Chapter 28: Cy wuz here

“I hate you! I hate you so fucking much!” Izzy yells as she runs through the door, soaked head to toe in unknown blood.

Mato, peeking out from the makeshift blindfold, slams a swivel chair under the handle of the door not moments before the shadow beast smacks into the door. The ethereal and reverberant thwap is accompanied by sounds of the wooden door cracking and creaking.

“I told you not to peek!” I yell, tearing the overkill blindfold off my face.

I turn to Mato “I told her not to peek.”

“Not the time.” He says, moving us onward and pouring some of his waterskin over Isabella's face and helping her clear the blood from around her eyes, nose, and mouth.

“Actually I think it might be the time, cuz the next time she thinks she knows better might be the time she gets herself or all of us killed!” I shout, temper flaring up under all the stress.

“There won't be a next time cuz I'm done! Fuck this! Fuck this so absolutely completely!” She says, throwing a stapler at my head.

I dodge it and can feel anger grabbing the wheel from the passenger seat and myself losing control. I'm about to throw her into a fucking cubicle or ask where the fuck she thinks she'll go when Demarcus yanks me back and stands between me and her while Mato grabs Isabella's hand firmly.

“Hey!” The two reasonable people shout in unison.

They look between each other, comically, and silently decide Demarcus should go first.

“We can talk about this when we're somewhere safe! You're both being shitheels while we're trying not to die!” He says.

“He's right.” Mato follows. “I wouldn't've said it like that but yer both being childish. From Isabella that's a little more understandable,” he says, turning to look her in the eyes.

“But yer also a young woman who said she can take care of herself. We've been trustin’ ya that that's true, don't go provin’ us wrong.”

“But you—” he says, pointing back towards me. “You are a grown man without the excuse of being a teenager. We're trustin’ ya to get us through all of this but how in the world can you expect us to follow the instructions of a man who lies, then flies off the handle and berates us just cuz he holds the smallest bit of power?”

“This isn’—” I start to yell back when Demarcus shakes me by the shoulder.

“Ey! C, don't tell him why he's wrong. Show him.” He says.

I can't help but think that I could do both.

I take several breaths, clench and unclench my fists, do the little counting bullshit to calm down and I'm back to functional.

“Fine. We gotta get outta this room before the lights—”

Speak of the devil and he shall appear; the buzzing fluorescent lights above us in this bullpit of cubicles begin to flicker as the shadow creature starts testing other ways to get inside.

“Fuck. C'mon, where to Cy?” Demarcus pleads.

I begin to unfold the map again, toggling the popup flaps that denote this vertical section of the map, trying to figure out where the 10th— or -10th?— floor twisty hall that acts as a weird ramp to the next section is.

We are tauntingly close.

Izzy scoffs.

“He doesn't know! He's been lost for an hour now!” Mato tugs at her and gives her a look to shut her up and I feel the stovetop under my cooling guts clicking back on again.

“Need help?” Mato asks me.

And the flame flicks back on.

While my guts are still simmering, but before they can come to a boil, I do something stupid and crazy.

“Fuck it. This way.” I say, slamming the binder shut and waving them all forward towards a door labeled “manager” that instead opens to break room.

“You just picked a random door! I'm—” Izzy yells before I cut her off.

“Sure did!” And my acknowledgement confuses her for a moment, which I take as the opportunity to explain.

“See, I realized something a bit ago that I really didn't want to try:”

“It doesn't matter.”

“By that I mean, if I have the binder from a version of me in the future that got out of this place, then in the primary timeline it is guaranteed that I escape. If this is the primary timeline, then no matter what route I take, it'll wind up being the correct one to lead us to the ruins.”

We come to a fork in the hall, the left corridor looking like it's gradually rusting and decaying, the right twisting and rotating like an M.C. Escher painting.

I take 3 steps down the M.C. Escher hall, gravity twisting so I'm now standing at a 3 degree angle from the fork, and I kick open a door and usher the group through.

“Of course, every turn I take, every door I open, I'm creating a branched timeline where I've doomed myself to an eternity of hellish irrelevance where I may never leave this place. So I'm currently waiting for the moment that I open my eye and realize that you've all been replaced with perfect imitations— When we reach the ruins, I may well have damned countless branches to wander these halls forever.”

I smack the down button on a freight elevator we pass.

“Well, not forever. Theoretically they would level in this place and eventually hit tier 2 and make it to the wider world, but they wouldn't have any of the advantages of the ruins and be forever branded as a branch.”

The elevator dings and the doors open to reveal every single wall covered floor to ceiling in buttons.

We all step in, everyone just sort of staring at me as I rattle on about branched timelines, my tone growing ever more manic by the second.

