by Turtle Me
Nothing happened, but when I placed both feet on the same square, the entire platform trembled before it suddenly spun ninety degrees. I was now on the left side of the square rather than the front side.
“Woah,” Regis muttered.
I carefully stepped on the square to my left, the one that was closer to the stairs leading up to the next platform. However, as soon as both feet were planted, the entire platform rotated counterclockwise, moving me away from the exit again.
“It’s a… puzzle,” I said, stepping on another square. “Like some sort of two-dimensional Rubik's Cube.”
The platform turned counterclockwise again, and the more I tried to get closer to the stairs, the farther away I was led.
Minutes easily bled into hours as we stepped, failed, and retraced our steps before starting again.
“Forward, left, left, forward, right—no I think it was left?” Regis muttered.
“Shut up! You’re making this harder,” I snapped as I hopped through the memorized path until we were just three squares away from the staircase.
I stepped on the square adjacent to the one I was already on, spinning me clockwise, but the move after that led to a dead route.
“Damn it,” I cursed, tracing back my path a few steps to hopefully find a different path.
“Can’t you just jump this distance?” Regis asked, his gaze shifting from me to the stairs.
I stared blankly at my companion. “Is that allowed?”
“You can get to the stairs easily from here,” he replied. “And generally, the stairs have always been safe.”
I thought for a moment and realized we could be stuck here for hours—if not days—on this giant spinning chessboard.
Imbuing aether into my legs, I jumped.
The distance was easy to clear, but as I descended toward the flight of stairs, a shadow suddenly loomed over me.
It was the entire platform.
My eyes widened as the blue platform flipped. I was no longer standing on top of the platform; I was underneath it, falling into the endless sky.
“Arthur!” Regis cried, falling alongside me despite his ability to fly.
I flailed my arms desperately in the air, scrambling to grab hold of something in the purple void. I tried to gather aether once more in my palm but to no avail—I didn’t have nearly enough to launch an explosive attack like earlier.
There was nothing either of us could do as we plummeted downward and the platform grew farther and farther away, until it finally faded out of sight.
269
Cornered
Panic began bubbling up in the pit of my stomach as the platform disappeared from view. The idea of simply falling forever, tumbling through an endless sky until my body consumed the last of my aether and began to eat itself from the inside and I withered to nothing, powerless to do anything but keep falling… it was, perhaps, the most horrific ending I could consider, not least so because there was nothing I could do about it.
I remembered the helpless void that I had trapped myself in before waking up in this dungeon. The sheer numbness and darkness that had swallowed my mind and soul sent chills down my spine at the mere recollection of it. This time, it seemed unlikely I would simply wake up somewhere else…
The impact of something hard slamming into my back snapped me out of my existential terror. An otherworldly surface glowed a soft white underneath me. As my mind tried to process what had happened, there was a dull thump from behind me.
“Sonova—”
“Regis! Are you okay?”
My companion swaggered back up into the air, hovering a few feet above the glowing white platform. “I don’t know… but for someone incorporeal, a lot of shit sure can touch me in this godforsaken place,” Regis groused.
I cracked a smile, happy to see my companion complain… and even happier to have solid ground beneath me. We had landed on another platform. Only one set of stairs led away, and it ended in a familiar red glow.
I stared dumbfounded at the view ahead, struck with a sudden sense of déjà vu. “Regis. Please tell me you’re thinking the same thing I am.”
“I’m trying not to think at all,” Regis grumbled. “This place makes my head hurt. I’ll let you do all the thinking, oh mighty Master.” With that, my companion, weapon of ages, flicked his flames, much like how Ellie swished her hair when she was upset with me, and vanished into my hand.
Letting out a sigh, I stepped onto the platform. Almost immediately, I felt the sensation of aether being sucked out of me as the glowing red platform stretched out in length, just as it had before.
“I’m not even surprised,” I muttered, trudging forward.
I coalesced aether into my left hand this time, limiting the rate at which aether left my body as I neared the staircase.
‘Easy,’ Regis scoffed.
I stopped a few steps short of the staircase.
‘Wait, no. Please don’t tell me… ’
“Where else am I going to find an environment that naturally pulls aether out of me?” I asked, smirking. “Besides, didn’t you just say it was easy?”
Despite my previous experience launching a destructive blast of aether from the palm of my hand, the second time wasn’t any easier. In fact, because I had focused primarily on gathering aether into my right hand, I had an even harder time with my left.
Needless to say, I walked up the staircase to the next platform with a shattered left hand, a near-empty aether core… and a big smile on my face.
Regis flew just ahead of me. My companion had shrunken yet again, and his flames blazed angrily. He was muttering a constant string of unintelligible curses.
I knew there could be dangerous psychological repercussions to the sort of self-harm I had been forced to engage in since waking up in the dungeon. I wasn’t a masochist, whatever Regis thought, but I couldn’t afford to spend a decade mastering aether the way I had done with mana. I needed to find every shortcut, no matter how dangerous, or I’d never get strong enough to save my family and release Sylvie from the rainbow-colored stone.
