The battle begins in full not with Gustavo hurling himself at the Keymaster but with a pack of entities dashing and flying at their fellow entity. Before the Keymaster can meaningfully lash out at Gustavo numerous hounds and smilers are on top of him, and he is forced to defend himself against their claws and fangs as they endeavor to protect their master and to corrupt the figure they are assaulting.
Gustavo is allowed to sail through the air and eventually lands on the floor over ten feet behind the creature he’s fighting. He smirks as his skillful rival puts a modicum of effort into defending himself from the tidal wave of bodies that seek to taste his flesh. The air above the battlefield is now home to a small number of moths who occasionally assault the powerful entity by spewing globules of acid at him.
The former human who is leading the assault on the vault’s mysterious guardian studies the figure he is fighting. He watches the thoughtful movements of the Keymaster, and studies the alien being’s sword swipes, his enhanced mind noticing the subtle cues that occur right before the being lashes out at Gustavo’s corrupted servants.
Eighteen entities are hurling themselves at the Keymaster. Nonetheless, the Keymaster is a frighteningly capable opponent and he skillfully dodges or stops their attacks. As Gustavo watches the warrior he begins to develop a grudging respect for the man on the basis of his incredible martial skill. Nonetheless, Gustavo is a tricky opponent in his own right with frightening capabilities all his own.
“Gustavo, is this all you’re capable of!?” The Keymaster eventually roars, causing Gustavo’s face to whiten in shock. His voice is a regal, almost aristocratic thing, and it is much lower than Gustavo would have expected based on the Keymaster’s appearance.
“I was told you were a mighty foe. It seems that all you can do is hide behind beasts and monsters. I am… disappointed.” The entity continues, disparaging Gustavo in an attempt to infuriate the man. Gustavo can tell that that’s the purpose even without attempting to read the man’s mind and ignores the attempt, even as the Keymaster is forced to remain on the defensive.
Gustavo uses his power over corruption to gaze at the door behind him. He doesn’t dare approach it while his enemy is locked onto him, and so he simply studies the golden object that stands between him and the primordial goddesses he is determined to free.
The gigantic object is a wall of gold and at the bottom of the wall is a simple doorknob. That is all that, normally, stands between someone and the Vault. Not today though, thanks to the Keymaster which greatly inconveniences Gustavo.
The revelation that the Keymaster is capable of speech shocks me. I am also, far less pleasantly, surprised to learn that my rival knows my name. It appears that whatever circumstances led to this stranger being here involve me, which likely means that my true enemy is behind this.
I glare at my foe as my forces continue to hound him, and I study his method of self-defense for any possible weaknesses. He is a monster, effortlessly deflecting the attacks of eighteen different creatures without injury but he is not so skilled that he can pursue me in any meaningful capacity without opening himself up to attacks.
As I study him I realize that while his defense is nearly absolute so long as he is focused on it he is not so overwhelmingly powerful that he can both protect himself and harm me at the same time. He may have a mountain of defensive power but his offensive abilities do not equal his defensive ones, which is both a hint of how to proceed and a powerful incentive for me to get involved in the attack as well.
Thanks to my potent powers as a “Trickster” I have a unique ability that grants me triple the amount of any “Items” I possess. Normally these multiplicates of my items either don’t fully exist unless I need them or exist in stasis, and right now is the perfect chance for me to utilize the tripled nature of one of my items… My “Mistilteinn”, the potent capstone items that top off the items attainable by “Tricksters”.
“Mistilteinn”, at least when they are, are magical weapons forged from the wood of the world tree, “Yggdrasil”. I possess three thanks to “Afarkaup Avarkostir”, and only one truly exists now. The one that exists does so in the form of a bow that can form arcane arrows and use them as deadly ammunition against almost any form, but any others I attain will respond to my will the moment that I retrieve them from inside of my backpack and use them for the first time.
