//------------------------------// // Chapter 23 - Delusion // Story: The Unbinding // by awesomesauce4 //------------------------------// --The Void - 18:24-- Isaac dazedly got to his feet, wondering when he had fallen down. The room was a shifting mass of colors, and he blearily blinked his eyes once or twice, trying to clear them from the eye-straining scene that was this new room. Something shifted into place, and the colors cleared to reveal… the Basement? Isaac looked around hurriedly – he was indeed in the Basement. But how?! Had he been sent all the way back to the beginning? Would he have to leave his three followers in the Hush’s room? Isaac looked down forlornly, wondering if they were okay, and jumped back with a stifled cry. His hands – his human hands – were there, along with his pale, fleshy human body. Where was his fused angelic/demonic form?! Isaac tried slapping himself, to see if he was hallucinating. He felt so… strange. It reminded him of the few seconds after he’d been injected with anesthetic drugs, just before he’d gone to sleep. Everything was numb, the lights were so bright… He took a step forward, wondering where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. Immediately, he stumbled, tripping over his own foot as he crashed to the ground. Isaac got up, a slight laugh turning into a burble of inhuman sound as he tried and failed to move his mouth muscles. What was happening? He looked up from his shaky standing position, and stumbled back all over again as he saw someone looking at him. They looked like a Gaper, maybe, except… they just had Isaac’s normal face. In the split second he glimpsed them, they vanished, his vision turning into a burst of TV static. Isaac blinked once in confusion, and found that his odd ability to fire tears from his eyes still worked in this strange place. Strangely, that gave him some solace. At least he could still cry. ----- Luna was still recuperating from her shock, supported by Celestia and Discord as her breathing slowly stabilized. Twilight and Rarity had run off to find a medic, and Chrysalis was still nowhere to be found. “So… what now?” Discord wondered, conjuring a fan that waved itself over Luna’s sweat-laden brow. “What do you mean?” Celestia asked. “That ten-million-year-old child is down there, fighting things even I’d be scared to tango with. But are we really just going to sit here and wait?” Discord pointed out. “We’ve done all we can do… I think,” Celestia muttered, looking down at Luna. “Still putting your faith in Destiny, I see,” Discord sniped. “It has not led me astray yet,” Celestia answered wearily. She thought back to the times when destiny commanded she banish her sister to the moon, when destiny commanded she send her beloved student off to who knows where, outside her protective reach, when destiny had warned her far too late that Tirek was about to start his rampage. Destiny, it seemed, had failed to warn her of this as well. But... perhaps that was a necessary part of the plan. She simply had to have faith. --Basement I – 14:48-- Eden was running as fast as it could, all thought of heroics forgotten as the Lost inside solely focused on self-preservation. The Garden was pure pandemonium, Lost Children running this way and that as they tried to give hundreds of conflicting commands on what to do. Use tears? Run away? Get help? Nobody could agree on anything except to keep running from Apollyon. The stony angel of destruction relentlessly pursued them, not a single hint of emotion surfacing as it continued trying to suck them into the Void. A few of the Lost wondered why Apollyon was not flying after them – it clearly had wings, small as they were. Meanwhile, some other Lost had taken to trying to use their D4’s, in the vague hopes of rerolling Eden’s starting items to something more feasible. This was having about as much effect as their tears were – that is to say, absolutely none whatsoever. Apollyon was coming after them as quickly as ever, and Eden hit a wall, backpedaling to find itself cornered. Some of the Lost urged it to head left, to the door clearly visible that way. Others urged it to head to the right, to the door there. Eden was paralyzed with indecision – it didn’t know what to do. Apollyon loomed closer and closer… --Womb - 14:48-- The Keeper shambled through the Womb, blasting its way through two Scolex with little effort thanks to Ipecac and Host Hat. A fountain of coins appeared as their corpses split into visceral chunks of fluid and muscle, and it instantly tottered forward to pick them up. It was powerful… but it knew it needed to be even stronger if it hoped to challenge what lay ahead. Far, far stronger. It stumbled its way to the Shop, a spider crawling into its eye and out its mouth as it smiled at the familiar sight. The exit door to Sheol was open behind it, but it still had one last thing to do on this floor. When it was done, It Lives crumbled to pieces before the Keeper, Mom’s usual scream conspicuously absent. Satan opened his door, offering the Keeper a reward for its hard work, but the Keeper had too little emotion or thought in it to understand ‘temptation.’ It moved onward, leaving Satan’s offerings behind in favor of moving downward to Sheol. Without hesitation, it slumped into the hatch, tumbling head over heels into the unknown depths below. --??? – 18:24-- Nobody, demon nor angel, had come for them. The gathered three Virtues – Kindness, Honesty and Loyalty – sat in a circle in front of the twin pathways to Sheol and the Cathedral, wondering what to do. “Magic went up to the Cathedral, and that means we should follow. Lilith’s taking care of business down in Sheol,” Honesty argued. “Isaac’s still… whatever he is right now, and I say we stay here until he wakes up again,” Loyalty viciously rebutted, snarling. “I don’t want to leave him alone… but what if Magic needs help?” Kindness worried, scuffing an armored hoof at the scab-like cobalt floor. “In the Cathedral? Unlikely. There shouldn’t even be anyone there, Isaac’s fused now, remember?” Loyalty scoffed. “But what if she decides to go up to the Chest?” Honesty asked. “She can’t. She doesn’t have the Polaroid, Isaac does,” Kindness reminded him. “This is getting us nowhere…” Honesty sighed. “Welcome to my life,” Sloth agreed. “Still, we should… wait. Sloth, how long have you been here?” Honesty