Dungeon Wreckers 72: The Closure

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They fell through an ocean of dead histories. 

Matthew couldn’t quite describe what he saw any other way. He and Tarantulas descended into an otherworldly space of floating particles holding more Flux than he had ever seen. Most of it was violet and yellow, but all strains of colors were represented here. The pocket dimension around them was larger than the core’s exterior would have suggested, so vast that he couldn’t see the end. Great purple bubbles showcasing twisted reflections of locations affected by previous Timeshifts; Ostende, now a twisted maze of malls and ships with teeth; the Panama Canal, flooded with flesh and goblins; Old Rome buried in lava; and so many more floated around them like tombstones of pasts that never were. 

A realization hit Matthew when he looked at them. 

Timeshifts didn’t change history. They purged it, amputated it, like a surgeon taking off a patient’s finger to prevent the gangrene from spreading further. They took Dungeons which had grown too big to fit in reality and risked twisting it into their image, then threw them back beyond the veil alongside that which they had touched and corrupted. History removed it all and then stitched itself back together around the removed area the best it could. 

Each operation had sliced time and space so much until the very fabric of reality frayed at the edges. History could only amputate itself so much until the whole body stopped functioning. 

No more. 

The hole Matthew had opened had closed up behind to trap him and Tarantulas as they continued their descent through the graveyard of ages. Black particles floated around him, spreading from his body like an infection. 

Sam once told Matthew that there was no place for Black Flux according to her Key. He finally understood why now. Black was paradox, entropy, that which shouldn’t exist and yet did anyway. It was the flaw that shouldn’t exist in any well-functioning universe, the destabilizing force. A perfectly ordered system shouldn’t have Black Flux in it. 

Not even the Hydra. 

The heart pulsed around them as more and more black particles filled it, consuming the yellow and the violet. The darkness bred and multiplied like an infection spreading across infinity. The ocean of Flux started drying up until Matthew finally saw what lurked at its source. 

A man.

Or something that used to be a man, diminished and bloated into a fetus of yellow and violet goo, mixing together in an unholy embrace. Matthew only caught a glimpse of him as he opened his mouth to utter a final cry through his core, with Black Flux pouring into it and swallowing his scream. 

“Once there was a man who stumbled upon the Keys to heaven.”

Matthew froze as he glanced at Tarantulas. The monster stared at the slimy heart of the Hydra with a sharp focus. Its ghoulish face betrayed an all-too-human expression. 

Pity. 

“The man was small in stature and spirit, hungry for acclaim and power he did not deserve,” Tarantulas said. “His greatest wish was to be crowned king of the city where he lived, a small kingdom of concrete built on wealth and prestige. So the man grabbed the first Key, and in its golden kindness, it granted him his wish…” 

The man who had become a Hydra was swallowed by the darkness he had accidentally created all those years back in Ostende. The core turned entirely pitch black. 

“But no miracle can fill the bottomless well called human greed. The foolish king wanted more, and seized the Key to another door so that he could have more, more, more… more than he could handle. His conflicting wishes drove him mad and twisted his form until he forgot who and what he was.” Tarantulas shook its head with a click. It had become human enough to mimic their gesture even at the end of it all. “This is the final fate of those who misuse the power of Flux.”

“How do you know all of that?” Matthew asked.

“They told me. The Keys. The Elixirs.” Tarantulas marked a short pause. “Your kind has found so many names for them across so many histories and ways to channel their powers.”

Then there was light. 

Matthew instinctively raised his hand as the darkness around them tore itself apart where the Hydra’s source used to be. A rift in the very fabric of existence had opened to reveal a vast and all-consuming purple light. Matthew felt his mind slipping by simply staring at this endless aurora that swirled and refracted in infinite fractals through space and time.

It was… beautiful. Beautiful and frightening.  

“This is it,” Tarantulas said. “At long last.”

The spider didn’t sound surprised or confused, which finally caused everything to fall into place. 

“You planned all of this,” Matthew muttered under his breath. “All along, you planned to use me to open this… this rift.”

“I did not deceive you,” Tarantulas argued. “I told you, I must meet with our creator. I must understand why I exist.” It pointed at the rift with a spindly leg. “This door leads to the answers.”

Matthew’s last eye widened in recognition. “If the Hydra was like us… then who created its Keys?”

Tarantulas nodded and glanced back at the rift. “The colors of Flux seep into this reality from other dimensions beyond your own. Realities that are high above and that the Hydra vampirized to grow larger. I sense greater wills coming from there, high above. The source of all sorcery.”

It spoke the truth. Matthew could feel it in his bones, in his soul. This rift led straight to the source of his powers, whether black or yellow. He sensed the presence of something beyond the threshold, a will greater and stronger than the Hydra itself… yet one that didn’t trigger his Doom Sense either. Keys were the natural state of Dungeons after all, which implied the entities beyond this rift weren’t inherently malevolent. 

They were just different. 

“Your kind is not ready to coexist with them yet,” Tarantulas said. “That is why Disbelief exists. Your minds are still closed, but that will change one day. The Hydra stood between you and these worlds, like a broken dam fouling the waters.”

“Or cancer twisting cells,” Matthew guessed.  

The spider had used him to puncture the dam so it could cross over. Part of Matthew resented the manipulation, but whatever Tarantulas’ motives, its plan did result in the Hydra’s destruction. He couldn’t quite complain about that.

“Now that it is gone, your universe will take its natural course… but I do not belong there.” Tarantulas marked a short pause with a series of clicks, like a computer running through calculations. “You can come with me if you want. There is much to learn.”