I think about closing my eye and spinning in a circle “pin the tail on the donkey” style, but realize the buttons all have faint, nearly indecipherable labels. I look for one that has “ruins” vibes and decide to go with basement 13.

“So, that's a silver lining. Doubt my branched self will see it that way though. But hey! In all likelihood The Great Work is just gonna group all the countless branched timelines into a single one where I go the wrong way and get lost in here. Apparently it doesn't like wasting the time— get it?— and effort making a shitload of redundant branches when a single one covers the majority of it and has the most ‘narrative weight’ whatever that is. You'll have to explain it to me eventually, Izzy.” I say, elbowing Izzy on the side and getting a bit of drying blood on my elbow.

The elevator dings and opens to a dingy, poorly lit concrete hall. I step out the elevator and begin passing metal industrial doors as I hear Isabella whisper behind me.

“Oh my god he's lost it. I mean, I never thought he had it but he's well and truly lost it.”

“Wait, did you follow any of that? All I really got is that we're either in the main timeline or a… branch? And if we're in the primary we're fine no matter what.” Demarcus confers.

“No, I think it's that he's creating branch timelines where he doesn't make it by picking random directions.” Mato discusses.

“He's saying that there's at least one timeline where he makes it cuz of the binder, and he's now rolling the dice hoping that this is that one, but by gambling like this he's making a million timelines where he never makes it. Or— one? I don't know what he meant by ‘narrative weight’.” Izzy corrects.

“Izzy's closest.” I chime back in, causing them to startle slightly.

I think they forgot I'm half blind, not half deaf.

I hold a hand against the wall and feel the concrete slowly shift to brickwork. Then, around a rusty metal door, boarded shut, I feel those bricks taking on the texture of sandstone.

“Demarcus, if you would.” I say, bowing back and gesturing to the dilapidated wooden boards nailing the door shut.

He steps forward and uses his bloody crowbar for its intended purpose for the first time and starts prying off the boards.

“Have I said recently how much I admire your practical problem solving, Demarcus? Crowbar was a great weapon choice.” I say, eliciting a sincere blush from Demarcus as he halfheartedly tries to swat at me behind him with one hand.

I turn with a coy grin to Mato and Izzy. Mato looks just concerned and has his crossbow drawn, checking for threats, while Izzy looks at me almost frightened. And here I thought she found half-baked funny.

Demarcus breaks through the last board, tries the door handle, then backs up a step to start kicking the door down.

The door flies open with a violent rusty screech, and I float a [Light] orb into the dark room over Demarcus’ shoulder. From around his massive frame I can only see sandstone, but Demarcus can clearly see more as he immediately doubles over in laughter.

“What?” Izzy asks, uneasily.

Demarcus leans back up and looks back at us.

“Yep, we found it.”

Demarcus steps into the room and out of the doorway then just watches our faces.

The three of us crowd around the rusty doorway and peer into the room. Inside, we see a colossal stone door, with an incredibly intricate relief of some nearly divine being holding a city in their hands. Spray painted on the door, in ancient chipping paint of faded blue tagging, in the classic stylized graffiti bubble letters are the words

“Cy wuz here”

Izzy laughs, mostly in relief, then catches herself. Mato looks too astounded to disapprove of the graffiti, and they all turn and stare at me.

It takes a moment before I realize that I'm laughing like a cartoon villain. And another moment still to identify the wateryness to my eyes and the relief in my shoulders. I won the coin flip.

My mouth shuts with a final shuddering breath, and I lower my head. I stare at the stone floor and whisper to the version of me left trapped in this place.

“I'm sorry.”

We walk in and begin gawking around, just taking in the massive stone wall in this strange basement. Mato runs a hand along an area of the stone uncarved, twisting some dust between his fingers, while Izzy just stares up at the mural, scowling slightly at my defacement of it. Demarcus looks at the graffiti then back to me and gives me a smile and an upturned nod.

“Solid tagging. Didn’t know you knew how.”

“I don’t. Not yet.” I reply.

I pull out the binder and flip past the shitty map and finally get to read the section on the ruins. I’ve been diligently avoiding reading ahead, despite my curiosity killing me.

Congrats, kid. That wasn't the cleanest solution and we definitely should avoid doing that again. But if it's stupid and it works…

Anyways, the first room you're in now is safe to sleep in. Take some time and help Izzy get cleaned off. You can safely use your entire waterskin, there's clean water inside in an enchanted fountain. There's a pretty powerfully enchanted water purification core inside that fountain so, smash the douchebag and take it when ya come across it.

