BestLizard
Junior Trainer
- Pronouns
- He/Him
21: Mad Descent
Finally, I land on my feet after falling down the stairs. A bunch of odd shapes tumble from above, bouncing off my back but being too light to hurt and no shadow follows up to punish me. I chuckle, both in amusement of my landing but also to blow off stress I’ve built up. It doesn’t last long as sharp stabbing pains come from my bruises again. I hug my sides.
“Hurry. It’s hunting you.” No matter how often it repeats itself, it still speaks in the same deep, emotionless tone it’s always had.
I don’t hurry though. I… Laugh again, and I do so in spite of my bruises. An emotional levee broke for next I’m on my knees, arcing my back with a hand on my visor, cackling to the skies with laughter.
“Hurry. It’s hunting you-”
“SHUT THE HELL UP!” I yell at the top of my voice. I grip my chest as pain spikes. Oh hell, it’s a lot too. My arms shake. “Shut up! Ha ha ha ha…”
…
…
…
I come back to my senses, or at least most of them - I can’t get rid of my wide grin stretching cheek to cheek. Why am I so amused? What’s wrong with me?
Well, I need to hurry either way. It’s hunting me.
I get up and go back to running. At least I have had a chance to catch my breath, as this segment of the dungeon is my longest yet.
Every trait about the previous floors progresses manyfold once I’m another ten floors deeper. Every surface has become a dead black obsidian with dizzying interweaved spirals etched through fractures. And most interestingly, there’s no longer any more shimmer, although there’s plenty of dusty white patches instead.
The ceiling is so low that I have to hunch over although it’s not the only thing that’s become cramped. The corridors are more tubes with how the walls are curved and they’re narrower than before. They bend and slink around, not just left and right but also up and down - every direction except straight. And they’ve become so long it takes minutes to jog through some. Every floor, It’s taking longer to reach the stairs.
The rooms are not much better. More than half are as small as walk-in closets. The ones that don't have sloped and uneven floors and have so many exits not just on the sides but above and below. There’s more exits than there is wall. I can’t even fit through most openings. And when I do reach the stairs, they’re only as wide as my body and have irregular, jagged steps. Every one’s a battle not to trip down.
I’ve gotten used to the falls that happen after descending each set of stairs, but they have been getting longer too. My last fall took seven seconds - I counted. It’s long enough that panic sets in each time, although I always stick the landing. I’m not even sure how - I don’t even feel the impact of landing, somehow.
Between the claustrophobic spaces, passing so many floors I’ve lost count, and how much time I’m spending falling, I know I’m far below the surface. There’s no doubt I’m going to pass a kilometer by the final floor.
There’s also much less life down here. There’s one less aura each floor and now I don’t even sense anyone anymore. There’s still aliens, though. They aren’t a threat: most are either too large and impossibly crammed within the cavern walls, or are so small that I can punt them away with my boot.
At one fork, there’s even an arm of one of them fully taking up the left path. Its body must be a gargantuan size, and I can imagine its whole body being stretched out and squeezed like a noodle, and how gory that must be. I really wonder how they end up in places they physically couldn’t fit into, and why the sizes are so varied. Wonder, wonder, wonder. I doubt my journey will unravel any mysteries about these monsters, but at the same time, it isn’t the inner workings of the dungeon I really care about. I just want answers about the universe, ideally why the world has ended and what caused it, or why we exist. And if not that, then what happened to Kommo-o. Then I’ll die satisfied.
“Go right. Hurry, it’s hunting you.”
I listen. I’ve figured out what’s up with its insistence: no matter the context, if I’m stopped for a short bit, it will tell me to hurry. If I ever run out of breath too fast or trip, it will tell me to pace myself. It seems unable to recognize context, just that I have slowed down, and it will always think I need reminding. It’s so odd, this Pokemon-like voice knows so much, yet there’s so little it's aware about. At least knowing it isn’t being impatient makes the reminders less bothersome.
The new corridor has a slight curve that straightens out after minutes of jogging. After that, it’s an unbroken corridor that goes on and on, the longest I’ve ever been in. The walls are uniformly cramped, only inches away from my shoulders. There isn’t a single white patch and the fractures’ patterns repeat after a long time. Something isn’t right.
“Stop,” the voice says.
I do, although I go straight to holding my knees and panting. I haven’t stopped jogging in maybe an hour. “What’s wrong”?
“Give me a moment. I’ll be leaving you.”
“Hey, tell me stuff!”
There’s no response. And in no time my leg muscles start aching. To prevent muscle atrophy, astronauts do work out regularly and that does include myself, but even fit people have limits.
The running isn’t great for my hunger either. All the stress and physical activity has surpassed my appetite but it’s coming back all at once now. My stomach doesn't just rumble - my arms shake in hunger, and I certainly feel irritation.
All this body awareness is so stark to the quietness around me I’ve now noticed. There used to be so much shimmer sloshing and the stomping of the colossal aliens could be heard for many floors. But there’s not a drop of shimmer anywhere anymore, the giants are long past, and there’s no Pokemon to disturb this peace. It’s empty here. Only pain and my panting.
I punch the wall. “I need to keep it up,” I tell myself. Need to keep my sanity up, that is. “The final floor will have something of value. I will find Kommo-o. Or I’ll see some great legendary. Maybe the One Who Is Not will bless me. And if not, I’ll be back on the station with all the knowledge I’ve accumulated and so, so, so much time to analyze it.” I punch it again. “But it’ll mean nothing if I don’t make it to the end! So I need! To stay! Strong! Aaaaaah!”
I bang it a few more times and take a deep breath. This feels so good. Too good. I need to hold back laughter again. That’s when the cracks in the wall catch my eye. There’s a familiar, wide-mouth face sketched into it. After blinking, I see Kommo-o. I squint. Huh?
“Lucario, turn around and run,” the voice said. It is panting, with a quiet wheezing to its breath. “We walked into a trap.”
That’s when I realize that the emptiness around me wasn’t just emptiness, but an aura made of emptiness itself. It was a long distance away, but it didn’t come from either direction of the tunnel: it encapsulated me like a sphere.