Breaking the Rules Pt. 22

All of this ran through his head, flashes of images and the accompanying emotional turmoil. He had no time to stop and process, to compare to his own situation now, or gain new insights on his experiences; there was only one foot in front of the other and continue. He reached the walkway, looking desperately both directions. He tossed his pack to the ground and spun, seeing hobgoblins approaching from both directions. He dodged one way, letting the zombie in front come barreling past to slam into the rail behind him, then dodged again the same direction, causing the second zombie to turn too quickly, tripping over its own feet and collapsing on its side. The hobgoblins hadn't spotted any of them yet, but they were approaching fast and he hoped they would prioritize their targets appropriately. The first zombie came around as the second was still stumbling back to its feet. Nuru kicked out, launching himself off of one hip at a carefully-timed moment when the zombie's leg was stepping forward on that side. He hopped up and away, and the zombie twisted and fell, flailing its arms ineffectually at him as it went down. All too soon though, the bear-crawling zombie had nearly caught up, and the two others had gotten back to their feet and were slowly starting to get their balance to come at him again.

The hobgoblins came in hard, one of them spotting the combatants and letting out a harsh cry, which alerted the other and another coming in behind it. The air seethed with tension as Nuru ducked and dodged for his life, until the hobs quickly but clumsily arrived and attacked with wild ferocity. Nuru was worried for a moment, but the re-fighters were fully equipped, and the zombies had discarded any weapons they had ever had, going for a simple grapple. Then he was worried again, when the crawler was dispatched, and the undead had no further targets to distract them from him. However, they looked only the briefest moment his direction, before turning away and returning to their original paths. Nuru stood, panting, trying to make sense of what had happened, and what he was going to do next. A suspicion began to stir as he watched the hobs turning and going back the direction they'd just come from, forming a patrol pattern.

'They won't bother you,' she'd said. How had she known? Sure, undead fighters were undead, attacking only what they were ordered to do for the most part, unless they encountered a natural enemy that triggered their instincts. But how had she been so sure they wouldn't be set to attack anyone that wasn't a Cultist? And why were all the zombies wearing Cultist robes? And why were each one of them fresh? The defenses of the Glitch...

"You knew. You freakin'- you bloody goddamn knew!" Nuru roared, punching himself in the shoulder. "The Glitch makes a zombie outbreak as the defense, is that it!?"

/Easy now. Everything's going to be OK./

"How!? Zombies, you nymphomaniac! Do you know-!"

/Yes, I know about your parents. I didn't want to worry you before it was time. There was nothing you could do about it./

"I could have prepared myself mentally. If I'd known-"

/I took care of it for you, gave you those dreams to set your mind in a good place. You'd have turned tail and never done it, if I had told you. Face your fears, mortal. Rise above them. Heroes never win by taking the safe road. We're so close to reaching your goals, and mine. This will all be worth it, I promise./

"Fucking cunt. Never do this to me again. I swear by all twelve gods I'll summon you in person and have you murdered," Nuru snarled. "You know I can do it!"

"Eh- ye alright there?"

Nuru whirled, panting. A dwarf stood nearby with a hobgoblin standing next to him, watching carefully, looking back and forth between him and the fallen zombies. Nuru swallowed, took a deep breath.

"Yeah... I'm... fuck. Zombies jumped me. I'm still shaken."

"Hate ta ask but... they never bit ye, did they?"

"No... no, never touched me," Nuru said, holding up his arms to show no injuries on his hands.

"Damn fool. Get outta here. Can't ye see there's an outbreak?" the man said, shuffling past.

"Yeah, I... wait. I'm here for a friend of mine. She- she went to the labyrinth. I need to help her. Which way do I go?"

"Feckin'- dun be stupid. Ye see anything amiss, hear anythin', ye skedaddle, ya hear? Dun turn inta zombie fodder an' make us kill ye later."

"I won't."

"Alright. The Glitch lies in th' center o' the sideways basin, there."

The dward pointed at the inverse sphere Nuru had already seen, where The Glitch churned with some unseen force.

" 'Neath that, on t'other side, is a passageway that'll take ye to the place. Take the fork to the outside, past th' tower same way as I'm goin'. The passage was cleared last I heard, but ye know how these things go. Traveler beware."

"Right," Nuru gulped. "Thanks."

"Dun thank me yet." The dwarf walked off, shaking his head. "Worst feckin' day fer runnin' th' maze..."

