The Years of Apocalypse - A Time Loop Progression Fantasy

Chapter 97 - Into the Labyrinth

After Mirian finished putting up basic wards in her quarters, she started working on an eavesdropping device she could deploy, then an all-purpose divination device. Already, she was annoyed that she didn't have access to a focus. What she really wanted to do was scan the town's populace for the kinds of soul marks Specter liked to put on her agents or for other abnormalities. Arenthia had said that such marks weren't common practice, but that was during her tenure years ago. A focus would also help her scan soul energy in the Labyrinth. How many priests have bothered to investigate down there? she wondered.

It would have to wait. For now, she'd get as much information as she could. Still, she felt an urge to scream sometimes. Everything about the time loop required a great deal of tolerance for repetition, and she was growing impatient with it all. One disaster conversation with Beatrice had been enough; it was not something she wanted to repeat.

The divination device ended up being modeled on three different devices she'd made at different points in her loops. One part detected passages, another light anomalies, another glyph sequences, and another different types of energy. It was inefficient, bulky, and a bit of a mess, but she could always revise the design later when she had a better idea of what to look for and what the expeditions usually did.

Then she worked on her spellbook the rest of the day, stuffing into the pages every combat spell she could think of, and every divination spell she hadn't be able to fit into her detector.

The next day, she met the Torrviol Expeditionary Team for breakfast. Grimald had a map on the table, already marred by grease dripping from the bacon he was munching. "To review. This is what the route to the Vault looked like a week ago. It's already shifted, as one of the teams has already reported a change in the first level layout. First floor should be clear. Then we stay as close as we can to this region. Expect several fights on the second level. The shaft down to the third level seems to be linked to the Vault, so as long as we find that shaft, we should be able to avoid actually needing to fight down there. The shaft had stairs last time, but nothing the two times before, so we'll take the rope. Niluri, your job is to learn and follow orders the first time. Can you do that?"

Mirian nodded.

"Great. If we encounter Scrappy, we disengage and wait outside the vault until it goes away."

"Scrappy?" Mirian asked, even though she remembered Lily telling her about the Elder automaton that was roaming the vault.

"Eight-foot tall golem. Nothing we've thrown at it has even dented the thing. But it won't leave the vault, even if you're just across the threshold. Ready?"

"Yup."

As they headed toward the building that housed the entrance to the Labyrinth, Mirian heard Beatrice whispering to Cediri, though she didn't seem to realize Mirian could hear her. "…don't trust her. She's far too calm for someone who's never been down there before."

Cediri whispered something back, but she couldn't make it out.

The entrance to the Labyrinth was in the one fortified building in town. Unlike normal fortifications, though, this one had the gear wheel for the portcullis and bars for the doors on the outside. The arrow slits in the building also faced inward. It wasn't designed to keep people out, but anything that made its way up from getting loose.

"Remember, if you get lost or stuck down there, you're on your own. Everyone goes down there at their own risk," one of the soldiers said.

"Reconsidering?" asked Grimald.

"No," Mirian said. "Let's go."

Mirian knew something of what to expect from both Professor Viridian's lectures and her dreams. Beatrice first used a glyphkey that all authorized expeditions were given on a second door inside, then took a self-moving platform, dubbed an 'elevator' by her companions, down a vertical shaft. It was a strange experience for her, but it certainly was nicer than taking that many stairs. It lowered them into a large cavern hanging with unnaturally glowing stalactites. At the back of the cavern was the door. It loomed large, at least twenty feet high, with black statues of twisted creatures made of too many spines and teeth.

That was the next thing to expect: labyrinthine horrors. Like chimeras, it was a classification of similar myrvites, not a single species, but they were all basically the same: horrible looking creatures without many of the organs common to normal surface life.

"Spellbooks ready?" Grimald asked, hefting his warhammer. The team was prepared with various supplies tucked into their packs, and Grimald also wore a breastplate and plated greaves over his padded armor.

"Ready," they said, one by one. These checks weren't just for fun. Once they crossed into the Labyrinth, the team stopped joking and took on an attitude more like the military discipline Mirian had grown used to when helping lead the Battle of Torrviol.

Cediri had both a spellbook on one chain and a journal full of maps on another chain. The page he was open to was an exact scale copy of the map one of the first-floor-only teams had made. He made a note about the status of the room, as he said, "Room clear. Niluri, you brought your device, right? Can we get a measurement on that?"

Mirian activated one of the glyph sequences, letting the device measure the length, then width of the room. "Seven point four meters by five point eight," she reported.

"No change to dimensions, then. Good. We're not likely to see a shift event while we're here."

As they moved through the first level, Mirian had both the sensation of deja vu and stepping into the unknown. She recognized the glowing fungi that lined the strange stone of the Labyrinth, that stone that never did seem to reflect light the way it should. The walls of undecipherable hieroglyphs were also familiar. And yet, being there, actually being there, felt different, and everything about it was more visceral.

There were strange sounds that echoed through the rooms, and every so often the fungi on the wall would stir, the stalks turning toward them so that the circular, eye-like patches followed them as they moved across a room. The tight hallways linking the rooms felt more claustrophobic. Above them, the tangle of metal pipes were mixed with the pale hyphae of the fungi. Below, the stone floor was seamless.