The bow is close by, but I don’t want to reveal every tool in my repertoire just yet. Fortunately… I can easily make the other two “Mistilteinn” real weapons with a simple act of will.
I reach into my backpack, and I retrieve one of the wooden weapons. As I grab onto the phantasmal and amorphic weapon I feel it begin to solidify in my hands and react to my will. I pull it out of my pack and as it does I sense something akin to a soft, but incomprehensible voice coming from it.
Time slows as I bring the weapon into being and as it begins to escape my backpack I hear its voice grow in volume and comprehensibility. The voice asks me for guidance and to help shape the thing into the tool I need. I shut my eyes and I envision a powerful weapon that can be effective against a foe as skilled as the Keymaster.
When I answer there is a momentary pause as the voice thinks of what form would be the most conducive to my goals. A moment later time begins to speed up and I successfully retrieve my weapon. I pull out a knife, and am surprised to see that the thing has taken on such a form, even as it makes me smile.
I don’t hesitate to chuck the knife at my foe. The thing arcs through the air, light as a feather in my hands and capable of considerable devastation. I seem to have thrown it a bit higher than I anticipated, but the knife doesn’t seem to mind and I watch it correct itself in midair. A massive smile appears on my face when the weapon abruptly arcs downward and cuts through the air towards the Keymaster.
I am annoyed when my opponent stops one of the hounds under my control with a backhand slap before he turns around for a half second and counters the knife with his gigantic sword. The weapon is sent crashing to the floor and gets embedded in it, indicating how sharp the blade is even though it’s made of wood.
The Keymaster wields a strange oar-sized sword made from an unusual black metal but with the sort of precision that the best surgeons in the world could show while wielding scalpels. His skill with his weapon is impressive, and remarkably annoying.
What the Keymaster doesn’t know, and this becomes apparent when he doesn’t react to the fact that the knife frees itself from the concrete floor, is that my weird weapon is alive. The flying dexterity weapon is a potent tool and it has a mind of its own much like my bow does. I watch the Keymaster’s back stay turned to the weapon even as it hurls itself at him again, only for him to turn his body in an impossible way for a human and deflect the knife again with an ugly scowl on his face in response to my weapon.
“Intriguing…” I mutter, as I begin to realize the nature of the Keymaster’s defensive methods. It seems that the figure is capable of detecting attacks once they enter a certain, tiny range of him, a range that reminds me of my unique kinesthetic ability to be fully aware of my own range of motion. Once an attack enters this range he deflects it. Earlier I leaped at him and I must have entered the outer edge of his ability to sense attacks right before he deflected me onto the floor.
I momentarily allow myself to use the senses of one of the hounds, to get a better angel through which I can see the Keymaster. As my eyes synch up with the eyes of the hound I begin to sense what is in front of the creature.
Through the eyes of the hound that I am allowing myself to use as an unusual pair of eyes, I can see the Keymaster continually dodging or countering attacks but because of the sheer number of strikes he has to deal with he is forced to use the minimum amount of force needed to rebuff attempts to gain control of him. It is interesting to watch as he gracefully but not quite perfectly dodges or deflects blow after blow.
This stranger is powerful but he’s not perfect. When my knife hurls itself at him I decide to do the same thing and leap at him once more. With a foe like this, against someone like me, even one blow can begin to change the course of the battle and as I approach where the knife is I send a pulse of corruption into the weapon. This grants it the same insidious properties my allies have and make a blow from it a dangerous, almost poisonous thing.
I am actually faster than the small knife happens to be and so despite my being farther away from the Keymaster than my knife I get to see him turn to react to me before he does so for the knife. I immediately estimate that his speed is only a touch below the speed of sound, but for some reason he can only do slight movements at this speed. I watch his oar-like sword whip out to deflect me and as the thing dashes towards me I glance at it and use a familiar power.
