Day 29 Chapter 22
- Location
- Around here
[X] Plan Controlled Explosions
"The source of the dark magic, as well as the other that I sensed, are both on this floor," Lancer says. "The dark magic is too thick, and I was unable to tell if there was a witch hiding its presence inside, but the other…" Lancer's voice trails off, and she shakes her head. "I still can't get a read on what it could be. My familiar can't get close enough to it without my connection to it going haywire, but it… It looks like a glowing mass of light, almost like staring straight into the sun."
"If it's so bright your familiar can't even look at it without blinding you, then what are we supposed to do about it?" Mirai asks. "It kind of feels like we've just been set up for failure here."
"Doubtful," Lancer replies. "Whatever is going on… Has some sort of purpose to it. It may be an alien purpose, but none of this is by coincidence or random chance. We just don't know what we're looking at."
"Okay, that's all well and good," Mirai says, "But what are we supposed to do about it? Which one should we hit first?"
"I think we should try to go after the source of the dark magic first," you say. When Saki and Mirai look to you for an explanation, you add "It's like this: If there's no witch inside the dark magic, then we'd have two things we have to figure out, and that won't change no matter which one we did first. But if there is a witch, then we'll know what to do, so it's really like there's only one thing we'll still have to figure out if we do it like that."
Saki and Mirai look to each other, and they both nod their heads. "I agree, master," Lancer says. "A witch, I can handle with ease. This other… I am unsure of. If it is dangerous, I would prefer not to exhaust myself figuring it out, only to go into a fight against the witch tired and worn out. Tackling the source of the dark magic first would be the better course of action."
"Can we all assume that you already know the way?" Mirai asks. "Your familiar got close enough to it the first time that we'd have a better idea of where it was than just 'somewhere up here' right?"
"That's correct," Lancer replies. "I'll still be relying on your familiars to help clear the way, but we should be there…" Lancer's voice trails off, and the an explosion rocks the world around you. Now that you're on the same floor as the explosions going off, it's much more violent, and you're thrown to the ground as dust from the ceiling is shaken loose by the blast. "Master!"
Lancer dives on top of you as a piece of ceiling is worked loose, and you hear a sound that doesn't sound too good. It sounded violent, but with Lancer on top of you you can't tell what it was. "Master, are you all right?"
"Um… I think so?" That last explosion was too close, and you're feeling more than a bit shaken up by it, but you do your best to compose yourself. "Saki? Mirai? How are the two of you doing?"
"We're alive," you hear Saki saying. "Somehow…"
"This place was really rigged to blow, wasn't it?" Mirai grumbles. "First reality decides to play tricks on us every time we so much as move a muscle, and now this! Who the hell designed this labyrinth, anyway?"
"Beats me," Saki replies. "Let's just hope beating them doesn't kill us in the process."
You can't die yet. The world is still in danger.
"Lancer, can you get off of me?" You're not going to complain about the view, but Lancer is just a little bit too old for you; and besides, you don't think she sees you that way, either. "It's kind of hard to breathe with you squishing me."
"Apologies, master," Lancer replies with a pained grunt. "But I'm afraid I may need some assistance getting up, myself."
With your head trapped in a compromising position, you can't really see what's going on, but apparently- "Oh, crap, don't worry!" Saki and Mirai can. "We'll get that off you in just a second, Lancer, hold on."
You hear the sound of Mirai's heel tapping against the floorboards – wouldn't you know it? The one normal thing about this place is that the floor is actually made of floor – and moments later, you hear the shuffling sound of her stuffed bears. "Ready? On three! One, two, three!"
Suddenly, you can breathe easy again, as the weight pinning Lancer down on top of you is lifted. Mirai's teddy bears toss it aside; it's a piece of ceiling, and it's heavy enough to crack the floor when it lands. If it could do that to the floor, you don't want to think about what it did to Lancer when it fell on her. You manage to slip out from underneath Lancer, but she remains stuck in a crouching position. "Just give me a moment, master," Lancer says. "Just a moment."