Nuru shouldered his pack and followed that direction after catching his breath and settling his nerves. He caught up to the dwarf inside the tower, where he was winding up to throw a ludicrously large axe up into the wooden walkway of the next level up. The axe head flew off the handle, smashing through the boards and bringing a whole section of the flooring down; a zombie fell amidst the debris, and was bisected by the axe head as a tendril snaked up from the axe handle and pulled it back down when the dwarf gave it a mighty yank. Nuru didn't wait to see what happened, he dove around a corner as splinters flew, and took the side route through the tower complex. He avoided the stairs going up and down, instead heading straight for the opposite door, and emerged into a war zone. Bodies lay everywhere, and as fresh as they were they all it was hard to tell how many were zombies, and how many were cultists who had died fighting them. Nuru stepped wide, wary of any possible that might not be entirely dead, lamenting the missed looting opportunity, and pressed forward toward where goblins and wargs were fighting men in hooded robes, and Nuru tried to identify zombies just so he knew which ones to stay furthest from. He spied a side passage going down straight into the rock, unlike many of the walkways which opened out to the mountainside and, if someone was determined enough, could have been climbed up to. But not this one; it was fully enclosed in rock, and had torches leading the way down which were starting to sputter and a few had already gone out. He took the winding stairs quickly, but carefully; if he twisted his ankle, or fell and hit his head, there's no knowing what fate he'd meet.

At the bottom, the passage turned inwards, towards the lake on the other side. Here there were a few bodies on the ground, and two men standing guard in front of a yawning archway, beyond which was only blackness; Nuru couldn't even see the floor.

"No admittance," one of them hissed.

"We're closed today," the other whispered, voice carrying easily in the stone cavern.

"Guys, I just-" Nuru whispered.

"NO ADMITTANCE." They had spoken as one.

Nuru looked them over. They were elves, full-blood or near enough, with black Cultist robes, pendants around their necks, and a swipe of black paint across their eyes. He turned around, and started walking back up. Now what was he going to do?

(Feel like being helpful?)

/Always./

(How do I get past those guys?)

/Give them something to distract them./

(Like what?)

/Lure some enemies down there with you./

(Are you crazy!?)

/I didn't say it would be easy, but you can do it. My aura should attract them. Zombies always eat the sexiest people first. Can't blame them, sexy people always taste better! As you might remember from last night./

He went back the way he came, cursing all stairwells. He came back up and found a new wave of zombies had broken down a wooden gate, and were currently beating back the cultists standing behind their line of hobgoblins.

"!Launi Laya!"

Three of the zombies turned about to look at him, then broke off from the fight. One of them got taken down and its neck snapped by an opportunistic warg, the other two continued forward in Nuru's direction. He dodged around them, avoiding being grabbed by outstretched fingers, although not completely avoiding getting hit in the face by them, and trying his best not to get distracted by seeing the body of another zombie get thrown violently over the railing into the water far below. He got their hoods pulled back and, in a flash of inspiration, gripped them hard by the hair on the back of their heads when they stumbled into each other. They struggled, but one step after another got them to the entrance of the stairs down. He cancelled the aura and focused on getting the now-pliant zombies to stumble down the stairs. He was sweating profusely from the effort of keeping them close as he reached the bottom steps, but as long as their eyes pointed away from him or any other target they were relatively unresisting, letting their hands fall to their sides. Once they saw the elves at the archway, however, their arms went back up and they both howled hungrily, pulling away from Nuru and stiffly lunging at the two cultists.

The elves looked at each other. One of them nodded. "I got this."

So saying, he stepped forward and his curved sword flashed out, slashing through arms and neck of one zombie, before he spun and planted the tip of the blade through the other zombie's face, one move flowing right into the next. They both crumpled, and the weight of the second zombie let the blade pull free as it fell.

"Haaa! Good one!" the second one said. "Hey, you've got somebody-"

The first spun, hearing Nuru step forward to catch the head of the first zombie, now detached from the rest of it. His eyes narrowed, and he gripped his sword, preparing to attack.

"Aheh heh...!Kyakyawa Gani!"

The elf thrust the sword out, but stopped short of impaling Nuru's chest.

"Ack! Careful with that!" Nuru said, stepping to the side.

