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Chapter 18
🕑 Added 2023-04-25 18:53:18 +0000 UTCA day or two turned into the better part of a week. Occasionally Kassar chimed in to offer a tip or two, but most of Bruce’s time was spent with his legs crossed trying to sense every single detail of the area around his sanctuary. At first, it was a bit boring, and Bruce began to feel himself going crazy with boredom as he tried to make sense of the different colors and intensities, but after a day or so of concentration, he began to make serious progress. Not enough to make the process fun, but once he could finally make sense of the input, it began to occupy Bruce’s full attention, not leaving him the spare focus to feel bored.
Learning to use Eyes of the Void was strange. The ability didn’t get any stronger. Colors and shades were just as bright or dim as they were when he first activated it, but Bruce found himself getting better and better at finding individual flows of energy amidst the gray backdrop of the maze. It was like watching a movie or reading a book. At first, he could only see the things that were readily obvious like action or dialogue, but now he was beginning to notice themes and foreshadowing.
More than anything, Bruce learned that Kassar had been right. Eyes of the Void had an absurd amount of potential. The sharpening of the sensitivity of the images and perceptions granted by the ability was only the beginning. Even as his mastery grew, Bruce could feel that there was more hiding beneath the surface. Secrets and techniques just out of his grasp that would let him detect even the faintest mote or current of energy that might denote an enemy or an ability.
With only a week of practice, the improvements were stark. He could easily spot the chameleon lurkers leisurely passing within a couple hundred feet of the sanctuary, but beyond that their camouflage presences grew hazy. Their presences were as faint as ever, but at least up it was a fairly simple matter for him to track the monster’s slow movements as they meandered through the walls of the maze.
Finally, Bruce stood up. Instinctively, he stretched his shoulders and back. It didn’t do much, one of the many benefits of being a construct crafted from pure psychic energy was not having bones and muscles that could grow stiff, but the motion was strangely comforting after hundreds of hours of forced inaction.
“Ready?” Kassar asked. “Remember, at this stage you should consider any energy to be a potential threat, but especially green and red auras. Green usually means concealment while red is associated with violence.”
“I could probably sit down here for another month or two fiddling with Eyes of the Void,” Bruce replied, “but it feels like I’m hitting a plateau. I’m still improving, but it’s a lot slower.”
“Wait,” he cut himself off, mind finally catching up with what Kassar had just said. “What do you mean at this stage? Shouldn’t I be avoiding any sign of energy entirely? I thought you said that everything down here is trying to kill me.”
“It is,” the spirit responded, “but there is also useful bait in the Great Labyrinth’s depths. An adept enough warrior can extract the bait without falling victim to the trap it is in. A clumsy warrior simply dies, perhaps taking their entire warband with them.”
“I’ve had enough of bumbling through this entire mess in the dark,” Bruce said testily. “Tell me, what is it that I shouldn’t be doing at this stage? At a minimum, I’d like to know what I should be watching out for in the future.”
He could almost see Kassar shrugging his hairy shoulders while reclining in the hammock in Bruce’s subconscious.
“If you’re talented enough, you can use natural energy currents to make new abilities. Of course, it’s absurdly hard, and they have to be compatible with whatever path you’ve taken, but you’re descended from priest caste stock. It might actually be possible for you. Just make sure to watch out for traps and monsters. Those spots are like a buffet for the predators that stalk the maze, and you’ll have to rest there for days if not months to actually finish a new ability. Most of the time it takes an entire warband to protect a sage from waves and waves of monsters so that they can finish a new ability. A great way to collect EXP to be honest, but more than a bit beyond your skill level.”
Bruce gave a reluctant sigh as he turned to look at the sanctuary’s exit. Kassar was right. Staying in any one spot for more than a couple of hours was a death sentence. Never mind the slow moving chameleon lurkers, there were a number of small red and brown blobs of energy that raced incredibly quickly through the maze. He hadn’t actually seen one in person, so Bruce didn’t know for sure what they were, just that he had no desire to encounter one.
Shaking himself, Bruce took his first step out of the sanctuary in a week. Eyes of the Void showed only the normal currents of silvery white energy with flickering bursts of violet. Outside of a trap that had been lingering in a side corridor, the coast was as clear as it was ever going to get.
