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 Posted: Mon Oct 30, 2023 3:04 am
1/5“I pledge my life and loyalty to Mercury, and to Ekstrom. I humbly request your aid, so that in return I may give you mine.”
It was fascinating, the way the words just…came to her. Almost like she already knew what she ought to say to get to where she’d been wanting to go ever since she heard that it was possible, ever since she had those dreams. Unfortunately it wasn’t exactly what she expected.
She was teleported into a pitch black room with a type of darkness that seemed to consume the noise around it.
For a while all she could hear was her own breathing, and barely at that, but as she adapted she began to take in more details. Directly in front, mere inches if she had to guess, was a wall of absolute cold like she’d never felt before. It felt like a damaging kind of cold, the sort of thing you wouldn’t want to touch bare skin. She took a short step back to put some more distance. Her eyes now adjusted, she squinted at the bit of wall directly ahead of her.
“Is that…”
A flicker–faint, but it was there–or was it more of a flash? Whatever term applied, it was a slow, pulsing, almost imperceptible light. If it wasn’t blacker than black in the room she was sure she’d have missed it. So she stepped closer again and saw exactly what it was–the lines of a rectangle etched into the wall.
It was hard to imagine what to do with this kind of scene. Her experience in the sci-fi genre was minimal at best, and all logic dictated don’t touch the thing at the beginning of most of those movies, anyway. If she was meant to be the heroine of this place, maybe she could get away with inspecting it, but what if she wasn’t? What if she wound up like that guy from The Mummy, who picked a scarab out of the wall and wound up getting his brain eaten by it?
It didn’t help that there was nothing in her dream that depicted this kind of scene. It’d be a moot point if you’re meant to see something in the dream, given that the room may as well have been a black hole at that point. Rambling thoughts began to run through her mind as she came to the gradual realization that she might have been stuck, and when it got to the point that she could hardly hear herself think, she put her hands over her ears and crouched down to the ground. Her eyes were shut tight out of desperation, and she took long, slow breaths to try and slow it all down.
It was in the moments that soon followed, once she’d calmed down a little bit, that those dreams fully came to mind. The pathway, the doors, the platforms, the events around someone’s death…
Her eyes shot open and she breathed her answer.
“The bypass.”
She gathered herself up and stood then, about an arm’s length away from the wall. The idea that something might happen was still hovering in the back of her mind, but all the same Ekstrom reached forward and touched the very center of the rectangle. Sure enough, a very faint outline of a hand flashed very slowly on the surface, so she touched her palm to the wall, closed her eyes and focused, once more, on her wonder, and on the power with which she was entrusted.
It was small at first. Just a dot of warmth, but it gradually spread to the edge of her palm and beyond. When she opened her eyes, she saw the pale blue data lines extending out from beneath her palm. Slowly they filled the rectangle, moved toward and eventually traced the edges of the rectangle itself.
She watched in quiet wonder as, like a key to a lock, the glow traced invisible lines, etching into the wall the door to her wonder. Once all fully drawn, she watched those same glowing lines recede back into the rectangle and under her palm, and then onto her palm, and then they were over her very being, and after a few seconds concentrated and disappeared into the center of her chest.
Powered Passive Enhancement Acquired
Ekström Tech Whiz
The warmth followed the lines, and she closed her eyes instinctively, focusing on just that warmth for a long moment. The way it eased her, the way it made her feel like she was finally where she was meant to be all this time.
When she opened her eyes she smiled softly and, with the same focus as earlier, she pressed the rectangle inward.
It moved in and there was an audible click, then a sudden hiss of air as it escaped from the room. The great doors groaned with age but they opened wide all the same.811 (gdocs)
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Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2024 1:27 am
2/5She was quite literally blinded by the light as soon as the light began to stream in from beyond the sealed doors of her wonder, but when she was finally able to comfortably open them the scene was, to her surprise, familiar. Again, the dreams came to mind, and when she glanced to her left she saw the platforms that led up to the very top of this trench. The way up wasn’t immediately obvious to her, but she wasn’t too worried about that. If her dream was any indication, it was just frozen tundra up there, anyway.
