Mage Tank

“Only a little ominous,” Xim said.

“You know it’s probably full of monsters.”

“Sure, but we know there are monsters. It would be worse if we didn’t know about the monsters and they surprised us. Also, the fog isn’t too bad down here.”

“I guess.” She was right about the fog. There was still a slight haze, but the air was mostly clear. My toxicity wasn’t going down, though. “I’m assuming one of us has torches.”

Varrin reached into the sack I carried and pulled out a lantern. He turned a dial on the side and the shutter opened up, sending a beam of white light down the tunnel.

“A bit better than a torch,” I said. “How’s that work? Do you have lightbulbs here? I figured with the medieval getup that this was a pre-industrial type of vibe.”

“I don’t understand half of what you just asked,” said Varrin. “It’s a glowstone lamp. There’s a glowstone in it.”

“Oh. It works pretty well.”

“It has a minor focusing weave to enhance and direct the light. It’s one of the few magically imbued items you can bring into a Creation Delve.”

“There are restrictions?”

“So many,” said Varrin. He walked off down the tunnel.

Xim and I walked side by side just behind Varrin, which was a little awkward with the curve of the floor, but both of us wanted to be able to see what was ahead. There was a light stream of water running along the ground like it was a sewer or water runoff system. Unlike the Delve above, the sewers were not very straightforward.

The first time we came to a junction that gave us three possible paths to follow, we decided to stick to the right wall. That led us to a wide, impassable grate. When we wound our way back to the original junction, we kept right again, which was straight from our original bearing, and came to another junction after a few minutes of walking. Varrin sighed and took out his chalk, then began marking the paths we’d explored and the ones we hadn’t.

I began building a mental map of the sewer in my head and after two hours was starting to get a good idea of the shape of the area. There were a large number of junctions, and while they didn’t follow a direct grid pattern, it was more geometric than organic in design. The bounds of the sewers also seemed to correlate to the facilities upstairs. Where I estimated there was a wall above, we would quickly find a grate or a dead-end with water trickling down from a drainage pipe in the ceiling.

At one point we found a sheer cliff face where the water ran off into a massive underground chasm. Varrin’s light wasn’t strong enough to make out the far walls of the room and the sounds of the water hitting the bottom came from a long, long way down. I made a note of that one in the event we got desperate for a path to progress, but none of us thought it would be a bright idea to take a dive and pray.

Several hours passed before we became nervous. That’s not true, we were all nerves down there in the endless maze of absolute darkness, but we did begin to get more nervous when the twelve hour mark came and went. If my mental map of the place was correct, we had thus far covered an area of around fifty percent of the large grow chamber above. I was reasonably confident that we would find some sort of exit before our time got too short.

That’s what I told the others, at least. Who knew how big this place might be.

I eventually suggested that we test an idea.

“If we head directly north from this point then we should end up in the area where the chute from above dumps the crystals out.” I’d arbitrarily decided the cardinal directions, since compasses didn’t function in this Delve.

“Even if I believe you,” said Varrin, “why does that matter?”

“If this facility was designed to pump out those crystals, then it’s reasonable to believe there would be more of the facility wherever they are delivering the crystals.”

“Or,” said Xim, “that chute travels a mile through the rock and dumps out the side of a mountain.”

“You think we’re inside a mountain?” I asked.

“Maybe. The Delve portals we use take us to real locations in the world, but they don’t tell us where.”

“If the Delve ends up trapping us after the twenty-four hours are up, rather than disintegrating us or eating us or whatever else it might do, would someone be able to come find us from outside?”

“Doubtful,” Xim answered. “We know the Delves exist out in the world because they have been found on occasion, but most of them are hidden deep within the earth. We’re unlikely to be discovered in time.”

“I see.” My mind cataloged that info for later. “Still, I think my idea is the best we’ve got.”

Varrin looked between the two of us, then nodded and began heading up the tunnel toward the nearest junction. As we made our way ‘north’, I noticed that the water flowed away from the direction we were heading. That gave me further hope that we were moving toward some new part of the facility. After all, you wouldn’t runoff water flowing toward your industrial facilities.

After another hour of marching, my thoughts and attention began to focus more inwardly. The scenery was all the same and I could only walk in silent vigilance for so long before I got sick of it. We weren’t talking, trying to reduce the chance that any errant monsters might hear us. We hadn’t seen any for some time, but I didn’t let myself fall into a false sense of security.

