One. Two. Three.
It was beating too fast, a fluttery, nauseating rhythm caused by his body not knowing whether he was up or down.
The Memory Vaults didn't appear to follow any of the familiar rules of a physical realm. The floor wasn't flat; instead a series of suspended crystalline platforms floated over a drop that glowed with a sickening, radioactive green light.
But below this obstacle wasnt just a fall into nothingness. The light below writhed as it swirled in slow, viscous currents, like oil separating in a centrifuge.
[ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD: SOUL RESONANCE] [EFFECT: GRAVITY DISTORTION] [WARNING: VESTIBULAR SYSTEM COMPROMISED]
"Don't look down," Elias muttered, swallowing the bile that rose in his throat. "Or up. Just look at your feet."
"Easier said than done," Thorne retorted. Her voice sounded thin, stretched by the tunnel's weird acoustics. She gripped her staff so hard the skin over her knuckles turned white. "This doesnt feel like magic. It's wrong. The air feels like its sticking to my skin."
Elias stepped onto the first floating platform.
It dipped under his weight, bobbing like a cork in water. He threw his arms out for balance, the new upgraded Bastion-Breaker Plate clattering loudly. The sensation was hideous; his eyes told him he was standing on rock, but his inner ear insisted he was falling.
Motion sickness, he diagnosed. Sensory mismatch. The brain can't reconcile the visual input with the proprioception.
"Stay in the centre of the slabs," Elias called back. "If you step on the edge, the centre of gravity shifts. Think of it like walking on ice."
They moved slowly. The silence of the Vaults pressed in on them, broken only by the clack-slide of their boots on the smooth crystal and the low, mournful hum that vibrated through their feet.
The tunnel spiralled. The platforms grew smaller, the gaps wider.
At the third jump, Elias mistimed it.
He pushed off his left leg, aiming for a hexagonal slab two metres away. But as he jumped, the gravity in the tunnel surged, a localised fluctuation.
He hit the slab hard, but instead of sticking as he had expected, he bounced, hard.....
Weightlessness took him, and for a terrifying second, he floated a metre or so above the platform, gently spinning as his limbs flailied in slow motion.
"Elias!" Thorne reached out with her staff, hooking the crook of the wood around his ankle.
She hauled him down, and gravity slammed back into him with double force. He hit the stone with a grunt, the air driven from his lungs.
[FALL DAMAGE: 5%] [STATUS: DISORIENTED]
He lay there for a moment, cheek pressed against the cold crystal, watching the green abyss swirl below.
"You okay?" Thorne asked, breathless.
"Physics," Elias wheezed, rolling onto his back. "Bloody, BLOODY physics."
He pushed himself up. "We need to move faster. The fluctuations are rhythmic, like a tide. We have to move between the waves."
He watched the floating stones. They rose and fell in a subtle, breathing cadence. Up... down. Up... down.
"On the downbeat," Elias said. "Go."
They sprinted: jump, land, brace; jump, land, brace.
They hit the solid floor on the far side of the chasm just as the gravity wave crested behind them, sending the platforms they had just crossed spinning wildly into the air.
Elias leaned against the wall, checking his vitals. Hie felt like his stamina bar must be greyed out at the edge
"We're getting closer," he said, pointing down the corridor.
The walls had changed. The opal transparency was gone, replaced by a deep, resonant gold crystal that pulsed with a steady beat.
Thump-thump. ... Thump-thump.
This was data, memory moving as light.....
Elias touched the wall.
[DATA STREAM: HISTORY]
<...we sang the stone into shape... we did not cut... we asked... and the mountain answered...>
The thought wasn't his. It was a recording, playing on a loop.
Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.
"The Gold Tunnel," Elias said. "History. The Codex said the soul gems retained their knowledge. This whole hallway... it's like a record of their civilisation."
"A record of what they were," Thorne said softly, "before."
The corridor opened into a hexagonal chamber.
Unlike the tunnel, this room was cluttered with crystalline pillars that jutted from the floor and ceiling at sharp angles, creating a forest of reflective surfaces. In the centre, a massive geode blocked the path, locked in place by a dwarven clamp.
"Dead end?" Thorne asked.
"I dont think so? More like a checkpoint."
