Chapter 39: Memories

Misa had thought the space with the horde was a void. It had been an inky, dark space, lit only by the light of the portals on either side. Seemed pretty void-like to her.

She had never been wherever here was.

The space on the other side of the gate was somehow darker than even that, to the point where Misa thought that it was perhaps only this place that could truly be called a void. Looking out into the distance left her feeling cold, almost, like the sight was enough to drag something vital out of her.

And yet somehow, everything here was perfectly lit; there were no shadows at all on her or any of her companions. It was... odd, to see them like this. Some details stood out, and others were smoothed over; Derivan's engravings and Vex's scales were nearly impossible to see without the telltale shadows and light glimmering off the edges, but the otherwise subtle dyes on Vex's leathers were suddenly accentuated.

Vex had tried to cast [Featherfall] as soon as they were through the threshold of the gate; they didn't know whether or not to expect monsters on the other side, but they wanted to be prepared. But he hadn't needed to — as soon as they were through the gate, their momentum fell away, and they were left... not falling, exactly. But not completely still, either.

They were drifting, and here it seemed that their thoughts influenced the direction they drifted in. At first, they floundered, worried they would be attacked; Vex nearly tumbled into Derivan, and Misa almost shot off into the distance. But there was barely any indication that this space had monsters at all. There where whispers of insectoid shapes, perhaps, closer to the gate. Those shapes were near impossible to see. Misa could only feel them ghosting past her, like they were still immaterial.

She shuddered.

"There is something strange about this place," Derivan said quietly, after they had all settled and drifted closer together. "I do not know what it is, but something feels... familiar. Except it is not familiar at all. I do not recognize the part of me that knows this place, and the feeling is unsettling."

The armor fell silent. Vex glanced at him, though he seemed pretty anxious about being in this space himself. "Are you okay?"

"I am fine," the armor said. "But I would like to leave this place, I think."

"We need to hurry up anyway," Misa said. She was looking ahead, towards the only thing that existed in this space.

In front of them, in the center of this strange, inky void, was a single glowing spark.

It sat atop a pedestal of crystal that might as well have been attached to nothing, for all that it was just floating there. Sharp-looking flecks of metal were embedded into the top surface of the pedestal, serving no apparent purpose.

Above that spark, a strange, wispy beam of light that spiralled outwards from the device, twisting up into the air, and it was only when Misa followed it with her gaze that she saw the chaos up in the air. Pinpricks of light were scattered above, each nearly infinitesimal in size, though some were larger than others. Looking directly at any one of them granted her a scattering of impressions that she couldn't quite parse — one would be a forest, another a small city, and a third small village set out in the middle of nowhere...

The last one made her wince. It was the one that the trail of light led to, and it was the smallest amongst the others by far.

When she looked into the sky again, there was nothing there. She had to follow that trail of light with her gaze before it reappeared, and staring at it too long gave her a headache —

"Misa," Sev said, interrupting her thoughts, and she blinked once, tearing her gaze away with a shudder of disgust.

She didn't know why, but the sight felt wrong to her.

But there wasn't time to worry about any of that.

"What is this?" Misa asked instead, gesturing to the shimmering blue spark sitting on the pedestal. "Is this related to the monsters, somehow?"

"I haven't read anything about this," Vex said with a frown. "There are theories about dungeons having a power source... but it's never been located. Maybe this is what that is?"

"If it's the power source, we'd just need to remove it to get the monsters to stop," Sev said.

"Perhaps," Derivan said. He leaned in closer, then jumped backwards when a system screen buzzed into existence in front of all of them.

X-51 ####### #####R

INTEGRITY: 7%

WARNING: DESTABILIZATION IN PROGRESS. EVACUATION HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Buzzed. They could all see it, and unlike the usual System screens, this one was flickering strangely, like it was unable to completely form.

"Let me..." Vex murmured out loud — and then he visibly winced, clapping his hands over his eyes. "Ah—!"

"Vex?" Derivan was immediately by the lizardkin's side, one hand on his back. "Are you alright?"

"I'm... fine." Vex grimaced, blinking a few times as if to get the spots out of his eyes. "I tried to analyze it like I do with some magical artifacts; I didn't see any mana around it, so I wasn't expecting it to be so bright. But there is a lot of mana around it, it's just not visible in... whatever this space is. I guess however the various [Mana Sight]s work, it doesn't work here? But my analytical skills still work, and when I tried to analyze it, the skill bombarded me with so many runes I couldn't see straight."

"What does that mean for us?" Misa asked.

"I... give me a moment." Vex blinked a few more times, glanced carefully at the artifact, and then quickly looked away again. "Okay. I don't have a chance of interpreting whatever is going on in the runes. But I can sort of tell how the mana is moving based on the power in those runes, and it looks like there is a massive amount of mana flowing into that thing."

"Into it?" Sev asked.

"So it's not the power source," Misa said. She narrowed her eyes. "We don't have time to waste to figure out what this does. I'm going to grab it."

"Grab it?" Sev frowned at her. "It's a glowing blue dot—"

Misa grabbed it.

The crystalline pedestal below suddenly flickered and died, the color changing to a dull gray. At the same time, the spark became inexplicably heavy, and Misa grunted and stumbled, rotating in the air as she was suddenly forced to use both her hands just to lift the thing. "Shit," she said.

Above, the wispy trail of light began to flicker and vanish. It had been dying anyway, but now it was entirely dead, and those pinpricks of light above were no longer visible to them.

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"Shit is right," Sev swore, staring back at the gate. "We better go. The gate's closing."

"This thing was maintaining the gate?" Misa glanced at it, then cursed when she saw it was rapidly shrinking. "Shit. Okay. Let's go."

Fortunately, it wasn't all that difficult to carry the spark when she could move through space with a thought. Misa didn't have time to appreciate it, though, because another thought had dominated her mind.

