Chapter 28: Breaking the Rules
"Yes!" Perinque shouted, "That would have been preferable to finding out this way!"
She was right, and he realized it... but that did nothing to help matters between them. She had begun pulling away before then, and now... he'd be surprised if she came back to the house any time soon at all. After they made their way back, she split off from the group, and several days had gone by without any word from her.
Tam was no better... In a different way. Ever since he'd linked up with the kid at the Dungeon, it was as if he was in a hurry to figure something out... What this something was, he wouldn't share. He'd spend all day alternating between their garden, the basement, which he'd repurposed as his experimental spell lab, and various trips out alone. All this ended up leaving him too much time to himself... time that the voice seemed to enjoy harassing him in.
Come to the Demon Altar, it encouraged him. That was its new fixation. For the last few days, it would invite him out to the Demon Alter, promising There, I will open your eyes more fully... Which was not something he was too interested in understanding. Though being left alone as he was... he wasn't sure what he did want anymore. Maybe he would go... just to see...
Stepping outside the structure for the first time since they'd returned, he noticed movement towards the path as a small shadow seemed to shuffle away from the building. It was, he assumed, one of the slimes that followed Perinque around, "Perinque!" he tried calling out.
A flash of light not too far from him announced Tam's appearance, "What's up?" his friend asked him, seeming rushed.
"I..." he started to reply, You are being watched, the voice informed him, your friends no longer trust you, and for a moment, he wasn't sure he wanted to answer Tam, "was... just going to walk for a bit. I'm getting restless," he finished.
"Give me a sec, and I'll come with you," Tam responded, "I just need to note where I am in this mix..."
"No," he interrupted his friend, "you don't need to do that. I'll be careful," he added with a weak smile. The searching look his friend gave him hurt, and the voice, See how he questions your intent, wasn't helping things. Did they not trust him? Was that why they were avoiding him? Could he truly blame them?
He had given in to it then... he didn't have to now, but did he dare actively challenge it? It was gone, in a way that it had never left before. What did mean for him? Closing his eyes, he tried to see the builder... and saw nothing. Without the presence, he was just...
An inspiration struck him. If he'd lost that which the presence had given him... was it possible he's regained... Looking to the wall, he was able to pull the torch to his hand at a thought. A small thrill, a feeling of... He collapsed once more, incapable of even fully processing what had just happened. Even if only for a moment... he was fully, and truly free... And he hated himself for his first thought... That perhaps falling now... But no... He knew better. He also knew what he needed to do. He had wasted too much time already in self-pity.
Even without its presence, he could feel the loosening of the rules in this night. Several waves of change were coming, too close together... The world was in a state of flux the like he'd never witnessed before... And he would take full advantage of that. The builder must survive the night. He left the structure and began gathering resources from the terrain as he made his way towards the Nurse's home... where he assumed the builder and it would be, the looser rules allowing him to gather as he walked, without a need to slow down, or even the need for tools. The Builder Must Survive the Night.
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Kaaaaa...thyyyyyy his voice cut through the carnage, and I could hear him as if he were standing right beside me, what's the matter sweetheart? Looking past my kidnapper as he fought a losing battle against the nauseous wave of death, I could see what was left of Johnathan just standing there, visible through the onslaught of once living things, watching the violence with its face twisted into what I imagined was supposed to have been a smile... had there been enough of its face left for that.
We were going to be married... were married... looking down at my ring, I was hit from above by one of those flying eyes with enough force to throw me to the floor, where two others followed me down. That wasn't enough to have distracted me however from the glow emanating from my ring. It was... wrong... as if something was inside it, radiating its energy out from the metal... and it looked... familiar... Johnathan! It was the same wrongness that I saw coming from him... and in the air... but I could just see... something under that... a glow that wasn't wrong...
I knew I was hallucinating... glowing rings and flying eyes, and dead people... but at this point, I could either go along with it... or snap... and I wasn't about to give up. I could feel that second glow in a way that was almost physical... As if I could reach out and... The world exploded into an incomprehensible series of lights and colors, and I lost track of what was going on around me in any way I could hope to describe.
