The Long Way 19 – Winding Tracks (Patreon)

“By the heavenly…” Aclysia began what would have turned into a curse, had she not been too occupied lugging a metal pole around. It was almost too heavy for her to even lift, flying with it was a chore, and yet she managed. With desperate strength, she dropped it above Apexus.

The slime caught it with both hands and lodged it between the approaching walls. The sound of turning gears turned into the desperate grinding of metal against metal. Already the pole started to bend. “Another,” Apexus shouted up to the metal fairy.

‘Can’t we take the other way, darling?’ she wanted to beg. Physical labour was far from her favourite activity. Consequently, grabbing the poles from their holsters on the platform above the narrowing corridor and tossing them down was torture for her. ‘Don’t be a burden,’ she told herself and did as her beloved demanded.

For his part, Apexus was considering heading back where they came from. The corridor had started to narrow in on them the moment they had entered, but the entrance had never closed. It was a trap, but it wasn’t an unforgivingly deadly one. A group that couldn’t access the upper platform would have died here outright and, while dungeons may have been difficult, they didn’t exist to murder everyone unfit in one aspect. It was a testing ground, not a selection by criteria.

The slime received the next pole and lodged it between the walls. They had convenient depressions in the light grey stone. He just had to angle them properly to fit. “You can do it, Aclysia,” Apexus shouted some motivational words up. He would have gone up to help her, but, like usual, there wasn’t enough room to take off. That his wings carried him was a miracle in and of itself. Flapping them and hoping to make it straight up was a pipe dream. Apexus needed forward momentum to gain height. He would have sooner managed to scale the walls.

At the end of the corridor, the third member of the party was lodged in an activity she preferred to outsource: thinking. Reysha stared at a four-by-four panel, containing fifteen small tiles. They could be slid around, using the gap, and the lines on each was all the clue she needed to know some kind of pattern was wanted. She scratched her head, not quite sure what pattern that was.

Reysha looked over her shoulder. By virtue of the work required, she was the only one left in the situation. ‘Ya aren’t that stupid,’ she thought and looked back to the panel. There were several more lines around the panel that connected them to symbols on the wall. ‘Are there any doubles or something…?’

The answer to that was no, none of the symbols were doubled or even similar. The best she got was that some had round and other square frames. With nothing else to go off, she started sliding things around to connect two of the squares. That did nothing, so she tried two of the circles next. That caused light to slowly creep down the lines from both sides. Once they met, Reysha noticed nothing happening.

“The walls are speeding up!” Apexus shouted over the sound of one of the longer poles snapping.

Hastily, Reysha disrupted the connection and the pressure the walls put on returned to regular levels. ‘So, circles are energy source, squares are receivers?’ Reysha guessed and tried her best to establish a new connection between two as quick as possible. Her approach to this was to wildly slide the panels around until something matched by happenstance. Sometimes she stopped to plan a few steps ahead, but she lacked the patience and structural thinking to lay out anything truly advanced.

Resultingly, she took longer to get to the result than Aclysia would have. Apexus would have taken about as long, although for different reasons. When she had a square and a circle connected, the gears in the walls suddenly slowed to a crawl.

“Well, that did something useful,” Reysha said and scratched her head. “Yo, Clysia, think ya have enough time off carrying duty to solve this now?”

“…I… dunno… do… I…?” Aclysia asked, heaving heavily to bring down her internal temperature.

“Yes,” Apexus gave the quick answer and Aclysia made her way over as quickly as exhaustion allowed. Once she stood and looked at the mental task, she was more lively. This was her element. After staring at it for three minutes, she broke the currently active circuit and shuffled the tiles around with steady certainty.

To Reysha, many moves looked counterproductive. The walls around moved, soon snapping another one of the poles. Not knowing what else to do, Apexus grabbed the longer of the two resulting pieces and lodged it back into place.

Aclysia did not let any of that distract her. Staring with single-minded pursuit, she continuously analysed the predictable field of input and reaction. Movement for movement, she arranged the chaos Reysha had found and, in some ways, worsened, into a symmetrical pattern. Only the sole empty field interrupted it. All the lines connected a square to a circle.

