Dimensional Analysis
Surrounded by enemies on every side, forced back against the cold stone of the temple wall, Tamil found that the only thing he could think about was how he was going to get the green stains out of his clothes.
There were still almost twenty slimes left. They oozed and slunk around him, somehow staring him down despite not having any eyes. The glow of the six lanterns placed around the room caught on their gelatin bodies. A bead of sweat trickled into his right eye, causing him to flinch and blink. The nearest slime jumped at that opportunity, a mechanical roar echoing through the room as it shot towards him.
Tamil reacted instantly, jerking both of his shimmering scimitars up into a X-defense in front of him. His aim was perfect, and the rocketing slime impaled itself on the blades, its bits and pieces splattering over him with a sickening sucking sound.
The elf growled, looking down at his clothing in disgust. He'd paid a mountain of gold coins to get that specialty dwarf forger to build him his custom-designed enchanted silk wardrobe. Strong enough to deflect a knife, but soft enough to sleep in. He'd deliberated over the color scheme for weeks, and now the green sticky goo would probably never come out.
Glaring at the surrounding horde of disgusting blobs, Tamil reached down and gingerly picked up the small metallic block, still covered in a layer of slime. Rocket-powered slimes...whoever had designed this dungeon clearly didn't have a team of experts to shoot down his terrible ideas. Putting one of the most awesome devices on probably the most pathetic creatures just seemed like an effort in mediocrity.
Two of the slimes seemed to notice his attention moving to the block on the floor, because they suddenly mimicked their dead companion, jumping into the air and activating their rockets. A blue-hot spike of flame shot out from behind the slimes as they barreled towards Tamil at high speed.
Sighing, Tamil dropped the rocket engine, ducking his head as he lifted his scimitars up, cleaning slicing through each of the two monsters as they shot past above. Another rain of goopy drops poured down around him, but by now he'd lost his patience with this nonsense. He leaped out of his crouch, spinning around and slicing through two more slimes before the crowd of them could react.
The slimes became very agitated right away, jumping and rocketing towards him all at once. Tamil smiled coldly, weaving through the green mess like a leaf through a murky fog, swiping down killing blows one by one. His gambit began to work, the slimes starts to bump into each other in their haste to get at him, giving him the opening he needed to dodge and kill with his scimitars.
In just a few drawn-out seconds, nothing remained of the slimes but a gelatin pool of remains on the floor. Tamil panted ever so slightly, carefully replacing his blades in their sheathes on his back. Then he looked down, letting out a groan of disgust as he lifted his boot out of the green muck. Now his custom-made leaping boots were ruined as well. The grey wizard was going to get a hefty damages fees once Tamil got out of here.
That thought jarring his memory, he reached down and scooped up one of the slime rocket engines, holding it far away from his body as he shivered, doing his best to shake the slime off of it. He had absolutely no desire to put something so revolting into his knapsack, but his constant need for gold won out against his pride. Specialty and novelty devices could fetch a high price on the black market, and this was an innovation Tamil had never seen before, as silly as it was. After getting about as much of the goop off as he could, he placed the block deep into his bag, hoping that his other treasures weren't about to become cheaper by association.
That done, Tamil turned and eyed the imposing door set into the wall on his left. He'd been through enough dungeons to know when he'd reached the boss's room. He couldn't go in there without looking at least passable, so he pulled a mirror out of his knapsack and began combing back his dark brown hair. Luckily he'd managed to avoid sliming that up too much, but he still needed to use a comb to get out the green bits that had stubbornly stuck around. After giving his charcoal-black face one more look over, he replaced the mirror and walked up to the door, feeling confident that, despite his ruined clothes, he looked good enough for even a visit to the queen. Taking in a deep breath, he pulled on the doors, slowly letting them creak open as he stepped inside.
