The Chameleon Loop

Nox crawled to the edge, trying not to move his ribs when he inhaled. Since he’d overshot the wall he had to crawl back to the main corridor. It led to a sort of crawling half breath that quickly deprived his brain of oxygen, sapping his strength and intelligence. He would have been crippled by broken ribs before this dungeon, but now, after he had endured twenty one deaths, pain was losing its sting. Drawing his Mbar he used the top-grade steel pommel to gavel against the marble wall, attracting the kill team’s attention.

“Ash, heal…” Gasped Nox.

He hadn’t needed to speak, Ashley was already on her way, hands glowing softly as her healing power flowed towards him. The distance lessened her spell, but the mana saturated dungeon counteracted that shortcoming. Cracked ribs sealed together, leaving Nox’s chest sore, but functional. He inhaled deeply, savoring the dank taste of stale labyrinth air.

“Thanks! Be careful with the traps.” Nox called, setting off on his solitary path.

Swapping his worthless Mbar for a XXL chode he set off, leaving an inch thick red line for the others to follow. Two hours later he was sitting atop the final dividing wall, sculpting several blocks of C4. In preparation of the ziggurat he’d injected another 10ml of therapy and stuffed the empty vials into the C4 brick. A personal touch to spite the labyrinth. One he followed up by lovingly carving faces into each brick. The first and largest got a smiley face and a detonator nose.

“Rudolf, the red nosed bomb.” Muttered Nox, rolling the 50lbs keg of C4 –now known as lil Rudolf– off the edge.

Next he sculpted a bunny face on the smallest brick, intending to use it as an improvised grenade. A remote controlled land mine to shave the minotaur’s ballsack.

“Betty the bouncing bunny-bomber.” Said Nox.

Finally he packed up the rest of his C4, and stuffed it into the main pouch of his backpack. He’d find a use for it later. With his demolition plan in place, Nox marked the walls with red arrows, hoping that they would be enough to notify the kill team. If fifty pounds of C4 somehow failed to say “look over here”. Although, if they missed the giant glowing pyramid and a blown up wall there was probably nothing he could do to get their attention. Still, he wanted to be thorough. Sloppiness had gotten him killed on the finish line just a few hours earlier. That final tripwire in front of the ziggurat must be protecting something. The minotaur had been swift, efficient, and joyless. As if protecting the ziggurat was an important duty to the boss. It hadn’t wasted time pulling off his arms and hacking off his legs, it had just murdered Nox.

Why kill me so hastily mr bullhead? Unless the ziggurat is your weakness?

‘Or it could just be his sock drawer, where he keeps his bovine harem.’ Said Loki.

“Yeah right.” Laughed Nox, finding the idea of picking up ladies in a dungeon to be impossibly dumb.

Nox squished ‘Betty’ into a lumpy football, grinning as he carefully inserted a detonator that was paired to a separate switch and placed it inside an admin pouch on his cargo shirt. He hadn’t played football in years, but he remembered the basics and managed a good enough spiral. Betty sailed through the darkness of the labyrinth, wiffling her way through the updraft of mana –gaining several feet of elevation– and coasting thirty yards into the ziggurat’s surrounding grassland. While it flew Nox withdrew the detonator, unintentionally fumbling them until he lost track of which detonator blew up which bomb.

Silence.

Where’s the minotaur? Do you have to trigger the tripwire? Oh, uh… SWEET! I was all worried about nothing. Thought Nox, replacing the detonators into separate pockets. The Corps had trained him with C4, but he rarely needed multiple simultaneous detonators. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he needed to blow multiple bricks with individual remotes.

If I survive, I'll buy a second remote and distinguish it… Maybe with gold paint, or bedazzling, or something.

He confidently strode to the labyrinth’s edge and stuck his hand over the edge, waiting a moment before retracting it and finding all his digits were still intact.

“Cowabunga.” Said Nox, dunking his head into the reverse mana-falls.

Energy tingled his nose, tickling his chin and simultaneously giving him the sensation of two wet willys. While the ziggurat had once seemed like a collection of matte black stones in a barren courtyard, it was in fact a beautiful marble hue, covered in glow stones and bright colors. Reds blended with yellows to give the marble structure an appearance of a sun setting over ice. Grass stretched out in every direction from the ziggurat, a welcoming plain of peace. Elysium incarnate, tucked behind a deadly maze and an illusion. Light fell from the sky, cast by an imaginary sun, yet from inside the illusion Nox looked over his shoulder and beheld the labyrinth glistening in sunshine. Weird, although this is pretty nifty.

‘Glad you like it, but I need to warn you… Don’t let Mia see you. If you’re petrified that technically doesn’t count as dying, even though your heart will stop.’

