Nightmare Keep (Euphoria Online Book 2)

by Phil Tucker

  “No!” My scream was torn from my depths, my hands twisted into claws, but my anger was shot through with horror and self-loathing. I fought to stay on my feet. Dr. Avisham loomed over me, filled my field of vision.

  “Chris!” Lotharia’s voice came as if from far, far away. “Don’t listen to him, he’s—”

  Shadows swamped her and she was gone, swallowed whole like a pebble dropped into a black pond. I blinked, dumbfounded, and staggered back.

  “Now is your chance for redemption,” said Dr. Avisham. His tone was kindly. “Prove yourself the son you could have been. Return to her room. Take her hand. Let her know you’re there for her, even now.” His voice was low, relentless. “She’ll recognize you. Take comfort from you. Go on, Christopher. Return to your post.”

  “I…” I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Had I been holding a sword? Hadn’t there been a girl here moments ago? What had happened? I passed my hand over my face, and when I looked back up the lights shone brightly in the hallway. Nurses chattered at their stations. One pushed her cart past us, giving me a pitying smile as she went.

  “Come, Christopher.” Dr. Avisham reached out for my elbow. “You’re under a lot of pressure. It’s natural to have an episode like this. I was about to visit your mother. Let’s go check on her together.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. I let him guide me down the hallway. Something had been stolen from me. But he was right. I took a deep breath and stood straighter. Dr. Avisham had finally returned. I wanted to ask him about the painkillers, about raising the dosage so my mother could sleep better.

  I went to run my hand through my hair and then stopped as I saw a small, star-shaped scar in the middle of my palm. I frowned at it. Where had that come from?

  I stopped.

  Dr. Avisham took a few more steps, then turned back to me. “Christopher?”

  I rubbed my thumb over the scar. Where had it come from? A memory flashed through me. A knife punching down through the top of my hand, pinning it to a white tablecloth. The rattle of plates. A face snarling at me, eyes wild, a girl, a woman I was seeing – Brianna?

  “Christopher?” The doctor raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”

  I closed my hand into a fist. Brianna. Like a Japanese tea flower unfurling in a pot of hot water, my memories unfurled in the depths of my mind.

  I shook as they rolled through me. Brianna. Our break-up. Seattle. Championships. Justin’s phone call. The flight home. Applying to be a teacher. Euphoria.

  Euphoria.

  “Christopher?” Avisham raised an eyebrow. “Is there a problem?”

  I extended my hand and the Void Blade materialized within it once more. A moment’s concentration and my jeans and shirt were replaced by tunic and breeches, my Stone Cloak settling over my shoulders, my shadow belt snarling around my waist.

  I smiled at him, and he took a step back.

  “No problem,” I said. “Just getting my bearings. All good now.”

  His patrician’s face settled into a severe frown. “Now, this—”

  A quick check. My mana had gone up while I’d been under the delusion. Had it served as some kind of twisted meditation? No matter. I was back up to twenty mana. It would have to do.

  I dropped a Shroud and immediately Double Stepped behind Avisham. A moment of sweet, perfect embrace as I passed through the shadows, and then I was behind him, Void Blade swinging. I hit and he exploded with a roar into a mass of darkness even more impenetrable than my Shroud; it was as if I’d smashed a hammer into a great chimney filled with bats, which suddenly exploded out with a shattering roar.

  I leapt back and the darkness coalesced into a massive figure before me, back arching just under the ceiling, huge arms with multiple joints reaching for me, each finger a Ginsu blade.

  I completed my Double Step and appeared high above and behind Xylagothoth, activating Stunning Backstab as I hacked at his head. Somehow, he twisted around, reached up and caught hold of my Void Blade mid-swing, moving so fast I could barely follow. The Void Blade, insubstantial, should have passed right through his palm, but instead he stopped it cold, and where he held it the sword spat and hissed like water poured into a pan of hot oil.