Tamil had been through dozens of dungeons in his days. He'd defeated boss after boss and stolen their treasures. Dragons at the end of a dungeon was a common choice, and a nightmare for him, since his swords typically couldn't pierce through their scales. Something like a demon dog or an evil sorcerer were usually better, but whatever the threat he'd always managed to come through the other side alive and looking at least passably handsome. He tensed himself, looking around to see what he'd been facing this time around.
After a few seconds, he blinked, his body relaxing in surprise. Based on the doors, he'd been expecting some kind of spacious grand finale room with pillars and balustrades and all those other fancy architectural embellishments. What he hadn't expected, however, was a small cubby of a room, barely tall enough to facilitate the doors, barren except for a small pedestal in the center and...a frail old man in a rocking chair next to it?
After taking a few moments for his brain to shift back into place, Tamil crept forward cautiously, holding out his scimitars in an X between himself and the geezer. He wasn't born yesterday: this could only be an illusion or a trick to cause him to lower his guard before the boss struck. Either the old man was more than he seemed, or he was just bait to lure him into a false sense of security. He'd survived too many times to die from such an embarrassing blunder, so he stepped forward with all his muscles tensed, ready to strike.
The old man snorted softly, his eyes opening as Tamil stepped closer. The grin of helpless old men everywhere tugged at his lips, and he looked the adventurer up and down without a trace of fear in his eyes. "Why hello there, young man. It's been so long since I had visitors. You can put those swords down now, there aren't any monsters here."
Tamil twitched slightly, his hands gripping the blades harder. The man appeared to be genuine, or at least an incredible actor, but this could all still be a trap. And he'd called them swords! He growled softly, tiredly wishing once again that he could speak up and correct the idiot in front of him. They were "scimitars," not "swords!" Those were entirely different things!
The man continued to rock back and forth in his rocking chair, eyeing Tamil curiously. "Mmmm, not much of a talker, are you? Well, that's all right, I'm sure I can do enough talking for the both of us. Come and sit down here in front of me, I'll tell you some tales that will really put some hairs on your chest!"
Elves don't grow hairs on their chests, you moron. Rolling his eyes, Tamil walked past the old fool and moved towards the pedestal. His inability to speak had saved him many times from saying things that he might have regretted...but he still often wished that he could use the cutting words in his mind. The room's occupant was safe to ignore for now at least, so the adventurer turned his attention to the object of his mission.
Just like the room and the guard, the treasure on the pedestal was completely underwhelming. It looked like a pitch-black circular rock, the kind smoothed down by years of wearing from a riverbed and perfect for skipping stones across the water. The grey wizard had said something about this stone being the "Arcane Jewel of Bhree" or something like that, but all Tamil could see was a relatively worthless rock. Still, he'd done his job, and the wizard would regret it if he tried to short-change him, so he scooped up the stone and dropped it into his bag with a clatter.
The old man peered up at him, still rocking back and forth. "Oh dear, that wasn't very gentlemanly of you, stealing someone else's things! I'm not supposed to let you do that."
I'm ready for you to try and stop me, Tamil thought to himself, spinning one of his scimitars, anticipating a counter-attack. But his opponent didn't make any moves, aside from the ceaseless rocking back and forth. Sighing in annoyance, he stepped towards the exit.
The dark colors and shades of the room around him began to run together like paint in a rainstorm. Dizzy and disoriented, Tamil dropped one of his scimitarss and clutched his head, trying to regain his balance. Was this a curse of some kind, designed to weaken him before the battle. Shaking himself, he looked around for an advancing enemy.
He was surrounded by deep shades of green on every side. Clumps of dirt broke as he shifted his feet into a deep, loamy soil. The air was muggy and hot, and he could hear the chirps and growls of thousands of creatures off in the distance.
Tamil dropped his other scimitar, spinning around his shock. What was this madness? Had he been teleported to another location? But he had never seen or heard of a forest like this one, not in all his years of traveling the world. A quick glance to the side confirmed that the old man was still nearby, his rocking chair beating out time without even a pause.