Another explosion rocks the building; you aren't sure you've got a moment to give her. "All right, Lancer," you say, resolving to give her the moment she needs whether you can afford to or not. "I'll trust you."
Quickly, Lancer traces one of her runes into the floor underneath her, and she drops down on top of it. It's definitely more than a moment before she's managed to roll onto her back, but when she does, she traces another of that same rune down the front of her outfit. It's another several moments, more of them than you can afford with how violently this place is shaking, before Lancer is able to right herself. She dusts herself off as she stands, and says "Let's get moving," to you and the others as the explosions die down, for the moment. "We're getting close. The explosions wouldn't be this violent if they weren't protecting the source of all this."
The building shakes even more fiercely than before, as Miria's teddy bears continue to set off traps ahead of you. There's a few times where you feel like the entire place is going to come down on top of you, but fortunately that doesn't happen. There are a few times where you have to take shelter from falling ceiling debris, though, but those only slow you down.
They also make you wonder where all of this ceiling debris is actually coming from, because every time you look up at the ceiling, you don't actually see and gaps where debris might have been shaken loose. Is that just one more trick this labyrinth is playing on you, or what? But then where is the debris coming from? Where did that piece of ceiling that Lancer shielded you come from?
You don't have time to dwell on questions like that. That's pretty typical of the way things have been in here so far, actually. Reality has thrown you for so many different loops that you haven't really had time to do much more than experiment so see what works, without really dwelling on what worked or why it might have worked. You still don't really understand how gravity works inside this labyrinth, for one.
But anyway, you don't have time to dwell on your questions, because the closer you come to reaching your destination, the, uh, the weirder things get. Not the same weird that they've been before, but like, normal witch labyrinth weird. The hallway you're walking down seems like it stretches on forever, with your every step bringing you further away from the goal rather than closer to it. Thin black tendrils line the walls and cover the floor and ceiling, but the closer – further? – you get to your destination, the thicker they become, until the entire hallway is covered with choking black.
Literally choking black. Not only is this black so black that it obscures everything, every single edge and nook and corner of the hallway blends together into a single, unbroken blackness, but it's literally choking. Your breathing becomes staggered, and you're reminded of the thick clouds of miasma that rolled in when you were fighting the giant spider in the sewers. You bring a hand up to cover your mouth and nose, as you see Lancer, Saki, and Mirai doing the same.
You don't know for how much longer you're forced to continue like that, because soon enough – or maybe not soon enough – you've arrived at your destination. "That's it?" Saki's voice is muffled by her hand as she exclaims, upon seeing the mass of dark magic; "And… We don't know if there's a witch inside there or not, right?"
What you've arrived at is a massive ball of dark magic, blacks and reds and purples and blues, all swirling violently together inside a ball that's as big as the room it occupies. Its lights illuminate a corner of the room, casting long shadows onto walls of otherwise solid black, giving them back their definition for just a second before the shifting shadows pass, illuminating another corner in a different part of the room. "How do we figure out if there's a witch in there or not?" Mirai asks.
Mirai reaches out with her sword, as if to poke the massive sphere, but Lancer stops her. "Don't disturb it,' Lancer says. "We don't know what will happen if we do."
"So then, how do we get rid of it?"
"Um… I've got an idea," you say. All eyes are on you, and you ask Lancer "Could you put up a big barrier around the ball? That way, we can try hitting it without risking it attacking us back… Or without our attacks bringing the rest of the house down on us."
"I could," Lancer replies. "But, what sort of attacks are you planning to use against… This?"
"Just enough to, uh… To crack it open? I guess?" You really aren't sure if you've worded what you want to do appropriately. "Basically, I want to hit it hard enough to see if it'll open up and show us whether there's a witch inside of it or not. So I guess that'd be pretty hard, wouldn't it? To hit it with, I mean; I'd be hitting it pretty hard."