She took a few steps outside and, noting the lack of anything beside the platforms, she turned to look at the room she’d teleported into. It was…dusty, and very obviously unused for who knows how many years. Tens? Hundreds? Maybe thousands? It made sense that it was dusty, though that very first dream came to mind again and she suddenly had a feeling that dust would be the least of her problems here. There was a podium at the center and seven doors, but that was about it.
She walked the room and took in as much detail as she could with the limited light, but when she was ready to move on it didn’t feel like a good idea to keep the doors wide open, so before long darkness engulfed her once more as she closed the door behind her.
Now that she had a good idea of where she was, she was able to notice other things. The most notable thing, really, was the smell. It hung heavy in the air and clung to the walls, a damp, musty scent with the faintest hint of iron. A few moments of breathing it in, alongside the dust, made her cough loudly, and before long she covered her nose and mouth to block as much of it as possible. It helped with the dust, not so much with the smell.
When her eyes had fully readjusted to the darkness, she took her first few careful steps toward the inside this time.
It was hard to tell how far into the room she was, but she soon came to the podium. Feeling the edges, she learned that it was octagonal in shape, and after squinting down at it for a good few seconds she saw that there was another rectangle nearly identical to the one at the entrance. She squinted for a few seconds longer, spotting two very thin lines just above the panel with surprising ease despite the surface being absolutely caked with dust. A thought occurred to her that those were places to slot something in, perhaps an access card or key, though there must have been some way to get it to activate. As is, not even a sheet of paper would slot into either space.
She wondered for a moment about how or why she had the thought, but did her best to move on. For now she at least had an inkling about what to do with the panel, she could look into the other stuff later. So like earlier, she straightened herself out, took a deep breath, and touched the center exactly like she did at the entrance.
– [ ] –
“If only the knight can enter, why even bother with hiding the door?” she asked, arms crossed as she stared at the panel before her. Channeling her magic was still currently more challenging than she cared to admit, and she knew that he knew it, which was why he was forcing her to do this in the first place.
Benedict always was good at identifying her weaknesses. “It’s all a part of being a mentor,” he always said when she pointed that out.
“You never know what types of technologies will be developed in the future,” he said calmly, then nodded at the podium in front of her. “Alright, visualize first. Eyes closed, deep breath.”
She grumbled, but did as instructed.
“Still yourself, focus.”
She felt the tension slowly leave her, and as always, when he guided like this, she was gradually able to clear her mind.
“Alright, when you’re ready.”
The surface of the panel was cold beneath her palm, but it warmed from deep within. The warmth of her wonder, she thought, was a paradox to its frozen surroundings. It was a warmth she could never mistake for anything else. It felt the most familiar, it felt the most like home. It was etched into every last inch of her wonder, from the largest wall to the tiniest grid. It was in every line and every column. It was energy, in its purest form in that space. It was as much a part of her as she was a part of it since she’d taken up the mantle, and when focused she was able to align herself to it. To synergize with it, so to speak, and thus allow herself see into the very depths of her wonder.
She felt more than she saw the edges of the path begin to glow, this time leading to the door immediately to her right.
“How many?”
“Four.”
“Directions?”
“North, north, southeast, northwest.”
“Good. Lead the way.”
She opened her eyes and looked at Benedict for a moment. The grin on his face made the teen curl her lip out of annoyance, though that faded quickly as she stepped through the doors that would led her to the entrance to the Circuit.
– [ ] –
Ekstrom took a shaky breath when she looked again at her surroundings. Gone was the soft, white glow that came from above and beneath the edges of the walls, the only light to a rather barren entryway. Even back then, save for the podium and the doors there was nothing else in this room, and that might have been the point. Still, despite the emptiness, even in her vision she felt energy teeming from within the space, a stark contrast to the hollowed out feeling she had now.
“A waking dream this time…great,” she said when she was finally steady enough to comfortably speak, and she refocused on the panel. This time she steeled herself as she gently rested her palm on it once more.
No vision came, but the longer she stood still in that darkened silence the clearer her mind became. Again she focused, and the warmth followed.