What exactly is your game here, old man? He moved to rush the potential enemy, but he nearly tripped instead, his left foot gripped and unable to move. Turning his gaze downward, he saw a thick brown and white stalk poking out of the ground, wrapped a few times around his boot. A tree root?
The elf reached down, trying to pull his foot free with no success. The grip even seemed to tighten a bit as he tried, and with a rustle the root started withdrawing itself into the soil, attempting to bring Tamil with it! He groaned from the pressure as his leg was yanked downwards, compressing and passing through the thick soil agonizingly slowly. He could feel his bones straining to hold their positions.
Another root snaked out of the brown dirt and coiled around his right root, jerking him down to his knees. Wiggling his legs in vain, he tried to reach for his scimitars, which were laying in the soil just a couple of inches out of reach. He stretched out his fingers, growling softly as his feet sunk into the soil even more. Another root, even thicker than the others, coiled up and around his torso, binding him to the ground and grinding him against it.
Sweat poured out of his dark skin as he strained, just far enough away from his blades to make them completely useless. Biting his teeth together, he let out a bestial roar and pulled against the roots with all his strength. His fingers managed to curl around the grip of a scimitar, and he sighed with relief. Twisting himself around as best he could, he brought the blade down on the wooden root and slashed and hacked for all he was worth.
A loud hissing erupted from the root, along with a thin white fog. The uncut portion wiggled in anger, and the roots around his feet tightened their pull. Tamil wildly jerked his legs, trying to get them far enough out of the soil to cut away the roots. The wood battled the integrity of his bones for a few moments. Finally, he managed to get a clean shot at his right foot. With another hiss of apparent agony, the both roots uncoiled from his feet, and the creature, whatever it was, slinked back down into the ground, leaving behind nothing but a few chopped off wooden shoots.
Panting heavily, Tamil stood up and grabbed his other scimitar. Wasting no time, he broke into a run towards the old man, determined to get out of this illusion by any means necessary. As soon as he started running, the world around him began to bleed together again. For a moment, he found himself looking at the same barren room he had been in before...except that everything was completely upside-down, and he was running on the shallow ceiling. Before he could react to this, his feet brought him up to the old man just as the scene shifted around him again.
A bitterly cold wind suddenly ripped into his clothes, causing Tamil to shiver immediately. Silk wasn't exactly the best clothing for cold weather, and the elf found himself surrounded by a landscape of deep white snow. Off in the distance were tall mountains, ringed around his position on all sides. He didn't recognize any of them from his travels or the maps that he carried. Once again, the old man had come along as well, carving rivets in the snow as he heedlessly rocked.
Tamil raised his scimitars threateningly to the old man. Not for the first time he regretted his curse of muteness. He needed to figure out what this monster was doing to him. Luckily, he'd found in the past that a show of force could communicate all sorts of complex messages without a single spoken word.
The old man, however, didn't seem to be fazed by the blades a few inches from the tip of his nose, rocking towards and away from them as if they weren't there. "I told you, young man, you shouldn't steal what's not yours. Give the jewel back to me and you can go right back home."
I've got a better idea, Tamil thought, pulling back a scimitar to piece the man right between the eyes. However, rumbling disrupted his balance. Both the ground and the sky seemed to be shaking, and the grumbling was quickly becoming a roaring. Feeling his blood run even colder than it was already, he twisted his head around, seeing a great wave of white several stories high speeding towards him.
Tamil barely had time to shout in alarm before the avalanche hit him in full force, tossing him off his feet and spinning him around in an icy, dark whirlpool. Both his scimitars were ripped from his hands, and he could feel his limbs and head being tossed around, just a single well-placed rock from being broken into tiny pieces.