"Yes, I suppose you would be," Lancer says. "All right, we'll give your idea a try." Lancer's fingers are a blur as she traces several runes in quick succession, and an almost-invisible barrier forms up around the ball of dark magic. "Well, master, it's all yours," Lancer says, stepping aside so you and your friends can take a crack at it.
You do what you can to clear your mind, and concentrate on ways to hit your target through the barrier Lancer has set up, but without letting the blast from your attacks come out the other end. You breathe in deep, focusing all your being on that one task. As the jewel in the center of your staff glows a bright purple, Saki and Mirai step up beside you, charging up their own attacks. Saki's riding crop hums and crackles with electricity on one side of you, and on the other, seven pink-coloured disks form in front of Mirai.
Finally, you release, crying out with "Limiti Esterni!"
On either side of you, Saki and Mirai let loose their own attacks. Saki's is punctuated just with rabid screaming as she unleashes a massive ball of electricity, but when Mirai calls out "Ursa Major!" you smile. Sure, it's not in Latin, and it's probably not the name the old you gave her for her attack, but the fact that she's even doing it in the first place makes you smile.
Your three attacks all pass through Lancer's barrier and make a big splash, enveloping the ball of dark magic in a terrific explosion that, thankfully, is caught by Lancer's barrier and kept from being reflected back at you; or worse, sent into the rest of the house causing it to fall down on top of you.
Thankfully, your attacks managed to crack the ball of dark magic, and into the massive crack you've made in it the dark shadows and endless black retreat, returning some semblance of light to the room that doesn't cause your eyes to go crazy. You don't know if you've managed to defeat it or not – unlikely; if you'd defeated it, wouldn't the labyrinth have folded in on itself and spat you back out into the real world? – or if now that you've cracked it open a witch will appear, but so far nothing seems to be happening.
Then the ball of dark magic parts, revealing a passageway behind it that's bathed in warm, blinding white light. It's the most beautiful, most radiant thing you've ever felt, enough to make even Niko's smile, her hugs, her kisses feel cold and dull in comparison. Like your entire being, mind, body, and soul, are all being enveloped in a hug all at once.
You don't want to leave.
[ ] Wat do?
"The source of the dark magic, as well as the other that I sensed, are both on this floor," Lancer says. "The dark magic is too thick, and I was unable to tell if there was a witch hiding its presence inside, but the other…" Lancer's voice trails off, and she shakes her head. "I still can't get a read on what it could be. My familiar can't get close enough to it without my connection to it going haywire, but it… It looks like a glowing mass of light, almost like staring straight into the sun."
"If it's so bright your familiar can't even look at it without blinding you, then what are we supposed to do about it?" Mirai asks. "It kind of feels like we've just been set up for failure here."
"Doubtful," Lancer replies. "Whatever is going on… Has some sort of purpose to it. It may be an alien purpose, but none of this is by coincidence or random chance. We just don't know what we're looking at."
"Okay, that's all well and good," Mirai says, "But what are we supposed to do about it? Which one should we hit first?"
"I think we should try to go after the source of the dark magic first," you say. When Saki and Mirai look to you for an explanation, you add "It's like this: If there's no witch inside the dark magic, then we'd have two things we have to figure out, and that won't change no matter which one we did first. But if there is a witch, then we'll know what to do, so it's really like there's only one thing we'll still have to figure out if we do it like that."
Saki and Mirai look to each other, and they both nod their heads. "I agree, master," Lancer says. "A witch, I can handle with ease. This other… I am unsure of. If it is dangerous, I would prefer not to exhaust myself figuring it out, only to go into a fight against the witch tired and worn out. Tackling the source of the dark magic first would be the better course of action."
"Can we all assume that you already know the way?" Mirai asks. "Your familiar got close enough to it the first time that we'd have a better idea of where it was than just 'somewhere up here' right?"
"That's correct," Lancer replies. "I'll still be relying on your familiars to help clear the way, but we should be there…" Lancer's voice trails off, and the an explosion rocks the world around you. Now that you're on the same floor as the explosions going off, it's much more violent, and you're thrown to the ground as dust from the ceiling is shaken loose by the blast. "Master!"