If they succeeded — if unplugging whatever this was had stopped the monsters from appearing — then her time with her village was coming to an end.

Misa held the spark close. She didn't know why, but she was getting the feeling that it was going to be important.

Orkas could taste blood in his mouth.

It was a phantom taste, really. The blood had vanished from his mouth as soon as it appeared, and he had taken a chunk of damage to his health instead; far preferable to the injury that had actually been dealt to him. He didn't particularly fancy having a large chunk torn out of his face, or having one of his tusks broken.

So that wasn't a problem. What was a problem was that he was pretty sure they couldn't hold out against the horde as long as they needed to.

It had been fairly obvious from the get-go, really. As soon as the first monsters had appeared, Orkas had known there would be a problem. Everything they'd devised hoped that the horde they would face would consist largely of Bronze monsters, with Silver elites at most; the fact that the majority of the monsters they had to face were Silver was already a problem.

They had the allies that Misa's team had brought with her, as much as he couldn't bring himself to completely trust them. They were proving extraordinarily effective, too; experienced delvers in all, they were cutting through the insectoid horde with a brutal efficiency.

But there were only four of them. Even if all five of them were fighting, it wouldn't have been enough.

Their walls were holding for now, though, so there was that. Misa's plan had been pretty good — he'd been impressed. She'd even drawn up a blueprint for him of the way all the traps and walls should be laid out, and it had only required minor corrections on his part, because her memory of the village didn't quite match up with what they had.

A part of him wondered how much history had changed, without Misa here.

The rest of him was more concerned about the monster screeching in his face, acidic spittle flying into his eyes. Orkas grimaced and roared in pain, thrusting his spear blindly forward; he heard the crunch of chitin as the spear slid into its flesh —

— [Spearing Thrust] took over, and the shockwave from the skill tossed the monster back long enough for him to pour a bit of healing potion over his eyes. Fuck. That stung. They hadn't been prepared for fucking acid spit.

The other guardsmen were struggling with much the same near him, he knew. And he could also see that they were tiring — none of them were built for a prolonged fight like this. A lot of them were scared, too, because for all that they were guardsmen in the village the village itself had been relatively peaceful; there simply hadn't been any reason to fight, until now.

He heard one guardsman scream as an insectoid blade cut deep into his shoulder, and he felt something in his heart harden. Anger and resolve, of a sort; anger that this had already happened once to his village, apparently, and that they were being forced to do it again. Resolve to beat the circumstances that had been forced upon him, because he'd already failed once, and he could not and would not fail now that he had warning.

If the timescale Misa had given him was correct — and everything else she had given him had been correct so far — then they would have to deal with this for at least another three hours.

Orkas was confident they could survive at least one. Some barriers and walls had fallen, but they had built them in layers, and were able to retreat back to the next when the first one was broken. The support of the skeleton crew that Misa had left him kept some of those layers holding strong for longer than they'd expected. Some of the monsters were arriving injured, easier to kill than the others; no doubt Misa and her team were doing damage to them. It lightened his heart to see it.

But he was worried.

His resolve could only bring him so far. Their walls would fail eventually, and at the current rate, even with the extra barriers they had built, they'd retreat to the last layer before two hours were up. They needed to end it early. Misa had been right.

So he needed to trust the woman who called herself his daughter, and trust that she and her team would end this before things went too far —

Something in the air changed.

Orkas blinked rapidly; his vision had suddenly split into two, and he felt a pounding headache searing its way into his skull; when he touched his head, he saw his hand come away with blood. How? Injuries weren't retained, that was the entire point of the health system...

He stumbled. Was he missing a leg?

Part of him knew he should have been worried. He should have been terrified, even. Unexplained, impossible injuries meant another monster, one that had [Injury]-style debuffs and was invisible —

— but that wasn't right, either. He knew this, because these injuries were familiar.

He knew this because he remembered, and the pain of his injuries were nothing compared to the memories he now had; memories of having a daughter, of her first laugh, her first smile. He remembered the first time she'd picked up a mace he'd left lying on the ground and declared it hers, and then sparred him for the right to keep it.

He remembered losing on purpose, laughing as she pinned him down and declared her victory.

He remembered her fascination with classes and skills, and her complaint that it seemed unfair that some got rare classes, and others got common ones. He remembered her saying that she would find a way to use her skills well no matter the rarity, and how she worked with every member of the village to better use their skills; sometimes for absurd, useless things, but she had such a bright heart that they all went along with it.

He remembered their arguments, the times they had fought, certainly, but in the pain of having lost his daughter before she was even born, those memories faded into the background. The joy was what stood out; the joy of having his memories back, of those lonely days replaced with a happier family. His wife's laughter, her smile every time her daughter did something new or interesting. Her whispers to him about how their daughter would grow up to be someone brilliant.

He felt himself losing his grip on his weapon, but he couldn't find in him the energy to care; his head ached, and his heart pounded, and his body was fresh with all the injuries he'd sustained when he went down fighting to protect his family. He hadn't even known Misa was out there, fighting alone.

The monster he was fighting let out a victorious screech and sent a blade careening towards his chest. He was too gravely hurt to stop it, but he forced himself to try; to react. To reach for his weapon. To do anything.

But before he could do any of those things, Misa was suddenly there, her mace tight in her hands. She swung it hard enough into the mantis monster's face to send it flying backwards, mere seconds before the blade would have pierced his chest.

Her gaze was furious.

Not at him; never at him, not truly. She was angry at the world, and if he knew her...

She was about to throw everything she could think of at it to fight it.

"We won," Misa declared to the air, glaring at something — at a very specific something, in fact. A system screen? "Like hell I'm letting you do this to my family. I am not watching them die a second time."

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