He began jogging. Now that Bruce knew what to loop for, the air practically crackled with energy. The silver and purple streams of power were similar to EXP but they were fixed in place. He could sense them, and with the proper ability Bruce could probably use them, but there wasn’t any way for him to absorb the power.
In the distance, one of the reddish brown auras began streaking down a pathway that connected with his. Bruce quickly took a right turn followed by a left, careful to avoid the suspicious streak of red on the wall of the corridor in front of him. It could be a well or an imprint of violent power, but in all likelihood it was a trap.
The blur of energy zipped down the hallway about six seconds after Bruce had vacated it. The monster didn’t even hesitate, rumbling onward at around fifty miles per hour before it slowed slightly to whip around a corner and sprint out of his range.
Bruce shivered. His choice to duck into a side channel had served him well, but at the same time, there was no way he would have been able to outrun the monster if it had spotted him. Only luck and the sharp corners of the maze stood between Bruce and a quick, brutal death.
Shaking his head, he began jogging again. He only spotted one more of the fast moving energy globs before the staircase to the eighth floor came into view about a half hour later, but in that intervening time he had taken ten detours, eight for traps and two due to chameleon lurkers infesting large sections of the maze.
When he finally reached the staircase, it was a relief. Even the dangerous and physically exhausting climb up to the eighth floor wasn’t as trying as his efforts to stay just out of reach of the monsters that thoroughly outclassed him on the ninth.
After making it to the next level and resting for five minutes to regain some focus and energy after his ascent, Bruce got to repeat the process all over again. Here, the format was different and significantly more dangerous. There were fewer sharp turns and dead ends. Rather, the seventh floor had a lot of long straight and wide corridors with limited places to hide. Worse, it was positively lousy with traps.
Every ten to fifteen steps there would be another one, a bright red octagon about two feet per side planted in the floor. They were all clearly visible, but that only made Bruce that much more wary. Eyes of the Void was a high end skill, but if the traps were as plain as day to someone with a much more affordable ability, what did that mean about their danger level?
The maze wouldn’t put a worthless challenge into its depths. So far every encounter had been calculated to ruthlessly trap and kill intruders. Frankly, a suddenly simplistic and easy pattern made him more wary than a hulking minotaur standing in the center of an arena. At least there, he knew what the Great Labyrinth was throwing his way. Here, the true threat was hidden. Bruce knew there must be something else, but he had no way of knowing what it was, and that lack of-
A flash of silver and red at the extremes of his perception was all the warning Bruce had. On instinct he threw himself to the ground a fraction of a second before something screamed by overhead. An eyeblink later, there was another glimmer of aura at the far end of the hallway.
This time, Bruce was able to see the attacker as it blurred past on the far right side of the corridor. More than anything, it looked like malevolent lightning. A wild burst of crackling energy that curved slightly through the air toward him. Luckily, it was moving too quickly and the passage was too wide for it to track him down, but it easily moved a foot or two in the air during the eyeblink before it passed him entirely.
He stood up quickly, making it another ten or so feet before blanching. Silver and red energy was welling up at either end of the hallway, but rather than releasing itself immediately, it began to gather and crackle hungrily, as if it were waiting for something.
“Bruce,” Kassar said quietly.
“I see it,” he replied, stopping and bending his knees slightly, trying to ready himself for anything. “Any idea what’s about to happen?”
Before the spirit could respond, the maze answered for him. Three bolts of lightning exploded from either end of the hallway, zipping through the air almost too quickly for the eye to follow.
Bruce didn’t have time to think. Instincts took over and he threw himself to the ground once again.
The second he hit, Bruce rolled to the right. Just before his shoulder made contact with a trap panel, he propped himself up with his left arm, teetering dangerously of the expanse of crimson aura as the lightning burned through the space that he had once occupied.
Torched ozone assaulted Bruce’s nose as he flopped to the ground, just beside the trap trigger, cold sweat pouring down his back. The lightning had filled the hallway in a grid. Three spaced at waist level with another three around where his head or neck would have been.
Dropping to the ground should have been enough to dodge all six bolts, but two of the waist high blasts broke from the pattern, almost blowing a hole in the ground where he had been laying. Only by rolling to the side at the last minute had Bruce been able to avoid the attacks.
He stood up, breaking into an immediate sprint despite the weakness in his knees. The only saving grace of the lightning was its poor agility and the long corridor it needed to travel in order to hit him. It was hard to judge its speed, but it was moving at least seventy five miles per hour, fast enough that the idea of outrunning it was a sick joke.