Lancer dives on top of you as a piece of ceiling is worked loose, and you hear a sound that doesn't sound too good. It sounded violent, but with Lancer on top of you you can't tell what it was. "Master, are you all right?"
"Um… I think so?" That last explosion was too close, and you're feeling more than a bit shaken up by it, but you do your best to compose yourself. "Saki? Mirai? How are the two of you doing?"
"We're alive," you hear Saki saying. "Somehow…"
"This place was really rigged to blow, wasn't it?" Mirai grumbles. "First reality decides to play tricks on us every time we so much as move a muscle, and now this! Who the hell designed this labyrinth, anyway?"
"Beats me," Saki replies. "Let's just hope beating them doesn't kill us in the process."
You can't die yet. The world is still in danger.
"Lancer, can you get off of me?" You're not going to complain about the view, but Lancer is just a little bit too old for you; and besides, you don't think she sees you that way, either. "It's kind of hard to breathe with you squishing me."
"Apologies, master," Lancer replies with a pained grunt. "But I'm afraid I may need some assistance getting up, myself."
With your head trapped in a compromising position, you can't really see what's going on, but apparently- "Oh, crap, don't worry!" Saki and Mirai can. "We'll get that off you in just a second, Lancer, hold on."
You hear the sound of Mirai's heel tapping against the floorboards – wouldn't you know it? The one normal thing about this place is that the floor is actually made of floor – and moments later, you hear the shuffling sound of her stuffed bears. "Ready? On three! One, two, three!"
Suddenly, you can breathe easy again, as the weight pinning Lancer down on top of you is lifted. Mirai's teddy bears toss it aside; it's a piece of ceiling, and it's heavy enough to crack the floor when it lands. If it could do that to the floor, you don't want to think about what it did to Lancer when it fell on her. You manage to slip out from underneath Lancer, but she remains stuck in a crouching position. "Just give me a moment, master," Lancer says. "Just a moment."
Another explosion rocks the building; you aren't sure you've got a moment to give her. "All right, Lancer," you say, resolving to give her the moment she needs whether you can afford to or not. "I'll trust you."
Quickly, Lancer traces one of her runes into the floor underneath her, and she drops down on top of it. It's definitely more than a moment before she's managed to roll onto her back, but when she does, she traces another of that same rune down the front of her outfit. It's another several moments, more of them than you can afford with how violently this place is shaking, before Lancer is able to right herself. She dusts herself off as she stands, and says "Let's get moving," to you and the others as the explosions die down, for the moment. "We're getting close. The explosions wouldn't be this violent if they weren't protecting the source of all this."
The building shakes even more fiercely than before, as Miria's teddy bears continue to set off traps ahead of you. There's a few times where you feel like the entire place is going to come down on top of you, but fortunately that doesn't happen. There are a few times where you have to take shelter from falling ceiling debris, though, but those only slow you down.
They also make you wonder where all of this ceiling debris is actually coming from, because every time you look up at the ceiling, you don't actually see and gaps where debris might have been shaken loose. Is that just one more trick this labyrinth is playing on you, or what? But then where is the debris coming from? Where did that piece of ceiling that Lancer shielded you come from?
You don't have time to dwell on questions like that. That's pretty typical of the way things have been in here so far, actually. Reality has thrown you for so many different loops that you haven't really had time to do much more than experiment so see what works, without really dwelling on what worked or why it might have worked. You still don't really understand how gravity works inside this labyrinth, for one.
But anyway, you don't have time to dwell on your questions, because the closer you come to reaching your destination, the, uh, the weirder things get. Not the same weird that they've been before, but like, normal witch labyrinth weird. The hallway you're walking down seems like it stretches on forever, with your every step bringing you further away from the goal rather than closer to it. Thin black tendrils line the walls and cover the floor and ceiling, but the closer – further? – you get to your destination, the thicker they become, until the entire hallway is covered with choking black.