It welled up from deep within her, soft but steady as it enveloped the entirety of her being. She followed its course with her mind’s eye, from deep within, out through her extended arm, down to the panel, and like in her vision she felt more than she saw the faintest glow on the edges of a path that led to the upper left door.
“Northwest, north, northwest,” she repeated, like in her vision, and when she opened her eyes she was surprised to see that the room was still dark but she knew exactly where to go.1160 (gdocs)
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Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2024 2:02 am
3/5The door that she eventually came to bore familiar marks. They were in one of her initial dreams, before she was even awakened, and she felt some relief that there was something familiar yet again. Even if she might have needed another one, she wasn’t sure she could handle another waking dream–or maybe ‘vision’ was a better term for it–without passing out.
Stepping through the doors, it wasn’t immediately obvious why it was called the Circuit.
“‘The Hallway’ is probably more accurate,” she said as she fought down a smirk of self-induced amusement.
Through the doorway, which closed and effectively disappeared behind her, was exactly that–a hallway. A seemingly endless one from where she stood, and along both walls there were those markings, though a different set this time. When she touched them she half-expected to be pulled into another vision so she braced herself…needlessly. Nothing came, and she felt a little silly for expecting it.
“Never really know,” she whispered in her own defense, and she proceeded down the hallway.
True to form, it looked and felt absolutely endless. It was a long while before she finally got to a split in the path. She touched the new set of markings, this time really hoping for a vision, but again nothing came and she came to the conclusion that she might actually die down here. Lost in the labyrinth of her own wonder. Thinking of them again, she realized that while she’d seen the markings, none of the visions she’d had so far told her anything about what they meant. It wasn’t as though any of them were particularly specific, they were more like glimpses of things she ought to know as the Ekstrom knight. A vague how-to, a sorry excuse of a replacement for a flesh-and-blood mentor like Benedict.
His words came to mind, though, and Ekstrom found herself closing her eyes again. She had to keep calm and keep her thoughts from running wild like earlier if she wanted to get anywhere. There wasn’t much use to panicking alone; it’s not like there was anyone around to help her or reassure her, so she knew she had to keep her head on straight to make it through.
Ekstrom took a deep breath and focused, and as she cleared her mind she felt the same warmth from earlier begin to overflow again, soon revealing a path for her to follow.
Each time she had to pause to refocus took more effort than the last, but without fail this little ritual of sorts guided her through the Circuit. She followed its course, she must have walked for hours, and eventually she came upon a very familiar door. The sight of it alone brought both relief and dread. Relief because it meant she made it out of the Circuit. Dread because the last time she saw it was in a very vivid vision depicting someone’s death. Hers, maybe, considering it felt like it had all been happening to her, from her point of view, but she wasn’t exactly sure of that.
It was a hazarded guess, at best, but it felt accurate.
The panel was on the side of the door this time, and she followed the same steps as she did at the very first panel she came across. Pause, focus, press inward. There was an audible click, and then a sudden hiss of air as the seal of the door was broken. She pushed it open and made her way inside.583 (gdocs)
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Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2024 2:36 am
4/5It was vaguely familiar. Bits and pieces came to mind from that initial dream–a computer, a nightstand, an eject button, and some kind of chute–but little else. She followed that vision step by step, stopping first at the computer. Like everything else it was covered in dust but she spotted details about it with the same ease as she did the panel from the entryway, and it somehow felt familiar. With some power she had a good feeling she’d be able to get it to work, actually, so pocketing that she moved on to the nightstand.
“Top drawer,” she whispered. It opened with a bit of effort, and inside was a small, leatherbound book and a ring. The ring looked important–trinkets tended to be–so she grabbed that first before considering the book again. It looked like a journal of some kind, and though for the moment she didn’t think she would ever open it she still took it out and pocketed it as well. For all she knew there might be information about how this place worked within its pages.
She quickly moved on to the chute, though that seemed to be sealed shut and the eject button wasn’t doing anything. Either it needed power or time had wasted away its functionality. Either way, she had no way of bringing back whatever was shot into the outside world, so she went to the door on the opposite end of the room.
