170. Dark Castle

Ike reached the castle. After being stuck in a single street of the city for so long, it was strangely easy to approach. Neither space nor time looped around him, as far as he could tell.

It’s almost as if he’s given up.

Or he wants me to approach.

There was nothing for it. Whether the guy wanted him to come or not, he had to get Wisp back. He couldn’t walk away. Couldn’t head for the walls and leave, hoping to escape on his own. He was coming, even if it was a trap.

I just have to be careful.

Scraps of buildings remained, here and there. The blank squares of their foundations. A few rotten boards clinging to the stone base. He looked over his shoulder one last time, sadness in his eyes. The city had been dead for a long time before he’d arrived. Even the puppets had only occupied a small, seemingly-alive segment. The rest had already long fallen into ruin.

But why? How?

I’ll just have to ask the guy who saw it all go down. Even if I have to beat it out of him.

Before him, two giant black iron doors arced high into the castle’s thick stone walls. He lifted his hands and pushed. The doors thumped. A board held them on the far side.

Ike gathered his strength and pushed again.

The board snapped. The doors swung wide, hinges squealing the whole way. Ike stood alone, facing an empty yard. Fifty feet separated the outer wall and the inner castle. Halfway through the distance, a massive staircase began. It ascended up to a pair of red double doors.

“Someone likes double doors,” Ike commented under his breath. He stepped up to the staircase. Slowly, he climbed it.

Very, very slowly. Sweat dripped down Ike’s brow. He paused, wiping his brow, and looked behind him.

He was halfway up the stairs. An ordinary expanse of stairs stretched before and after him.

“More of this bullshit,” Ike grumbled. He lifted his foot and stomped  with all his might. The stairs shattered. The entire staircase, above and below him, collapsed into stone rubble. He dropped to the ground, then crouched down and jumped, activating his Lightning Clad skill. Ike soared toward the double doors. As he closed in on them, he whipped out his foot. Lightning crackled over it. The double doors snapped off their hinges and hurtled inside, rolling end-over-end to crash against the far wall.

Ike landed on the polished stone floor inside. He dusted off his hands. “That’s more like it.”

If the proprietor was in control of everything within this space, if it was, as he had himself suggested, his Wizard’s Tower, then Ike had one easy way to take care of it:

Destroy everything.

The clue had come as time had passed. Because that was exactly it: time passed. Ike wasn’t trapped in one day. Months changed. Seasons swapped. The people below performed the same actions, but they were things. Puppets. Objects.

His memories were missing. He couldn’t deny that. But it wasn’t necessarily time-folding that caused them to go missing. It was a simple, elegant answer, but life wasn’t always simple and elegant. Maybe the proprietor also had a memory-wiping or memory-blurring skill. He got the impression that he and Wisp weren’t the first visitors. It wouldn’t be surprising if the proprietor had amassed a few skills to allow him to entrap his visitors more efficiently.

Likewise, he wasn’t trapped in some kind of folded space. No. After all, if he was trapped in space itself, simply destroying the town wouldn’t have broken him out of it. But that wasn’t what was happening. Instead, the man simply moved the town beneath him, looping it as he moved. Or perhaps more accurately, moving the ground beneath him to place him back at the start of the town. He wasn’t clear on the details, but he didn’t have to be. As long as his theory was correct, he’d be able to break out by destroying the street.

And he had.

It had been a gamble. If he was wrong, he would have just destroyed his own world. Would have been trapped in a wasteland forever. But the alternative was allowing the man to ‘loop’ him forever, so he took the chance.

Facing the solid stone castle, Ike cracked his knuckles. If he had to tear this castle apart, stone by stone, he’d find Wisp. The man couldn’t hide her from him if there was nowhere left to hide.

He approached the back wall. Ike lifted his fist.

“Ike! That you? Hey, slowpoke. Over here!” a familiar voice called. It was faint and distant, but one he’d recognize anywhere.

Ike whipped around. “Wisp?”

“It is you! Come on! Right over here.”

Ike slowly took in the room. He saw nothing. No one. Her voice sounded like it came from his level, or maybe below him, but he didn’t see any doors in that direction. There was another set of doors at the top of another staircase, but no way down, and no way straight ahead. “Where are you?”

“Great question. The treasury! Come on, hurry your ass up down here! I’m trapped in with all the treasure. Space keeps looping around me, and I can’t get out!”

Is it a trap? He mimicked Wisp’s voice before with the puppet in town. I have no evidence suggesting that someone can remain safe and whole after their puppetized. Then again, I have no evidence to the contrary, either.

A second later, Ike rolled his eyes. What am I thinking? Wisp’s a Rank 3 mage as well. If it’s her, she can break herself out. I don’t need to rescue her.

He cleared his throat. “It’s not space that’s looping. He’s just moving the objects in the room—maybe even including whatever you’re standing on—to make it feel that way. Destroy everything around you, and smash your way out!”

There was silence. Ike’s stomach sunk. Was it a fake, after all?

Thump. Thump.

BANG!

Abruptly, the wall in front of him burst outward, spraying shrapnel at him. A huge black monster lunged at Ike, its many legs stabbing toward his heart.

Holy shit! Ike threw his arms up. Ice Armor coated his body. He braced himself, preparing for a huge attack.