Shaking away these introspective thoughts, I stepped onto the orange platform. I dodged the invisible reptile-centaur beast once more, but rather than making the mistake of killing it and letting it disappear, I pinned it down and absorbed its aether first.
An additional benefit to expanding my aether passages was that I was no longer limited to consuming aether using my mouth. I could now absorb directly through my hands, retaining a little dignity and poise.
Stepping up onto the blue platform, recovered and brimming with energy, I patiently solved the spinning platform puzzle. Having already navigated most of the puzzle, it was much simpler the second time. The key was keeping myself calm and not letting my frustration overwhelm my sense of caution.
My heart finally calmed after stepping onto the staircase leading to the next platform. The memory of the ground flipping out from beneath me and sending me down into the void had been seared into my mind, and I was glad to temper that fear with success.
“Please let this next one be the exit,” Regis prayed, his horns practically drooping. I shared my companion’s anxiety. The surreal nature of the puzzle zone was much more taxing than the straightforward fight for survival we’d faced in the jungle and endless plains of blue grass.
The platform was about twice as big as those we’d already crossed, and emitted an ominous black light.
I pushed aside my worries, my hand subconsciously reaching for the bag carrying Sylvie’s stone. Despite the state she was in, my bond had become an anchor for me, a constant reminder of what my goals were.
Steeling myself, I stepped onto the black platform with Regis following close behind. As soon as my feet were both planted on the glowing black surface, the entire platform began to thrum deeply.
I scanned my surroundings, my senses on full alert. The thrumming grew louder, then louder again, a deafening vibration that s
hook my bones and made my temples ache. Just as I thought I couldn’t possibly listen to it for another second, hundreds of black wires shot out from all four edges of the square platform, crisscrossing each other to form a fence-like enclosure that stretched high above us. The hum died down until it was a barely perceptible tinnitus-like ringing at the edge of my perception.
Regis looked up and around. “That can’t be good.”
I stepped toward the center of the platform, a thick layer of aether shrouding my body. The fact that we were blocked from moving forward meant that we needed to solve some sort of puzzle… or kill something.
As if reading my thoughts, the ground a few yards in front of me rippled, and a large mound of glowing black began growing from the platform.
The expanse of purple sky surrounding us darkened as a towering figure took form before us.
I gazed up at the shadowy giant: the bipedal creature was at least five times my height and looked like it was wearing a full set of armor crafted from the same shadowy material as the rest of its body, along with a great helm featuring two horns curling upward.
As it stepped toward us, causing the entire platform to tremble, I said the only thing appropriate for the situation: “Look, Regis. It’s your dad.”
My companion regarded me for moment, deadpan. “I liked you better when you were depressed.”
The glowing black floor shook furiously as the shadowy sentinel’s fist came crashing down, impacting where I had stood only an instant before. Its movements were slow, and I dodged the blow easily, but I knew that getting hit even once could spell death.
“Regis.” I held out my hand. “Gauntlet Form.”
Regis flew into my hand and I siphoned aether through him, side-stepped a low sweep of the golem’s arm, then drove my smoky-black fist into the golem’s leg.
The impact made a noise like rocks being crushed in a quarry, but the golem only stumbled back a step.
The tight grip I felt around my core reminded me that the number of times I could use Gauntlet Form was limited, but it seemed like even a hundred such blows wouldn’t be able to kill the giant beast.
The golem let out a deafening roar, apparently pissed that I had managed to give it a bruise.
I grimaced as I clenched my shadow-clad fist once more. “Again!”
Channeling even more of my aether through Regis, I let the destructive power build. The smoky-black aura began to spread, slowly climbing up my arm.
The power ached as aether continued to coalesce in my hand and arm. Something jolted through me, a foreign sensation like a spark flying from a flint and steel, and I lost my concentration for half a second.
The sentry struck. The force of the blow threw me off the ground, and I slammed against the black fence, feeling the tearing sensation of my ribs breaking.
Coughing out a mouthful of blood, I rolled onto my back to see Regis staring at me. The aether that had been collected to my hand was gone, redistributed throughout my body, and already beginning to heal my wounds.
“What the hell happened? Are you okay?” the shadowy black ball asked before turning away. “Watch out!”
I rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding the giant golem as it tried to stomp on me.
Jumping clumsily to my feet, I looked at Regis. “Was that you?”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, frustrated. “Did you get hit in the head? I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but there’s a giant shadow golem trying to kill us.”
“I got hit everywhere,” I retorted, regarding Regis. I frowned as I looked at my companion. “The feeling… that spark… never mind.”
With my body healed and my sense of self-preservation forcing me to be a bit more wary of those huge fists, the giant golem and I began playing a game of cat and mouse. I was hesitant to make another attempt to use Gauntlet Form until I understood what had happened, forcing me to try and attack its weak points.
Turns out, it didn’t have any. Its faceless head was just as hard as its armored crotch and chest.