Occasionally, Mirian's device would detect faint glyph sequences, embedded in the stone walls. Even with a magnifying lens, she could barely make them out. Removing them would require special diamond-tipped drills (or Jei's stone-transmuting spells, Mirian thought), and they were on a strict timeline, so they didn't stop to examine them.

As reported, the first level was empty, and none of the rooms had changed since the last team investigated. The other team had encountered a few smaller labyrinthine horrors, but by now the corpses had vanished. That was unnerving, but also normal. What exactly removed them, no one knew. Cediri mentioned they'd used monitoring equipment to try and figure it out. They'd detected strange low vibrations and a small spike in arcane energy, but were no closer to answering the question than anyone else who'd investigated.

A half-hour of cautious walking brought them to one of the passages to the next level. They made their way through another large gate, this one dripping with stalactites so that the door resembled a maw. Except, Mirian knew from Professor Holvatti's class there was no way the rock formations were natural. Some sort of slippery slime-mold had grown over the stairs, and Beatrice casually used a flame spell to clear a path down the middle. They had just enough time to pass over it; Mirian could hear it making a schlorp sound as it regrew behind them.

Grimald paused at the threshold. "Darklamps ahead. Niluri, turn them off for me."

The darklamps were a strange part of the Labyrinth. Each room had glyphic light sources—the inspiration for the first glyph lamps—but sometimes they had darklamps that intentionally bent or displaced light in the room to hide some part of it. It was the kind of place the labyrinthine horrors liked to lurk in. Mirian didn't have a counter dark spell, but she did have a counter light spell. She used her technique of starting a spell on one page, then flipping to the next to finish the spell with a different glyph set, targeting each darklamp one by one until the shadows receded.

"Room looks clear. Advancing," Grimald said. "Two doors. Beatrice, cover the north door. I'm on south."

"Got it," Beatrice said. "Niluri, get us measurements."

Cediri didn't need to be told what to do, he was working on his map. Instead of creating a bulky mapping device like Mirian had done for the Underground, he preferred his small journal and using precision measurement spells to guide his pen so that the drawing was to scale. Mirian gave him the measurements.

"Niluri, divination on the north tunnel and the room beyond. Cediri, south."

Mirian channeled into her divination device. The readout was a bit primitive; the magical detector used a single colored light that changed color depending on the intensity of the arcane force detected, going from red on the low end to violet on the highest end, following the color spectrum of light. The interface could otherwise only project numbers with a numeral illusion spell. Cediri's device projected a three-dimensional representation of what he detected. Mirian made a note to get a closer look at the construction of it later.

South, there was a room with two more doors. North, a room with five that split off in all directions. North would take them closer to the third level, but Grimald said, "Get out the device. Blocking barrier engine on that north door. If there's one room I don't want overrun in an ambush, it's this one. We'll go south and circle back around. Beatrice, you're on rearguard."

Beatrice swung her pack off and took out a small spell engine that she set up by the door. She turned it on, and a forcewall spell covered the north door.

"Good. Let's go."

They repeated the process, slowly tracking east and then north.

"It's too quiet," Cediri said.

"Agreed," Grimald said.

Still, they kept moving, with Cediri keeping a close eye on his developing map. "It was a complete shift of the level," he finally said. "Not a single one of these rooms is the same anymore."

"But that usually comes with the myrvites returning. We should have seen something by now. I'm calling for a withdrawal."

"Agreed," echoed both Grimald and Cediri immediately.

"Shortcut?" Grimald asked.

Cediri shook his head. "There's a few passages that might line up, but they also might be dead ends. Retrace."

Grimald and Beatrice swapped positions. Mirian got off a few more measurements. They were so close to the Vault—but it would be a big waste if she just ran into it and got mashed into pulp by the Elder automaton immediately. Better to get a sense of what the Labyrinth would be like until the end of the cycle, because she had an opportunity no one else did: to know exactly how the Labyrinth would behave when she descended into it. The predictability might get her to deeper depths than anyone. And how deep does it go? she wondered. As deep as the leylines?

Then she noticed her device was registering higher arcane energy in a room west of them. Ambient mana in the Labyrinth was always higher than the surface, but instead of yellow, it had turned green. "Arcane energy increase west of us," she said immediately.

Then Beatrice's face went white. "The blocking barrier just went down."

"It's under attack?" Cediri asked.

"No, it went down. I got the glyph signal for catastrophic failure. Something smashed it."

"Shit," Grimald said. "We need to move. Double time." He started jogging, and they followed him, keeping a watch on the surround. That's when they heard the first screeching sound echoing through the tunnels.

"Labyrinthine horrors. Medium sized ones, by the sound of—" Cediri started to say, and then they heard more screeching. It seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Horde," he said. "Horde, horde, horde. Fuck! Grimald, move that fat ass of yours."

Grimald, who was at least 90% muscle, quickened the pace.

"Niluri, that device of yours is too bulky," Beatrice said. "Leave it."

Mirian tossed it to the side without hesitation, which seemed to surprise Beatrice.