With a practiced quickness and precision, Tamil brought his knapsack forward and slipped a hand into it, forcibly calming himself despite his tumbling. Finding an egg shape in his palm, he sighed with relief and squeezed it as hard as he could. A blast of hot desert air radiated out from him, warming up his body and giving a devastating sear to anything around him. The snow in a sphere about twice his height was instantly turned to vapor. With nothing holding him up, he began to tumble towards the snow below, his spell removing any snow beneath him before he could land on it. Cursing in his mind, he adjusted his grip on the egg slightly, changing the shape of a spell to a dome, allowing him to crash into the cushion of snow beneath him and roll to a stop.
Tamil pulled himself up, still shivering despite the warmth around him from the snow he'd just been enclosed in. The avalanche continued to flow around him, any snow coming within a certain distance disappearing in a puff of steam. He didn't have long before this spell burned out, so he turned his head to get oriented. Through the roaring maelstrom around him, he caught glimpses of the old man a good distance away. The snow was barreling over him again and again, but he seemed rooted to the spot, not even noticing the force of the waves.
Grinding his teeth in frustration, Tamil took off running towards the old man, the magic spell keeping him safe for the time being. After a few steps, the familiar blending of the sights around him began to occur, and the snow vanished, replaced again by the familiar tiny boss room. Releasing his grip from the spell, he tried to grip another weapon, his scimitars long gone by now. But once again, as he approached the old man, the world around him shifted.
Bits of snow steamed off of his body as the air suddenly became unbearably hot. Everything surrounding him was in dark heated shades of red and yellow. Pools of lava fanned out from him as far as he could see, the rocks letting off a paint-peeling stench as they burned.
The old man had actually appeared in the middle of a lava pool, but his rocking continued regardless. Tamil was beginning to wonder whether he was dealing with something immortal...and whether he could actually hurt this man.
"You can't figure it out, can you?" his enemy said with an innocent smile. "It doesn't matter where you run, you're in my power. I can twist the dimensions in whatever order I want. When you think you're running towards me, you're actually just pulling yourself even further away from your home universe, taking yourself into unknown possibilities of worlds."
Tamil was used to not really understanding the monologues of evil lords, so he mostly ignored the details and tried to keep the important bits. Moving around seemed to be teleporting him to different places when the old man willed it to happen. He needed to be careful with his steps if he was going to get out of here.
His instincts kicked in before his brain could, his legs jumping out of the way as a glob of lava suddenly landed in his previous location. Something was sitting in the giant lake in front of him, and in a few seconds a massive head surfaced, letting out an ear-splitting shriek. It was the biggest dragon he had ever seen, black scales glowing from the lava glistening on their surface. His scimitars would only be as long as one of this beast's teeth, and he didn't even have those anymore.
The dragon turned a deep black eye towards Tamil, his snout following and letting out another scream. Every dragon had a different temperament. This one seemed like a no-nonsense type. Tamil's hand desperately rummaged around in his bag, looking for some kind of weapon, anything at all. But none of his spells would work against this monster.
The dragon's jaws creaked open, and his fangs began to swing down towards the tasty little snack. Tamil ducked and rolled, barely escaping and receiving a burn on his arm as it brushed against the monster's well-cooked scales. He rolled to his feet next to the old man, who as usual seemed completely unconcerned with the events happening around him. "Never been to this universe before," he mused casually.
Tamil glanced between the old man and the dragon, a desperate idea forming in his mind. As the dragon spun around for another bite, the elf grabbed the rocking chair, easily lifting both it and the old man into the air. With a roar to match the beast's, he tossed the chair with all his strength, both it and its occupant arcing directly into the dragon's mouth and down its throat.
The dragon suddenly jolted to a halt, its teeth mere moments from ripping into Tamil's dark skin. It tried to let out another screech, but the sound was muffled and choked. The object Tamil had thrown down its throat without letting him chew had lodged itself in the creatures esophagus, cutting off its air supply. Its head slammed into the ground, eyes rolling back as it writhed, trying to dislodge the foreign object.