The gears stopped completely, then rolled back at a rapid speed.

They all took one relieved breath. Alarmed by the massive ‘CLUNK’ that accompanied walls settling back into place, the group got ready for combat. It was the right decision, as the panel now parted to reveal another wall right behind it. One made out of pure, grey crystal.

A diamond-shaped segment within it began to glow. Golden light of the soft variety grew in intensity, until it reached incandescence.

“Aclysia, recover and count, Reysha, attack,” Apexus gave the simplest and quickest strategy he could, while charging at the crystal wall. The Myrlight dungeon’s boss was still seared into their memories, even if it had been months since they fought it.

A sound like a ringing triangle filled the air, as forms wavered behind the crystal wall. Soon their presence was completely obscured by the brightness of the boss. Blinded, Apexus nevertheless continued his charge. The swelling noise unloaded in a laser beam that struck him in the chest. It carried little in terms of kinetic energy, but seared skin and slime underneath. A smell like salt water filled the air.

Apexus took the enemy spell head on and hurled his fist at the wall. It was sturdier than the one they had encountered before, withstanding the force of the impact. Cracks nevertheless spread out from the impact like a spider web. Shards started to fall out as he kept punching, ignoring the hole getting burned through his abdomen.

Finally, the laser ebbed away and Aclysia started counting down from thirty. That was what they had last measured the distance between attacks to be. They wouldn’t find out whether or not they were correct, as Reysha had drawn out the warpick and swung it at the boss monster. The tip smashed into the crystal, cutting into a crack already made, and hit the boss within.

Like a frozen lake’s surface thunderously tearing apart, the wall of crystal exploded into an energy wave, releasing the monster. Ebbing away, the light lowered to such levels that the form of the boss could be made out in clearer detail. Like two pyramids attached at the base, the tips aligned in perfect verticality, the crystal creature was simple in its body. Two large wings of pure energy, light woven into arches, expanded from its centre point. The prism was based on an angelic creature and the sounds of its wrath sounded like the singing of wet glass.

Colourless crystal still rained down when the boss started to retreat into a room behind. The group pursued immediately. Unlike last time, there was no wall between them and the next chamber, giving them the safety to heal their wounds. No, the boss immediately started to fire another laser at them.

“Twenty second gaps,” Aclysia informed her party members, while taking the frontline.

The room they entered was massive, over fifty metres wide and ten tall. Filled with dripstones, water and brick pathways leading to a centre platform, it gave more than enough room for aerial mobility. Aclysia utilized that fact by drawing the initial attention of the attacks to her. The discharging laser followed her and failed to land a hit, while Reysha and Apexus stormed down the path on foot.

Apexus spread his wings, ready to either fly over to the centre platform immediately or at least leap forwards to cut the time taken to get across the spiralling path. Before he could take off, a Light Elemental manifested in the path before them. It was golden, taking the shape of a broad humanoid with a hovering tail instead of legs.

“Oh no you fucking don’t!” Reysha shouted, while the creature tried to grab Apexus’ arm. The tiger girl slammed her axe into the head of the being. It cut through with ease, interrupting the existence of the magical being enough that the energies dispersed. The hold on the humanoid chimera’s arm became ephemeral before it could stop him and he took off.

Other monsters appeared all over the room, Frozen Wraiths, more elementals, and in the water lurked Grapplegoos. Only the former of these enemies were of a bother to Apexus. Their wails chilled him, made him slower and the beat of his wings less energetic. Still, each clap of the verdant wings allowed him to leap across the watery ditches that separated the parts of the path. Reysha tried to follow as fast as she could while fighting her way across the regular way.

Aclysia was still occupying the boss, who had settled on the island at the centre of the room. It turned its prismatic body in an attempt to hit Aclysia with any of its lasers. Things were getting increasingly tight, until Apexus arrived and slammed his massive fist into the boss’ surface. In retaliation, the laser was redirected to Apexus. Now threatened at direct range, it did not ebb away, but Apexus managed to stay ahead of the boss by circling around it while pelting it with attacks.

