Cinnamon Bun

Chapter Five Hundred and Two - Choice Paralysis

There was a chair for me to sit on. Again, that same folding chair that I suspected belonged to Sir Aberrforth's friends.

I looked around the darkened room. The core was actually glowing a little now, but that same glow was fading away. I could imagine it being much brighter a few moments ago, and now it was returning to dormancy. Was it the kind of thing that only used up magic while it was active?

Actually, that would make a lot of sense. Aside from my shadowy companion, this core probably almost never encountered anyone else. It made sense that it might spend most of its time hibernating. Maybe it even had to save up magic to generate those visions. I had no idea how much magic it took to predict an alternate timeline, but I imagined it was ... a lot? Probably? Seeing visions and stuff couldn't be easy or simple magics. Imagining different scenarios based on a person's past like that?

I blinked, then reached up and rubbed at my face. I'd been crying a little.

There had been so many visions there where I didn't have the friends I had now. The later on they became my friend, the less likely they were to be friends with me in the visions. Amaryllis was common, but Awen less so. I rarely made friends with Bastion at all, and that means that Caprica was out of the picture most of the time. Booksie was a frequent friend, surprisingly, and that meant that Rhawrexdee was there too sometimes. Calamity was someone I never met in any of my visions.

Still, I was rarely friendless in those visions. I often joined that group of grenoil explorers I first met. I had seen a few versions where I became friends with that innkeeper in Rockstack, working for her, or sticking around her inn for weeks or months.

"Are you caught?" the old man asked.

I blinked, then shook my head to recentre myself. "Caught?" I asked.

"In the visions of what could be?" He looked to the orb, almost longingly. "This thing trapped me here. I think... I think I could leave it now, but its visions would remain with me forever."

"What is it?" I asked.

"It was a dungeon core, once," he said and I nodded at that. That fit the look of it. "Its dungeon was dangerous, though. Even before it had a second floor, the elders of the villages nearby knew it to be a threat. A dungeon of reminiscence. A dungeon where you see all of the potential you once had and squandered."

"All the friends you could have made along the way," I added.

He gave me a look, but didn't prod further. "The elders came together and destroyed the dungeon. Not entirely, because the locals have a long list of superstitions and foibles about breaking dungeon cores, but that didn't stop them from toying with the core, using their magics on it, and turning it into this."

"Did they just leave it here?" I asked.

"No. It was their challenge. Young men and women would be sent down here and shown how they had failed, how different choices might have improved their lives." He leaned back, head tilting to the side. "I suppose it introduced some to introspection."

"Okay," I said. "That doesn't explain, well, you."

He grinned. A flash of gums in the dark. "I wanted power. I wanted to see my levels rise. I wanted to be stronger. The pillar of my existence was to seek greater power, and these visions showed me how to do it."

I nodded. In some of those visions, I'd made so many more friends than I had now. If I could just figure out how to backtrack and find them ...

... He said he had wanted power. In his visions, he probably didn't focus on friends, but on personal strength. Did he see a million ways that he could become more powerful, faster?

"It'd be pretty tempting to watch these visions over and over," I said.

"Yes."

I could imagine it. In a different world--ironically--where I had no friends and desperately wanted them, if I'd been given the chance to touch this core and see all the friendships I missed out on... well, even now it hurt a little. So many meetings that would never happen, so many potential friends that I'd never actually make.

It was passing, now. The details were growing blurry, like trying to remember a dream after it had happened. "It trapped you," I said. "You wanted to grow stronger, so the core showed you all the ways you could have been stronger."

"And weaker. It doesn't discriminate. But yes, it's the paths to greater power that interested me most. Cleaning. That's your magic, isn't it?"

I nodded. There was no point in hiding it.

"Weak. But taken to a logical extreme. A simple skill built up over and over again until it grows into something more powerful. Do you know how many skills have that kind of application?"

"Um, no?"