With my primary weapon out of service and the golem much too strong for me to defeat with just punches and kicks, I did the only thing I could think to do. Keeping my distance, I began coalescing aether into the center of my palm.
As a thin layer of purple spread outward from the center of my hand, I hoped that my limited pool of aether would reduce the recoil of the aether blast.
But as I prepared to unleash the destructive blast of aether, I couldn’t help but question its capability. Though it was the wrong moment and time for introspection, I wondered how the raw blast of energy stemmed from aether.
Like mana, did aether have a pure, affinity-less form, or was this power—like the strengthening of my body—a branch of vivum? But Lady Myre had explained vivum as the influence over all living components.
That’s when it hit me.
I had been on the right track with both Gauntlet Form and the aetheric blast, but they were merely a part of the bigger picture.
Suddenly, the spark-like sensation jumped up my arm again, and an unbearable pain enveloped my hand. I looked down to see what looked like runes forming on the backs of my hands. They lingered for less than a second before disappearing from view. However, I could feel the runes travelling up my arm, like a white-hot ball of iron, following in the path of the spark as they trailed down my back and legs before finally settling at the base of my spine.
Despite my growing tolerance for pain, this nearly caused me to faint. Still, a warm glow radiated up through my torso that reassured me that, whatever had just happened, it wasn’t going to immediately kill me.
“—thur!”
I snapped out of my reverie at the sound of Regis’s voice right beside me, and remembered that I had been in the middle of a fight against a towering shadow golem.
I dipped my head and prepared for an impact that never came.
“Arthur, look,” Regis stated.
Raising my head, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The black sentinel, whose figure towered over thirty feet high, was slowly backing away from me.
It’s scared.
Regis gaped, taking in the sight in disbelief.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I-I’m not sure.” I looked down at my hands. There was nothing to see. However, when I coalesced aether into my hand, a warm sensation spread from my lower back, along with a flood of knowledge.
I staggered forward, nearly losing balance at the jarring sensation. It only lasted a split second, but I knew the knowledge now ingrained into my brain would last forever.
I muttered a single word under my breath, still looking at my empty hands.
“What?” Regis asked, floating down and staring at me. “Are you okay, Arthur?”
I could feel my lips curve up into a grin. “I’m better than okay. I understand now.”
“Understand what?” Regis rebutted. “You’re freaking me out, Arthur.”
Lifting my cloak and shirt up, I showed Regis my lower back. “This.”
My companion’s eyes widened as he saw the silvery-white rune glowing on my spine, just above my hip. “Do you know what this rune says?”
Regis shook side to side as I let go of my cloak and shirt, covering my back.
“I do,” I said, a wide, wild grin plastered on my face. “And so does that thing.”
I approached the giant, shadowy knight, my gait calm and deliberate. The closer I got to the towering golem, the more I could see its form hunch, as if it was trying to make itself smaller in my presence.
It knew.
I was no longer the one trapped in here with this aetheric creature—it was now trapped in here with me, and it recognized the battle as lost.
Slowly raising my arm, I channeled aether into my right hand. The warm touch of the rune carved onto my back reassured me, and the aether manifested into a small flame that glistened like pure amethyst.
The amethyst flame sat in my palm like a newborn. There was no wild ferocity or scorching heat that emanated from this flame. It was cool, tranquil, and silent, like the breath of some transcendental god.
At the sight of the ethereal flame, the shadowy golem body began to tremble. Like a cornered rat, it lashed out, slamming down its massive arms to try and flatten me.
I raised my arm, meeting its giant fists with my right hand. The amethyst flames silently consumed both huge hands, dancing happily across the dark material of its body.
The shadowy beast bellowed in helpless rage, desperately flailing its handless arms at me.
Using its arm like a ramp, I rushed up it until I was standing atop its shoulder, then drove my flame-clad hand into its head.
“Farewell,” I said softly as I watched its head deteriorate from the violet flames. I hopped to the ground and stood back as its body sank down into the black platform.
270
Branch of Destruction
As the giant sentinel dissolved back into the black platform, it felt like, rather than calming down, my adrenaline rush from the battle was growing more intense. My breathing became shallow and I could feel my heartbeat quicken by the second. Blood pounded against my ears, dulling out everything except for the sounds of my own ragged breaths. It was an overbearing yet intoxicating sensation.
I was suddenly afraid that I might lose my mind.
I tried to withdraw the violet fire clad around my right hand, but it wouldn’t be extinguished. The cool flames clung to my skin, throbbing, and the rune on my back felt like a scorching brand pressed against my spine.
I didn’t know why this was happening, but it felt like either my body was rejecting the rune, or the rune was rejecting me. A scream tore from my throat as the violet flames grew stronger and more wild, engulfing my entire hand.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Regis frantically rushing toward me before disappearing into my body. It wasn’t long after that darkness overcame me.
When I came to, the shimmering purple sky was the first thing to greet me. The second thing was the pain. My right hand felt like it had been marinated in a vat of acid, and a dull throb still lingered in my lower back.