Chapter 17 (Patreon)

Bruce made it two steps onto the ninth floor before everything went pear shaped.  The wall in front of him blurred slightly, bulging outward in a hemisphere that split horizontally to reveal a yellow eye the size of a dinner plate.  He froze, hoping that it wouldn’t spot him if he didn’t make any sudden movements.

It blinked.

Bruce blinked back, barely breathing as he did his best to blend in with the featureless walls.

It focused on him, and Bruce felt something sink in the pit of his stomach.  Underneath the eye, the smooth not-stone deformed, transforming into a circular mouth.  It looked like a lamprey, grotesque red lips framing concentric circles of needle sharp teeth.

“I would advise running,” Kassar remarked a fraction of a second before the maze around Bruce erupted in a burst of green light that was only visible through Eyes of the Void.

Bruce didn’t bother replying.  His feet slapped against the floor as the mouth behind him let loose a steam whistle screech that rocketed through the audible register and into realms that only dogs could hear.  The world swam around him as the sound overwhelmed Bruce’s senses.  It felt as if he had been hit in the back by a bag of sand, and the ground itself wobbled and shook like the ocean on a windy day.

He missed a step.

The world slipped to the side, and Bruce’s right foot came down at a bad angle.  There was a brief moment where adrenaline and terror filled his body, and then Bruce found himself plummeting toward the floor.

His chest hit first, bouncing slightly before Bruce’s face slammed into the ground.  That was all that saved him.  The air above Bruce cracked as a half dozen of the lamprey teeth broke the sound barrier, whizzing and pinging as they shattered and deflected off of the far wall.

The screeching stopped, and Bruce wrenched himself back to his feet, ice water running through his veins.  In front of him, the hallway was beginning to narrow, collapsing from every direction as if unseen hands were compressing it to the point of collapse.

Along the corridor’s walls, the gray material that made up the maze began to bubble and warp.  Hands, talons, and other grasping appendages that his mind couldn’t even process began to push themselves to the surface.  Reality itself seemed to skitter and flee before the pincers and grasping fingers that struggled to manifest themselves.

Bruce took off running again, bile burning at the back fo his throat.  Some hundred feet away, the Eyes of the Void spotted the end of the green light.  Ordinarily, that would have taken him three to four seconds, but the combination of fear, adrenaline, and his newly enhanced attributes pushed him beyond his limits.

Even with the need to dodge the limbs and tentacles that were grasping blindly toward him, Bruce managed to cover the entire distance in just over two seconds.  He didn’t stop when he reached the edge of the green zone, instead finding the first corner he could and dearing around it at full speed.  Only then did Bruce slow down to a jog, focusing his attention back on Eyes of the Void to try and get a grasp of his surroundings.

“What in the name of beer, blue jeans, and apple pie was THAT?”  Bruce grumbled, surveying the maze in front of him and marking out a path that avoided any hint of green light.  “I thought the ninth floor was supposed to be easier than the tenth.”

“It is,” Kassar replied.   “You should head to the left at the second intersection up ahead by the way, that should bring you within sight of a sanctuary.”

Behind Bruce, the square of green light that identified the monster began to slowly move after him.  He sputtered out a curse, and pushed his pace from a jog to a run.  As soon as he took the corner Kassar had mentioned, the comforting square room of a sanctuary popped up near the edge of his perception.  After taking a pair of quick detours to avoid corridors that glowed faintly with dull red or green energy, he finally found himself ducking into the sanctuary.

Bruce plopped onto the ground, breathing heavily as he pressed his back against the wall.  He’d been able to lose the creature that had ambushed him at the top of the stairs, but there hadn’t been any way to know for sure if it was still sweeping the area so he hadn’t been able to appreciably slow his pace.  After all, at least according to Treekipp, monsters would follow you into the ‘safe’ spots if they saw you enter.

“Okay,” he finally said once he had caught most of his breath.  “What was going on back there?  I thought that I’d at least have a couple of seconds to breathe before something tried to jump me.”

“That was a chameleon lurker,” Kassar responded.  “Think of it as somewhere between a trap and a monster.  Each one infests an entire section of the Great Labyrinth.  They can move slowly, but as you saw a Lurker can attack anything inside its body.  Usually by the time you know you’ve wandered into one, it’s too late to escape.”

“You were just lucky that it reacted slowly,” he continued.  “I think it barely registered your low energy signature.  By the time it realized you were an entire being rather than a construct or a probe, you had already begun to escape.  I wouldn’t count on such fortune a second time.”

Bruce sucked in a breath, closing his eyes as he sought to steady himself.  At his side, his hands clenched and unclenched, letting off nervous energy as he thought over his next words.

“I couldn’t even see it until it activated.  Hell, I didn’t even know that stealth abilities were a thing until it saw me.  How in the name of all that is good in the world am I supposed to avoid things like a Chameleon Lurker and make it back to the first level if not blind luck?”

“Welllll,” Kassar drew his response out.  “You can see them.  Eyes of the Void is a strong enough ability to detect any monster in the Great Labyrinth’s shallows.  Only when you start delving to the true depths in the spaces between the stars will you encounter creatures able to avoid its gaze.”

“Fine,” Bruce replied, biting back a string of curses that wouldn’t help anything.  “Supposedly I can see the Lurkers.  Great.  The only problem is, that when it mattered, I didn’t.  So, what’s next?  I’m practically running blind out there.  You’ve taught me how to use the Eyes of the Void, but beyond that, all you’ve done is sit around and soak up the sun while drinking.  If you don’t give me some help here, I’m going to die and your precious revenge will all be nothing.”