demanded, sitting up again and staring at the green, rotten humanoid, who was casually sitting just outside the circle as though he'd been there just as long as they had. “A while…” Sloth answered, laying back and staring at the ceiling. “…Care to give us a number?” Loyalty irately inquired, raising an eyebrow. “Uh… a minute…? I saw you three talking…” Sloth mumbled. “…Well, you’re probably another Virtue? But we have to wait for Isaac to wake up again to purify you…” Kindness mused, stealing another glance at Isaac’s twitching form. “S’fine… I’m good at waiting,” Sloth yawned. With not much else to do, the other three elected to wait with him, the swirling, silently screaming blue faces all around them slowing their movements as if sensing the lull in the conversation. --The Void – 19:02-- Isaac breathed heavily, his heart feeling like it was alternating between not beating at all and the speed of a racecar engine. He’d just cleared out a few rooms in this massive floor, and so far each room left him more confused than the last. Was this the Womb? The Cathedral? The Basement? Even the floor itself couldn’t seem to decide, as exiting one room of one area caused him to end up in another room from a completely different one. Worse, every so often, the whole floor around him would shudder, TV static fading out his vision, and by the time he could see again, everything had shifted colors and appearance to new, random floors. At least the map seemed somewhat constant… As Isaac ventured forth into a new room, he was greeted by yet another impossibility. Two Guardian doors, side by side, awaited him in this room, both being marked as bosses on the map. As he dealt with the Chargers and Mushrooms in this Caves-esque room, he pondered this, his thoughts feeling oddly sluggish. This wasn’t Curse of the Labyrinth, as far as he knew – why, then, were there two Guardians here? And what might he face on this terrifying new Chapter? Isaac didn’t know, but he was prepared to find out. He stumbled through the first door. To his shock, Satan sat there, grinning his usual conniving grin. Isaac tried to call out, to yell at him for all he’d done, to do something, but his mouth wouldn’t work right. “Bbeb,” Isaac managed, drooling slightly as the Flooded Caves room shifted to the Utero’s scenery. Satan, seemingly taking this as a challenge anyway, leapt off his pedestal. The fight itself was the same as ever, and Isaac’s muscle memory from thousands and thousands of similar fights saved his life many times over. However, it was made all the more difficult in that he couldn’t quite get his body to move right – trying to run resulted in him kicking his legs out and falling, trying to dodge caused him to simply stumble in the wrong direction, and the whole time he felt like he was moving underwater. What… Isaac tried to question, but even his thoughts seemed to have trouble articulating. --??? - 19:22-- Isaac kicked a leg out at the air, groaning as he lay flat on his back, his third eye spinning in dazed circles. “So… what do you think happened to him?” Kindness whispered, watching their new master attempt to doggy paddle upside down. “I think Satan, or YHWH, or somebody got to him,” Loyalty sighed. “Isaac? Can you hear me?” Honesty asked, prodding at Isaac’s gray form one more time. “Guess he’s just gotta shake it off… not like there’s anything we can do,” Honesty sighed, returning to laying back and staring at the ceiling. Sloth snored in agreement. --Basement I - 15:00-- As Eden lay there, paralyzed, it slowly became aware that it was not being sucked into the Void. Apollyon had stopped, quivering slightly in front of it. The Lost, inside the Garden, stared back at the empty sockets gazing at them, feeling no pull anymore. Then, Apollyon slumped over, before crumbling to dust. Eden stared at it for a moment, then breathed a single, collective sigh of utmost relief. --The Chest - ??:??-- “Impossible…” YHWH breathed. Apollyon had been destroyed. How? How had that wretched child managed to defeat His most terrifying Angel yet? He looked backwards through time, trying to watch what had happened from every possible perspective… but nothing made sense. Things were looping and jumbling together, timelines intersecting rampantly in ways that left even Him dazed to look upon. A sharp tap sounded from behind Him, and He whirled around. A lone Child was standing there, eyes burning a cold, cold blue as six colorful lights swirled around three smaller ones around them. “Hello, Father,” the child introduced. “It’s about time we talked.” --The Void - 20:57-- At last, somehow, Satan had been defeated. But before Isaac could even breathe a sigh of relief, Satan melted, a white, sticky substance replacing his goatlike form before disappearing into the floor of the Depths, vanishing from sight. A lone Item was left in its place – the Trinity Shield. But that only appeared in Angel Rooms… Isaac rolled forward to pick it up anyway, before getting back onto his feet and heading for the exit. What was in the other Guardian Room? Time to find out. To his surprise, it was just Chub – but the backdrop was the Cathedral. Shrugging, or at least making an attempt to shrug, Isaac set about defeating the massive grub, slowly getting used to the strange feelings and sensations that clogged his every step. Chub, at least, was easier to kill than Satan, and when the giant monster finally went down, it left in its place… the Spear of Destiny? Isaac picked it up curiously, hefting the heavy iron weapon. Another Angel Room item… how odd. Perhaps there were many bosses on this floor, then? He was beginning to warm back up, his head beginning to clear just a touch. Isaac slowly walked towards the exit, the room shifting and swirling chaotically around him even as he did his best to ignore his nausea. What seemed like an eternity later, he’d scoured an impossibly large amount of rooms, and an equally disturbing amount of Guardians. He missed his old pink lasers… Wait, what pink lasers? He couldn’t recall having any of those. He was just a child, living with his… Isaac shook his head. What was going on? He finally found a new path to take at the very top right of the map, and a single, last Guardian Room door. The room was empty – just a few rocks. Isaac took a deep breath, and stepped through the last door. Almost immediately, he started screaming.