Knowing how to deal with it, and being able to cheat the layout of the room, dealing with it wasn’t immensely difficult. Soon the angelic prism fell apart, collapsing into a pile of shards with a pure core. The other monsters in the room had their life energy suddenly cut and collapsed, dead, wherever in the room they were.

“That was a fucking thing,” Reysha said and looked over to the three paths that consequently opened. One went up to the Laghast layer, one continued on this one and another went down. Only after eating what they could from the, primarily magical, assortment of enemies, did the three check out the paths available, starting with the lower level one. “Would ya look at that,” hummed the tiger girl.

The path took them down to one of the translucent walls. A particularly large and curved one, looking at a healing fountain. The same healing fountain that the tiger girl had some voyeuristic fun in. That been over ten days ago for the group, but they remembered the layout of the room well enough.

Demonstratively, Reysha raised her nose and sniffed. “Hey, do ya smell cum?” she asked and broke out into a manic laughter when Aclysia’s face twisted into a shocked expression. “I’m just kidding, bubble butt. Can’t smell anything out of the ordinary here. Aside from us.”

Apexus knew what she meant. They had been without a bath, or any other form of break, for three days now and just yesterday they had fought the boss of the Myrm Nest again. Swimming in the disgusting slime without the option of a cleansing healing fountain rest afterwards had Apexus consider getting into the water in the boss room upstairs.

“You are terrible,” Aclysia shook her head and turned her attention to another four-by-four panel in one of the walls. “Should I attempt to solve this?” she asked.

“That will either open the further way or the entrance to the healing fountain,” Apexus theorized, “so yes.” They had no intention of turning around, but the bath was seriously sought after.

It only took Aclysia about a minute to figure things out. Once the puzzle was solved, part of the wall slid open.

Screams, infernal screams, echoed out through the opening in the once solid blockade. Laghasts, somewhere in the distance, shouted with all of their might. Their roars were overcome by another creature. One much, much more terrifying.

None of the three realized immediately what it was, but their subconscious knew that something horrible was on the way. All three pressed against the nearest solid wall, recalling fire and death. Reysha pressed all air out of her lungs and forgot to breathe. Unpleasant as it was, having nothing to shape into a scream saved them. They were dead silent, just as the dungeon became dead silent.

Frozen for several minutes, unable to think about anything but the question if they had perhaps misheard, they stayed put. Then the Deathhound walked into the room. On all six of its limbs, the demonic monstrosity named Turlesh advanced. The nostril slits on the front of its elongated head widened and slimmed with each breath it took. Blood and water covered its skin, leathery and glistening like it was polished by the life fluids of lesser monsters. Its tail curved in the air, casually whipping against the nearby glass and leaving a scratch in the material the group had previously thought nigh indestructible.

Reysha shivered in fear. Memories of Heralry flooded back in. Traumatic visions she had seemingly overcome framed the gaze focused on the monster that looked around with its four, independently staring eyes. When one of them stared right at her, she fainted. Apexus moved just before the redhead fell over, overcoming his own fear. In silence, they stayed, pressed against the rock wall.

Raising his head, Turlesh growled, acidic saliva dripping from his exposed, equally sized teeth. The Deathhound loathed the chase and how long it had already lasted. His tongue extended from his fluidly parting maw, the flesh parting like two snakes. The air tasted of his prey more than usual, concentrations of pheromones in the air letting him know he was getting closer. ‘Back to Empress,” the Tharnatos-class demon thought, walking down the track of the slime step by step.

While the two still awake parts of the group witnessed this, the demon only saw a healing fountain room with three attached doorways and dark blue walls. Investigating any was uninteresting to Turlesh. Fatetracking would bring it where he had to. No need to waste time on side paths.

All Aclysia and Apexus knew was that Turlesh had already crossed the recently opened path three times and never entered it. Then the demon continued on its path. Out through the doorway they had eventually taken.

They continued to sit there for a solid twenty minutes.

Then Aclysia broke out into nervous and relieved tears.