Matthew hesitated a moment. Neither of them had any idea what awaited beyond this rift, but this was bound to be a one-way trip; a leap of faith into the unknown. Maybe he would find that sweet oblivion he had craved for so long there, or absolution from a higher power. Perhaps the rift would lead him to new adventures his mind couldn’t conjure. 

But… leaving would make people he cared about quite sad. 

“Because we care,” Kari had told him once the Association arrived to save him. 

He had hoped he could blow it all up after settling all of his affairs, to go out in a blaze of glory when he had no other option, and then fade away… but now that he knew his friends had been ready to risk their lives for him, now that he had seen how much they cared and that even the likes of Ulysses would rather see him live despite all he had done… he simply couldn’t just ignore it all. 

“No,” Matthew decided after some hesitation. “It’s tempting, it really is… but I've got people waiting for me elsewhere.”

Tarantulas welcomed his decision with a nod. It watched Matthew for a while, even as the rift shrank slightly. 

“Do you hate me for killing your fellow humans?” It finally asked, with an air of morose finality. 

Matthew looked back at Tarantulas. The monster had little in common with humans besides its ability to speak and think, yet now that it was about to depart this world for another, knowing that it would never meet again and there was nothing to gain from it… it asked a human for absolution. 

Because it felt guilt. It felt shame. 

And that probably made it more human than the likes of Jack had ever been. 

“No, I don’t hate you,” Matthew replied sincerely. “But I can’t forgive you either.”

He couldn’t forgive Tarantulas the same way he couldn’t forgive himself for Perse. Some crimes couldn’t be excused with a slap on the wrist, even to oneself. He would let the spider leave because it had been instrumental in saving the world, but he couldn’t forget and pretend nothing happened. 

He was done denying the truth, to himself and others. 

But it wouldn’t stop Tarantulas. Maybe it would die. Maybe it would find the answers it was looking for. Maybe it would wander the cosmos. Whatever the case, it would no longer be the Association’s concern. 

“I understand,” Tarantulas replied, sounding neither surprised nor saddened. It had expected that answer and accepted it. “Farewell, my creator. Tell your companions that I apologize for what I did… and that I hope we meet again someday.”

Matthew watched as Tarantulas descended towards the rift as it began to shrink. The spider fell through the violet abyss without looking back… and as Matthew’s eye followed it, he noticed a shade on the threshold. A humanoid form of pure purple energies that resembled the strange hat magician shown in the paintings earlier. 

Matthew didn’t have much time to ponder what that entity was as the rift closed on itself and unleashed a pulse of Violet Flux about as intense as a true Timeshift. A tide that rippled through all space and time propelled him backward through the Hydra’s crumbling layers, through the beast’s spasming world-innards and its final roar of agony. 

“Sorry you had to clean up that mess, Mathias,” he heard a voice whisper in his ear. It sounded like a man, but it echoed all around him through Flux itself. “I hope you will find happiness now.”

It felt as if Flux itself uttered these words; it was like hearing the voice of sorcery itself. 

Matthew was flung across space all the way back to Earth, back to the street where he first entered his own hole. He expected to crash on concrete and instead hit a set of soft flesh cushions. 

Matthew had lived through enough forceful Dungeon ejections to recognize Kari’s bosom and John’s back. 

Ulysses had crashed on the pavement nearby along with the Doc and Maggie, with the street being otherwise empty. Matthew guessed the others had been ejected elsewhere through the Mall’s many other entrances… if they had made it out at all. 

An inhuman screech of pain startled him. 

Matthew’s head snapped at the sound’s direction and found himself staring back at a familiar set of eyes.

Durge.

Durge was there, screeching and crawling on the pavement as black patches grew all over its flesh. 

“Behind me!” The Doc shouted as he bolted to his feet faster than anybody else, but there was no need for him to do so. The monster who had haunted their nightmares was in too much pain to pay attention to any of them. 

Matthew had seen Durge successfully adapt to many things. 

Black Flux wasn’t one of them. 

Darkness consumed the monster from within like gangrene, causing it to glitch in and out of existence. Some of its eyes simply snapped out of existence in a flash of blackened light, followed by its legs. The monster’s arm reached out to Matthew, and its jaws muttered one last plea. 

“Please…” Durge rattled with shaking fear in its voice. “Please…”

After all it had done, after all the murders and the pain it caused, Durge still had the audacity to beg its victims for life when confronted with true death. For all of the power and intelligence it once held, for the potential it had to shed its nature like Tarantulas, it remained a pathetic serial killer to its core.   

Even if Matthew was a saint capable of feeling compassion for the wretched creature, it would have changed nothing. It was already too late. 

It disappeared the same way Matthew’s house did. 

Durge was here one instant, and gone the next. 

Matthew gathered his breath, as did his teammates, old and new. He stared at the empty spot where his nightmare used to be with a heart beating so fast he feared he would have a stroke. His teammates all breathed in and out, all of them half-expecting Durge to pop back into existence to strike back at them.

It didn’t. 

“Is it…” Ulysses gulped. “Is it dead?”

“Maybe…” the Doc replied with cautious consideration. He moved to analyze the spot where Durge disappeared with Flux and found nothing. “It’s gone at least.”

Durge had gotten its wish. It managed to escape the Mall in the end, for a grand total of ten seconds. 

Matthew’s hand reached out to his face. His missing eye had stopped hurting, and he could only feel a scar of flesh when he touched it. The portal was gone. 

“Yeah,” Matthew replied with a sense of immense relief. He was tired, he was exhausted, but more than anything, he was finally content. “It’s over.”

The Mall and its subsidiaries had finally closed.

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A/N: and we're close to the end. Next chapter should be the epilogue (likely longer than other chapters) and then the afterwords ;)