As the weapon my foe uses like a shield barrels towards me I hit it with a powerful and concentrated beam of corruption from my eyes. My corruption is a powerful thing and it hits the sword hard, allowing me just enough influence to slow the blade enough to allow it to capture me and deflect me but not fast enough that the weapon shields its owner from my knife.
Even as I am redirected and again sent hurtling through the air by the sword I hear the sound of the Keymaster grunting in pain when my knife cuts his cheek and then keeps speedily whirling past him. He immediately turns around again just to deflect more attacks and I can see the bleeding cut on his face as I flip through the air past him.
His blood is red, just like I assume that mine still is. Somehow there’s something mildly intriguing about the fact that this odd figure has red blood… It’s weirdly ordinary and that’s kind of extraordinary in a place like this.
I sense a miniscule amount of my corruption in the Keymaster and that is a decisive victory for me. The eerie corruption I wield is not all powerful, but even trace amounts of it are dangerous and subversive, and I use it to slow my enemy just a touch. He doesn’t even notice the alien substance that makes his blade feel just a little bit heavier and makes his movements just a touch more sluggish.
I can feel his muscles tense a touch, and I easily sense that this is such a subtle change that the man himself doesn’t notice it immediately. By resisting the urge to smile, albeit with a bit of difficulty, I manage to keep my small but meaningful win a secret even as I “Order” my servants to attack more fiercely than before.
I don’t yet possess the true and unadulterated power of the “Essence of the Binder” but I can appreciably mimic it and I get to watch my servants glow with powerful corruptive energy as they recommit themselves to me and my cause. The beasts all growl in unison, the sound different when it comes from different creatures, and yet it all comes together to become a haunting chorus. I also mentally order my servants to force the creature away from the door it’s been guarding.
My forces spread out and surround the man, as the beasts weren’t quite smart enough to do that on their own. With my guidance they begin to assault the Keymaster with renewed vigilance and ferocity, which brings a cruel smile to my face.
In moments the tide of the battle begins to turn. My creatures assault our foe in unison, and we begin to corral him away from the door, forcing him in a direction conducive to my greater desire here.
I don’t care about killing this foe. My intentions here are to force this asshole away from the door and to allow my human allies to enter the Vault so that I can free Narlin and we can save the communities situated throughout the level.
I just want to move the location of this fight, and I am delighted that slowly but surely my enemy is literally moved by my servants from just in front of the door to a bit away from it after a few seconds of intense fighting. We aren’t quite where I want us to be, but we are more than a few feet from where the Keymaster was standing when I first met him.
The creature still hasn’t been hit by any of my entities which is a little bit disappointing, but the weight of his weapon is starting to get to him. I can see him slowing down and being forced to push his own body farther, faster than he had too before. At this rate a victory over him is inevitable, even if it’d take… hours to achieve.
I am learning from this experience. It turns out that I am not particularly strong when it comes to direct combat but my advantages and tactics give me a certain amount of freedom that my opponents may struggle to address effectively.
My allies still haven’t made their move, but I can sense them preparing to do so. I can feel those of them attuned to the hivemind I control tensing as they sense an opportunity to dart out and hurl themselves at the distant door. If they can get inside the Vault I can find the chest and free Narlin!
My corruption is alive, in a manner speaking, and fanatically devoted to me. Even tiny portions of the stuff are eager to do my will and to advance my objectives, and when my allies finally dart out of the hallway and dash towards the door, I order the corruption in the sword my foe is wielding to weigh down the blade.
The Keymaster gasps when the blade he is holding becomes too heavy for him for a split second and drops towards the floor. As this occurs I spur my corrupted followers onward and they sprint towards the door. At the same time my creatures pounce on the opportunity to harm our foe, spitting acid at him and throwing themselves at the skilled warrior. All of this is too much for the stranger, who takes hits for the first time other than when my blade nicked his cheek!
As my allies reach the door the Keymaster seems to be forced to his knees. Miniscule amounts of corruption begin to seep into the warrior, and I can feel the corruption in him being bolstered by the new amounts of the stuff that enters him.