Considering the set of symbols there, she had a feeling that it would lead her back into the Circuit. There was a single unfamiliar one, though, so she had her doubts, and thinking back on her dream she wondered if this would lead her to the final room in that dream.
“It looked like they used a Bypass on all the doors, but I could swear there was some kind of key involved…”
The access panel was the same, and as expected the same ritual allowed access to the room beyond. The smell that followed after the door was unsealed made her keel over and gag, partly from surprise but mostly from disgust. She was only able to keep from vomiting because this smell was, unfortunately, something she got used to because of her job.
It was the familiar stench of decay, and while she felt she should have expected it considering her dream, there was no way she could have predicted the scene that was revealed before her eyes.
Bones. Piles of bones on all sides, all along the corridor. The doors beyond had been destroyed and forcibly opened, and while she was grateful because it meant she didn’t have to channel more energy into guiding her through another leg of the Circuit or to open even more sealed doors, she would have preferred that over this. To her right she could see the familiar walls of the Circuit beyond another broken door. Overhead, it looked like someone had busted through the ceiling from whatever room was above..
She couldn’t help but wonder if that’s how the bodies were funneled in here. Was it to torture the person who died in the room past the fifth door just ahead? At the end of her dream there was still some level of consciousness. Was that person still alive when her dream ended? What happened after? Did they all pile in here thinking there’d be some sort of way out?
The corridor felt smaller than all the others, cramped by the odor, the bones, and thoughts of what it all must have looked like before the flesh had wasted away. Ekstrom hurried through, covering her face with her arm even though it did absolutely nothing to help. Tears pricked at her eyes but she held them at bay. There was no sense in crying, at least not yet. She could mourn when she confirmed the details.
Compartmentalize. That’s how she functioned at work, and it’s how she could function here.
She rushed past the first door, then the second, and so on until finally she was through the fifth door. In her rush, upon touching the first surface to stop herself from crashing her vision flashed and suddenly the room wasn’t dusty anymore.
– [ ] –
She was warm, almost feverish, yet somehow she felt cold at the same time. There was pain, everywhere, all at once, yet she was somehow at peace. She closed her eyes and heard someone speaking seemingly a long way away from her, but when she opened her eyes again they were actually standing just in front of her, brandishing a large weapon. They were angry, that much she could tell, but she couldn’t make out any words.
“You’ll never get out of here alive,” she said, her voice much weaker than even she expected it would be. She was dying, though, so maybe she should have been surprised that she could still speak at all.
They spoke, but again she couldn’t really make out the words.
But she smiled, and then closed her eyes again. “I wasn’t expecting to.”
– [ ] –
She blinked and came to, and when she saw the same ax jutting out from the panel she couldn’t hold it in any longer. Finally, and very violently, she emptied the contents of her stomach right where she stood. Tears mixed with bile on the corners of her lips, the fresh memory coursing through her mind. Her last thoughts, every last bit of the pain that she felt in those final moments, everything was so real. She may as well have actually been the one to suffer through it.
When she had nothing left inside she slid down to her knees and took slow, measured breaths, trying her best to gather herself enough to turn and look at the place where she died. She didn’t know how long she sat there, nor did she really care. She’d lost all sense of time in the Circuit, so it didn’t really matter now. A nap sounded nice, but she fought down that urge as best she could.
Eventually she did turn to look at the rest of the room properly, though. Starting with the ax. Above it was tattered blue cloth, she didn’t have to look to know that it was remnants of the Ekstrom knight’s uniform. The top half of it, anyway. Kneeling down, the same cloth was piled down at the bottom. She felt her stomach turn at the sight but she held it in and recalled something from that very first memory.
“The key…”
Gently, she pushed the cloth aside and sure enough there sat two items. A key in plain sight, and a keycard halfway tucked in the folds of the cloth. Their designs match, and despite her state of mind she couldn’t help but smirk. “Definitely in the theme of all things Mercury,” she said softly as she picked up the set. “All this because they needed these two things…and even with them, they wouldn’t have made it out.” With a soft sigh she stood and looked on at the scene that she could only imagine was one of carnage, but now it just sat here, peacefully preserved in some kind of time capsule. Eerily quiet and all but forgotten.