Literally choking black. Not only is this black so black that it obscures everything, every single edge and nook and corner of the hallway blends together into a single, unbroken blackness, but it's literally choking. Your breathing becomes staggered, and you're reminded of the thick clouds of miasma that rolled in when you were fighting the giant spider in the sewers. You bring a hand up to cover your mouth and nose, as you see Lancer, Saki, and Mirai doing the same.
You don't know for how much longer you're forced to continue like that, because soon enough – or maybe not soon enough – you've arrived at your destination. "That's it?" Saki's voice is muffled by her hand as she exclaims, upon seeing the mass of dark magic; "And… We don't know if there's a witch inside there or not, right?"
What you've arrived at is a massive ball of dark magic, blacks and reds and purples and blues, all swirling violently together inside a ball that's as big as the room it occupies. Its lights illuminate a corner of the room, casting long shadows onto walls of otherwise solid black, giving them back their definition for just a second before the shifting shadows pass, illuminating another corner in a different part of the room. "How do we figure out if there's a witch in there or not?" Mirai asks.
Mirai reaches out with her sword, as if to poke the massive sphere, but Lancer stops her. "Don't disturb it,' Lancer says. "We don't know what will happen if we do."
"So then, how do we get rid of it?"
"Um… I've got an idea," you say. All eyes are on you, and you ask Lancer "Could you put up a big barrier around the ball? That way, we can try hitting it without risking it attacking us back… Or without our attacks bringing the rest of the house down on us."
"I could," Lancer replies. "But, what sort of attacks are you planning to use against… This?"
"Just enough to, uh… To crack it open? I guess?" You really aren't sure if you've worded what you want to do appropriately. "Basically, I want to hit it hard enough to see if it'll open up and show us whether there's a witch inside of it or not. So I guess that'd be pretty hard, wouldn't it? To hit it with, I mean; I'd be hitting it pretty hard."
"Yes, I suppose you would be," Lancer says. "All right, we'll give your idea a try." Lancer's fingers are a blur as she traces several runes in quick succession, and an almost-invisible barrier forms up around the ball of dark magic. "Well, master, it's all yours," Lancer says, stepping aside so you and your friends can take a crack at it.
You do what you can to clear your mind, and concentrate on ways to hit your target through the barrier Lancer has set up, but without letting the blast from your attacks come out the other end. You breathe in deep, focusing all your being on that one task. As the jewel in the center of your staff glows a bright purple, Saki and Mirai step up beside you, charging up their own attacks. Saki's riding crop hums and crackles with electricity on one side of you, and on the other, seven pink-coloured disks form in front of Mirai.
Finally, you release, crying out with "Limiti Esterni!"
On either side of you, Saki and Mirai let loose their own attacks. Saki's is punctuated just with rabid screaming as she unleashes a massive ball of electricity, but when Mirai calls out "Ursa Major!" you smile. Sure, it's not in Latin, and it's probably not the name the old you gave her for her attack, but the fact that she's even doing it in the first place makes you smile.
Your three attacks all pass through Lancer's barrier and make a big splash, enveloping the ball of dark magic in a terrific explosion that, thankfully, is caught by Lancer's barrier and kept from being reflected back at you; or worse, sent into the rest of the house causing it to fall down on top of you.
Thankfully, your attacks managed to crack the ball of dark magic, and into the massive crack you've made in it the dark shadows and endless black retreat, returning some semblance of light to the room that doesn't cause your eyes to go crazy. You don't know if you've managed to defeat it or not – unlikely; if you'd defeated it, wouldn't the labyrinth have folded in on itself and spat you back out into the real world? – or if now that you've cracked it open a witch will appear, but so far nothing seems to be happening.
Then the ball of dark magic parts, revealing a passageway behind it that's bathed in warm, blinding white light. It's the most beautiful, most radiant thing you've ever felt, enough to make even Niko's smile, her hugs, her kisses feel cold and dull in comparison. Like your entire being, mind, body, and soul, are all being enveloped in a hug all at once.
You don't want to leave.
[ ] Wat do?
