My ears popped. The air pressure in the room grew. The vines covered the ceiling and walls, raced like snakes across the floor, headed straight for me. There was nowhere to run or hide. All I could do was stand my ground.
It might’ve been my imagination, but in the constant writhing and wiggling, in the sounds of thorns scraping against stone and vine, I could make out the word “insect” repeated over and over. A whisper on the dead air, slowed down and prolonged by the surge’s effect. Gooseflesh covered my arms and neck.
I spun in place and whirled the sword around in a blinding, burning arc. It clipped some questing vines and shattered them to black glass, their death tinkle swallowed in the ceaseless whispering.
Another slash rewarded me with more impacts, more shattering. And another. The heat from the blade was sweltering, and the air around me sizzled. I would boil alive before I made any headway against an enemy that was everywhere. In the thickness of the thorns I had no idea which way lay the dais and the source. My heart thundered and my mouth was dry as week-old bread. Creeping pangs of fear gripped my chest.
Panic is not our friend. We don’t need it right now. Panic doesn’t solve issues.
I forced my mind to quiet, took quick stock of my resources, and planned for the next few heartbeats.
My MP bar was still plenty high, slowly ticking down, the drain manageable. I had more than a minute of objective time, and the vines didn’t seem like they could accelerate the same as the furnar. Small mercy, but one I was going to use to the fullest.
Whatever Melenith had done to the sword, it felt ravenous in my hand, power coursing through it like blood in my veins. It wasn’t drawing MP from me, so it could only be coming from Melenith herself.
I parried another thrust of black with the shield and was rewarded with a blast wave of shattering force spreading away from me. Neat. Or it would’ve been if the shield didn’t instantly heat up to near incandescence on that first blow. I dropped it, afraid it might burst into flames after all I had demanded of it.
With an effort of will, drawing on reserves I somehow still had after the [SECOND WIND], I slowed my breathing and cleared my head of the mounting dread. I still had plenty of resources and my weapon could shatter the enemy.
All I needed to do was not get stabbed.
Melenith screamed in the darkness outside my pocket of light. I turned towards the sound and found her a dozen paces away, her hair glowing. No, her hair was aflame! It haloed her like the goddess she probably was. The vines stormed around her, writhed and stung at her, but her halo of fire pushed them back from each thrust.
The moving wall around her was so thick that I could only catch glimpses of her fighting. Darkness whirled and snapped and tried to drag her down.
We were isolated in a sea of vines, yet her power was in my hand. If I ran to her, I’d be wasting precious time.
Instead, I figured out where to go. I knew where Melenith had fallen. I knew where she was now.
On my left, into the writhing darkness, lay the dais and the altar. The vines swallowed the light whole, reflecting nothing back, only devouring. A slash of the sword just ahead of me opened a pocket of clear floor.
“Insect,” the dark hissed and spat.
I advanced a step and swung again.
Was rewarded with the first stone step revealed.
They came at me from all sides, stabbing, prodding, reaching out. Failing.
I allowed my mind to open and empty out like a sieve. What use did I have for thought then? What good were they to me in a moment of blind battle?
Now was the time for instinct. I couldn’t see the stabs, but I could feel the tingle in the back of my neck, the tightness of muscles prepared for another puncture, the swish of the air on my skin and the scrape of thorn against thorn.
I advanced and swung. Vines shattered. Again. More.
More!
A well overflowed inside me. I could feel it now, in this weird moment of clarity and certainty: I had to reach the altar. Nothing else mattered.
Life must continue. Potential is limitless.
Eternity had said that, and I was beginning to see what it meant. As long as I wanted to push on, I could find the tools to do so. And right then, I listened to the one skill that really wanted to keep me alive, ignoring all else, drawing from the well of my potential.
Melenith roared and her fire lit up the dark only to be swallowed again. My sword, however, blazed with a light so intense that it hurt to look at. I wasn’t just swinging the blade now. I wielded fire and anger and a will to live that dwarfed mine.
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The flames roared in my hands, furious at only being fed glass. The skin on my arms blistered, but the gloves protected my hands. Lucky, lucky me.
All of a sudden I wasn’t climbing anymore. I had reached the top and stood before the column that rose from the depths. It shivered. I felt it in the ground. I felt it in the air. I heard its hissing insults, just before it all grew quiet.
There was a momentary pause to the writhing, then I could feel the entire room’s attention on me. All the spikes turned as one. They turned my way, poised like snakes to strike.
I leapt forward, sword raised, voice roaring, MP near the red. I slammed the blade into the middle of the column, flame plunged into absolute darkness all the way to the hilt.
For a moment nothing happened. I hung there and cringed in preparation for a thousand cuts.
Then the column of vines began to shatter. A burst of light burned a hole the size of my head where I’d stabbed, then it began melting.
With barely a moment to cry out, I began falling as everything my sword touched shattered. Like in the first dungeon, the sword’s touch was anathema to whatever this thing was. The sword only needed a touch.
I fell into the passage opened by the altar, holding on with both hands to the sword as it cut into the corruption. Wind rushed by my ears. The dark remained impenetrable.