Most of the light surrounding me was wrong but there, right in front of me was a dim glow that was right. Reaching out to it, I could feel it fading... And I knew that if I didn't do... Something... It would disappear completely. But I didn't know what to do. I tried grabbing it... But it didn't do anything, and the light continued to fade... I didn't know why... But I didn't want this light to go out.
There, off to the side. There was a glow that somehow seemed like it went with the glow in front of me, though much more compact. I could feel that glow too... And what's more, I could hold it. Without any real understanding of what I was doing, I grabbed some of the smaller light, and brought it over to the larger light. As soon as the lights came together, the larger light increased in brilliance, just a little, and with an objective I didn't understand, I began moving the rest of the smaller light over as fast as I could manage.
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His world had been further reduced to a wooden sword, and nothing but chaos beyond it. He knew nothing more than the focus that kept the blade swinging, seemingly of its own accord, as the limited strength he attributed to himself had long since expired. He was beyond actively trying to defend himself. He was beyond even trying to defeat his opponents... As even this limited world began to fade around him. He was at a point where he welcomed the darkness. Why was he even fighting anyway? A dark laughter began to crawl in at the edge of his senses...
A burst of something brought him back to himself, and the battle was grossly and violently back in focus. The pain that had begun to wash away with his vision was alive in him again, and something else... Something... Good, flowed through him. Just as his senses came fully back, they were violently torn from him once more as a solid mass of... Something... Crushed him against the floor.
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Coming to the nurse's housing, he could see the assembled army of the dead haloed around the small rise, called forth by the Blood Moon and its dark power. As he approached the mass, he began forming the dirt into a tunnel that extended before him, cutting a line through the zombie, building it as he went, and pulling it up from behind him, he used the earth to keep the dead from getting too close. Without its influence within him, he wasn't certain that he could walk through them unmolested, and he was uninclined to take a chance on it.
As he closed in, he built up in an easy slope, further separating him from the dead and preventing the sharp rise from slowing his momentum. A few of the Demon Eye seemed to take his moving construction as a challenge, and he was mindful of their slow wobbly assault, building out from the walls to divert their paths when they came too close. It seemed that they weren't blind to him after all.
"YOU!" its voice, coming from both outside and within his head was somehow even more terrible in its force, and for a moment, he paused his steady march to the door, which was now a stone's throw before him, "It seems that after all this time, there is still something left in you that needs instruction."
He ignored its taunting, and continued toward the door, still building the structure around him to keep the Demon Eyes at bay, and just before he reached the door, The Groom stepped out to face him. He knew he didn't have time for its games, and tore the earth from beneath it before it had chance to begin whatever it had planned.
huhuhuhehehehahaha... it began laughing from the mouths and spheres of every dark thing moving in the night, a sound that echoed not just in his ears, but in his mind as well. Any moment now it would take hold of him again, but before it did... The builder MUST survive the night.
He pushed forward with the cloud of earth that he'd gathered as he made his way here, filling the small structure from the back, and forcing the dead out. Just as the last of the demon eye was separated from the corner where the nurse and builder huddled, he could feel its presence forcing its way back, accompanied by a sensation not unlike a blade being thrust up the length of his spine. No! I cannot let you-
The rest of his thought was cut short as a pair of arms encircled him immediately followed by a strangely familiar tightening in his neck before the world disappeared in a flash of purple.
"Damnit Tam!" he shouted as his friend appeared in front of him, blinding him in the dim illumination provided by the Demon Altar across the room, "I told you I was fine by myself!"
"Well, I can see that..." Tam responded with a frown, unmoved by his outburst, "What I'm having a harder time understanding-"
"I was just..." he tried interrupting as he attempted to come up with an excuse, Curious the voice provided.
"Curious?" Tam asked.
"Wait! You heard..." he stopped as Tam's eyes narrowed, "I mean..." Hehehehehahahahaha...