  Its maw curled into a grin as I fell back down to the ground, then a fist came barreling at me out of nowhere. I barely had the wit to pull the Stone Cloak around me and activate it before it hit. The world shook as if I’d been hit by a battering ram, and my cloak shattered as I was lifted off the ground and sent flying out of my Shroud back into the bright hospital light to land and skid then roll perhaps ten yards along the shiny linoleum.

  I coughed, unable to breathe. My head spun and the wind had been completely knocked out of me. With effort, I rose to all fours. Xylagothoth emerged from the darkness. He was horrific. His head was part wasp, part liquid shadow, his mouth behind the mandibles impossibly wide like a serpent’s and filled with fangs. His body was Protean, shifting in shape as he approached, swelling with muscle one moment before growing slender and serpentine the next. No lower half to speak of; he trailed off into shadow below the waist.

  “Such a pity,” he said, Dr. Avisham’s voice impossibly incongruous as it issued from his maw. “I’d hoped to keep this neat and tidy. Still. Violence is its own reward.”

  I grunted and rose to my feet. The periapt’s warmth was flooding me, and with a grunt I summoned another Shroud around the monster and followed it up with Grasping Shadows and a set of Ebon Tendrils.

  A horde of arms reached up from the ground to grasp at Xylagothoth, clasping at his shadowy extremities and snarling him in their grip like wisps of hair, while the great shadowy tentacles wrapped around his waist, overlapping each other like the coils of massive anacondas.

  I sprinted forward. Xylagothoth was ready for me, unperturbed by my bindings, and he spread his arms as if to welcome me into an embrace. I activated Expert Leaper and jumped up onto the corridor wall, where I then activated Ledge Runner so that my feet found purchase on the railing that ran along the wall’s length. Not losing speed, I sprinted at a forty-five-degree angle along the wall

  This at least took the bastard by surprise. He tried to turn, but my tentacles tightened their grasp; in annoyance, he shredded them with his claws, but by then I’d reached him. A burst of will and my old friend the Death Dagger materialized in my hand. I leapt across the hallway right before him and slammed the Dagger into one faceted eye.

  Xylagothoth screamed and reared back, but I was past him, leaping into a somersault and hitting the ground where I turned on a dime and pulled my Death Dagger from his eye socket back into my hand. I activated Uncanny Aim, locked my silver thread on the wrist of the hand that held my Void Blade, and hurled the dagger.

  It flew straight and true and lodged itself into the monster’s flesh. His hand spasmed open and dropped my sword. I was right there, sliding forward on my knees to snatch it out of the air and then spinning as I passed under his arm to cut straight through his torso.

  Xylagothoth roared and his entire form shifted, losing coherence only to reform as a massive black octopoid thing, looking half like a kraken from those old woodcuts and half like an ogre. Three tentacles wrapped around me with terrifying speed, lifted me up off the ground and slammed me so hard into the wall that I crunched into it, sinking through drywall and breaking a wooden stud.

  He wasn’t done. Even as my armor ring caused a nimbus of blue light to flare around me, Xylagothoth extended his tentacles, ramming me along the wall, shattering through studs and doorframes, splintering the drywall in an explosive roar. I closed my eyes as the pain began to overwhelm me, the periapt burning hot upon my chest. Shadow belt, I realized. Just enough juice left—

  I activated it and immediately became insubstantial, falling through Xylagothoth’s tentacles and the wall itself into an empty hospital room. My sense of self stopped my fall at ground level, but then I took
a deep breath and dove down. A flash of pipes, darkness, concrete and rebar and then I was one floor down, popping out into a new hospital room. My belt ran out of power and I collapsed to the floor, gasping in pain and shock.

  This room was barely formed. The walls were bland and uniform beige. A gray panel was affixed in the upper right corner, meant perhaps to be a TV but without any features whatsoever. A large rectangle held the position of the bed, and recesses along the far wall indicated where the windows should have gone.

  A work in progress, perhaps. A stand-in.

  The ceiling exploded as a dozen tentacles surged down toward me, and I dove out through the doorway into the hall beyond. The tentacles were like heat-seeking missiles, curving around and shooting out through the door in my direction. I hacked and parried with the Void Blade, chopping the suckered heads off the tentacles, giving ground, but they were too fast, too many: one curled around my ankle, another snagged my left arm, a third wrapped around my thigh.