Take a good long while tonight to write in the new binder. Remember, you're predestined to lose the old one by the end of this dungeon, so better have everything in the new one by the end. You'll have three more opportunities to rest once inside so don't worry about doing it all tonight. Remember to avoid copying 1:1.

You won't be able to copy over the last half of the book by hand in time, so I've stashed a scroll of [Transcribe Text] in a hollow brick in your final saferoom. This is honestly for the best because it'll keep you from reading too far ahead.

This place is the tomb of a pharaoh or something. Weirdly enough not one of earth's pharaohs but dead ancient Egyptians continued the practice in the Wider World so, there's a few new ones kicking around.

Regardless, that means you'll have some bigass jackal statues to fight in the next room once you try to open the next door.

Don't open the door fully til you're done fighting. Big bats.

Tell Izzy to hang back and “I dunno, play some fight music or something.” This is to intentionally belittle her. She's got the self esteem and doubt endemic to teenagers, but hyping her up won't work coming from you. Your job is to antagonize her so she'll eventually give it her all to prove a point. Show her we wrote this entry a year or so later to prove you aren't actually belittling, just manipulative.

[Magic Missile] is somewhat effective against the statues if you really put your back into it, but you should get a new spell tonight that'd be good to practice.

Demarcus will do the most damage, while Mato's weapons can't do shit. Tell him to pull a Star Wars Episode V with some rope and trip the fuckers.

Listen to any blue graffiti you see. That's us. The messages may seem contradicting or confusing but just do your best.

The binder goes on to describe a few secret compartments, loot findable in servants quarters, ways to cheesily kill some monsters, tips to get Mato and Izzy to level during the crawl (no need for Demarcus cuz he will pull more than his share of weight) and makes a few snarky comments and jokes. Then it continues.

Eventually you'll come to a big-ass room with metal bars surrounding everything and a giant carving of the pharaoh on a door. This is what the mana potions are for. You've gotta channel mana into the carving to get the door to open. The pharaoh could do this near instantly cuz he had some ridiculous mana well skill or something, so it’s a test. Not even future you can do that instantly. Thankfully, this version of the door is nerfed so tier 1 you can still do it. It'll take you like 3 full minutes and every mana potion you've got, but you can do it.

While you're charging the door, the bars will raise and the pharaoh’s pets will be coming out of the walls. Tell Demarcus to just go apeshit while Mato snipes threats and Izzy buffs and creates walls. This is a test of endurance. Ya gotta tell them to [Push Through].

I'm not sure why I wrote that last bit like a skill.

You'll be mana-sick as all hell, but that's good. It'll grow your mana well. You'll find a “hair o’ the magical dog” in a pot in the following chamber that will cure your mana-sickness, but hold off on using it until you get past the tile hall. The more you heal mana-sickness naturally, the more your well will grow. You're good to sleep here.

After that is a hall where the floor is a bunch of tiles with symbols on them. You gotta step only on the tiles that look like crane birds cuz the other ones will fall away to reveal a pit of lava under the floor. Classic dungeon shit. Don't ask me where they got the lava.

Finally, on the other side of the lava room is the pharaoh's tomb.

And yeah, we already killed that guy. Hucked his wrinkly ass into the lava in the previous room. Kind of a pushover. So, instead, we replaced him with a Beholder Lich! That guy wouldn't have been enough of a fight to push you all to tier 2 so, had to raise the stakes a bit. You're welcome. We filled the pharaoh's sarcophagus with sick ass loot. Enjoy that.

After the fight, when you go to sleep, you'll all hit tier 2. So, night before, say your goodbyes to the gang. You'll have to tell the orientation construct that you want to enter the Wider World alone. This is very important, they'll immediately die if they come with you.

Plus, we've got work to do.

It'll be a good while until you see them again— but not too long, relatively speaking. For them, they'll see you again immediately, but that's time travel for ya. Demarcus will be able to find you again if you tell him how to tell the various versions of you apart. Be vague and kinda mushy. You'll know what to say in the moment.

It'll be a hell of an entry to the Wider World, so stretch before the construct teleports you.

Some tips for the Beholder fight:

The thing is ancient and desiccated by now. Stiff. Keep moving.

After god knows how long it's been stuck in here without souls to feed on, and whatever was done to it to make it a part of the tutorial, it's got ultra alzheimers by now. These things are usually super intelligent. This one is not— but it can see just fine.

Beholders have a thing about their eyes so that'll be in perfect condition. It's the phylactery— the super magical thing that keeps liches alive. So hit that. We gave you a really powerful being with a big ass Zelda boss weak spot to keep things balanced.

Tell Izzy to take cover behind a pillar. Sound bounces.

Finally, this is the most important part, so listen carefully.

Let Mato die.

It's the only way.