"I'm not seeing the humor here," Tam responded to his... his laughter... Wait, its laughter... No.. Was he laughing...?
"I..." The Demon Altar, something about being this close to it was causing him... You meddle in things beyond you little wizard... he said, as he took a step towards... Wait... "No!"
"Oooookay," Tam grabbed his arm, "That's enough Demon Altar for-"
He swung out with the other arm and before he could connect, a small explosion of fire between them tossed him back out of the room into the cavern corridor that lead down to it. Laying crumpled in the dirt, he could hear it begin to laugh... Hehehehehe...
"Annnd..." he felt Tam's hand for only a moment before the telltale sign of Tam's teleportation preceded another flash of purple light, this time followed by him being blinded by the sunlight, "... we're out of there." Tam finished his statement as they thumped onto the grass.
You let him command you thus? The voice taunted him... but it was quieter... like it had been in the past. Not like it had just been in that room below. He lay there for a moment, letting the sun warm him, and trying to figure out what he was going to do next.
Hehehehehehe...
I was out of the smaller light, and unsure what to do next. The light in front of me was beginning to fade once more and I had no more light to give it. Looking around, I could see... Another larger light in the distance, a much brighter light, and it was coming this way... But between the light and I was the wrongness, a large concentrated mass of something that I just knew wanted to consume the lights.
I reached out for that other light, but I could not get through the mass, and then just as I was about to give up, the mass was gone. Or more accurately, it fell. And what rose in its place was a thing beyond words. Coming from the very depths of my nightmares was a mass of... pulsating, shifting, organic material. As if the insides and outsides of every living thing I had ever seen was sewn together in a massive moving edifice... and it was definitely moving. I watched, unable to do anything more than that as the mass enveloped the smaller light, blinking it out of existence in the process.
NO! I screamed, reaching out for the light that had just vanished, but it was too late. The light was gone, and only the edifice remained. And it had heard me. I had nowhere to run, had no idea even where I was, when the towering nightmare construct shifted towards me.
Ow! Something hit me, hard, and without transition I was snapped back to myself, and my surroundings. We were, the stranger and I, huddled together in what I assumed was the same corner we'd been in what seemed like a lifetime ago, only now, we were surrounded by... dirt? The stranger was unconscious, lying before me, at just the same distance as the light had been and there was a soft glow coming from a small quivering pink gelatinous mass of some kind, and within it, "My Ring!"
The mass condensed, and presented my ring from within it, up to meet my reaching hand.
"Th... Thank you.." I wasn't sure how to respond to a glowing pink thing, or if it even warranted a response, or hell, if it were even capable of accepting whatever response would be appropriate for such an encounter.
If it wasn't alive, it was certainly mobile, as after I took my ring, it *Shlp, Pop, Tss* bounced to the dirt wall, and seemingly melted into it, leaving me now in darkness.
Kaaaa...thhhhhyyyyy...
I could hear that voice again. And it sounded even less like Johnathan now than it had before. As I tightened my hand around my ring, I could see the world begin to shimmer much like it had before, a hint of that terrible edifice becoming visible once more, and I loosened my grip shutting my eyes to it.
Kaaaattttttthhhhhhyyyyyyy...
The voice called out to me again, and I didn't know what to do. I knew it wasn't my Johnathan... But... for a moment I could feel him when I looked at the ring... I don't know how I knew that, but in the same way I knew the stranger was somehow connected to the light I'd seen before, I knew Johnathan was connected to the light in my ring. And with nothing else to go with, and no idea what I was about to do, I squeezed my ring and tried focusing on it as the world shimmered once more.
Everything once again became a cascading cacophony of light and colors, and I could see that towering edifice of pulsating flesh far closer than anything in me could handle, and I almost lost my focus. Instead, I tightened my grip on the ring and looked around to find... There.