I can feel my servants ripping into him, biting and clawing the figure, and each time he is actually struck by my forces a fraction of a percent of corruption enters him. He is too tough for any of my attacks, even those of my servants, to truly harm him but each bit of corruption that seeps into him makes him weaker.
My allies dart to the door, protected and covered by my floating, at least partially self-aware bow right as the Keymaster spots them and emits an explosive roar. The entities closest to the man are blown back by the force of his scream, and even the few pot shots my bow takes are blown away by the force of his voice. He gets up and continues to emit the almost sanity-damagingly loud noise.
He begins to turn his head in my direction, and hate fills his eyes as he and I lock eyes. His screeching prevents any of my entities from approaching him, and he approaches me with malice visible in his gaze.
I don’t back down and I hit him with a powerful, focused wave of telekinetic energy. This almost forces him to his back, but he resists the force behind my Force-based attack and he takes a single, slow, step towards me.
My allies yell for me, for help, when the doorknob that existed on the door vanishes right as they reach for it. This annoys me but I am presently dealing with the Keymaster, and I can’t afford to not focus on him. I hurl wave after wave of potent, Force-based telekinesis at him but only a few manage to send him back even a single step. That said, the sight of this figure approaching me begins to irritate me and with each step he takes that anger grows sharper.
My waves of telekinetic power are potent things and I notice them growing stronger with each step the Keymaster manages to take. He and I are currently and obviously locked in battle, and his corruption is significantly slowing him down, but he’s so intensely powerful that even these conditions aren’t enough to meaningfully stop him.
As my anger grows deeper and darker I feel it mixing with my powers over The Force. I can sense my ability to use my potent semi-psychic powers growing with every wave of telekinetic power I fling at my foe. Nonetheless he is gazing at me with steely intensity and he is unrelenting in his approach.
Even when I get a clean hit on the man and he is forced a few steps back he is only slowed, not stopped. It’s impressive, in a way, even if it is tremendously annoying.
I use “The Flooded” to morph one of my limbs into a gun, even as I reach into my backpack with my other limb and pull out one of my shotguns. I open fire on the asshole in front of me, and watch as he forces himself to dodge bullet after bullet with impossibly precise movements. The bullets that are fired from my handgun, in a literal sense, are teeth that are formed and then fired at my enemy in milliseconds thanks to “The Flooded”.
I grow another arm, one which juts out of my shoulder, and use it as the central focus through which I channel Force-based telekinetic bursts. The Keymaster continues to dodge my attacks until I hit him with a wide telekinetic wave that hurls him backwards and I get to pepper him with individual bullets as he is sent away from me. At the same time I make use of “Corrupted Consciousness” and enter the mind and body of Lopez, one of the men who agreed to willingly join the hivemind and thus accepted a decent amount of corruption.
I take a millisecond to adjust to Lopez’s senses even as I will his body forward and compel him to put his hands on the golden door. I increase his strength by focusing the positive effects of the corruption inside of him on his physiology, instead of allowing it to holistically boost everything about him. This makes it far more effective at boosting his physiology, improving him in physical regards for a bit, and I get to see and feel his fingers dig into the door in my way. I roar, which he mimics, as he rips the door out of the way and ungracefully tosses the large thing back towards my main physical body.
Beyond the door is a gigantic room filled with crates containing supplies of all sorts, a prominent and medieval-looking treasure chest, and at the other end of itself a shimmering portal to what I immediately know is the next level of the Backrooms: the Sub-Basement. On the other end of the portal is a strange, small hallway and over the hallway are several loose, jagged pipes made of what appears to be well-maintained copper.
Everyone stares into the massive room, and even I am a bit stunned. It’s easily the largest room I’ve ever seen, and as Lopez gazes upward I don’t see a visible ceiling. The room is at least a few miles wide, and much of the floor is covered in crates and backpacks that are filled with valuable goods. I can see everything from almond water to weapons and everything is in such abundant supply that even just eyeballing it I’d estimate that the stuff could outfit a modern city with ease.