"Plenty. That's not to mention those skills which are strong to begin with. I left this place, at first. It gave me so many avenues to pursue, so many images of alternate versions of myself who had grown strong. The visions fade. Like waking from a dream, but the broad strokes remain. So I followed in my own footsteps. I attacked dungeons and destroyed them for the skill points I'd earn. I killed animals, monsters, people. I gathered a dozen of the most powerful skills I could and grew them to their limit. But I needed more. More guidance, more of an idea on how to grow even stronger."

"So you returned here."

"Constantly. Until the day I was trapped. Do you know what I regret most?"

"What?" I asked.

"Myself. I regret... me. I..." He paused for a moment, and I remained quiet as he searched for words. "I regret my own greed for more. Because it lead me to where I am now, when I could have been so much happier with far less. Now I have immortality, and nothing to do with it."

The cave felt very quiet then. Quiet and cold and lonely.

The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. I swallowed, feeling the weight of his words settle into the pit of my stomach. "Immortality?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

He nodded slowly. "Yes. I sought skills to avoid death, to avoid the natural course of life. I wanted to transcend it, to become something more than human. And in a way, I did. But it wasn't what I expected. It wasn't freedom. It was a curse."

I took a step closer, feeling the coolness of the stone under my bare feet. "Why didn't you leave? You said you could."

"Those same villagers, the elders, they knew what I was up to and trapped me here. The trap has long since worn itself out. Now I'm just... I don't think I can leave."

He was afraid. Like someone who hadn't set foot outside in so long that now the very thought made them anxious. It was the kind of thing that might be fixed with good friends and a lot of patience, but I didn't imagine that he was getting a lot of that in here.

"I took my revenge. Even in here, I could strike out. I think I destroyed an entire civilization. To be sure, it was only a small, forgotten one..." he gave a dry chuckle. "... What an accomplishment." I saw his palms, flat out towards me in a gesture of surrender that quickly faded back into the dark.

"I'm sorry," I said.

"Sorry about what?" he asked. "No, nevermind. You can leave. Your friends are wandering about, but the prison isn't a maze. You'll find them."

"Leave?" I asked. "What about you?"

"I'll live. Heh."

I blinked fast. "No," I said.

He tensed. I couldn't quite see it, in the dark, but the black took on a quality that reminded me of a cat turning a corner to find a snake on the ground ahead of them.

I had to explain, before he misunderstood. "Being alone here, being stuck in a cave with nothing but that thing, that's not living," I said. "That's surviving, but only barely. Living is... living is having good friends, living is helping others, living is waking up and being proud of what you've done and having more to do that you look forward to doing. I saw a lot of past versions of me just now. Some of them were very sad, but I think that all of them were still living. Mister... um, I never got your name. But Mister, I don't think what you're doing is living."

He stared at me, and I could feel his gaze like a cool brush of wind across my skin. "You might be right," he said.

I took a small step closer. "Then come with me? With us? You can leave this place. We can break that thing. You don't have to stay here and be alone anymore."

He hesitated. There was a flicker to the darkness. "Do me a favour," he said.

"Okay," I replied.

"Break it before you leave."

"Are... are you coming with me?" I asked.

"Do you really believe that even I deserve a second chance?" he asked.

"Yes," I said.

The dark felt a little warmer for a moment. It was a strange sensation that passed as soon as it came. "Then that makes one of us," he replied. "Goodbye, Broccoli. Forget this place, if you can. But don't forget what you learned here."

There was a flicker, and suddenly things weren't as dark. Orange's light now bathed the entire room, and I felt like I'd just shucked off a heavy winter jacket, the weight pushing me down from all over was gone.

And so was the old man.

"Wait, what about my friends? Weren't you going to help me find them?" I asked no one.

I licked my lips and looked around the room, but there were no signs of him. He was gone, for real. I hugged Orange closer, then eyed the core.

Well, I supposed he had asked for me to do him a favour...

***