She stood after a long moment, attaching the key to the keyring as she did. The thought of swallowing it made her stomach turn again, but she had nothing left to give it made her nearly gag at most. Desperate times, she thought, then tucked the set away for safekeeping. Personal Item Acquired
Knight's Key and Keycard (Ekström master keys) 1255 (gdocs)
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Posted: Sun Jun 16, 2024 3:27 am
5/5Ekstrom took another sweeping look around the room, her thoughts a jumbled mess but she had a vague idea of two things that she needed, particularly in her current state–light, the most obvious one because she was still standing primarily in the dark, and for one of the computers to work.
To get even just one of those things meant that she needed to restore at least some power to the wonder.
The room had been thoroughly bashed in, and by the previous knight’s shield to boot. For the sake of protecting what she had sworn to protect when she took that oath, she knew, but still. Ekstrom inspected each and every panel under the light of her cell phone (which she pulled out of her subspace pocket) as best she could, wondering, curious. It all felt familiar, and there was an inkling of confidence that she knew how these things worked. Nothing immediately came to mind, but the very last panel was the least damaged among them so she took her time inspecting it.
As soon as she found the first fixable thing in that panel, it started a flow that she couldn’t stop even if she tried. It went from one fix to the next, plugging something here or straightening something there. She scavenged for parts from the other panels and MacGyvered them together onto the one she was fixing. It wasn’t pretty, nor was it perfect, but by the end she had a good feeling that it would work.
“And this…” she muttered quietly to herself as she connected what she believed to be the last and final thing to complete a circuit on this portion of the Grid. It was a lot of pomp and circumstance, but apart from a little whir and a quiet hum nothing really came of it. Her confidence just about fizzled when suddenly, there was a flicker of light overhead. Just a flicker. Just once, but it was enough of a sign that she’d done something! At that she grinned and stood back, inspecting the Frankenstein looking panel rather apologetically.
“We’ll worry about looks later, I think,” she said, and with a sigh she turned and walked out of the room.
She hurried down this corridor again, and once safely back in her old room she made extra sure to close the door. She also made a mental note to bring some air freshener for next time. And maybe some incense. She wasn’t exactly religious, but the idea of cleansing the space was really attractive.
When she turned to head back toward the door to the Circuit, she noticed it. The computer monitor was now on, and there was a cursor flashing on the screen. Her eyebrows nearly disappeared into her hairline, as she approached with cautious optimism.
It actually worked?
Her MacGyvered panel actually worked?
“No. Way.”
Suspending her disbelief, she quickly recalled her dream, and then tapped a key on the keyboard and hoped that it would bring up that same blank window.
It did.
“No way.”
Glancing down, she noted that the access point was nowhere to be seen, but the same thin lines were there, as they’d been on every access panel since she walked inside, though this panel was significantly smaller. Perhaps just large enough for a fingerprint scan as opposed to a full palm scan. She blinked curiously and, taking a shot in the dark, she pressed her thumb to it and channeled her energy.
Two beeps followed by a quiet whirring, and the lines widened just a bit. Judging by the size…
“No way.”
She shoved a fumbling hand into her pocket and took the key and keycard out. She slotted each into place and…
Nothing.
She deflated. So close, yet so far, but it was progress all the same. She considered for a long moment if she wanted to invest more time into this, or if she should call it a day here. Being who she was, she wanted to try one more thing. She had a good hunch, similar to when she’d been looking over the panels, and she was so close.
“This place is all about security, right? Which means layers upon layers of it, probably even with the biometrics. So maybe…”
With a sigh, she slotted the key and keycards back into place, though this time she kept her thumbs on the side of the etched in data lines. Once they were in, she channeled her energy once more.
Two more beeps followed by another quiet whirring. When she glanced down there was now a third access point, reminiscent of a USB slot, that opened. She grinned at that. She knew exactly what she wanted to try slotting into there, but if she did that, who knew what she would find, and by extension who knew when she would get home if she found anything at all. Still, even though she wouldn't continue until her next visit, she couldn’t help but say it.
“Bingo.”834 (gdocs)
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