Shades Of Forever

"Where are we?"

I spin around, looking for any sort of cover, but no matter which direction I turn the view is the same - disturbing yellow liquid sky overhead, eyes trapped beneath malleable glass underfoot, a horde of violations growing closer and closer as the three monstrous figures remain in their places.

"Why does it all look the same?!"

CRACK CRACK CRACK

My rifle is already firing, picking holes in the oncoming rush, but it's not making any difference in the number of violations. I try to step backwards but the sticky transparent ground glues my foot to the floor.

...reality loop... only way out... is removing... the anchors...

playtime

Pete the cat jumps out of my shadow and stretches, arching its midnight back, then bounds forward in a graceful lope. After two sinuous strides, it disappears from view, then reappears several seconds later even further away. It sits down and looks back at me, as if wondering why I'm not joining it.

...can't believe... I'm saying... this... follow... the Entity...

I take off after Pete, swearing under my breath. Four steps later the world flickers again and I'm back in the wreckage site, closer to the giant structure housing the first anchor. There's no sign of the violations anywhere. I stumble to a halt again.

"What-"

No time. Keep running.

I burst into motion again, trusting Box.

We're in a modified Klein bottle topography. I can explain what that is later. What you need to know is that every ten meters you move towards the anchor you're going to alternate between-

The other dimension slides into place around me, Pete lazily washing a paw. The violations are even closer now. My rifle starts firing again.

...your reality... and this... piece of... reality...

Pete springs forward, and this time I'm right behind it. We flicker back and forth between worlds, drawing closer to the incoming violations and the floating wheel of the first anchor, simultaneously entering the lowest entrance to the starfly wreckage. It's an extremely disorienting feeling, like the universe is constantly melting and reforming around me, and the sticky glass shifts up and down to mimic whatever elevation I'm on when I pass back. The dim gloom of the wreckage slides away to roiling sulfur light and the violations are now close enough to bring my kukri into action.

The trusty blade dips in and out of malformed flesh, my rifle continuing to pick off distant targets, and Pete contemptuously carves through violation after violation, fractal claws shining strangely in the bruised illumination as it pounces and swipes. Lashing hits bang off my Marauder chestplate, repelled by the durable material, but I can't dodge them all.

Current Life: 522/550

We break through the wall of violations into another reality shift, deep within the starfly wreckage, scattered detritus of unknown purpose surrounding me. The red dot is getting closer, matched by the growing bulk of the five-eyed head in the other dimension. I catch a quick breath, then charge onward once more.

This time when I emerge into reality, a red warning zone flashes around me. I swear and dash away, just in time to avoid a maw of putrescent ichor that emerges from the glass, snapping shut where I just stood. The fanged mouth dissolves, bubbly fluid flowing back into the floating head's bulbous nose. The wheel bracketing it spins faster as violations continue to fall around me.

The head is finally in rifle range.

Executing 360NoScope.exe

Current Energy: 30/180

Blasts of force rock the head backward, puncturing all but one of the eyes. It squeals as it returns to its original position inside the wheel, a horrible blubbering sound, and the disc speeds into a blur. Crimson threat light covers the entire area surrounding me and Pete.

...Sky-

I'm already moving, sprinting directly towards the anchor. One step. Two steps. I leap forward right as the air ignites in a welter of flaming barbs. The world shifts back into my reality, a quiet and cavernous chamber that stretches all around me. Some sort of metal pillar extends from floor to ceiling in the distance, a red outline surrounding it. My limb fires a rifle shot, puncturing the hushed silence, but the bullet just pings off the pillar.

...it's impervious in this reality. We'll have to kill it in the other realm.

I groan, then start running again. Way too soon, the world flickers me back into the maelstrom of madness. More violations pour towards me and Pete, and I notice some inky threads trailing away from its tail, flowing back into my own shadow. I dash to the side, dicing another group into nothingness and slightly easing the pressure assailing my cat.

"You okay, Pete?"

annoying food

Pete swats another two violations into nothingness, then bites off the head of a third. Another threat indicator burns to life around us, and I dash forward, narrowly avoiding a stinging hail of needle-like missiles composed of hardened ichor. Once again, it flows back into the head's nose after the attack completes, but that's not what catches my attention.

All four of the ruined eyes have regenerated, spinning pupils locked on my own. The wheel starts increasing in speed again.

"Shit. C'mon, Pete!"

I dive forward through a barrage of heavy strikes, shifting back into my reality as the flaming barbs manifest across the air, a thicket of unthinkable pain that slips away like a forgotten dream. I pause to think, the metal pillar in front of us almost mocking in its solidity. Pete prowls back and forth, inky fur bristling.

hunt. kill annoying food

"Yeah, I'm trying, Pete. Box, what are we going to do? That was our strongest attack."