Tamil knew better than to stick around and make sure that it worked. He took off running away from the dragon, but in a few seconds, the colors began to bleed together. Cautiously, he stopped his running. The dungeon reformed around him, the changes stopping as he stopped moving. Something was wrong, however. He glanced upwards, seeing the doors he had entered from stuck into the ceiling above him and the pedestal sticking out of the wall to his right. The room seemed to have been flipped on its side, leaving him standing on one of its walls.
The surprise wasn't that the old man and his rocking chair were still there. The surprise was that they seemed to be rocking on the wall, completely unaffected by gravity. Tamil growled softly, glaring at the seemingly immortal enemy perched on the wall above him.
The old man, for his part, waved down to Tamil with a smile. "Just give up, boy. The dimensions are mine to command, and you'll just slip into another universe if you try and escape. Toss the jewel up here and we can be done with this game."
Tamil reached up and felt the burn on his arm. The scales had seared right through his silk clothing...that was going to make costs even more expensive. His survival instincts were telling him to cut his losses and escape...but his pride, and his upcoming wardrobe expenses, wouldn't let him give up the jewel. He needed some way to outwit this old man, but how?
He glanced around himself, thinking. His dimensions had been twisted, that was for sure. Up and down were no longer up and down. Moving forward, backwards, left, or right could become another teleportation into a different dimension. But which would be which? If he could only reach the door and get out of here....
Tamil blinked, the final piece of his plot clicking into place. It would be risky, foolhardy, and completely insane...but what other kind of plan would work against a monster who held this kind of power. He ripped open his knapsack, rummaging around until his fingers closed on a still slightly gooey block. He pulled the slime rocket-engine out, setting it on the ground.
"I'm waiting, boy." The elf did his best to ignore the old man, doing some calculations. He had to make it a straight shot, or else he'd risk teleporting again. It would have to be absolutely perfect.
"Boy? What are you doing down there?" After a few seconds work, he'd used some twine to attach the rocket to his right foot. Standing on the block, he took a deep breath, turning his head up to gaze at the large open doorway, which was directly above him. Then, he yanked on another piece of twine, remotely flipping the activation switch on the engine.
Tamil zoomed up into the air, his body firing directly towards the rocket. He had to keep his body perfectly rigid, hoping and straining to keep his trajectory straight upwards. He only got a glance at the old man's baffled face as he zoomed past. The room around him was bleeding together, not from a dimensional shift but from the acceleration racking his body. The engine began to putter, and he closed his eyes, groaning as gravity started slowing him down.
Then, suddenly, Tamil was sliding against a hard stone floor, his clothes ripping and his skin scraping. He rolled to a halt, panting softly and looking up at the ceiling. He seemed to be floating a bit...and when he sat up, he found himself in the pool of dead slimes, the goo having cushioned his fall. He glanced back, the doorway to the boss's room closing behind him.
Not even caring about the damage to his clothes or hair, he fell back into the slime, panting loudly. Then, he started to laugh, both out of absurdity and relief. He'd made it out! His completely stupid plan had actually worked! He had to check his knapsack again, but yes, the jewel was still inside.
He slowly picked himself up. The grey wizard was going to have to pay through the nose for this job. Tamil hadn't felt so close to dying in a long time...it was almost intoxicating. He did his best to brush the blue goop off of his shirt and pants. After this, he was going to need a long drink. Then a visit to the spa. Then a long list of requirements to get a newly tailored suit. After that he'd....
He blinked, his thoughts suddenly catching up to a problem. He looked down at the slime remains beneath his feet. They glowed in the lantern-light, a deep blue against the gray of the stones. Almost doubting his memory, he checked the older stains in his silk. They were definitely green.
He looked around, now noticing tiny details in the room for the first time. The number of lanterns, the décor, the shape of the walls...everything was ever so slightly different. Maybe his flight hadn't been completely straight up and down? Some universes must be nearly identical to the one he'd started in, after all...
Oh well, Tamil thought, a soft smile playing on his face. Close enough.