Ahead, he could feel the energy beginning to build again.
Bruce bit his lip, pushing his body harder as he sought to make it to an intersection about one hundred feet in front of him. Each step, he had to keep a portion of his attention on the traps that grew more and more frequent.
Ninety feet.
Without an ability as strong as Eyes of the Void, between running and dodging, he almost certainly would have triggered one of the mechanisms by now. It was easy to see how this floor could turn into a death trap for the clumsy or unwary.
Eighty feet.
The energy buildup was growing more and more obvious. In the distance, Eyes of the Void detected the end of the hallway where the three bolts of lighting were twisting through a tight circle, their speed increasing with each circuit.
Seventy feet.
There was a band of red crossing the corridor, almost ten feet wide. Bruce jumped, stomach in his throat.
Before he could clear the gap, the lightning at the end of the corridor released itself, angling upward toward where Bruce was reaching the apex of his leap.
He summoned his hammer, twisting in the air and bashing the ceiling with all of his might. The haft of the weapon thumped against his hands, knocking himself downward.
Lightning struck his maul, overloading and shattering the weapon into fragments of violet light that immediately began dissipating. Light exploded behind Bruce’s eyes, jamming what felt like shards of glass into his brain
The hair on his arms stood on end, sizzling off as the electrical charge of the near miss coursed through his body. Bruce’s nerves screamed in agony as his back pounded into the floor.
A moment later, another arc of angrily silver energy passed overhead from the other direction, curving down toward Bruce’s prone form but unable to reach him as he writhed in agony on the floor of the maze.
“Get up Bruce,” Kassar growled. “You have maybe five seconds before they recharge enough to come again and they’re learning your patterns. You’ve gotten a taste for how outclassed you are. One direct hit and we’re dead.”
He groaned. Much as his migraine made him want to snap at the phantasm, Kassar was right. Bruce staggered to his feet, wobbling slightly as he began to run once again.
Sixty feet.
There were red marks on the walls and ceiling now. He’d need to be even more careful when dodging. Brushing any surface could be a fatal mistake.
Fifty feet.
The three strokes of lightning at the far end of the hallway had begun to move in a circle again. They were much slower than he’d seen before, but with every step they began to pick up speed.
Forty feet.
He could see into the corridor that ran perpendicular to the death trap he was sprinting down. It wasn’t nearly as wide and the traps were much sparser. Bruce doubted it was completely safe, but at the same time, compared to what he was currently dealing with it looked like paradise.
Thirty feet
There was a cube of red energy floating in the air. It wasn’t just that the floor was trapped. The very oxygen itself of the maze was hostile to intruders.
Twenty feet.
Bruce could feel goosebumps on his smoldering arms, and the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end as the growing static charge from the captive lightning bolts made his teeth tingle.
Ten feet.
The lightning was bright. Silver and red light shone off of it like a beacon, and Bruce knew it could throw itself at him with only a moment’s notice.
Right before he hit the intersection, it happened. The three bolts aligned themselves vertically with one at head level, the other aiming for his chest, and the final attack directed at Bruce’s shins and knees. There wouldn’t be any dropping to the ground to dodge this one.
Just as Bruce was about to throw his body to the side to avoid the attacks, he felt a glimmer of energy behind him as the other three strokes of lightning aimed themselves at ankle level across the hallway, cutting off any hope that he might be able to tuck his shoulder and roll to freedom.
Instead, he kicked off the ground toward the upcoming hallway, twisting in the air and sailing backward like a high jumper as he arched his back to keep as much airtime as possible.
The lightning crashed past, close enough that the flash of light half blinded him. Bruce waited for his nerves to report another near miss, breath in his throat, but it never came.
Instead he landed on his back in the new hallway, barely a food from another red octagon. He bounced once, air rushing out of his lungs as he frantically rolled away from the trap.
Overhead, a solitary streak of malignant electricity blazed a silver and red path through the air, a danger, but nowhere near as bad as the six bolts he had been dealing with at once.
“Say Bruce,” Kassar remarked. “I think you should find a sanctuary. You’re pretty beat up right now, and by my reckoning your senses are shot. A couple hours to relax would do wonders.”
Bruce groaned, allowing himself the indulgence of closing his eyes for a half second.
“Noted,” he croaked.
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