneath the Stone Throne. And after they entered it, the item caught the scent.

The rest was just finding us. We weren’t that far from the entrance, so they didn’t have to go far. They didn’t even run into any Agony daemons. Nor into Mr. Cuddles. It actually wasn’t easy to persuade them that it existed, but since I was an intelligent person I expected that, so I snapped a photo.

I also shared my insight into what exactly happened in this place.

Then we searched the place. The cult retreated, the adventurers did so as well. They were probably waiting outside, slowly starting to think that the Golem won after all, since we hadn’t gone back for a while now.

We had a while. So we quickly searched the rooms surrounding the now inactive teleportation circle.

Bingo.

There was a treasury. They managed to evacuate most of it, I could literally see the outlines of coffers filled with money that laid in the room long enough to be a surrounded by dust. They took it out. But… some of the money was scattered around. Money and small jewels.

Perfectly round coins. Silver, but some of them were also made of electrum. On the detail level of modern XXI century coins on Earth (at least in those countries that still used them).

An imperial dragon on one side, various symbols on the other. Imperium continued the ancient kynevian tradition of making commemorative emissions. Bronze and iron coins were something else, but silver and up were already quite important and a part of imperial propaganda.

Some of them showed the coronation of former or current imperators, some had symbols of the Imperial Army regiments that did something heroic and got rewarded with special commemorative coins. Others commemorated the ascensions of certain important ministers, adventurer feats and so on. All of them works of art.

Yes, so I’m now almost sure that Imperium is backing the Hand of Freedom after all. And we are interrupting them, whatever they were planning to do.

“What do we do?” Simea asked good question.

Alright, let’s just make sure this money is put to good use, rather than helping Ambryxis.

“Steal everything that isn’t nailed to the wall.” I answered. “And then find hammers and take the nailed stuff too. And let’s do it quickly, preferably before the rest get their courage back and find us stealing stuff. “