Below me, the mass of wrongness was somehow connected to the edifice, and there I could see what I was looking for. The faintest hint of a light, of my Johnathan, almost completely obscured by the wrongness emanating from him in waves. I reached out towards that light, and was forcibly rebuffed by the towering...
"They call it the Wall of Flesh," Tam informed him as they sat in his spell lab.
Perinque had been at their home waiting when they arrived, and had refused all his attempts to talk to her, turning away whenever he tried, and he'd finally just given up. She stood leaning against the door frame, wearing that impossible clothing that made it hard to see her clearly.
You have lost them, but I... He was working on tuning the voice out... The voice of this Wall of Flesh as he now knew it was called, but it was likewise impossible. The best he could manage was to focus enough on other things that it was only a hindrance to his listening, instead of a distraction.
"And?" he asked, urging his friend to continue his explanation.
"And I don't have too much more than that to work with," Tam sighed, "I've been trying to figure out ways to reach out to the Guardians that are left... But as it turns out, the kid's connected to the last of them," he finished with a shrug.
"I mean, the Eye of Cthulu and the World Worm are still around... Sort of... But they've fallen to to its corruption, and it's only a matter of time before he does as well."
"Who does?" he asked his friend, noticing as he did that Perinque head dropped a little at that.
"The kid... Or more accurately, the dungeon guardian connected to him. Skeletron," Tam answered, looking at the ceiling with a frown, "I mean, he doesn't know what's going to happen to the kid when he succumbs... But he's done all he can to buffer him from it."
"So the kid's like me then? He's got a voice of something in his head?"
Shaking his head, his friend turned his frown to him, "No. What you've got whispering guardians only know what into your head is much worse. This Wall of Flesh is not of this world. Or at least, it wasn't until recently... Which is really a difficult frame of time to gauge, as what's recent to an eternal guardian may be-"
"Ahem," Perinque cut in, speaking for the first time, "Tell him about your plan."
"Sorry," he smiled a little as Tam winced, it was nice to see even a little bit of the way things used to be from his friends, "I got carried away again," his friend continued, taking a deep breath before he did, "Anyway, this Wall of Flesh is somehow connected to the Corruption. They're not sure if it caused it, or was caused by it, as it wasn't really a force of note until more recently..." Tam shot a glance at Perinque before continuing, "But either way, they think that as long as the corruption exists, its power will only grow."
"Oh," he spoke into the silence that followed that proclamation, "So what, we just get rid of the corruption and perhaps it will go away?" he chuckled at the absurdity of that statement... but Tam was not laughing, "You've got to be kidding me."
"Listen," Tam put his hands up to forestall a further reaction, "I know it sounds ridiculous, but hear me out-"
"That's not a plan!" he shouted, "That's a suicide mission!" Hehehehehe... "And the voice agrees with me!"
The look Tam leveled at him caused him to rethink his last words, "What I mean is, the idea of us going to fight the corruption has it laughing."
Tam was giving him a peculiar look, and seemed about to say something... But then shook his head muttering, "an even worse idea."
"We're not just planning to charge into the corruption looking for a way to clear it out," Perinque cut in, getting the conversation back on track, "We're planning on trying to contact the World Worm."
HAHAHAhahahahahahahaa...
"Oh," he retorted, "It loves that idea too..."
"I'm not really concerned with what the voice in your head does or does not enjoy," Perinque cut in, "And the only reason we're telling you what's going on is so that you'll stop trying to get yourself killed while we look for a solution to..." he could even hear the frown in her voice, "whatever's happening to you."
"The dungeon guardian said that the World Worm went into the corruption to find a way to stop it," Tam continued, "So even though it's been corrupted... There's a chance that enough of it is still around to maybe give us some insight into what we could do about it."
"Because that worked so well with the Eye guardian," he snapped, hating the wince it brought to Tam's face.
"We've been able to reach out to the Eye of Cthulu since then," Tam responded, surprising him, "Through its totem... another one of those eyes we used to summon it the first time," he added.
"And you say I'm trying to get myself killed," he shouted, "After what happened that first time! Are you serious?"
