Chapter 105: Devil’s Workshop

  He stared at his hand for a couple of seconds in stupor before forcing it down, retracting the gauntlet again.

  It was not as if the appendage grew a mind of its own. His body was still under his control, consciously. But it was now apparent that the gauntlets’ constant insistence was affecting him subconsciously.

  “We have a problem,” he finally said.

  He was already a burden on his teammates due to his destroyed supplies. He didn’t want to be even more of a deadweight due to whatever this was. They had been patient with him, though, so he owed them an explanation. Even now, they were silently waiting for him to tell them what was bothering him. They didn’t push because they trusted him as their leader. Therefore, despite his reluctance, he had to own up to the weirdness again, no matter how frequent it was becoming.

  “Remember what I told you about the volcano?” Parth asked, alluding to the conversation they’d had when airborne, escaping from their last pit stop.

  “Yeah?”

  “This place also seems weird. I suppose if I fall asleep here, I’ll get a vision about the hot springs. Maybe, maybe not. But my gauntlets are acting up.”

  “Like when we sparred with Andrea and her team for the first time?” Moira asked.

  “Like that, but dialed up to eleven.”

  For a second, nobody said anything. Then Moira let out a long sigh, “That’s bad.”

  “So, the gauntlet controlled your hand on its own?” Kwame asked.

  Parth nodded to both, hoping that he didn’t come across as a schizophrenic.

  “And you didn’t feel a thing when it did?” Moira continued.

  “Nope. I mean, I have been feeling insistent nudges from the gauntlets since we landed in the hot springs. But I clamped down on it and retracted the gauntlets. And it was fine for a little while. But now it’s back.”

  “Beautiful. Then I suppose we can’t just rest yet,” said Moira, stepping back to the trail.

  “What do you mean?” Parth asked.

  “Isn’t it obvious that we have no other option? We trust you, and you haven’t led us astray, so questioning your sanity is moot. More so, with your heat senses being a tangible proof of these visions. If we keep suppressing your gauntlets, then we don’t know what we are risking. What if we are near a worse trap than the volcano?

  “It’s better to follow through when we are all alert and relatively full of mana. Now come on, let’s go.”

  Kwame also chimed in, “She’s right. Also, didn’t your gauntlets settle down when you were fighting Andrea? So they should settle down this time too if we follow through.”

  Parth sported a tiny smile on his face and sighed in relief. His teammates’ support meant a lot to him. He would not let them down. And the matter of questioning his artifact’s apparent behavior was once again a non-issue, since Andrea had confirmed that her artifact had also reacted to Parth’s. Once again, this was all new territory. They hadn’t heard of anything like this before. But there was a first time for everything.

  “Alright, let’s go,” Parth said as he stepped back to the trail.

  As they began walking, Moira asked, “Should I create another platform for you, Kwame? Just in case.”

  “Yeah, let’s do that,” Kwame said.

  Moira swiftly cycled through her deck and arrived at a three of diamonds. She deployed the barrier, and Parth removed Kwame from piggyback and placed him on the barrier. Glowing white vectors shot out from her buckle and attached themselves to the barrier, slowly carrying it forward.

  “You sure you have enough mana?” Parth asked. Moira had done a tremendous job while both Parth and Kwame were out. She’d finally taken some rest in that cave, but Parth felt that it was not enough. Despite the self-healing, the body needed proper rest.

  “Enough to heal and cart Kwame around. You both are going to do the fighting, aren’t you?” She answered playfully.

  “Ha-ha, of course. Once again, don’t expect finesse from me right now.”

  “Raw strength is more than enough right now. Maybe following the gauntlets’ direction will solve the issue with the blue fire,” Kwame chimed in.

  “Maybe, who knows? Either way, once we settle down, I’ll find a way to bring these flames to heel,” Parth said with grim certainty. He hated losing, after all. And what was losing control, if not another loss?

  Parth took a deep breath, focused on his mana, and summoned his gauntlets once more. The moment he did, he could feel the steady drumming against his head. It was as if they had locked onto something and were trying to transmit something to him. But he wasn’t equipped to understand what they were transmitting. The gauntlets had always been hyper-responsive to his desires. Largely due to his sync rate, he’d learned. And maybe that’s why he is feeling these sorts of reactions from the gauntlets as well. Maybe the gauntlets had tried to communicate with his predecessors, and maybe they weren’t equipped to deal with it. The artifacts weren’t renowned to be particularly sentient. But Parth was slowly beginning to believe otherwise.

  He followed the trail, and as he did, he let his thermal sense establish its domain. Interestingly, the prodding from his artifact stopped the moment he activated his heatmap... That wasn’t exactly an accurate representation of what he was sensing. His ability was more than two-dimensional, and the temperatures weren’t exactly like colors in his perception. But the word resonated with him for some reason; it came to him unbidden, and it was a feeling of utmost surety. Heatmap was the name of this ability, whether he liked it or not. Was his gauntlet influencing him? That thought should scare him. But he didn’t feel afraid.