...the only possibility is to close in and overwhelm it before it can regenerate. It will leave us open to attack from the violations, however.

"If that's what we have to do, that's what we have to do. Let's go, Pete."

I begin another run at the pillar, anticipating the reality shift. Sure enough, we slip through dimensions after another two steps, violations spinning and snapping at us. I barrel through them, Pete a buzzsaw of inky death.

Current Life: 470/550

The floating head is a little over twenty scrumbles away-

...twenty... two... meters...

-when normal reality reasserts itself. The pillar looms before us, a broad expanse of scorched metal piercing the center of the chamber. This close to it, it's obvious it doesn't belong here. Pete yrowls angrily at it but we don't stop moving. The next shift sees the floating head looming over us, spinning eyes glaring balefully. The whirring wheel makes a barely audible screeching noise that immediately puts me on edge; a horrible combination of metal on glass on tooth on bone. Ichor spears start lashing out at me and Pete, and I focus on dodging while getting close enough for Box to bring the kukri into action.

Current Life: 438/550

Milky orbs rupture into rancid fluids, more awful squeals gurgling out, but no matter how fast we attack, no matter how much stronger each subsequent blow lands, it's not fast or strong enough. The eyes keep knitting back up, ichor spears slicing shallow gashes along my arms and legs, flicking ebon pieces of Pete back into my shadow.

Current Life: 352/550

A field of red blazes around us again, the sticky glass underfoot keeping me from retreating. I try to time up the orange pulse, searching for the right moment to energy jack.

Executing NothingPersonnel.exe

Current Energy: 22/180

My violent reflections pierce the head from ten different angles but it's too soon, and it's not enough. Incandescent barbs bury themselves across my face and head, lashing my own vision with acidic hate, cruelly hooked points tearing themselves free in starbursts of agony. I scream in pain.

Current Life: 124/550

Box's attacks slow, Phase Shift doing its best to minimize the damage. I lose vision across the left side of my body. More ichor spears flash in, laughter echoing in their oily depths, the unending tide of violations piling in behind.

Current Life: 97/550

"This isn't working," I rasp, desperately dashing side to side, trying to clear out a space. Next to me, Pete is an incomprehensible whirlwind of claws and teeth, felling violations by the dozen, but it's only enough to barely keep us alive. The wheel begins accelerating once again, the floating head gazing down at me like some perverted mockery of a judge.

...don't... understand... anchor should be... dead... not enough... disruption... to its form...

Bloody light embraces us, no escape visible to my half-blinded sight. Violations are trying to bury Pete beneath a pile of rending teeth and tentacles, their efforts slowly succeeding. I rack my mind for a solution, but all I can focus on is that unmoving head.

That form that hasn't shifted once, despite everything we've thrown at it. As if it's locked to a specific location.

"Pete! Follow me!"

Executing NothingPersonnel.exe

Current Energy: 11/180

Sadistic silhouettes buy us a moment of freedom, and I bull my way through the overwhelming press of unreal flesh, Pete limping to my side. I'm making my way to a very specific point.

Current Life: 41/550

A point that's exactly five meters away from the center of the floating head. I rest a hand on Pete's silken back, not knowing if what I'm planning will work, but certain it will.

dash

reality melts around us, replaced by a claustrophobic chamber of writhing runes, the space barely big enough to contain us. Jagged edges crawl their way through each other in endless loops, moving faster and faster, frantic in their attempt to escape, and Pete and I smile.

I was right.

We're inside the pillar, and this is the anchor's body.

Pete and Box strike simultaneously, kukri and claws rending vast swathes of illegibility across the wretched scrawls. One last gibbering squeal echoes through the column, and then it shatters around us, evaporating into immateriality.

Our triumph is short lived.

Reality shifts again, dragging us back into the blasted wasteland even though I haven't moved. Up above, the floating head explodes in a welter of ichor and sound, violations shivering into non-existence all around, but that's not what grabs my attention.

The sulfuric sky is curving towards the horizon, frothy chop battering its surface, and then suddenly we're standing on top of a frozen wave that's moving in a hundred different directions, glass-shrouded changeling eyes gazing down on us from above. The second anchor, that impossible knot of red lightning and wires, sinks into the murky depths and dissolves, black veins tracing labyrinth patterns amidst the yellow. Beyond it, somehow taking up the gap between ceiling and floor, a hunched grey figure is staring at us from the corner of its eye, wisps of something shrouding the rest of its features.

"Box, what the fu-"

It's inverting the topography! Sky, we need to move!