In a fresh burst of panic, I used the very last of my MP and activated [IRON FLESH]. Not on my legs or arms. I aimed it at my back, spreading the effect as far as I could take it, hoping I had enough MP to reach the bottom of the fall.
I could’ve let go of the sword, maybe even cling to the wall, or try and arrest the fall.
That all seems reasonable in hindsight.
In the moment I’d’ve been damned before I let go of the sword. Either I killed the corruption in that place, or died trying.
The floor came up and hit me moments later. Or I hit it. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I landed on my feet, fell on my ass with enough force to shatter my tailbone, but did not actually break my spine. Woot! The sword cutting through the shattering vines had kept my fall speed just shy of fatal.
Even so, I should’ve been dead. Or I should’ve been a paraplegic. But I wasn’t, and that was enough thinking on shoulds and coulds.
The room could’ve been the twin of the one in the first dungeon. It had a central pedestal on which a dark blue orb floated. It was wrapped in thorns, but its light still shone through. There would’ve been crystals surrounding the orb, but all in the room were shattered, black vines erupted from them. They all reached out through the access port.
I got up before my body figured out it shouldn’t move, and I went straight for the core. I raised the flaming sword and brought it down double handed onto the knot of evil that surrounded it.
And was immediately rewarded with the sound of glass shattering on a colossal scale. It deafened me. The world shook. What remained of the crystals sundered to dust.
And the vines all burst into dust, from the bottom of the room, the destruction racing upwards along all the vines I hadn’t already destroyed on my way down.
[CONGRATULATIONS]
[YOU HAVE CLEARED YOUR SECOND DUNGEON]
[MODERATE CORRUPTION HAS BEEN PURGED]
[YOU HAVE UNLOCKED: INSIGHT - LVL 2]
[CANDIDATURE HAS BEEN LOGGED]
[SUPPORT HARNESS EFFICIENCY HAS NOW BEEN REDUCED TO 50%]
[DETAILS TO FOLLOW UPON SYNC WITH MAIN CONSCIOUSNESS]
I stared at the message and couldn’t really believe my eyes. I’d done it! I’d fucking done it!
A moment later, more messages popped up.
[OBJECTIVE COMPLETED: “Find and clear a second dungeon”]
[YOU HAVE REACHED LEVEL 8!]
There was more, but I blinked them away. I grabbed hold of the core pedestal, gritted my teeth while the level up healing blasted through me, then staggered back towards the hole in the ceiling.
The altar lay beneath the hole. I stepped on the round circle of stone that was the only different texture in the otherwise featureless room. The thing began to climb.
I’d survived. The sword still burned.
But was Melenith all right? I had to learn before dealing with anything more. I paced around the altar as it climbed, almost like some lazy industrial elevator that took forever to get anywhere. I vaulted over the edge of the hole once near enough to the top, then sprinted down the stairs.
Melenith lived. She was curled up in a ball on the floor, arm over her head, breath gurgling. A whole constellation of puncture wounds covered her body and she bled a shocking shade of red from too many wounds to count. My knees trembled at the sight.
“I… what do I do?” I asked as I reached her, hand trembling. I had no idea what to do. “How do I help?”
She uncoiled slowly, whimpering with the effort.
“Is it done?” she asked, voice thin and raspy. “Is it dead?”
I nodded more vigorously than needed. “Yeah. I reached the core. Destroyed the corruption.”
She let out a whistling breath. My sword’s flame winked out. It left the blade black and scorched.
Melenith drew in a deep breath and the wounds across her body began to sizzle and close. She rolled to her side and tried to rise on her remaining knee. I tried to help but she swatted me away.
“Stay there, human,” she growled.
Unbelievably, she rose to her feet. Tendrils of white-hot fire burst from the stumps of her leg and arm and took on the shape of missing limbs. They glowed with the light of the sun, which was welcomed in the dark, bloodstained temple.
“You… can do that?”
Okay, so it wasn’t a bright question to ask, but seeing her upright again and the flood of guilt expunged from my chest kinda took my wits along.
“Not when feeding your weapon,” she said. She tried to sound regal but only came off as tired and weary. “I gift you my rune. It is named IGNIS.”
She reached out a hand and shook the black dust off my blade. The rune remained on the sword, glittering on the metal. Melenith drew another line on it with a claw, connecting the strange design to the hilt.
“Now it will feed on you when you need the aid of my fire.”
[YOU HAVE GAINED A RUNE-ENCHANTED WEAPON: THE BURNING LASH]
I blinked the message away. “Uh… thanks?” I reached out and took the weapon back from her hand. It remained hot to the touch, but was finally cooling.
I’d wielded the blade just minutes before and knew its weight and feel in my hand. But now it felt changed. A hungry, devouring will hid deep within. It thirsted. Questing tendrils reached out to my MP and demanded they be fed.
Melenith stalked off, slightly limping, towards the altar. The whole thing descended with her before I got back up to the dais, leaving me to take the long way down. After all that, the prospect of going down the rung ladder was no appealing.
I heard her screaming while I was still less than halfway down.