Chapter 198 - Behind the Locked Door II

Sylvia banged a paw against the top of Claire’s head as she rolled back and forth and giggled up a storm. Such vigour accompanied her cackles that she immediately found herself short of breath; speaking was impossible, and her consciousness found itself fading away, already half replaced by a pure white world of bliss.

“Shut up.”

Pinching the fox’s nose with one hand, Claire lightly rubbed her battered forehead with the other. Her brow was every bit as red as her cheeks, and she was tempted to lay at least some of the blame on the fox, who had only watched as she bashed her face straight into the rock-hard dimensional gate.

“Stupid portal.”

Grumbling in frustration, she kicked the magical doorway, but it didn’t budge. The forces around its entrance had long swirled to make an invisible shield that prevented her passage. It refused to loosen unless she backed away, and taking even the slightest step in the portal’s direction resulted in the blockade’s immediate return.

Rolling her eyes, Claire crafted a storm of vectors and forcefully deconstructed the barrier. Every spell that tried to reject her was wrenched aside, ripped apart, leaving the portal bare and unattended. Its magical options depleted, the gateway attempted to repel with a physical deterrence. Pale, sickly hands emerged from within, wriggling and bending in ways impossible for bodies intact. They reached for her throat, but never touched her. Those that came too close froze and crumpled; not even the thickest one could stand up to the piercing cold.

When she stepped out the other side, she found herself standing atop an elevated, paved road that stretched as far as the eye could see. The bridge was made of cement and stone, anchored in the ground with wide, robust bricks. Empty fields of water lay on both sides of the structure, with one of the two horizons sporting a setting sun, and the other already taken by the night’s embrace. Two scruffy seagulls landed on the railing, cawing at her before flying off again, setting sail for the other sky.

“Oh, there you are! What took you so long?”

Sylvia was standing in the middle of the road, tail wagging in anticipation of the long journey ahead. She was in her humanoid form, bent forward with her hands behind her back and a wide grin plastered across her face.

“Come on! Hurry up! We’re gonna be late!”

Running over to the lyrkress and grabbing her by the hand, the fox happily skipped down the road, talking about the various sights that awaited them all the while. The chattering continued for five straight minutes. Until she was interrupted by a lizard to the chest. An incredibly confused, flattened Boris was shoved into the fox’s gut and wrenched through her ribs.

The kill came with a log, but not one that the lyrkress thought about for any more than a second. Because it was never spoken. And Flux had never failed before.

“How could you?”

The words left the fox’s lips before as her skin turned pale. The blood that drilled from her lips changed, dulling from red to black, mammalian to eldritch. Her cold, dead hands tried to reach for the lyrkress’ throat. But just like all the others, they failed. Even as eyes began appearing all over them, growing, shrinking, transformed into a mass of black.

“False believer.” “Stay away.” “Dreamwalker.” “Another one.” “Leave us.” “No.” “How?” “Childkiller.” “Stay.” “Horror” “The wall.” “One of us.” “Go away.” “Horror.” “Dreamwalker.” “Lost.” “Why?” “Ice.” “Blasphemer.” “She broke the wall.” “Dreamwalker.” “One of us.” “You broke the wall.” “Horror.” “Leave us.” “Spark.” “Stop her.” “Immediately.” “Now.” “Ice.” “Horror.” “Brethren.”

Each pupil appeared to glow as it spoke, their deathly moans overlapping, melding together to form a melange of terrified whispers. The monster tried to emerge from within Sylvia’s open wound, but a twist of the lizard cut it short. The eyes screeched in pain, shrinking away into the pulsating, darkened limbs before slowly fading to dust.

Half the fox’s body was turned to ash and blown away by the wind, while the rest gave beneath its weight and crumbled into a pile of red and white. Only to reappear in perfect condition. Right as another pair of seagulls landed on the side of the bridge.

Like a broken record, the dream looped. A freshly reconstructed Sylvia repeated her lines and stepped forward.

So Claire stabbed her again. To fuel the same result.

Over and over, ad infinitum, the cycle continued. More detail was added with every iteration. Sylvia’s behaviour became more realistic. Cities appeared on both ends of the bridge, and their skylines were fleshed out. The wildlife grew more abundant; two gulls turned to four, four to eight, and so on and so forth.

Until Claire finally snapped.

Sick of the illusion, she reached into her chest and retrieved her golden key. Sylvia lunged at her and tried desperately to knock it out of her hands, but holding in a reverse grip, she wove it past the fox’s defenses and jabbed it into the faker’s skull.

