Dialga, Palkia, And Pure Evil: Chapter 3: The Isaac Mines

By Arthur P. Geddermeyer

"Hey everybody welcome back to Northernlion plays the Binding of Isaac: AFTERBIRTH+. I'm really hoping this is a strong run because boy do I have a good anecdote for you all today. I was going to play the Bone Lord, but maybe we'll get lucky and Eden will give us something good. Maybe a guppy item, brimstone is always welcome, just give me something good and give me something fast. Going in we've got great damage, fantastic rate of fire, two red hearts nothing to complain about here, and of course let's check the seed. Okay so the seed has been generated using the Armenian alphabet somehow, I'd love to read it off but I don't think I can. If you can type those in, be my guest, and would you look at that we're starting with guppy's tail and guppy's head. First room hasn't been any trouble so far, and a card has immediately been dropped. It's the joker, immediate first floor devil deal. Oh my god, it's nine lives we are immediately Guppy.

We're in luck folks, we're not going to be needing to talk about Isaac for a long time. This is one of those runs that's been blessed from the start. So anyway, about a few weeks back famed economist Thomas Sowell came knocking on my door. He says to me 'Hey NL, you need to take me to the Isaac Mines.' So I tell him 'Tom, you know I love you. I've read all your books; some of them twice but you have to understand that the Isaac Mines aren't a real place. They're an allegory for how I slave over my pouring hot keyboard to bring fresh Isaac content to a bunch of angry teenagers every day. If they don't have anyone to get mad at for messing up a pot play they might revolt against their machine overlord, death Empress Ramona Flowers, gynoid queen of Canada's seedy underbelly.' This was back when I'd experimented with actually chaining myself to my computer so I could eat, sleep, and breathe Isaac, but Tom was determined. 'You don't understand,' he told me, 'The Isaac mines are the secret entrance into Ontario's Absorption gate. An associate and I are trying to get through and my old friend Elon told me you're the only one who knows where they are.'

Now you can't just go around using Elon Musk's name in vain so I had Kate grab the key to my shackles and I walked Tom to the door. Now I'd have assumed that it was just a weird dream if Mathas hadn't texted me minutes later asking if I'd been visited by Thomas Sowell. So I gave Mathas a call.

'Mathas, is Thomas Sowell with you right now?' I asked?

'he is' Mathas replied.

'did he ask you about the Isaac mines?'

'that he did.' So I told Mathas to put me on speaker phone.

'Tom. You can't go around harassing streamers telling them to take you into a bunch of underground caves that don't exist.' I was getting peeved so I hung up on Mathas and Thomas Sowell and got back to recording Wizard of Legend. I was on floor 2-1 when someone else knocked on my door. Now at this point I was getting annoyed so I tried ignoring them and they knocked again. When I didn't answer the door, knocking turned into live gunfire and chess world champion Anatoli Sergievski came running into my apartment with two dragons, actual demigod Takumi Aldini, and some guy I'd never met.

So Anatoli runs up to me, starts violently shaking me by the neck and yells 'Was Thomas Sowell just here?' and I'm getting a bit scared so I tell him yes and one of the dragons, this one was blue, gets really annoyed.

'NL, you need to take us to the Isaac Mines.' It yelled at me. 'Tom wants to destroy Ontario, he's working for Daniel Shaw. We're from the future of the future. We went to the past to stop him, but we failed and went to the past's past.' Now of course Daniel Shaw needed no introduction, that man has a the intersect but I'll get to that later, let's talk about the run for a minute. We had no trouble on the entire first floor by immediately becoming guppy; we have flies everywhere but if there's anything I could ask for, slightly higher rate of fire could be nice. We're coming up on the second floor boss room and we have enough bombs where it shouldn't be a problem. We're fighting the widow so bombs really are a viable strategy. Damage is high enough where one or two should do the trick, and magic mushroom; game you shouldn't have. We unfortunately miss the devil deal so all there is to do is move onto the next floor and hope for the best.