  Ever since he had awoken his artifact, the absurdly high sync rate made it feel like the gauntlet was a part of him. But after the latest spar with his doppelganger, that feeling only intensified. Just like the name of the ability, he had the same surety coursing through his being that his artifact was a part of him. And why would a part of him attempt to hurt him? So, he kept walking the path confidently.

  Even though the subtle nudging had stopped, he knew where to go. There was a hot breeze traveling down the path, illuminating the way to his heatmap. Well, he didn’t need any fancy senses, as the trail was still clearly visible. But it was as if this entire area was designed this way. To captivate all his senses and lead them all to the same destination. Just to test his hunch about the breeze, he momentarily deactivated his heatmap, and the gentle nudging against his head returned.

  Knowing that there was nothing else to do but commit, Parth activated the heatmap and continued walking.

  Just like the trail stood out to his senses, there was something else that grabbed his attention. About a hundred meters to his west, there was a total lack of heat. His heatmap’s domain was spherical, and the entire chunk in that direction had no temperature both above and below the ground. Heck, it felt like there was no ground as well. It was a complete void. But his eyes told a different story.

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  “Gimme a moment, guys,” Parth said and jumped high, easily clearing the treetops. With a mild burst of flames, he climbed higher into the air. He turned, facing the gap in his senses, and took a good look in that direction. He didn’t see anything odd; just an endless sea of rocks, and a barren landscape past the trees in their current refuge.

  “What happened?” Moira asked, floating to his level, her wings fluttering nervously. Kwame trailed behind on her mobile barrier.

  “I just don’t feel any temperature at all from that direction.” Of course, his spherical range had shifted with his abrupt movement. But the void still remained. And it was eerily uniform in its absence. Parth swayed a bit to the left, then to the right, then front and back. His domain kept shifting accordingly, feeling the heat when he moved backwards, away from the void. While also losing more of his domain while moving forward, and hence closer to it. But the other plane was constant. Moving horizontally yielded no change, no matter left or right. The void remained ahead of him throughout.

  “Are we far enough to have reached the boundary?” He asked after a moment of silence.

  It was a valid line of thought. Despite how it looked, the dungeon had a limited amount of space within its control. The sky was fake, the sun was fake, and so was everything beyond the boundary of each so-called level.

  “It’s possible,” Kwame said, as the knuckleball floated in front of him. “Do you want me to check?”

  “Do we risk it? We don’t want the dungeon to think that we’re trying to force our way out,” Parth said. In their current condition, they didn’t want it retaliating against them.

  “Voyagers in the past have brushed against the boundary. It doesn’t really retaliate unless a certain amount of force is applied. So, it’s better to know for sure, right? If there’s a situation that needs us to leave in a hurry, and we crash against the boundary head-first, then we’re toast.” Moira added.

  “True. But ever since the trials started, we have been subject to back-to-back ‘never before in our history’ shenanigans,” Parth said, emphasizing it with air quotes.

  A few moments later, though, he sighed and agreed. “We do need to be sure of our surroundings in such a hostile territory. Be very careful, Kwame. Just brush against the boundary. Do not apply any amount of force that will get us nuked. I’ll let you know the distance.”

  Kwame wordlessly sent out the knuckleball at a snail’s pace in front of him. Meanwhile, Parth increased the intensity of the flames covering him, keeping him afloat. Moira had also primed a card, ready to throw it out at a moment’s notice.

  “About fifty meters, keep the pace,” Parth said. As Kwame’s artifact kept moving forward, Parth focused on his heatmap, monitoring the distance between the possible dungeon boundary and the knuckleball. “About thirty. Hold the pace. Twenty now. I can’t be precise, but you’re very close. Slow down even further. Slow. Hold! Move just an inch forward.”

  The moment the knuckleball followed the last instruction, it got pushed back several inches by an unseen force. There was a slight ripple in the air where it made contact. But nothing elaborate, and definitely nothing violent. It was consistent with the behavior of the dungeon’s boundary. They now had the confirmation they wanted.

  “Reel it back in, Kwame. Good job,” Parth said. He abruptly cut off his flames, pumping mana to his lower body, in preparation for the short landing.

  “Yeah. So now we know for sure. We can’t move further west,” Moira said, rapidly descending while also making Kwame’s floating platform follow in pursuit.

  As Parth landed, he turned back towards the trail, his heatmap still active. “I’ll keep monitoring the boundary. Even though I don’t feel it in the boundary, there should be a slight curvature to it. So we shouldn’t be moving in a straight line indefinitely as well.” The dungeon’s levels were circles, after all. Despite the twisted space manipulation making it seem otherwise, even to his magical sense.

  Regardless, it was time to follow the trail and get to the bottom of this mystery. So, deeper into the trail, they went.

  “Right around this corner,” Parth said ten minutes later. Even before he had seen it, his heatmap gave him a picture of what was up ahead. They were about to come out of the foliage and step into something else that should not have been inside the dungeon.

