Every Loop Costs a Friend

Chapter 4 - What Lives Inside

Chapter 4 · 1,182 words

The tower's entrance was a gap. No frame, no threshold, no mechanism. The black surface of the tower simply stopped, and beyond where it stopped, there was a space that the eyes refused to resolve. The entrance had depth that vision could not measure.

The expedition formed up in the courtyard before dawn. Two hundred adventurers in ranked order, with the Initiates at the back carrying supplies and holding the perimeter. Garran stood near the entrance, watching each team pass. He caught Soren's eye and gave a single nod.

Soren nodded back. His hands were not shaking. He was past that.

They entered the tower.

The transition was immediate. The world changed its mind about what it was. One moment Soren was in the courtyard with morning light on his face and the sounds of the city behind him. The next moment he was inside, and the light was wrong, coming from no source, casting no consistent shadows, a flat gray illumination that made everything look the same distance away.

The corridor was wide enough for four people to walk abreast. The walls were the same black as the exterior, seamless, warm to the touch. The floor was the same material. The ceiling was the same. There were no joints, no seams, no texture. The space had been carved from a single piece of something that refused to be distinguished.

"Sound check," the team leader whispered. A Copper-rank named Zarek. His voice carried two paces and died. Beyond that, nothing. The air absorbed sound the way the walls absorbed light.

"Form up," Zarek said. "Standard approach. Scouts forward, perimeter holders on the edges. Stay within arm's reach."

Soren took his position on the left edge of the formation, shield up, short sword in his right hand. Sabine was three people ahead. Kael was behind him. He could hear Sabine's breathing, the scrape of Kael's boots, nothing else.

They walked for what might have been ten minutes or thirty. The corridor didn't change. Then it did.

Soren was counting steps. Two hundred and twelve, then two hundred and thirteen. The wall on his left was closer than it had been. Not by much. A hand's width, maybe less. But he was sure. He turned his head to check and the wall was where it should be. He looked forward, counted five more steps, looked left again.

Closer.

"Something's wrong with the architecture," he said.

Zarek, ahead of him: "What?"

"The walls. They're—" Soren stopped. When he looked left again, the wall was where it had been originally. Or where he thought it had been. He couldn't tell anymore.

"Stay focused," Zarek said. "Eyes forward."

They kept walking. The corridor turned. Left, then right, then left again. Soren tried to map it in his head but the turns didn't connect. They should have been going in a circle, but the corridor kept extending, kept opening into spaces that were almost but not quite the same as the spaces they'd passed through.

Then Kael stopped.

"Did you hear that?"

Soren listened. Nothing. The silence was total, complete, a physical thing that pressed against his eardrums.

"Hear what?"

"I thought—" Kael started walking again. Then he stopped.

Something hit him.

There was no sound of impact. No visible source. No displacement of air. One moment Kael was standing there, mouth open, about to say something. The next moment he was on the ground, and there was a wound in his chest that hadn't been there a second ago. Blood. A lot of it. His eyes were wide and confused.

"Kael!" Sabine's voice, from ahead.

Soren dropped to his knees beside him. Kael's mouth was moving but no sound was coming out. The wound was clean-edged and deep. It had passed through him with perfect precision. There was nothing in the wound. No weapon, no fragment, no foreign object. Just an empty space where his body used to be intact.

"Medic!" Zarek was shouting. "We have a casualty, east corridor, I need—"

Another one fell. A Copper-rank on the right side of the formation, ten paces away. The same thing. No sound, no visible source. A sudden wound and a body dropping. She didn't even cry out.

"Contact!" someone screamed. "Contact on the—"

A third fell. Then a fourth. Different directions. Different people. The same result.

Soren's shield was up. He was spinning, looking for a target, looking for anything. There was nothing. The corridor was empty. The walls were smooth. The air was still. His companions were dying and there was nothing to fight.

"Fall back!" Zarek's voice, cracking. "Fall back to the entrance!"

They ran. Soren grabbed Kael's arm. Kael was still breathing. His expression held bewilderment, the raw kind that comes before pain registers. Soren tried to pull him. Kael was heavy. Dead weight in the literal sense.

Another Copper-rank fell beside them. Then Zarek, three paces ahead. The team leader went down without a sound, a wound opening in his throat, clean and precise.

Soren let go of Kael. He couldn't carry him. He knew he couldn't carry him. The knowledge was cold and clear and it made him want to scream.

Sabine was ahead of him, fighting. Her sword was out, cutting at the air, spinning in circles. She was shouting something. Commands or just noise, he couldn't tell. There was nothing to cut. There was nothing to fight.

An Initiate to Soren's left dropped. Then another, three paces behind him. The formation had completely broken. People ran. Some made it five paces before they fell. Others fell where they stood. The tower remained silent and empty. The killing came from directions he could not identify.

Soren ran to Sabine. He grabbed her arm and pulled her behind his shield. The shield would stop nothing. He knew that. But it was all he had.

"We need to—" he started.

She was looking past him. Her face had gone white.

"Soren."

He turned. Nothing there. He looked back at her.

"Soren, behind you."

He turned again. Nothing. The corridor was empty. The walls were smooth. The air was still.

Something tore through his chest.

The pain was beyond anything he'd imagined. His body was occupied by something that wasn't there, a presence without form, a violation without a violator. He looked down and saw the wound. Clean-edged, deep, blood welling up from a cut that had no source.

He fell. His shield hit the floor and the sound died after one pace. Sabine was kneeling beside him, her hands on his chest, pressing down on a wound she couldn't understand.

"Stay—" she was saying. "Stay with me, you need to—"

He couldn't feel his legs. The gray light above him was getting dim, or his eyes were failing, he couldn't tell which. He could see Sabine's face. She was crying. He didn't think she knew she was crying.

He tried to say something. His mouth moved. Nothing came out.

The last thing he saw was Sabine's face, and then the gray light went out, and there was nothing.