"We did not fall," Perinque snapped, cutting his yelling short.
"But you could have..." he responded in a quieter voice, "you almost did even..." he finished weakly as he remembered that night.
"Here again Tam?" he asked, as he looked at the ruined remains of a place he once called home... in a time long since passed and until recently, nearly forgotten.
"You know I no longer use that name Gaul," a voice that he hardly recognized responded, "or should I be calling you Guile now?"
"Call me what you will, but tell me," he turned to confront the ancient wizard, once his friend, and now a mere skeleton of the person he once was, "Why are we here!? The Builder is not yet safe and until the Blood Moon sets, his life remains in flux."
"You think I do not also feel the weakening of the rules," Tim, as he now called himself, retorted, "It is for that reason that I chose now to act... That I can act..." he finished in a quieter voice.
"We do not have time for your foolishness wizard," he snapped back, noting the sharp look the skull somehow managed to convey in response, "take me back above that I may serve as a distraction to the Wall. He has manifest the Crest on some of his builds, and given time, he may be capable of ending this."
The torches on every wall erupted in a brilliant light, and a wave of fire washed the room, removing the cobwebs but otherwise doing no damage the mostly ruined contents therein.
"Do not talk to me about the crest!" the skeleton's voice boomed from every corner of the structure, as the symbol of the land began to glow from almost every surface, "You once manifest the crest on everything you crafted!"
"My time is long past,' he snapped, "You know as well as I that I am now no more than a puppet for the Wall's amusements!"
"And yet," Tim responded, throwing something at him that he instinctively pulled to his hand, "even after all this time you can still wield the Hero's Sword."
He looked at the shimmering weapon he now held, and for a brief moment considered...
"No!" Tim shouted, but too late. He destroyed the blade and tossed its hilt back to the skeleton before him.
"My time has passed," he repeated, "Take me above, or stay and wait for it to find me. It is only the Builder's life with which you toy."
He was crushed violently against the wall by an invisible force, and the broken blade was driven through his hand in the process, pinning it to the wood beside him, causing him to shout in surprised pain before...
"Hehehehehe..." he began to laugh, almost involuntarily, so deeply had the Wall become a part of him, "Do you now intend to end me Wizard?"
"I was prepared for..." Tim did not finish his words, but instead walked over and pulled the sword hilt from his hand, still holding him to the wall with his magic, "whatever needed to be done."
He laughed again, was this how it would end? Could it end for him here? Was he to be that blessed, a final gift from a one-time friend?
The wizard pulled a small doll from his robe and pressed it into his bleeding palm, causing a sensation not too far removed from the pain inflicted upon him by the Wall when it felt the need to instruct him. Screaming out at the unexpected pain, he tried pushing against his invisible bonds to no avail.
"What is this!?" he roared, as the doll was pulled away. A doll he noted looked suspiciously like himself, only cut open down the middle, and within it, "A Life Crystal? What kind of foolishness are you intending with this?"
As he finished speaking, the doll sealed itself shut and pulsed once with dim red light as it did. A pulse that he could feel in every fiber of his being. At that, a large ashy creature stepped in through the open doorway and stood behind the skeletal wizard.
"I..." Tim began, before turning and handing the doll to the demon, watching it leave with it before speaking again, "this was not the way I wanted this to go."
"What have you done?" he yelled, "Working with Demons now are you? How little humanity you have left," he tried lashing out with his words.
"Humans are but one of the many creatures of the land," Tim spoke, his head hanging and his voice soft, "Goodbye... Friend," he finished, raising his hand and causing that familiar tightening in his neck before the small room vanished from his sight.
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I fell to my knees... I know... Had I eyes, I knew they would be clouded, I'm sure... It was too late to change things now... I pray... With him gone, the spell was coming apart and I could hear the whispers beginning again... I've done the right thing. It was my idea, it had to have been... Oh Perinque... She would understand... Forgive me... She had to understand... It was the only way...