Petrified? Whoa whoa whoa! Loki! Give me a real hint. How does that work? If my heart stops I'll die.

‘Hush! You can’t understand the details. besides, you only asked for a tenth of the minotaur’s power, so you’re only getting a tenth of its knowledge.’ Snapped Loki, not his normal jovial self.

Knowledge?

‘Is power. At least that’s what all you humans say. Well, that or some nonsense about family giving you strength. I don’t really care, just don’t let Mia see you or our game will end for a few months while I try and convince something to smash your statue. No, not in the sexual way you horny imbicile.’

What? Loki, something is seriously wrong with you. Like, I would say you’ve got a screw loose, but I’m not sure there are any screws left in that noggin of yours; or if you had any to begin with.

Nox molded another log of C4, this one two foot by one foot long, and jumped from the walltop. Landing and rolling with his momentum to break the fall. Shit! I forgot about the grass! Thought Nox, scrambling to his feet. Curiously, the grass moved with him, clinging to his body in an unnatural way, as if the grass had a mind of its own and wanted Nox.

‘Don’t flatter yourself, they are after your blood. But i’m not interested in watching you get turned into a shrubbery, so don’t stick your thumb in your bum.’ Ordered Loki.

Do you even know what that means? Or are you just some strange kind of parrot? Asked Nox, still clamoring to his feet.

He retrieved Betty the football, placing it just under the teleport tripwire. A small surprise that he packed a few extra glee-filled pounds onto. Hope this blows your balls off. Chuckled Nox, sprinting across the open field. Sunshine warmed his skin, and the field was perfectly flat, a perfectly level field of six inch tall grass, with nothing but the marble ziggurat. For all the field’s tranquility Nox felt something gnawing on his brainstem, as if something was watching him, waiting for him to make a mistake.

The ziggurat was built with eleven steps and each layer roughly as tall as Nox’s chest, making it four or five feet high. Not that he dared climb it, this wasn’t a playground, but a dungeon with lethal traps and deadly monsters. Thankfully he had planned for this, and retrieved another expanding aluminum rod, after all, if you brought a stick to poke monsters, you know it will eventually become a snack for something. Using the second rod Nox circumnavigated the grassland, peeking around every corner before crossing into a new quadrant. A minotaur’s bellow told him that roughly an hour passed as he traversed the grasslands, noting two oddities. Each quadrant had exactly one path from the maze to the ziggurat, centered perfectly in each wall, while the ziggurat seemed to be monolithic and inert. No stones moved, no tripwires existed, and there were no doors to speak of on any side.

Aluminum rod extended, Nox began his ascent. The ziggurat couldn’t be a solid structure, that would be completely illogical. No one, not even a god –if Loki could even be compared to the human concept of a deity– would build a ziggurat, shield it in a utopian illusion and then fill it with rocks!

Hoisting himself up the step pyramid Nox climbed, pausing before reaching the pinnacle to catch his breath. He rolled onto his back, watching a half dozen distant wyverns circle and clash in a midair dogfight, or maybe some sort of mating ritual. Affairs he wished to have no part of. Turning inward he wondered what life would be like when they finally got out of this dungeon, getting reevalutated should be his highest priority, then he could do higher level dungeons and… and what?

If he was a higher rank, the Corps would increase his quotas. Sure his stipends would increase but was that worth the risks? Were these powers even his? Was Loki a figment of his imagination or a dungeon creature? The boss was the minotaur, and dungeons couldn’t have two supreme beings. Could he even fight higher ranked monsters?

‘You haven’t even killed the minotaur! And you’re planning a victory lap? Haha, hahahaha!’ Said Loki.

Bile rose in his throat, he lacked power, higher ranked raids would mean more deaths, more painful echoes he would have to live through each and every time he died. NOPE! Thought Nox, immediately ruling out reevaluation. No way am I living through that just so some ahole sapiens can send me to die. I’ll raid E gates, maybe D gates… Nox let out a sigh, what was going to happen when they got out of this labyrinth? Bills would come due, there would be no loot to share, even if he bagged something obscenely valuable from the ziggurat it would be collected by the Hunter Corps for ‘research’. Most likely sold to the highest bidder so some mid-level corporate exec could fund his vacation home, or invent a new unit of ‘mana’.

They’ve taken everything I owned… and my whole family. I’d love to give em the finger at least once… Hide some gear from Pfizer or the government. If only there was a way to smuggle a few weapons out of here.

Hey Loki, you got any ideas? Maybe a magical item box I can stuff things into?

‘I’m a figment of your imagination. Ooooohh!’

Yeah right. If you were, then I would imagine you being useful! Thought Nox.