As Lopez steps into the room, I will him to walk in a specific direction. He boldly ventures towards the treasure chest, and this causes curious gasps to emanate from his friends as the chest is visually distinct and is the only sort of unopened storage unit that is readily visible.
He strides towards the treasure chest, and as he does I make use of the persistent nature of “Shaper” to grow eldritch arms and hands out of his shoulders. These unnatural limbs are copies of my own extradimensional appendages and when the man is in front of the chest they are the limbs that shoot out and touch the container.
The chest is a surprisingly beautiful thing. It is made of wood but it is also adorned with divine symbols, symbols that remind me of the artwork of pious people from throughout history. At a glance I can recognize symbols in the form of curious runes, such as a cross and a moon, and I can feel the power coming off of them. They keep the chest shut, locking the inhabitants inside of it.
The symbols are so potent that they are visible to the naked eye, even fully mundane humans can see them. If I am to successfully free Narlin then I must overcome them, and corrupt them with my own power!
When my limbs snake forward and touch the chest I begin to pour corruption into it. The corruption is drained out of me and I feel the power keeping the chest shut weaken as each individual symbol is infused with insidious corruption.
The thing takes a massive amount of corruption before the last holy symbol is inundated with the stuff and the magic keeping me out of the chest is broken. The symbols suddenly wink out of existence, even though they were previously visible even to Lopez.
My almost astral limbs move to the sides of the chest and push it open. As the thing opens a triumphant voice almost explodes out of it!
“Finally!” The voice roars, and as it does everyone around me and even the Keymaster can feel the heat emanating out of the chest as a suit of armor, a shield, some rings, a sword, a spear, and a hammer that looks like it came out of some fantasy novel, fly into the air above the chest.
I, in my physical body, begin to laugh and smirk at the Keymaster. He stops moving and gazes past me, into the very vault my allies and I came here to find.
His eyes are wide with fear, and he is frowning, as he stares at the newly freed contents of the chest. They continue to float, moving in a slow circle that currently “faces” away from me if the helmet of the armor is facing the same direction as the other parts of the treasure.
I watch my opponent do some mental math, even as I prepare the next part of my assault. I can see the gears in his mind turning, and then he suddenly vanishes.
He vanishes so quickly and so completely that the sight of it stuns me for a moment. Nonetheless, I can still sense my corruption inside of him, and I can sense it becoming eager to corrupt him and lure him to my side. My corruption is also so far from me that while I can sense and control it I can tell that it must be located several levels away from me, and is so far that I can only loosely control it. It’s genuinely impressive that the Keymaster can just teleport himself to different levels…
I sigh and take a beat to turn off the intense connection I currently have with Lopez as well as undo the changes I inflicted on him through “Shaper”. This beat is just long enough for the objects released from the chest to have turned enough to allow them to “face” me.
“Ah, there you are!” Utters the same triumphant voice that roared moments ago. I turn to face the floating objects and to respond to the voice but before I can I see them rocketing towards me, and they are close enough that I am hit by them a nanosecond after I spot them moving towards me.
I am temporarily blinded when the helmet of the suit wraps itself around my head, and I feel it begin to mold itself to better serve me, supernaturally changing its shape. My blindness enhances my other senses and I use the senses of my flabbergasted allies to look at myself.
The suit of armor and the other objects I have released from their unusual prison have surrounded me. The armor is wrapping around me protectively, and I feel the rings and shield affix themselves to my hands, and the weapons merely float in a slow orbit around me.
As each item attunes itself to me I begin to hear a curious chorus of distinctive voices fill my mind. Each voice belongs to a different goddess, and I can also hear the voice of Narlin amidst the chorus that now fill my head.