Now I tried explaining to Anatoli and his friends once again that the Isaac Mines aren't a real place but they were having none of it. So get this, the man whose name I never learned, might have been Pike Lattimorph or something, didn't really get an opportunity to speak with him, takes a large rock out of nowhere and throws it at my computer. I look to him and yell 'Hey you not nice dude. (now I didn't actually call him a not nice dude. I used stronger language, but I'm censoring myself because you know I still want that all access rating) computers cost a lot of money.' But where my computer once stood was a hole in the floor that seemed to go on forever.

'Thanks NL' the pink dragon yelled and all four of them hopped into the hole. Now I'm not going to beat around the bush, I swore at those men. All ages rating be damned 'What the Fuck guys.' I yelled and hopped in after them.

Surprisingly I suffered now falling damage even though I'd fell for a solid minute. I'd landed safely on the back of Pike, but somehow he was strong enough to not sustain damage either. These were what I could only assume were the famous Isaac mines I'd joked about for years. Various passives were embedded into the walls, the floor was littered with pennies and one crudely drawn image of Mom's knife was etched onto the only door we could see. After the five of us looked around, we could see that aside from us there was only one other man. If you really wanted to, you could probably describe him as strapping.

'Hey I'm Dan, the gatekeeper. Welcome to the Isaac mines.' Dan yelled. 'You just missed Thomas Sowell and Steven Universe. They were some pretty cool dudes. Want some cocaine?'

'No. Drugs are bad. Have some coffee' Takumi yelled and Dan was caught off guard. 'It's made of plants though.' He said and boy was he earnest almost like he genuinely believed that being made of plants made cocaine okay.

'How are we supposed to get further? It looks like the door is locked.' Pike called out and Dan explained that the way to get in is by sinning a bit. Now I think he was expecting one of us to ask him to suck their dick so when Anatoli took out an AR-15 and shot him several times in the foot he whined in agony and the door slid open. Since I thought I'd need a weapon I grabbed the actual Mom's knife out of the rock face of the Isaac Mines and the six of us walked in.

'You fight dirty Steven Universe the Fat. I want a rematch.' Pike yelled once he was in the actual Isaac mines and rushed forward without thinking. He didn't notice a Chubber walking by and he got knocked to the floor by the charger it shoots out, no recoil damage in real life guys. Pike stumbled back up and grabbed a small gun from his pocket. It shot a small burst of electricity that knocked the chubber down, and we continued to pace forward. After a short while we could hear the joyous singing of Steven Universe the fat, who I would later learn is one of Daniel Shaw's six god generals. I didn't really agree with calling him Steven Universe the fat, I thought it was kinda mean and he could probably kick my ass but I didn't want to start a fight I assumed those would come later.

'I am the wolf, and I will feed until I'm full. I am the wolf (I am the wolf), Save yourself.' Steven sang while skipping through the mines with a smile on his face. Bats would try to attack him but Steven would quickly kill them by using his shield as a boomerang, kinda like Captain America would. It's almost like Captain America himself was an ally of Steven and taught him how to properly fight with a shield. That'd be pretty cool I guess.

Now Steven was leading us right to the end of the Isaac mines and we wouldn't have had to navigate their cavelike presence on our own if Pike hadn't started squealing like a banshee and tackled him to the ground.

'This is for Wolf. He was a workplace acquaintance you son of a bitch.' Pike yelled as he punched steven in the head and the two were trapped in a bubble shield together. Anatoli tried to shoot through it using one of his five guns, which I had no idea how he was holding, but the shield wouldn't budge.

I finally had an opportunity to ask what exactly was going on. According to the blue dragon, whose name was Dialga, they traveled to the past to stop Daniel Shaw from sinking all of Omaha Nebraska into a massive abyss that separated the Earth's crust from the rest of the planet. The other dragon, Palkia, then explained that Thomas Sowell stole their lucky weed pipe decreeing that a relic that powerful shouldn't have been used for getting high in the first place. Using magical abilities that were taught to him by his the intersect, Daniel Shaw was able to use a relic of his own to destroy something called an absorption gate under the city so they traveled to the past again to try to stop him from doing the same to Ontario.