Elias scanned the room: the mirrors, the angles. Cindersnarl paced beside him, his claws clicked nervously on the quartz floor, a low rumble building in his chest.
Clank.
The sound came from behind a pillar: heavy, metallic.
Clank. Whirrrr.
"Contact," Elias snapped, drawing his sword. "Front right. Two targets."
Two Hollowhands stepped out from the crystal forest.
These weren't the drill-armed labourers they'd fought in the tunnel; these were excavators. Their right arms ended in mounted, rotary cannons—long barrels wrapped in cooling coils, humming with blue energy.
[TARGET DETECTED: HOLLOWHAND BLASTER] [THREAT: RANGED / SUPPRESSION] [DAMAGE TYPE: CONCENTRATED SOUL-FIRE]
"Get behind something!" Elias yelled.
He grabbed Thorne and dragged her behind a thick crystal pillar just as the air split. Cindersnarl scrambled after them, his paws sliding on the slick floor, barely making it behind cover before the beam hit.
CRACK-HISS.
A stream of blue fire scorched through the space where they had just been standing, and splashed against the wall behind them. Instead of exploding, it disintegrated the stone into a cloud of shimmering dust.
"That's not fire!" Thorne yelled, pressing her back against the crystal. "That's raw aether! It'll shred my wards!"
"Suppressive fire," Elias noted. The second construct fired. CRACK-HISS. The pillar they were hiding behind vibrated. "They're pinning us down!."
Elias peeked out. The constructs advanced slowly, their dwarven-engineered cannons cycled with an ominous precision. They exploited the room's geometry; their heavy armour and sizzling firepower as indomitable as a WW1 tank.
"I can't get close," Elias said. "If I break cover, they'll cut me in half. Cindersnarl can't get traction on this floor to charge."
"I can't get a clean shot!" Thorne countered. "The crystals are blocking my line of sight! If I lean out, I'll take a beam to the face!"
Elias scanned the room. The walls were polished opal, the pillars faceted quartz.
Reflective.
"Don't aim at them," Elias said, an idea forming as he traced the angles. "Thorne, the ceiling. That concave cluster above their heads."
Thorne looked up. "The mirror?"
"Bank the shot. Basic geometry. Angle of incidence equals angle of reflection."
"You want me to do maths while being shot at?"
"I want you to hit them without exposing yourself! Do it!"
The pillar shook as another beam struck it. A crack appeared in the quartz near Elias's head. Cindersnarl snapped at the falling dust, agitated.
Thorne gritted her teeth, adjusting her grip on the staff. Without leaning out, she aimed upward, calculating the bounce.
"Better keep his head down," she muttered.
FWOOSH.
She unleashed a bolt of condensed light. It flew upward, missing the constructs entirely, and struck the concave mirrors clustered on the ceiling.
Impacting into the mirrored surface, it didn't explode, it bounced.
The beam streaked down sharply after ricocheting off the ceiling, hitting a second prism on the floor behind the constructs, and slamming into the billowing exhaust of the left Hollowhand.
KA-BOOM!
The construct's fuel cell ignited. The explosion blew its legs off. It collapsed, the cannon firing wildly into the ceiling, bringing down a shower of glass.
[COMBAT STYLE: GEOMETRIC MASTERY] [BONUS: TACTICAL]
"Bullseye," Elias breathed.
The second construct turned, confused by the attack from behind. Its sensors swept the room, trying to locate the latest threat.
"Now!"
Elias broke cover. Opting not to run in a straight line, he zigzagged, using the pillars as momentary shields. The Warg bounded after him, struggling for grip but moving fast, a streak of orange heat against the cold blue room.
The construct saw him and traversed the cannon.
Whirrr-click.
Elias slid, dropping to his knees on the smooth floor. Momentum carried him forward like a baseball player sliding into home. He went under the barrel as it fired, the heat of the beam singeing the plume of his helm.
He came up inside the guard and drove Dawnfall's blade upward, jamming the point into the cannon's cooling vents.
Crunch.
He twisted the hilt. The metal sheared, and the cannon jammed.
The construct tried to backhand him with its free arm. Elias ducked, the heavy iron fist passing closely over his head.
