Sunlight In The Labyrinth

Warmth on my face drew me from the depths and I awoke with a gasp, vague and distorted dreams of smiling grey faces made of misery and terror devouring a rainbow of dancing lights evaporating from my mind like morning dew, leaving me with only a faint impression of mind shattering terror and wrongness clashing with unity and peace.

I blinked the grime of unconsciousness from my eyes, the fading impression of a grey smile that chilled me to my very soul and genial laughter that echoed inside my mind sending a shiver down my spine as I glanced about. A slightly too quick swipe of a paw revealed the feeling of warmth on my face to be a chalky grey mud seemingly made of stone.

I gawked at the grey mud dripping from my paw for a long moment in confusion before I took in my surroundings. The thing that stood out the most was unquestionably the fact that everything for several meters around me was a shade of grey too perfect, uniform, and pure to match the stone it had been before. Not to mention the strange softness of it all, as if it were not quite solid while still somehow retaining its shape.

The second thing that jumped out to me was the massive fucking hole in the ceiling twisitng off beyond the reach of my eyes. I blinked at the twisting vertical tunnel for a long moment, trying to understand where it came from before my disjointed thoughts swirled into the shape of that caustic gas that sent me into trippy nightmare land and wound me up in my current state.

Was that gas really so caustic as to melt through stone? How the hell did I survive a blast to the face and a full body immersion for several seconds if that’s the case?

Wait… how long was I unconscious?

There is no way of naturally telling time in this sunless pit and the system was not so kind as to provide me with a clock no matter how I asked. A grimace spread across my face, all I have is my health (which had increased to a whopping seven while I “slept”) as some indicator of time, though my lacking knowledge of how long it takes to restore a point of health made that equally as useless as the depth of the tunnel above me.

You know that feeling when you’re staring off into space, deep in thought, and you perceive but don’t actually notice something in your peripheral vision? It took me far longer than it should for something that wasn’t quite movement in the corner of my vision to actually register with my brain; the walls and floor were slowly, ever so slowly, becoming more grey. The semi-fluid grey that surrounded me was creeping further along the stone, spreading like some cancer upon reality twisting the healthy stone into more of itself. Now, while this is immensely disturbing, it also gives me a way to potentially measure how long I’ve been unconscious.

I counted the seconds in my head as the grey slowly spread, trying to measure the rate it spread at and if said rate was consistent for a very long few seconds before realizing I really don’t fucking care. Last I recall this place was mostly on fire and partially collapsing; I can safely estimate I’ve been asleep for less time than it takes a magically created tunnel system to crumble around my ears and that’s all that really matters, so I’ll leave it at that for now.

I’m sure the question will haunt me in the distant future, making me need to question how old I truly am and if I was somehow asleep for a decade or whatever but before I can be kept from sleep by existential confusion in the distant future, I need to live to see said distant future.

I’ve been coming to that conclusion far more often than I’d like.

I don’t have time to be concerned about something that could have killed me but didn’t right now; if time was in short supply before I passed out for however long, then I can be relatively sure it hasn’t suddenly gotten better now.

Light in the corner of my eye drew my gaze towards the way I had come. There, standing at the mouth of the tunnel, was an image out of some tale of heroics or horror; the plague doctor that had assailed my captor stood in the tunnel’s entrance, wreathed in flame that reflected off the cracks in the eyes of the mask. His right arm was simply gone, the shoulder a ragged mass of burned and blackened flesh that occasionally dripped molten gristle and likely infected pus to the ground. His chest was little better, a hideous mess of burned flesh coated in partially melted fat and what was obviously extremely necrosed flesh; though whether the necrosis was caused by the burns or something else I couldn’t tell. Of far greater importance to me than his injuries however, was his extended and intact left arm which appeared to be more made of flame than simply coated in it.

I could not see his eyes through the light bouncing off his mask, but I could feel the hate radiating from him even further than the heat of the flames. It wasn’t directed at me personally, nor was it the unfocused malice of the spider; this hate and rage was pointed inwards at his own pain and at the memory of the man who caused it. This was a man with nothing but spite and rage to keep him standing, a twisted sense of righteous vengeance all that was keeping him from succumbing to what must have been incredible pain and exhaustion. A sentiment I could more than understand.

He was breathing heavily, his spear nowhere to be seen and his cloak tattered and rotten in places; but nonetheless, he stood defiant. His presence, and the fact that he didn’t seem to be fleeing from or pursuing anything, told me the Mad Mage was likely dead.

I can’t say I’m particularly mournful about that.

Unfortunately for me, for all his every hobbled step forward was laced with exhaustion, he was not blind. The moment the light of his flame fell upon the unnaturally grey stone I could feel him pulsing with disgust and feel the crest of his rage towering greater than ever before. This man absolutely loathed what he was seeing on the deepest level imaginable; what lay before his eyes offended him to the very core of his being as if its very existence was anathema to his own. Alongside this rage was a sense of fulfillment, as if he had found what he was looking for and could finally act upon his purpose in life.

Trait “Unnatural Empath” gained.

Trait “Sociopath” weakened to “Sociopathic Tendencies”.

Well that’s faintly horrifying, but not entirely surprising; I had noticed I was picking up on the emotions of others far more than I ever had before.

I didn’t have long to contemplate the sudden changes to the fundament of my being or process the existential dread of the system changing my very nature against my will (Paranoia +1, fuck off!) before a wall of heat slammed into me and evaporated the sludge clinging to my body as the light at the end of the tunnel intensified until it was blinding to look upon.

The flames swirling about the plague doctor had grown to create a whirling inferno that surged over his body to coalesce before his outstretched palm, his arm glowing like an earthbound star as it sucked in the writhing sea of fire behind him. While I had very little knowledge of how magic worked in this realm, I easily recognized someone charging up an attack.