The response was a protracted slurping noise, followed by the sound of a straw swirling itself around the bottom of a coconut.  Bruce felt his jaw clench.

“You’re literally drinking right now, aren’t you?  I’m running for my life, and you’re sitting on a beach getting drunk.”

“I’m not drinking anymore,” Kassar grumbled.  “I just ran out of rum colada.  Now it’s only me, a stinging headache, and the beating sun.”

“Of course,” he continued, “I could just refill my drink with a touch of power, but that’s hardly the point.  I’m supposed to be retired.  People should be bringing me drinks.  Preferably a nice fit warrior caste-”

“Aren’t you a ghost or something?” Bruce asked testily.  “Can’t you just will yourself sober long enough to actually give me some real advice?  I’d like to survive for at least another day or so, and a planning session would go a long way toward keeping me breathing.”

“Fine, fine,” Kassar responded with a sigh. “What do you want to know?  Everything at these levels is bigger than you, stronger than you, and almost certainly can kill you in one hit.  If you’re going to live, the key is to avoid the monsters and traps.  The only other major concern is the staircases, but you’ve already managed to make it up from the tenth level, so we shouldn’t have to worry too much on that front.”

“Of course,” he continued, “you had me a bit worried on the way up there.  You’re strong for someone on their first trip into the Great Labyrinth, but ascending to the ninth level is more than I could fairly expect from you.  If you had hesitated even for a second, that probably would have been the end for both of us right there.”

Bruce froze.  The climb had been rough, taxing his body and mind past their natural limits, but he had been so focused on the swirling vortex of hunger and damnation to notice any other sort of danger.

“Void Mother forbid that you had actually used an ability other than Eyes of the Void on the tenth level,” Kassar rambled on, unaware of the cold sweat that was rapidly spreading over Bruce’s body.  “I doubt that you would have regained any expended energy quickly enough to make it up the stairs.”

“So the climb actually could have killed me,” Bruce said evenly.  “It didn’t just feel like I was about to die.  I really was near my end there.”

“Well yes,” the voice in his head replied with the same tone an adult would use to lecture a small child.  “You are in the bowels of the Great Labyrinth, the most powerful predator in the known galaxy.  Everything in here is an interloper, trying to kill you or both.  Literally every advantage and reward offered by delving into the maze’s depths is bait, a tempting morsel designed to encourage you to push further than you should.”

Bruce took a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second as he tried to calm himself.  Finally, when he felt a little steadier he exhaled and replied.

“Okay.  Got it.  Everything is trying to kill me and if I actually run into a monster, I’ll be lucky to escape even if I run as fast as I can so the plan is to avoid encounters.  Now, how in the hell am I supposed to avoid all of the death traps down here?  You had me learn Eyes of the Void, not any sort of stealth or camouflage skill.”

“None of the ones you could afford are worth a damn this deep,” the warrior answered gruffly.  “They use a lot of energy, and outside of a path with a stealth focus, they tend to focus more on making you hard to see or detect, not to avoid detection entirely.  The path of the neutron star is, to put it lightly, not one that is terribly compatible with hiding and skulking.”

“Eyes of the Void on the other hand,” Kassar lectured, “is an incredibly powerful ability for its level.  Every path has strengths and weaknesses. The path of the neutron star is designed for a heavy combatant.  Fire and Gravity are its two most powerful focuses, but they don’t mean much if you can’t hit anything.  What most people don’t realize is that a neutron star isn’t just an ultra dense pinprick of light in the night sky.  They give off energy in every spectrum.  Radio waves, visible light, gamma rays, and even the psychic energy of the Great Labyrinth itself.  That is what the Eyes of the Void and its evolutions let you see.  The thrum and pulse of the very energy that makes up the universe itself.  It is more than powerful enough to spot any of the monsters and traps you’ll run into on the tenth level.  If you practice with the eyes enough, you’ll even be able to get a sense for your enemy’s energy flow and find their weak points.”

“So you’re saying that I have everything I need to survive down here,” Bruce said slowly, reasoning through the phantasm’s speech out loud.  “I just need to focus more on actually using the abilities I have and everything should be fine.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” the disembodied voice replied.  “As long as you’re careful, you should be able to spot traps and enemies before they can find you, but you’re still going to find yourself scrambling for your life here and there.  We are about seven or eight levels too deep for your current abilities right now after all.”

Bruce shifted slightly, crossing his legs and moving his body into a more comfortable position against the sanctuary wall.  He closed his eyes, focusing on the flows and auras of light brought to him by Eyes of the Void.

“Got it,” he said.  “Step one is mastering Eyes of the Void.  Apparently chasing a couple wisps of energy around an island in my subconscious wasn’t enough to get me anything more than a rudimentary understanding of the ability.”

“Eh,” Kassar grumbled.  “That rudimentary understanding got you this far.  After all, once the lurker started chasing you, you managed to spot and avoid the trapped corridor and the other lurker.  I think you just need a little adrenaline running through your veins to make your training all come together.”

“Is that what the faint green and red energy I spotted were?” Bruce asked.  “I don’t suppose you could have warned me before I ran into a deathtrap of some sort?”

“You had it in hand,” the ghost answered.  “I figured it was best not to distract you after you escaped from the lurker.  If you tried to do something stupid, I would have spoken up.”

“Thanks,” Bruce replied dryly, “but I think I’ll work on improving my mastery of Eyes of the Void a bit first.  I’d like a little more warning than a faint glimmer of light before some sort of unspeakable horror tries to rip my soul out.”

Kassar just grunted out his response.

“Suit yourself kid.  I’ve already lost count of how long I’ve been waiting for a chance at revenge.  What’s another day or two?”

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