  The three of them stepped into low, rolling fields. A bit ahead, they could see what was supposedly a collapsed settlement. Just like the bits of stone and clay contraptions in the hot springs, this was something that they didn’t expect at all. Broken walls, which clearly belonged to demolished huts. And farmlands close to the settlement. And these were not like the manufactured, identical, open farmlands of the modern world. These were a bit quainter. But there was no telling if the farms here had ever been effective at all. Right now, they were barren. With just a cursory glance, Parth could say that the farm fields had been razed and left to rot. Impact craters, scorch marks, ash, and dandelions. The untouched tracks of soil and the burnt-out hedgerows were the only indicators that these were farmlands at one point.

  Apart from the visual surprise, Parth was not prepared for the scalding indignation that wafted off his artifact, into his stream of consciousness. He was getting used to his artifact acting up, and it was easier for him to separate his emotions from the artifact’s. All due to repetitive exposure.

  “So, that’s clearly a trap, right?” Moira tilted her head towards the settlement.

  “Possibly,” Parth said.

  The blades extended from the knuckleball with a snap, and the artifact shot towards the distance abruptly. Parth and Moira turned towards Kwame, with a curious look on their faces. He replied cheekily, “Well, we’re going to head in regardless, right? There are too many unanswered questions for us to just let the sleeping dogs lie. Makes sense to prepare a drone strike in advance.”

  “True. But I thought you two would be hesitant to go headfirst into a trap,” Parth said.

  “I thought we just had this conversation. We’re seeing this through, captain. And since when have you been so hesitant to get into a scrap? I thought you liked fighting,” said an exasperated Moira.

  Parth didn’t respond immediately. He wasn’t hesitant to fight, was he? His teammates had already told him that they wanted to see where this path led. He wanted to keep going, but subconsciously, maybe there was indeed hesitance. He was slipping into old patterns. Like how his back-to-back losses on Earth caused him to second-guess his every move. His wins here in the dungeon made him think that he was beyond all that. But maybe a part of him was still clinging to a perceived safety net of overt caution.

  “Since I lost the last one we were in,” Parth admitted. “But you’re right... Let’s stay alert and head in.”

  “That’s more like it. And what loss? The last couple of guys you fought are dead. They didn’t win in any way. One got his head smashed in, and the other got his face melted off. And after all that, you still managed to help us by breaking the sword arm of that maniac before Kwame pulped him,” Moira said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “Yeah. We didn’t lose, Parth. We’re alive. They are not. We made sure of that, didn’t we?” Kwame said, melancholy clouding his voice.

  “I get it. Just pre-fight jitters, I guess. Thanks for having my back.”

  By then, they had already started moving across the farmlands, towards the settlement.

  Moira chuckled upon hearing Parth’s response. “You don’t need to give excuses, O big bad captain of ours. Accepting it won’t make you less macho.”

  “Knock it off, you brat,” Parth snorted in mirth. “I don’t care about all that. It’s just a lot of responsibility and pressure. We’ve already gotten into a very tricky situation. And we’ve gotten severely hurt. Especially Kwame. Just don’t want to mess up again.”

  “It was not your fault. You didn’t take any wrong calls. We just have too many enemies. Like, absurdly too many,” Kwame said.

  “You think we’d be following your lead now if you weren’t a good leader?” Moira chimed in.

  “Fair enough... So, once again, thanks for allowing me the privilege of making these calls.”

  Within minutes, they had reached the closest hut. Or what was left of it. Just like the fields, they were similarly damaged. Scorch marks, impact craters, collapsed walls, the whole shebang. On high alert, they walked down the street.

  All the huts were similarly damaged. There was no exception. But that was not what concerned Parth. He was once again having a horrible feeling of deja vu. But this time, it was not born from his gauntlets. Sure, the artifact was having a manic episode of its own, radiating immense anger, ready to spit flames even without his input. But the deja vu was all Parth.

  He understood why in a couple of minutes, as the street opened up to a town square. A town square that he was all too familiar with. The same town square that he had seen in his visions. He had fought against his doppelganger just a few days ago in this same place. Albeit, in the visions, the whole place was on fire, and he didn’t have control over any flames until the very last leg of the previous vision.

  He stood in stupor, in the center of the town square, gawking at the place in disbelief. The volcanic vision was one thing. He’d only gotten it when he was literally inside the volcano. But this settlement had haunted him way before he started this trial. Just what the hell was going on?

  “I’ve been here,” he muttered, half afraid that he’d lose his pyromancy in person as well. But that didn’t happen, as a stray probe from his mana emitted a few sparks around each gauntlet. Thankfully, he still had his flames. It was a silly worry, given that it only happened in his visions, and even there, he had usurped the power right back. But with the way these visions were all pinpointing to real places now, there was no way that he’d take anything shown in them lightly.

  “Say what now?” asked a bewildered Moira.

  Parth didn’t get to answer her. The ground under them trembled and began rising all around them, boxing them in. The risen ground twisted and morphed, forming eight humanoid structures, each ten feet tall. The rocky structures cracked all over, and an orange glow shone from the cracks. With his heatmap on high alert, Parth could immediately tell that it was lava.

  They were facing golems chock-full of molten rocks.