It’s not exactly hard to guess what a furious fire mage is going to do with a concentrated sea of fire, now is it?

Now, as much as I would normally love to see such a massive act of pyrotechnic annihilation, I’m a lot less enthused when it’s being pointed at me. While I could faintly tell the man wasn’t even aware of my presence, that attack would turn me to cinders just as easily as his target would be reduced to slag despite his intentions. Besides, I highly doubted he would care to spare a rat from his fury, even if he did know I was here.

I didn’t know how long it would take him to charge and fire what I fully expected to be a tidal wave of flame, but I did know my options; run towards the enraged pyromancer and hope I could get behind him before he fired, which would also expose me to the threat of him intentionally killing me or his attack having blowback of some kind. Or try to flee up the tunnel carved out by caustic gasses and hope the flames don’t follow. While burrowing away floated about in the back of my head, I knew it couldn’t possibly be swift enough to matter.

The development of a swirling orb of what seemed to be more plasma than mere flame growing before the feathered warrior’s hand and filling the tunnel with a radiance that whispered of purity and wrath made up my mind.

Desperate claws latched onto weakened stone and I practically flew up the muddy wall, climbing the tunnel as fast as I had ever climbed anything in my life.

Agility +1

Strength +1

I had made it about twelve feet up the tunnel, cresting the lackadaisical swirl of the passage that had blocked my vision when I gazed at it from below, when wind began to whip at my face and rustle my fur. All the air in the tunnels seemed to be being drawn towards the tiny star the black knight had conjured. The rushing air became so intense I could barely maintain my grasp on the slightly melted stone, let alone actually steal a breath from the tempest.

My fears of suffocation were drowned out as a sense of unnatural stillness settled over the world around me even through the roaring winds, as if the very world was holding its breath before the majesty of what was coming.

Starlight flooded my tunnel, turning what stone it touched around the corner of the passage to slag on contact. Even the roar of the wind was silenced as the wrath of a star was brought forth to flood the tunnel beneath me in a tidal wave of plasma that simply erased the space I was in mere moments ago, reducing stone to gas in a flood of light.

The rushing air failed to prevent the intense heat from roaring up to meet me, turning the walls molten beneath my paws as I attempted to crawl through the cyclone. The very air was hot enough to singe my fur and force my eyes closed lest they dry up and shrivel out of my head even without the touch of evaporated stone.

Fire Resistance +1

Fire Resistance +1

I grimaced, the saliva in my mouth evaporating so quickly it leaked through my teeth as steam. I could feel my skin scorching from the side effects of this monster in humanoid flesh’s attack. The pain was a searing, all encompassing thing; like the worst sunburn imaginable before such transitioned into a true burn.

-1 HP

Pain Resistance +1

I grit my teeth, struggling to increase my pace as much as I could as the wind began to settle; I didn’t exactly have much health to spare.

I really hope I don’t get pompeii’ed by that gaseous stone.

Zildan panted heavily, the familiar feeling of badly burnt flesh keeping him grounded from the far less familiar feeling of seething decay spreading through his body and spiritual exhaustion bearing down on him. Tired brown eyes watched magma drip from the tunnel his grand attack had irreparable altered, satisfied that the Blight had been purged thoroughly.

He had sensed the vile Plague spreading in the tunnels; it had called to him as it did any of his brothers, mocking and tempting as it ever did to healers and men of even godless faiths. The Blight jeered at his inability to cure it, whispered promises of a release from pain and fear in its embrace, kissed his mind with thoughts of rest and peace eternal. He had ignored it, as he had been trained to do despite how tempting it made simply lying down and succumbing to his wounds feel, using its siren song as a beacon to find the source.

He attempted to close his outstretched hand, feeling the hot air against burnt tendons that pulled taut beneath skin turned to ash. He couldn’t help but grimace beneath his mask as the last digits of his blackened fingers cracked off and shattered on the ground. Even the incredibly heat resistant material of his uniform was melted to his skin, cracking and tearing with his every movement to reveal pus and blood and molten flesh. All of which were infected with vile illnesses he knew not the names of; in fact, he doubted any but the wretched mind that brought them to life knew their names.

He sighed, thankful that the metal teeth of his upper jaw had not turned to slag in his mouth. His master was going to be pissed if he survived this; he would be immensely lucky if he even bothered trying to treat him instead of executing him on the spot for daring to return to him in such a state. He had told him that merely possessing an affinity for Sunlight did not make him prepared to channel the fury of a star, that plasma was not so easily corralled as flame; as always, he was right.

Not that it much mattered, whatever horrible pestilence afflicted him would likely be the death of him long before he could reach his temple.

He would have to find a healer in the city and compel them to service, and quickly. Hopefully he could find some back alley healer of sufficient skill, if such even existed. He knew his brothers in the Order would sneer at him for not simply incinerating himself on the spot, let alone actually even contemplating bringing whatever smourgashboard of diseases he now carried to an inhabited city; but he knew that he alone could not hope to purge every vile creation of that mad wizard in his state.

That, and he simply didn’t want to die.

Oh, he would do his duty if he found he could not be saved. If whatever healer of ill repute he could find could not stabilize him and purge this sickness from him enough that he could do the rest himself, he would write a letter to the Grandmaster and incinerate himself, the doctor, and every building he had passed on the way if he could.

To do otherwise would be the lowest of heresy.

A groan slipped between cracked lips as he began the laborious process of turning around. His bones ached and the feeling of unnameable fluids leaking from cracks in his skin was one that would haunt him if he survived this.

At this rate, the Order would likely purge the city if he managed to get his report out. That thought brought a smile to his dry lips; he always hated this place anyway.