His arm with the zombie head still clutched in it swung wide. The elf tried to stab the gnashing face, but was hesitating any time he might hurt Nuru directly; the Glamour Defense spell was doing what Nuru had hoped it would. Nuru intentionally threw himself off balance, falling one way and then another, not quite hitting his stride, and waving the head wildly in the elf's direction. The man stepped back, unable to find a clear attack, and Nuru stumbled around and behind him, lunging towards the second elf and then backing off as the blade came whistling by him; he turned and flung the zombie head back at the first elf and used the momentum to give himself a little extra speed, and careened through the archway-

*****

Nuru awoke in a massive, brightly-lit chamber. He blinked several times in the painful illumination, coming from no particular source. The chamber was a perfect cube, with intersecting lines at precise right angles to each other, dividing each of the four walls into equally flawless squares.

"Where in the six hells am I?" Nuru said, his voice echoing back strangely.

He studied the middle of the room, where a ghostly outline of a hallway stretched away from him into a series of splits and more transparent hallways.

"Labyrinth sequence initiated," a woman's smooth voice said.

"Waaaugh!" Nuru said, snapping his head in all directions, looking for the source of the sound.

He saw no one, despite being able to see straight through to the far walls in every direction, and no exits from the chamber, including straight behind him where presumably he'd come in.

"Nnngh," Nuru said, rubbing his eyeballs hard at the eidetic-memory-induced headache threatening to break out as he tried to place this structure in the caldera's rim where he'd been minutes before.

"Countdown started," the invisible woman continued.

In one of the far corners, numbers appeared in a bright green, at first blinking in and out of existence, then becoming solid red and shifting with no transition. One moment, it read 30:00:00. The next, it read 29:59:12, then shortly became 29:53:55, and continued decreasing as Nuru watched; minutes, seconds, and hundredths of seconds flew by.

"What... the... f-" Nuru wondered out loud.

"Warning: faction alignment not specified. Please choose your Faction Symbol to proceed."

The ghostly passageway in front of him was overlaid with a series of exactly twelve entrances, side by side, and symbols over top of them. One of them, Nuru recognized from Tumelo's Chosen HQ, on a banner. Another he'd seen on Dubaku's robes, and he had to assume referred to Brotherhood of Masego. Katlego and Taurai's ceremonial wear had carried another. The Blue Sun of Jelani stuck out like a sore thumb. One after another, he identified as Faction-specific, and by process of inference and elimination associated every one of them. But this hadn't been in the directions, and Nuru wasn't sure how to proceed, if there was a right or a wrong choice.

(Hey! I'm here! What do I do?)

28:30:17

(Sanaa! Emergency! I don't know what's happening!)

28:10:44

"Hey! Hey lady! Can you hear me? What is this place?"

27:14:58

"God dammit... who are you!? Where am I!?"

The numbers ticked lower and lower.

"I... I have to choose? Is that it?"

26:37:08

"Shit, shit, shit... what happens when I choose? Does that mean I have to join?"

25:59:59

Nuru froze up, immobilized with indecision. He liked the Chosen, a bit, but there were people in there he definitely did not. Chibale was reprehensible and even Onyekachi was suspicious. The Spectrum might not even accept him, being as far as he knew a hundred per cent human. D'shemil might not qualify him. Jelani - well, that was out after what they'd done to Jaheem and Tusa, and his own father. Legba were kind of disgusting, although some of the other Goof Troupers might not be so bad - but then again, they were opposed to sex on general principle, so that was not happening. No *way* was he going with Neeoka's Seal Club. Eyamba was alright, maybe... but almost exclusive to dwarves, and Nuru didn't feel like staying in a stuffy cave most of his life. Adisa-

"FUCK those guys," Nuru muttered. "Well, I'd fuck Zula in a heartbeat. But Imari can eat a hot poker."

22:04:77

"Aaaaaugh, how do I choose, how do I choose!?" Nuru wailed. "Someone! Anyone!"

He remembered the instructions he'd found at the first campsite. He could see the twists and turns indicated on the paper, the spiral staircase he should have finished climbing by now. His heart thudded in his chest. His eyes glazed over as he breathed harder and faster, not moving an inch other than following his intended route with his eyes. His head spun.

20:20:17

He started pacing back and forth, arguing with himself about how bad one faction or another was. He couldn't even quite follow his own logic, as he slipped into a feverish madness. Some logic, any logic, that might ease this conundrum, that's all he wanted. He just had to pick a doorway, and then he could chase his goal; the goal he'd been pursuing for weeks, months, what felt like years. More than once he darted towards the Chosen signal, only to have an attack of conscience and stop. Minutes ticked by, numbers dropped. Nuru screamed out into the open space, hearing the distant walls reflect it back to him, mocking his pain.

