Though I Walk...

[Doomguy]

How long was I dealing with the dimension between worlds before I found my way out? I have no idea, and I have no intention of knowing. Time was basically meaningless in that modern art exhibit and after a while I had stopped checking my HUD’s clock because I’d grown sick of seeing the increasingly large number I saw in the corner of my eye every time I tried to parse out the next set of map pieces I gained. I was used to trial and error exploration of unnerving ruins and fortresses, demonic or otherwise, but even the Unholy Cathedral or the Gate to Limbo was not this twisted. At least there I could have shot something.

I hadn’t seen any gate since the one I came through, although in theory I knew which parts connected to it. Of course, that was the main problem: assuming anything made sense here, but I wasn’t just going to wander aimlessly and hope luck would save my bacon. It never worked before, and it wasn’t going to now.

“Maybe I’ll start hallucinating and that’ll show me how to get out” I joked, then flinched as I realized I was talking to myself again. But as demoralizing as it was, it was better company than the unfeeling things that passed by like ships in the night. Their only contributions to my time here was a creeping paranoia every time I saw one, worried that one might pass by me and gobble me up as a snack in my sleep.

It was only a greater paranoia of what they could do if provoked that has kept me from shooting them out of a desperate need of distraction. And that was a line I was close to crossing.

I looked up to the “sky”, let out a big roar of wasted violence, and then took a deep breath once my throat started to hurt.

And out of the corner of my eye, as I let out the biggest sigh I could muster, I saw something else. A winged, humanoid mockery of an angel, white as a certain godlike tumor I met when I was first dragged into this bad fan fiction and with the same bald headed look. It just floated through the air minding to whatever task was, but it was close enough that I finally found a good target.

The insults basically came rolling out on their own accord.

“HEY! You flying shitbag! You fucking rat with wings!” I yelled out to the thing, it’s path undeterred or attention taken as I piled on foul language “Yeah I’m talking to you, pusscake! Is your cum stain boss sending you out to suck dick or are you doing that on your own accord!?” I walked to pace with the celestial-esque thing, walking as close as the catwalks and platforms would allow and maybe even going over a few obstacles I didn’t think I could in my single minded attempt to insult it.

“Trying to ignore me, cunt?” I asked, although ti was clear it wasn’t trying to ignore me, it was completely succeeding. I might as well had not been there, which might have pissed me off if I wasn’t already enraged by the pre-existing terribleness of the void. There wasn’t even an errant rock to throw at my abused target, the bare nothingness was getting to me even on small levels.

Like a pyramid scheme of annoyance.

“We’ll I’m fucking here now and you can’t ignore me forever. I will find the way to Omni and I WILL shove the BFG down his throat. I’ll reduce his his smiling cranium to a smear on the wall of the multiverse. I’ll dance on his corpse and make a portal home out of his bones. I’ll turn his fucking world inside out for fucking messing with me!” My screams disappeared into the darkness, boiling blood in my veins coming to a simmer as my threats became less and less potent and by the end I was just slinging slurs and swears not suitable for publication.

I was no where closer to where I wanted to be, my voice was hoarse, and the thing went off on it’s merry way as if it wasn’t accosted by a foul mouthed marine in dayglow green armor.

But I felt much better.

“Alright. Now, where the fuck am I?” I glanced around the area I was in. I would say I was lost and trapped in a place without any rhyme or reason, but if you’ve stayed this far you’d know that was the case since I popped out of that damn fountain. I scanned the horizon, looking for find where I started my brain emptying rant.

And then I saw the look of a black arch against one of the blank white platforms, almost phasing in with the dull dusk background and absorbing what little ambient light there was. I blinked, my fatigue burdened mind wondering just what the hell that thing was, before it struck me like a mallet to a church bell. I was absently staring at the thing I was looking for one moment and in the next I was blitzing right for it in excitement and utter disbelief.

“Don’t disappear, don’t disappear, don’t disappear!” I yelled at it, the second time I was yelling at a mindless object and the first I knew it was pointless to do so. I jolted over basic shapes and lines, a sudden flash of colorful lights dancing across the grand circuitry and illuminating the gate with in rave’s worth of effects.

My sight was kept on it as I drew closer, almost not noticing the sudden right angle change to my path. It didn’t phase me, as I threw my leg up and the other and realigned to the new gravity. The path seemed to twist and turn as pulses shot pass me, and when I reached the goal I found the gate had suddenly disappeared. I scratched my helmet in confusion, before I realized what happened and I walked over the edge to find it on the other side.

I looked at the gate, identical in every way to every other gate I’ve seen and walked through. No identifiers, earthy tones like a granite top decorated it’s surface. I did not know if this was the second to last door to my escape, or the chute back to square one. Jumping in would be based on pure luck.

I looked back through all the pieces. There needed to be something to be gleamed here and not just a flip of the coin. I looked over the connections around me, the pulse revealing how this thing connected to other things. But looking at this platform and the one I came in on, they were completely unlike anything else. Only other unique piece could fit with it.

Like themselves.

I was running around in this rat’s maze for so long, I hadn’t considered an other option. I sat on my butt, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, and waited.

I wasn’t sure how much time it took, but when I next open my eyes I was at the center. Maybe not the literal center, but it was hard to describe it as anything else. Arranged like petals of a flower, interconnected platforms each with a gate on it around a single platform with an ever changing fountain, with a second set of gates like the ones I entered through in a layer beyond that.

And just out of reach, standing above it all, was a circle. Wholly unique and untouchable which held my way out.

“...how are you suppose to get up their normally?” I asked aloud as I jet packed up. Considering how loose the rules where, I realized how malleable the Omniverse was and I could have simple flown up here by will alone.

I chuckled at that though, and started the end of a very long journey.