A quick twist was all she needed to finally untangle the twisted threads. The bridge, the cities, the gulls. All of it went away as she found herself standing in a dark, humid room with a ceiling high enough to support her true form. Viscous, red liquid fell from the rocky roof, drizzling it in a veil of blood that would wash back to its origin after hitting the ground. At the end of the cavern, under a single ray of sunlight, sat a tired, deflated creature, a blob of blackened flesh with many eyes and tendrils, groaning the words that continued to echo through her ears.

The thing was already in combat, lashing out with its tentacles at a tiny mantis dressed in a suit of armour. It was only as she took a closer look at Arciel and Natalya, who lay in the room’s far corner, that she realised her own predicament. There was a one-eyed blob attached to her forehead. But unlike theirs, it was dried out, shriveled and crumpled into a heap of dead flesh.

“How long?”

“Uhmmm… maybe like a couple seconds?” said Sylvia, from atop her head. The fox was completely blob free, just like the lizard and the scythe-armed bug. “Oh and uhh… by the way…”

“What?”

“How could you just kill me like that!? That’s so mean! You didn’t even hesitate!”

“That wasn’t you.”

“Yeah, but it looked just as adorable as me, and it smelled and acted like me too! It was basically just me!”

“But it wasn’t.”

“Yeah, but you were still supposed to like, not stab it right away!”

Sighing, Claire ignored the fox’s indignant squeaks and looked at the key still present in her hands. It was supposed to be a piece of a dream, something that existed only in the realm of her mind. But the object was no delusion; she could feel its weight in her hands, the cold of its metal frame, and the minor blemishes and imperfections that dotted its surface. But when she pressed it into her chest, it vanished, disappearing as if it had never been.

“I thought we were supposed to be best friends! Best friends don’t just stab each other like that! Wait, are you even listening!?”

“No.” Claire pinched the fox’s cheeks as she drew Boris and moved towards the distant battle. “Do we need to wake them up?”

“Oh, uhm… I don’t think so?” Sylvia tilted her head. “It’s just a shoggoth. They should be okay until it gets bored, since it probably just wants to eat their dreams and stuff.”

“Okay.”

Drawing Boris and coating him in a layer of venom, Claire bucked her hips and sprang across the hall.

“Stay out of it! This one’s mine!”

But her momentum slowed as soon as the knight noticed her advance.

Even knowing his mental illness, Claire found the request rather bizarre. Matthias was on his back foot. Every attack that the amorphous blob launched would either pierce his defenses or force him to back away. Its tentacle lashes were so powerful that they tore open the stone chamber, the fists were tough enough to damage his blade, and its eyes kept up a constant, magical assault. Few if any of the arcane spells appeared to be aimed at the warrior, and that was precisely why he found it so difficult to evade them. The sheer volume of visual clutter made it impossible for him to identify the eyes fixed on his frame, and the random patterns would often leave him with nowhere to dodge.

Still, Claire obliged. Coming to a stop, she returned her lizard to his strap and pulled her fox into her arms.

“Wait, you’re actually gonna let him fight?” asked Sylvia, with a tilt of the head.

“Of course,” said Claire. “I still gain experience if he wins. There will be fewer of us to split it between if he loses.”

“Well I mean… I guess that does kinda make sense, but I just think it’d be more Clairey of you to step in and beat it up anyway. Or maybe kill them both while they’re not looking out for you.”

“I’m not a barbarian.”

“Yeah, right! You stabbed me! Like five hundred times!”

Pulling a little harder than usual on the vixen’s cheeks, Claire heaved a heavy sigh. “For the last time, you stupid rat. That wasn’t you. That was a fake you that the stupid shoggoth came up with.”

“Yeah, but it was still a fake me! I would’ve hesitated to kill a fake you, you know!”

“Prove it.”

“Huh?” Sylvia tilted her head. “How am I supposed to do that!?”

“Find a fake me and kill it.”

“Where the heck am I supposed to find a fake Claire!?”

“Valencia.”

“What’s that supposed to mean!?”

Silently petting the confused fox, Claire raised her head and turned her eyes back on the battle. Matthias was quick to prove himself more capable than she had initially expected. In the minute that she had spent looking away, he suffered no additional wounds; his time was spent pushing forward, diving between the tentacle monster’s attacks, and slowly whittling it down. Despite the curious development, however, she found herself completely disinterested in the outcome of his fight.

“How come he’s the only one awake?” asked the lyrkress.

“Uhhh dunno.” Sylvia pursed her lips. “I’m gonna ask the shoggoth.” Clapping her paws together, she vanished, appearing a moment later on top of the eldritch monster’s head. She took a few seconds to speak to it before repeating the action and returning to her previous position. “It says that he never fell asleep because he cut down the spore it threw at him. You’re the only one that broke out.”

