Dungeon at the End of the Universe

As soon as I activated Endless End, my mind cleared. Whatever effect they had vanished into thin air. Which, I then supposed, must mean that whatever they were doing must’ve been some kind of time effect too. Kind of hypocritical of them, to forbid everyone else from using time magic while practising it themselves.

But back to the present. Which was actually changing, now that I’d activated my UNIQUE Ability.

It was the first time I’d done so. Previously, it was always automatic. I die, it activates. But not this time. This time, I did it consciously.

Which also meant that for the first time, I had some proper control over it.

I looked out of my Dungeon. The world wasn’t exactly frozen. Everything was running at normal speed. What was different was the bubble, kind of like the one around Zemis’s divine palace, quickly expanding from my Core.

The second thing I noticed was my reserves of Universe energy. They were dropping. Fast.

Is that why, before, only I was transported? I didn’t have enough fuel to take my Dungeon with me? Or is it a special property of Universe energy? Could be either.

The bubble stopped just as it reached the edges of my Dungeon, even despite the fact that I still had Universe energy left. Not a lot, but there was some.

A last brief look outside told me that a few of the ‘time police’ had noticed something strange going on, but it was too lot to stop it. The bubble began contracting. However, despite it growing smaller now, and despite my Dungeon not shrinking with it, it continued to encompass me in my entirety.

So, third observation: there’s some spatial fuckery in this Ability as well.

Only once my entire Dungeon moon had been shrunk down to the size of a single point did the next phase activate.

“Hey Faellen,” I quickly spoke out while I could, “it’s bigger on the inside!” Hah! I always wanted to say that.

And then we vanished. Or the rest of the world vanished. Depending on which perspective you’re following. But also, from what I know the timeline we abandon by doing this ceases to exist, so maybe there is no other perspective to follow.

Either way, we were now… somewhere?

It definitely wasn’t the Void, that’s for sure.

And… I felt like I was falling? Sort of? Which was a weird feeling, since I was the size of a moon with my own gravity. It was a strange thing.

Alright, so. I can reasonably deduce that I’m now travelling back in time. Which means that that falling sensation is likely just my mind trying to understand the feeling of travelling back in time.

Which would mean that depending on how long I stay like this, that’s how long into the past I’ll go. Which means if I stop this, I’ll determine what the present is and we’ll be back to normal time.

But that begs the question: how do I get out of here? And after how long? Is it one to one, one ‘second’ here is a second back in time? I don’t know. Again.

But there’s one person who may know.

“Ahem,” I politely cough to get a certain someone’s attention, “Anything you’d like to tell me, Faellen ‘you can’t mess with the time stream if I mess with the time stream’ Goldenbrush? Of the Forgotten Court?” I make sure to put heavy emphasis on its name, like that time cop had done.

Said fairy looked very uncomfortable. But also confused? Like someone who’d just been accused of something so heinous and ridiculous that they just couldn’t take it seriously, but when they looked around everyone else was taking it extremely seriously.

“I- I have no idea.” It paused, taking a deep breath. “No, wait, something is coming to me now. Look, I know this seems super suspicious now, but I’m getting some new knowledge from my ancestral memories. I don’t know about the other stuff they were talking about.”

I sighed. “Look, just… tell me how we get out of here so we don’t go back all the way to the previous Universe. We can talk about this later.”

That seemed to relax my Bonded assistant somewhat and it got to explaining.

The memories, or knowledge, it had unlocked wasn’t too comprehensive. Most of it simply confirmed my assumptions about this place. One thing did stand out though.

Apparently, there was no time here. Which was weird, because we were talking and experiencing existence just like we’d normally be. But Faellen told me that that was because that’s how our minds were used to doing things.

It also meant that there was no ration of how much time spent here was time travelled back in time. Yes, there was a correlation between how long we thought we spent here to how far back we went, but it wasn’t absolute.

All of it was very conceptual and difficult for me to grasp. That’s the weakness of three-dimensional beings that are used to experiencing on half of fourth dimension.

Lastly, I learnt how to exit. Well, we both put our theories together and managed to figure something out, since Faellen’s inherited memories were not too helpful in that regard.

Basically, I did the usual thing. Which is to say, blindly* activating Abilities hoping they do what I want and throwing a bunch of mana at the problem if they don’t.

(*I was told by a… colleague, to tell you that after the Dungeon Core figured out the use of an Ability, like with the four basic Dungeon ones, it was no longer a blind activation)

The fall stopped.

Everything around my twisted and we were suddenly back in a space with proper time. When and where we were was left to be figured out though. Before that, the transition had to finish.

Yes, we were back into a single point. The same process as before played out, this time in reverse. The bubble expanded, I stayed the same size. Once both our dimensions matched, the bubble retreated into my Core.

And that was that. Easy.

I gave a scan to the outside of my Dungeon. No decaying space, so didn’t go that far back. Neither was there hot plasma everywhere, so the Big Bang of the Ferras Universe was already far behind us.

I decided to call that good enough.

I also gave a look inside, to check if everything was transported with me correctly. After all, this was the first time travelling with my whole Dungeon. And that’s when I noticed a small, tiny, negligible problem.

The second group of Sipalian adventurers. They’d travelled with us.