I almost immediately recognize Narlin’s voice as the same almost thunderous voice that roared when the chest was opened! I am almost distracted by all the voices, each of which is beautiful in its own way, but I barely manage to focus enough to move forward with my plans.
“Narlin, I have saved you. Now please… Save the people of this level by helping me shut down the portals that are releasing flying entities!” I say, my own mental voice suddenly sharper and weirdly more melodic than I have ever heard it be before. This quiets the chorus, and for a moment I am met with silence. And then a quiet, beautiful laugh begins to emanate from the sword which is slowly floating around me.
“Ahh, I’ll admit in my excitement I forgot about the pact I made with you. You are right, my most unusual savior, I owe you a debt. Allow me to repay you, just a bit.” The sword “says”, a clear and physical voice coming out of the blade of the thing.
The blade is a lengthy longsword with a beautiful hilt that is covered in art depicting the sun. It is also hot but in such a way that it emanates heat as opposed to being hot to the touch.
“Grasp me. Take me in your hands and wield me, and I shall cut down your foes.” The blade says, and there is a curious undertone to its words. Its utterances are almost… romantic, almost loving, despite the curious word choice. I move for the first time since the armor I am currently wearing wrapped itself around me and as I move I hear the stony voice of the goddess who has been trapped in my gauntlets and breastplate gasp gently.
One of my hands reaches forward and takes the hilt of the sword in which the soul of Narlin, a primordial goddess of flame, has been trapped. Narlin emits a rather low-pitched sound, one that I know to be the sound of delight, as she feels my hand wrap around her unusual body.
“So much power! And so much potential,” She says, delightedly. “Yes. This’ll do quite nicely.” She tells me, mysteriously.
“Point me skyward, young hero! Let us save this ‘Level’, together.” She says, her voice filled with both happiness and ambition. I hesitate but only for a moment and I don’t bother gazing up even as I stretch my arm towards the sky and point the blade towards the distant ceiling.
I blink, and that turns out to be fortunate because as soon as a moment passes after I have pointed my blade skyward, I feel the most intense heat I’ve ever felt scorch my skin and even behind shut eyelids everything goes curiously white due to the astoundingly intense flames I have just unleashed. I hear the roar of flames as my blade, and the goddess I have rescued begins to laugh as I mentally “Turn” to focus on my mini map.
It begins to show various portals, and even entities suddenly stop existing. I “Watch” as the thing goes from showing hundreds, maybe thousands of nearby entities and am somehow both floored and not surprised that they are ceasing to exist at an impressive rate. I can also “Hear” my blade delightedly laughing as she incinerates countless creations of the Universal Consciousness which defeated her and her allies… sometime ago.
She gleefully delights in their destruction, but somehow her flames never seem to advance past them. I don’t see any humans being harmed or being forced to cease to exist because of the flame, only portals and entities. It is… both amazing and curious, but I intuitively wonder if the goddess can sense my desire to protect them or is somehow aware that they aren’t like the entities. Either way, I’m glad I don’t have to try and stop her given the sheer delight in her voice at the moment.
The flames continue for several minutes, incinerating countless legions of entities in every direction around the Vault. Eventually though, the flames stop and darkness returns from behind my shut eyelids. When it does I chuckle and open my eyes, even as I quietly thank Narlin for undoubtedly saving the level from the predations of our mutual foe.
She does not respond immediately, and so I begin to walk towards the Vault, eager to see its insides from my own point of view and to reunite with my friends. My entities, which were also spared from Narlin’s rage, return to me and vanish, eager for their next chance to be of use to me. It takes me a few seconds to go from where I was fighting the Keymaster to just inside of the Vault, and when I step into view my friends turn and look at me only for their eyes to widen in amazement.
“Hey. I know I look different. Some… stuff has happened.” I say, mysteriously and rather bashfully. It is only when I look at myself through Lopez’s eyes that I realize just how extensive the changes actually are.
I’m not just wearing different clothes, I physically look different compared to the way I looked before I saved the goddesses!