I'm dashing forward before I can think, spurred on by the raw panic of Box's words. Void-black filigree beneath my limbs flashes red, painting a sudden blood system across the endless waves. I try to outrun it but there's nowhere safe from the threats. Symphonic lightning grounds itself in my ears, resonating inimical harmonies into my brain.

Current Life: 3/550

naptime

Pete flees to my shadow as I stagger forward, momentarily stunned.

...fuck. Sky, it's a pure reality attack. That anchor's pouring everything into forcing you to acknowledge the topography as a hostile surface. I can carve out a safe space, but you won't have much time to act.

Before I can answer, the blood system flares to life again, except this time there's a gap in the red. I leap forward and dash.

Stabbing tendrils of slow motion lightning crawl up from the waves in an endless eyeblink, tips questing in all directions. As quickly as they come, they disappear, leaving me unharmed.

Good work. Keep dodging, Sky, and we'll make it out of this. You're doing great.

The yellow water flares again, and once again I dash. It's a little easier than the time before to find the gap.

Excellent! You're a natural, Sky!

Box's words fill me with confidence, and the next dash is like I've finally learned how to walk. I can feel the gaps, know exactly where Box is going to open the next one. This isn't evasion. This is boring. There's no way I'm going to get caught by this stupid attack anymore. I can feel my vision expanding with my confidence, stored biomass reconstructing my ruined eye.

A shape coheres beneath my feet as I dance across the waves, hazily transparent at first, gradually filling in form and complexity. A cluster of looping wires drawing tighter and tighter around themselves, crimson lightning erupting frantically as it shrinks. With an audible pop, it disappears, and the sulfuric ocean falls still.

Second one down. Good work.

I look around, confused.

"But I didn't attack it."

That was a conceptual battle, Sky. You were fighting to assert your belief that this slice of reality included the infinities where the anchor couldn't hurt you. I helped reinforce it with positive feedback.

We should probably deal with the last anchor before we celebrate, though.

The glass sky suddenly twists around the frozen yellow sea, perspective shifting so that I'm looking down at the impossibly distant grey humanoid's bloodshot gaze. The tendrils of something cloaking the rest of its features writhe and clutch, drawing the entire reality down into its wildly vibrating pupil in a swirling vortex of sticky glass and noxious liquid, red threat zones pulsing in stutter-stop jerks. I feel myself pulled towards the horizon convergence point, slow movement that accelerates into a headlong rush despite the fact I'm standing still. A whistling roar builds around me, the harbinger of indeterminate terminality. Within the whirlpool, cracked reflections of broken mouths start spitting hooks of bloody metal, trying to pin me in place.

"What do we do now," I yell, contorting my body through dodge after dodge. I have no idea how to fight what feels like a force of nature. One hook pierces my left heel, slowing my movements, then another catches my right arm. Box fires our rifle at the cackling mouths, shattering them into splintered messes, but we continue falling deeper, vermilion threat warnings flickering on and off like Box is malfunctioning, a barrage of hooks stabbing through me from all angles.

Current Life: 7/550

WARNING: Biomass reserves depleted

...it's... almost finished... inverting... the bottle... need to... get out... while it's still... only one sided...

"What do we do?!"

...dash through... the terminus... energy jack...

I gulp, staring down at that all-encompassing gaze that feels like it's about to engulf me, then start sprinting at it. Chunks of malleable mirror rise out of the whirlpool walls, more mouths appearing inside, and my world is reduced to movement.

Spinning, diving, rolling, leaping, swinging, I bounce my way ever closer, pushing my body through motions that are nothing but pure instinct. Bloody hooks flash by my face as I twist and twirl, the sensation of falling in place oddly growing less and less potent the quicker I approach the malicious orb filling the entire horizon. Somehow, I find a way to move even faster, threat zones blurring into a continuous scarlet haze, and I spring into a mighty leap aimed at the converging sea and sky.

Time stops for a frozen instant, my hurtling form face to face with a bulging pupil the size of an entire world, a distorted reflection echoed in its abyssal depths. It feels close enough that I could reach out and touch the moist surface, shake hands with some alternate me.

Orange light pul-

dash

-ses, and a universe consumes itself behind me as I rocket through a tunnel of pure contradiction. Thankfully time has no meaning here, because if it did I'm sure I would go insane.

Reality reasserts itself around me between one thought and the next, my body flying between two sections of the starfly, tumbling across the soft dirt until I come to a halt on my back, staring up at the early-morning sky. Patches of puffy clouds hang in place across the bright blue, and I feel iron bands of tension slowly melting away.

"Box?"

Yes, Sky?

"If you ever say something is a 'quick in and out, easy levels' again, I'm going to kill you."

A weary yrowl sounds in agreement from my shadow.

...that's fair.