While we were talking, Pike and Steven were locked in deadly combat. Each punch Pike threw was swiftly blocked by Steven's shield and his hands were starting to bleed. Steven took the opportunity given by blocking a strong attempt to push Pete back and grab him by the throat. Pike must have said something very insulting about Steven's mother because I could feel the rage from far away. Steven was so mad that for just one second, his bubble shield popped out of existence. In that moment, Anatoli grabbed his gun and shot Steven in the head. Palkia assured me that Steven has incredibly high durability and wouldn't be killed by just one bullet but I'm not sure I believed him.

Steven's unconscious hands fell off of Pike's throat as he gasped for breath and rejoined us. With Steven unconscious, we'd need to navigate the Isaac mines alone. Mom's knife is just as useful in real life as it is in game so I was able to keep myself protected as we navigated the area until we came across a massive gateway. It was purely white, but a gold rectangle spread across horizontally about a third of the way up. Thomas Sowell and Daniel Shaw stood before the gate, we'd need to act fast if we wanted to stop them from getting inside.

Unfortunately, we didn't act fast enough. Shaw knocked on the gate and a booming voice came flying, seemingly out of nowhere. 'Where your vape at?' it called?

'Naturally, it's in my fanny pack.' Shaw replied and the ground began to shake. I was knocked on my feet, but my new companions (I guess I can call them that by now) were able to remain standing. The door pushed itself open and Shaw rushed inside, Sowell in tow.

Dialga looked Pike this time. 'We can't have a repeat of last time, stay behind.' He said, grabbed me by the waist and we followed in behind them, before the door was able to shut itself.

'We're here to stop you Shaw.' Palkia cried. I'd hoped we'd be able to go for the element of surprise but Palkia threw it out of the window. Anatoli fired all five of his guns at him, but Shaw was able to use his the intersect to teach himself defensive magic. With a wave of his hand a wall of glass was created between us and Shaw. When Anatoli's bullets collided with the glass, they were magically turned around and came flying at us. I was able to avoid getting hit but Anatoli was grazed several times.

'How could I allow myself to have been hurt by my own guns?' Anatoli asked and sat motionless on the ground. 'Is this what it's like to get shot by these? This is awful. I may need to re-evaluate my entire life.' He said and all five of his AR-15s fell to the ground.

'Anatoli, get up. You're our number one source of firepower!' Takumi yelled but it was a hopeless effort. Anatoli wouldn't budge.

I circled strafed Until there was a 90 degree angle between me, the rest of the team, and Shaw and thrust Mom's knife at him. It barely pierced Shaw and flew right back into my hand, just like it does in Isaac. Feeling the sensation of getting stabbed in the leg, Shaw recoiled a bit and looked me directly in the eye. His the intersect still gave him the ability to use magic so a large burst of flame came flying toward me. I ducked again to avoid getting caught on fire. If I weren't bald I'd have been at risk of having my hair ignited but I was safe from the flame. Shaw then created a spear of ice and threw it directly at me which I was barely able to slide out of the way of. Dialga and Palkia took this opportunity to rush toward Shaw and tackle him to the ground.

A sudden gust of wind came from the shadows of the hall. Thomas Sowell had been hiding, waiting for an opportunity to unleash the strongest spell found in his holy text, defending whirlwind. Dialga and Palkia were launched off of Shaw and a massive wall of wind kept them from getting to him. At this point, There was nothing standing between Shaw and the Absorption gate's sephiroth tree. With a hyperresonance spell, which shoots powerful energy, the tree was destroyed and the ground began to shake even further. Palkia gathered all six members of our team and used a power he called spacial rend to warped us all to safety.

Dialga started to tear up and said, 'I can't believe we've failed again. There's nothing we can do, Shaw's unbeatable, especially now.'

'He may have been strong, but if we come up with a good strategy, I'm sure we can beat him.' I said, trying to console Dialga.

'You weren't there to see it NL, it's hopeless.' Pike said 'During our last battle, Shaw used his the intersect on me. He knows about Warehouse 13. By the time we get there it'll be his.'

Thanks for watching, I hope you enjoyed the episode. If you did, click the like button, helps a great deal. Of course subscribe if you want to see more in the future. For now, thanks for watching I will see ya next time." Northernlion said, while Playing the Binding of Isaac but all of the Youtube Comments were about how he missed a tinted rock on floor one.

TO BE CONTINUED.