"Cindersnarl! Leg!"
The Warg slammed into the construct's knee, jaws clamping onto the hydraulic strut. The metal groaned under the heat of the beast's jaws. The constructs leg buckled, as it staggered in place.
Elias followed up with a rapid pommel strike to the faceplate.
CRACK.
The glass shattered. The swirling red soul-light inside hissed and fled, dissipating into the ether. With an echoing wail, the suit collapsed, a dead weight.
[TARGET NEUTRALISED] [LOOT: SOUL CANNON FRAGMENT, SCRAP IRON]
Elias stood, chest heaving, as he wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes. "Clear."
Thorne stepped out from behind the pillar, looking at the smoking wreck of the first construct. "That," she said, pointing at the ceiling mirror, "was ridiculous."
"That was triage," Elias said, sheathing his sword. "Identify the obstruction. Remove it, or bypass it."
"Why do you talk like that?" Thorne asked distractedly.
They moved past the wreckage to stand before the massive geode blocking their path.
Elias inspected the ginormous dwarven clamp holding it tightly in its ancient grip. It was locked.
"Can you melt it?"
"I can melt anything," Thorne said. She placed her hand on the lock mechanism. "Give me a second."
Heat flared. The iron turned cherry red, then white. It dripped like wax, forming a reflective puddle on the floor of the chamber.
The clamp sprang open. The geode rolled aside with a heavy rumble, clearing the way to the final door.
The door was magnificent.
It wasn't metal or stone; it was a single, seamless sheet of golden crystal, ten feet high with neither handle nor keyhole.
It vibrated with a low, constant hum emitted from somewhere beneath the surface, creating a barrier of sound pressure that pushed Elias back when he tried to step closer.
[PUZZLE: RESONANCE LOCK] [REQ: HARMONIC INPUT] [LORE: The Solmyr spoke in chords. Only the right song opens the way.]
"It's sealed," Thorne said, shouting to be heard over the hum. "It's a wall of sound."
"It needs a key," Elias said, "but not a physical one. It needs a frequency."
He remembered the Flashback: the feeling of being Weaver-of-the-Third-Harmonic, and the way the air felt when he 'spoke'.
Ping. Vrumm. Sing.
A chord. Three notes.
"We need to replicate the sound," Elias said. He looked around the chamber.
Clusters of crystal stalagmites, of different sizes and thicknesses, grew from the floor near the door.
"A xylophone," Elias realised, "or a tuning fork array."
He drew Dawnfall. "Thorne, listen closely. Tell me if I'm sharp or flat."
Cindersnarl sat on his haunches, ears pinned flat against his skull, whining softly at the high-pitched vibration.
He struck the flat of his blade against the smallest crystal.
Ting.
High. Brittle.
"Too high," Thorne said.
He struck a thicker one.
BONG.
Deep. Resonant. Cindersnarl stopped whining and tilted his head.
"Closer," Elias muttered. "That's the bass note."
He tapped a medium crystal.
Humm...
The door's vibration stuttered, and the barrier wavered.
"That's one," Elias said. "We need the sequence."
He closed his eyes, delving into the Weaver's memory. He tried to feel the song in his core, rather than his ears.
Greeting. Harmony. Resonance.
He moved to the crystals. He didn't just strike them; he played them in a sequence.
He struck the bass crystal. BONG. Then the mid-tone. Humm... Finally, the high note. Sing.
The sound hung in the air, harmonising. The three notes merged into a chord that felt like sunlight on skin as springtime stetches into summer.
The door shivered. The opaque gold crystal turned transparent, then dissolved into mist.
[PUZZLE SOLVED] [PATH UNLOCKED: THE CONDUIT ANTECHAMBER]
"You're full of surprises, Medic," Thorne said, lowering her hands from her ears.
"Just pattern recognition," Elias murmured, stepping through the mist. "Let's go."
historically. Gravity stops behaving, the Solmyr stop feeling like distant lore, and Elias is forced to survive in a place that doesn’t run on normal rules… only resonance, memory, and old songs still trapped in crystal.
geometry combat.
Yes, Thorne absolutely deserves credit for that ridiculous ricochet shot.
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think is waiting beyond the Conduit?