“What about you and Boris?”

“Uhmm… Boris was never a target because he counts as a monster, and it’s scared of me.”

Claire narrowed her eyes. “It knows you might try to stab it in the back.”

“Hey! That was uncalled for.”

“So was stabbing me in the back with a frog.”

“Wait, wait, wait wait! Is that why you were stabbing me!? Just because you wanted to be petty and vent!?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Giggling, the longmoose scratched the underside of the fox’s chin before walking to one of the walls and sitting down. A yawn threatened to escape her lips as she mindlessly browsed through her logs and menus, but she fought it back, right as she recalled a feature that had been effectively unusable prior to her ascension.

Log Entry 7025

You have connected to World Chat.

The box that appeared in front of her was more detailed than the one she had expected. It was a strange, rectangular menu filled with all sorts of gibberish she didn’t have the patience to look over. Fortunately, she was able to at least get it out of her way by lightly swiping it to the side. The box she was hoping to find appeared directly underneath, a large, mostly empty rectangle, with another much thinner one glued to its bottom. When she focused on the smaller box, she found that she was able to transcribe her thoughts to text with a speed and smoothness that no pen or scribe could match.

Alfred: Hi Claire. Stop trying to talk and go bang the cat. Trust me when I say, in her culture, sleeping counts as consenting.

Dorr: Context???

Alfred: Don’t worry about it.

Dorr: Yup, sounds like that one was going exactly where I thought it was. Please do us all a favour and ignore him.

Claire: Don’t worry. I will.

A smug grin appeared on her face as she relayed the message with her mind. As a whole, making use of the interface came off as somewhat of a strange experience. She felt like she was supposed to say the words out loud, as they were written, but it was impossible for her mouth to keep pace.

Alfred: ??????? Why would you ever do that!?

Claire: Because I hate you and your dumb cat fetish.

Alfred: Claire, please. It is far from dumb. Meet Flitzegarde, and your eyes will open to a whole new world of possibilities.

Dorr: Yeah, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen. You do realise that she shies away from everyone you taint, right? And for good reason too.

Alfred: What good reason!?

Dorr: …

Dorr: So anyway, hello, Claire, nice to meet you, etc. I see you’re not instantly disconnecting this time.

Claire: The pleasure is mine, God of the Inner Flame.

Dorr: Dorr’s fine.

Alfred: Yeah, she ascended. Picked up a few dozen points at least, I bet.

Dorr: Right… Not bad. Didn’t go myself, but heard Flux made a whole event out of it.

Claire: Describing it as an event is generous. They were simply observing.

Alfred: Yeah, and that makes it an event. Anyway, enough stalling. Go fuck the cat.

Claire: No.

She hugged Sylvia closer to her chest and rested her chin on her head. “How do I make Alfred shut up?”

Alfred: You can’t. :)

“Uhmmmm… Iunno.” Sylvia placed a hand on her paw and tilted her head. “Wait, are you connected to world chat right now?”

“Mhm.”

“Oh! Then can you do me a reaaaaally big favour and give Al a piece of my mind? I can’t believe he just started letting everyone out after he made such a big deal about letting me explore and stuff!”

“Okay.”

Claire: Alfred. Sylvia has complaints. She says…

Alfred: I heard her already. Just tell her it was outside my control.

“He says that he’s recently discovered that he’s more interested in catboys than catgirls, so he doesn’t have any time to field your complaints.”

Alfred: That doesn’t sound anything like what I said…

Dorr: Yeah, but it’s pretty on brand.

Alfred: Well… a bit, maybe.

“Wait, really?” Sylvia blinked. Thrice. “Well… now that I think about it, it does kinda make sense. Mom said that he used to tie up the equitaur in the basement and take turns screwing him and his wife.”

Claire: Pervert. I doubt they even consented.

Alfred: I’ll have you know that was an experiment for experiment’s sake. All of them have agreed to experiments at least.

Dorr: Man, Al… sometimes I think you really need a chastity belt or something, for your brain.

Alfred: I’d break it with sheer vigour.

Claire: Disgusting.

Alfred: Yes, yes, I know you’re narrow minded. Can you just tell her what I said already?

Claire: Fine.

“Apparently, that was an experiment for experiment’s sake.”

“Right…” The fox twisted her face. “Well uhm… I’m just glad I wasn’t around to see it.”

Alfred: …

Dorr: LOL

Log Entry 7026

You have disconnected from World Chat.

Smirking, Claire ignored the divine revelations that ensued and turned her eyes on the battle.

The duel between the bug and the blob would soon be over. And whatever the conclusion may have been, it was sure to be worth more of her time than Alfred’s idle complaints.