  A hail of icy shards burst down from the ceiling, each the size of a playing card and wickedly sharp; they scored deep lesions into the tentacles, shattered against the floor, and in a matter of moments dozens of wicked cuts had stalled Xylagothoth’s momentum. His tentacles loosened their grip, perhaps in something akin to shock, and I screamed and swept the Void Blade through them all, severing them in one fell stroke.

  The tentacles collapsed to the ground and the stumps withdrew. Lotharia arose from behind the nurse’s station, eyes wide.

  “Hell, yes!” I leapt over the counter, wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a kiss. Her eyes widened even further and for a moment all the insanity and tumult seemed to freeze, my heart rising as if it would burst, the sensation of her lips against mine indescribably delicious - and then I broke away, grabbing her hand and sprinting down the hall, hauling her after me. “Where to? How do we get the hell out of here?”

  “Outside,” she yelled. “I think – if we can make it—”

  The ceiling before us caved in with a pulverizing roar, dust and wiring and panels raining down as Xylagothoth fell through into a crouch, having changed now into something like an Alien xenomorph, all wickedly-oiled carapace and with a dozen kraken tentacles whipping around him.

  “Lotharia….” His hiss was like nails down a chalkboard.

  Her answer was to cause ice to sheathe her torso, crackling and spreading down her thighs and across her upper arms.

  I backed up, trying not to cough from the dust. “We’re not making much headway here. Got any ideas?”

  Xylagothoth prowled toward us, using its thick tentacles to keep its body off the ground, plaster and cement crunching beneath each broad sucker.

  “We need to get out,” said Lotharia. “Out of the hospital.”

  “All right,” I said. “Head to one of the rooms. Weaken the wall so we can punch our way out.”

  “Done.” She backed away a half-dozen steps, then turned and ran.

  “All right,” I said, slashing at the air a couple of times with the Void Blade. “Just you and me. I can do this. No problem. No sweat.”

  Xylagothoth screamed and burst forward, springing off its tentacles. I leapt back, dropped a Shroud and summoned a Ebon Tendrils which arrested its passage. Down to three mana. Xylagothoth crouched, ready to throw itself forward, and I dug deep: I summoned another set of Ebon Tendrils so that four tentacles intertwined with its own, holding it fast.

  The monster hurled itself forward, but it was like punching at a rubber mat – the Tendrils stretched, then hauled it back into place. It did this a couple of times, then stilled. I continued to back away. Was it giving up? Some new trick?

  Its body was blacker than my Shroud’s shadows, and I could make out wisps of black steam coming off its carapace. My Tendrils writhed as if in pain.

  “Lotharia?” I didn’t dare take my eyes away from Xylagothoth. “You ready?”

  “Almost!”

  Xylagothoth deepened its crouch, then let loose a horrific roar that resonated more in my chest than I heard with my ears. It surged forward, tearing through all four of my Tendrils and exploding toward me in a torrent of slavering shadow. It was like being hit by a subway train. I was bowled right off my feet, engulfed as if by a wave of oil, carried with punishing speed down the rest of the hallway and into the hospital room.

  I caught a flash of Lotharia turning toward me, flinging out her hand. I reached, stretched, and managed to snag her wrist a second before Xylagothoth slammed me into the wall with such force I should have been crushed into jelly.

  Instead, the wall gave way, blowing out in a mass of sandy blocks, and Lotharia and I flew out into the void.

  19

  We rolled out onto one of the massive silver strands, our momentum arrested by its stickiness so that we came to an abrupt stop, entangled with each other, gasping for air and struggling to rise to our feet.

  “Wait, wait,” said Lotharia as I fought to break free. “It’s gone. Look.”

  The silver strand behind us extended perhaps sixty yards and then forked. There was no sign of the hospital; of a shattered wall; of Xylagothoth in hot pursuit.

  “What? Where did—where did everything go?”

  Lotharia blew her hair out of her face and scooted out from under me. I obligingly rolled off, and we sat there, facing each other on an impossible strand of webbing suspended in infinite darkness.