I began to think about what I’d been through so far. The Delve had been so intense that I’d mostly been riding it out from one outrageous event or set-piece to another without taking any time to reflect. Now I was running through a list of possibilities for what was happening to me.

I’d already decided I wasn’t dreaming. If I were, then I would have to begin doubting every experience I’d ever had, and I’d already decided a long time ago that I wasn’t a big fan of Cartesian doubt as a life philosophy.

While I thought it was useful to doubt my senses and memories on occasion to try and remove bias, I never let my skepticism rise to the level of doubting the existence of reality completely. Every sense that I had told me that my experience was real, so I believed it was real. This also ruled out drug-induced hallucinations, which in my experience were never this grounded and concrete. It additionally barred the idea that I was in a computer simulation designed to trap my mind while a rogue AI network used my body as an energy source of dubious efficiency.

There was always the possibility of this being an afterlife wherein I am dead and this is some sort of personal hell, heaven, purgatory, or other machination of divine origin. I found that just as plausible as the scenario being presented to me, which is that I died and was reincarnated in some other world or universe. Since it required the additional assumption that some greater being was actively brainwashing me into experiencing a false reality, I discarded it as a theory. I had no good reason to prefer it over the resurrection scenario.

It was clear by this point that this wasn’t Earth, and I began analyzing the situation through that lens. What were the chances that life would evolve on a separate world in a shockingly similar humanoid form? Was the atmosphere coincidentally a similar mix of primarily nitrogen and oxygen? Why was gravity so similar?

It was entirely possible that my physiology had been changed to adapt to a different set of environmental factors and that I was experiencing an alien environment in a familiar way.

It was also possible that the humanoid form had some sort of universal functionality that caused alien life to trend toward it.

It could also be the case that this was an alternate dimension centered on a version of Earth that was similar to, but distinct from, my own.

That last theory was backed up by my subrace being listed as “extra-dimensional entity”, and the attendant details concerning my body traveling between dimensions. Without having more concrete information, any serious consideration about all of that would have to be held in reserve.

While I was curious, the thoughts were mostly a new distraction from the core topic that I least wanted to think about. If I was dead and buried on Earth, and revived in a new world, then everyone I knew and loved was gone from my life.

There was a time when I wouldn’t have minded that. I was a pretty miserable dude in my twenties, and had a serious case of misdirected anger toward the world for my own perceived shortcomings. I was buried in debt, perpetually single, depressed, overweight, had a non-existent relationship with my family, and worked a series of godawful retail jobs. That last one was honestly the least tolerable item on that list. If this had happened to me at twenty-five, I would have probably loved it. Fuck that world and the cosmic horse it rode in on.

But now…

I had done a lot of self-improvement and reflection. I’d gotten my mental health under control, which went hand-in-hand with my physical health. I lucked into a beautiful woman asking me out and that blossomed into a fantastic relationship. After some serious work in therapy I was able to speak to my father again after years of blaming him for my mother’s death. It was still his fault, therapy didn’t change that, but I was able to reconnect and find a way to exist with him. That also led to reconnecting with my brother, who I’d alienated for supporting him.

I still wouldn’t say I was happy. I didn’t even know what happiness was. What I will say is that it was the best I’d felt since I was twelve. And now, poof! Death by tree. My friends, my family, and most importantly, my fiancée, were gone. The weird part is that they weren’t the ones who’d died, it was me.

I couldn’t decide if that made it better or worse. While I knew academically that my life was much better than it had been in the past, and that my life overall was much better than the lives of countless other people, when I took a hard look at how I felt about losing it all–well, I didn’t mind too much.

That was such an odd realization. I loved my fiancée, I knew that at least. Sure, forget my family and my fancy high-paying job that was still boring as shit. Yeah, I never felt comfortable in society at large and wasn’t very attached to any culture I was engaged with. Ok, I thought most of the world was stuck in an immutable political hellscape that would lead to the inevitable torment, suffering, and untimely death of all our descendants. But, I did love her. And I was sad. But she was alive and well and strong and would be able to move on without me. If I was truly stuck in an unconnected reality and we were lost to each other, then I would have to move on as well.

The decision snapped me out of my reverie to realize that I wasn’t moving.

Xim and Varrin were about twenty yards ahead of me and I had no memory of slowing down. I started to hasten my pace to catch up to them, but heard a soft whisper from all around, almost as though it came from inside of me.

It hissed a single word.

[Stop.]