05:59:40

Where the time had gone, Nuru could not tell. He threw his head back and screamed, in primal anguish, and realized he'd already been doing that for some time. He was losing everything. So much effort, everyone who had helped him, all the rules flaunted and enemies made, all for nothing. He kept screaming.

01:02:81

He sobbed, and laughed, and sobbed again.

00:00:04

"No, I'll do it-" Nuru said, lurching to his feet, forgetting when he had fallen, then whirled to look for whatever the nearest doorway was.

"Time expired. No selection made. Procedural generation triggered." The woman spoke calmly, entirely oblivious to his ordeal.

The labyrinth faded even more, and began to shift. The lines on the far wall began to fill with strange characters. Nuru found he could not look away from them. They filled his vision. The labyrinth took on a new form, and darkened-

*****

The elf sliced cleanly through the flying zombie head.

"Fuck! He's gonna- he went through the archway," the second elf said.

"Well, now you've done it. What did you get, so I can confiscate it?" the first elf said, cleaning the ichor from his blade.

Nuru was lying on the ground, staring at a torch on the far wall.

/Hey! What is that? Slow down- what happened?/

(Huh? I didn't say anything.)

/You just said "Emergency" and choosing and six hells and I don't know what else. You had like a thousand thoughts all at once in my direction. Slow down. What's happening?/

(I failed.)

/What!?/

"I got... nothing," Nuru croaked.

"...nothing? What path did you take?" the second elf said.

"Fuckin'... none of them. I couldn't choose. The numbers went to zero and I..." Nuru sighed.

/You... that can't be right. I've put everything on this. How did you get nothing!?/

(I don't know. I'm sorry. I had a path, but there were symbols for all the factions first and I couldn't choose and...)

The elves looked at each other. One of them snorted. The other laughed. Moments later, they were clinging to each other, weak with laughter, trying not to fall down with overwhelming mirth.

"Comes to the-"

"Labyrinth! In Jabu's territory!"

"-in the middle of an outbreak-"

"-and can't decide-"

"-and gets nothing!"

The elves finished each others' sentences, stringing it all into one long joke at Nuru's expense.

"Yeah... ha ha, laugh it up," Nuru said gloomily, dragging himself to his feet. "Maybe I'll throw myself in the lake like all the goddamn zombies up there."

This just set off a new round of giggles and the elves collapsed to the ground, rolling uncontrollably. The black paint across their eyes had to be running by now. Nuru stumbled to the stairs and laboriously climbed, and even the stinging laughter of the elves roaring past him couldn't push his steps any faster.

/I can't accept this. You missed something. Tell it to me from the start./

He went back over it, every detail he could remember.

/So the woman who was there- but wasn't- started the numbers counting down./

(Right.)

/And then the doorways showed up./

(Yep. With all the symbols for each faction over top.)

/And then the numbers ran out./

(And I, like an idiot, hadn't even taken the first turn we planned on.)

/And the labyrinth rearranged itself./

(I mean yeah, and I remember it mostly, but it won't help. You can't ever go back in a second time. Unless you know what those other symbols mean.)

/Wait, symbols? What symbols? Quick!/

Near the top, where sunlight was streaming in, Nuru opened his spell book and turned to a blank page of parchment. He got out his quill and ink bottle and started drawing, first the grid of lines, and then from the top-left corner he started putting in the symbols.

/Skullfuck me with a scroll case! That's Old Demonic! Stop writing, and get out of there!/

(But... what does that mean?)

/It means, you narcissistic drama queen, that you succeeded! Don't you dare fucking die on me now, I need that whole set of glyphs! MOVE!/

Nuru gasped in a deep breath, energized by a tone he'd never heard from the succubus before. He hadn't a clue as to how any of that equalled success, but if she said it did, he was not about to stop and argue.

"!Gunung Seuneuan Hampang!!Motsa Sihir!"

He conjured and hurled the Lesser Hellfire Ball on instinct, reeling a zombie that had lunged for him, and then gave it a gentle shove with his hand that knocked it over and away. He didn't slow, feeling a fresh burst of buff from his Grand Entrance feat, hitting his stride on a bee-line for the entrance he'd come from, and activating Tusa's oath.