More sounds echoed through the tunnels, screeches mixed with the clattering of carapace on stone.

"Dead end to the east. Should we cover and fortify?" Cediri said.

"No. No telling how big the horde is. Move until we make contact, then we push forward. Beatrice and Niluri, on rear defense," said Grimald, breathing hard now.

Then the glyph lamps lining the rooms died all at once, and they were left in a nearly pitch black room. Mirian had her light spell out while Cediri swore loudly. "Three more rooms," he said.

"Movement ahead," Grimald called out, as Beatrice said, "Movement behind. They've caught us."

"Get to the hall so we can bottleneck them," Cediri said, but it was too late.

Mirian saw the ones coming from the front first. Some looked like giant centipedes with thin spines protruding off their segments like imitation wings. Others looked like hunting hounds, only they had six legs and no lower jaw, just extra long teeth. When she turned to look at the ones coming up on them, she saw flashes of claws and one that seemed to dozens of eyeballs staring out of its thorax.

Beatrice opened up with fireball, sending three in quick succession. Mirian felt the heat and wind of the shockwave wash over her, then got out her trusty force blades spell to clean up the survivors. While she could sever the legs and put deep wounds into the creatures, though, they kept coming. She swapped to a burning lightning spell, which electrocuted them, then ignited their flesh, which caused them to writhe on the ground.

Behind her, she could hear the resounding CRACK of Grimald's hammer as he smashed a path into the labyrinthine horrors again and again. When she briefly turned, she could see Cediri was alternating between force aegis and fire blades spells to support his slow advance towards the hall, where a seemingly endless tide of the creatures was coming from.

She and Beatrice began to carefully retreat as they fought. Beatrice switched to an incineration ray spell to pick off the advancing horrors one by one.

The labyrinthine horrors seemed suicidal, but they also learned. Instead of swarming across the ground, they started coming from multiple doors, some of the smaller ones moving along the walls and others clinging to the ceiling. Mirian channeled more mana into her light spell so that the dancing shadows didn't make it so hard to see them.

As she and Beatrice fought, they got into an unspoken rhythm, alternating spells, so that the other had time to pick out new targets.

"Can't hold them," Cediri said, then let out a shout like he'd been stabbed.

"Help them," Mirian said to Beatrice. "I've got our rear."

Beatrice didn't hesitate. She turned, and Mirian felt the heat at her back as Lily's sister unleashed another barrage of fire spells.

Mirian kept with lightning, but swapped to a chain lightning spell. It was more mana intensive, but much easier to hit multiple targets at once, especially ones trying to split up. The labyrinthine creatures seemed to know she had them figured out though, because all of a sudden a swarm of small ones, each the size of a rat but numbering in the dozens, came spilling out from one of the passages. Mirian telekinetically flipped pages to force wall to hold them at bay with something they couldn't climb, then bent the force wall into a cylinder so they were trapped. As the tiny horrors screamed at her, she sent a fireball of her own down the cylinder, then paged back to burning lightning just in time to skewer a larger myrvite that had charged her from the opposite side of the room. The bladed arms of the creature jerked and spasmed only a few inches from her.

More screeching echoed down the halls, but for the moment, their rear was clear. Mirian turned, and the others had cleared out the front as well, though the hall was clogged with the now crisp bodies of small horrors.

"Let's go," said Grimald hoarsely, and Mirian could see that he'd gotten several cuts into his armor. Cediri was bleeding profusely on one arm. Beatrice quickly got out a linen bandage roll from her belt and wrapped it. They started to move again, boots crunching as they did. It was incredibly gross, like walking across a floor of dead cockroaches.

The next room only had a few horrors, these ones covered in things that could have been tentacles or vines, except whatever they were, they had too many eyeballs on them. They were clinging to the wall, doing something to the fungus, and then they turned and started spraying out a mist.

"Poison—!" Beatrice called out, fumbling for her spellbook as she raised the collar of her jacket to try and cover her mouth.

Mirian swapped to her gather smoke spell. The spell didn't actually target the specific chemistry of smoke, which was diverse, but instead targeted particles of a certain size, and would take care of the cloud of poison spores just as well. "Got the poison. Someone kill them," she said.

Cediri used his fire blades to cut them apart one by one, while Mirian repeated her casts of gather smoke to make sure she'd gotten all of the noxious stuff out of the air.

"Keep moving!" Grimald called as he led them down the hall. "One more room—" He cut himself off. Mirian repositioned her light spell to get a better look. Circling about in the last room was another labyrinthine horror, but far larger than any of the others. Its abdomen was the size of a bull, with ten thick legs protruding from gaps in its carapace, while the upper body resembled the torso and head of a human. Only, no human had so many tendrils coming out of their back. The thin tendrils whipped around like a jellyfish's stingers, and judging by the prickly looking protrusions on them, would be just as deadly. As Grimald paused, the creature whipped its head around and stared at them, though its face didn't seem to have any eyes. Instead, the eyes were all embedded in the chest—dozens of them.

"Greater horror," Cediri whispered.

"Aegis," Grimald said, and Cediri obliged.

"Niluri, guard our rear," Beatrice said, and they prepared to fight.