  “It was never really there,” she said. Her tone was careful, as if she were working out the intricacies for herself even as she spoke. “Xyla created that trap in your mind. He lulled you into it and then tried to use your own memories and weakness to hold you. Once you broke free? The trap simply stopped existing.”

  I pressed a hand to my temple. “Wait. Then how did you get inside my memories? How did he…?”

  Lotharia gave me an apologetic shrug. “I don’t understand most of this. But it was only through your memories that I could escape. I was trapped, like, three layers deeper than we are now. Really close to him, almost at the core of this place. When he rose up to enter your mind, I was able to ride along with him and enter the trap as an independent agent.”

  “This is some weird shit,” I said. “And before? When we spoke to you, and you were all weird and cryptic?”

  Lotharia grimaced. “That was the best I could do to communicate directly with you. That was… not enjoyable. It felt like a really bad trip. Half the time I couldn’t even tell if you were there.” She shuddered and hugged herself. “How long have I been here?”

  “A couple of days now,” I said. “I’m sorry. I did everything I could to come as quickly as possible. But this team of high-level mercenaries showed up, and the keep itself…”

  She scooted forward and reached out to touch my cheek. “I know. I know you did. I don’t blame you.”

  My throat grew tight. Her face was right before mine. Had I really given her a kiss in the middle of that fight? Why had I been so bold then, and now felt all locked up? “Lotharia…”

  “Thank you, Chris. I don’t know how much more of that nightmare I could have taken. Being in there with Xyla. Having my thoughts twisted, my perceptions warped…” She trailed off and dropped her hand. “I think he was trying to infuse me into the keep. Spread my consciousness into the walls. And it was working. I was becoming… I don’t know how to put it. Like, you know how we all have a sense that tells us where our body is? An awareness of where our hands and feet are at all times? That sense was taking in the keep. I was spreading through the walls, growing ever thinner…” She shuddered and looked away.

  Resolve hardened within me. “It’s over now.”

  “We’re still in here.”

  “Then let’s get the hell out. Lagash was… where’d she go?” I rose to my knees. There was no sign of the orc. For that matter, I was back in my own body. Which meant… I didn’t know what th
at meant. “How do we find Xyla? You said we have to go three levels deeper?”

  “No. You broke free of his trap, which means you have the greatest clarity right now of any time since you entered the keep. Now’s the time to strike him. He’s helpless if you can avoid his snares. Come on.”

  We rose to our feet and hand in hand marched down the silver branch. Lotharia was right: the web did look different. Instead of endlessly splitting and fading away into the void, I saw a pattern now that had eluded me before, a circularity that homed in on what had to be the center of the web.

  “What is he? Xyla, I mean?”

  Lotharia gave an uneasy one-shouldered shrug. “He’s… he’s not a boss. I thought he was at first. But this – all of this – isn’t a quest. It’s one big trap. And Xyla is the keep’s… consciousness, maybe?” She walked a little closer to me. “When I think of my time with him, it’s like a fever dream. I can remember impressions, random images, but there’s no coherency to it. I remember being awed at Xyla’s complexity. And sad for him, weird as that was. I think he’s been going mad in here without someone to work on. Someone to trap. The solitude’s been driving him crazy.”

  “Is that why he took you into his core?”

  “I think so. He could have just bound me here on his web, but… something about the necrotic energy I was infused with, or my personality – I don’t know. He brought me down to his center of awareness and… I can’t describe it. Read me? Absorbed me? I was starting to meld with him, or parts of me were, or parts of me were breaking off and entering him, leaving me…” She broke off.

  I squeezed her hand. “You hung in there. You fought him off.”

  “No,” she said. “I was defeated immediately. It was like trying to hold back a tidal wave with my hands. Impossible. But he didn’t kill me, or erase me. He wanted me alive, and that’s the part that reached out to you. That’s… me, I suppose.” She looked down at herself, then stopped. “But what if this isn’t all of me? What if I lost parts of myself to him and I don’t even know it?”