The second time felt different.
The pillars were in the same positions, but the shadows they cast were darker.
Aether could swear he saw shapes moving within those shadows, things with too many limbs that vanished when he tried to focus on them.
The gravity-stabilizer still ground at the center, but its rhythm had changed. It began rotating faster, more urgent as if it knew they were trapped and was counting down to something.
The air warped and then multiple distortions appeared this time, appearing in sequence like a coordinated attack.
Lyria's eyes blazed before her Stillness Aura expanded, pushing outward in a dome that encompassed all three of them.
The first Pressure Claw formed to their right. It hit the aura and slowed down, bits of squeezed space showing as it pushed against the field.
The attack stopped completely before fading away as the three kept moving. Then a second strike came from above, another Pressure-Tentacle that could crush steel.
It fell toward them like a hammer.
Aether saw where it would land before it fully appeared. He moved just slightly to the left, just enough to stand where the attack would miss him. Before he fired a bolt towards the pressure, leading to a clash and the tentacle to burst.
This led to a shockwave that shook the area, forcing chunks of ceiling to fall.
But they ran through without slowing down.
Ahead, a Barnacle stuck to the wall, its shell glowing as it gathered power. Aether raised his weapon smoothly, not wasting any motion or breaking his stride. The beam shot out and hit the creature before it could attack.
Mila was there an instant later, her blade carving through its weakened body.
The creature dissolved, but another had already taken its place further down the corridor.
It launched a tendril at Aether's head.He moved his head a little to the right. The tendril missed his temple by less than an inch.
He raised his gun and fired.
The first bolt hit the Barnacle's shell, cracking it. His second shot shattered it completely, and the creature melted away.
On the walls around them, the shadows had changed.
A figure that ran during their first time through now knelt with clasped hands. Another that had wept before was now half-gone, its edges breaking apart like smoke.
"Don't stare at them!" Lyria yelled over the noise of twisting metal and falling rocks. "They'll mess with your mind!"
They found the stairs again, climbed up but then everything shifted and they were back at the beginning.
But somehow worse.
Aether's gut twisted at the wrongness that pressed against his skin. The pillars spun too fast, their rings blurring into shapes that hurt to look at.
Blue-white lightning jumped between the metal coils, lighting up the room in sharp flashes.
In the middle, the gravity-machine was hard to see through the warped air. It spun faster and faster until its noise became an unbearable shriek.
The shadows peeled themselves from the walls.
They moved like broken puppets.
The kneeling figure reached for them with jerking hands while the fading one kept breaking apart and reforming over and over.
Another silhouette, one Aether hadn't noticed before, had turned its head to watch them run past.
It smiled.
Then the air erupted with Pressure Claws.
Dozens of them appeared all over the area before rushing down on them. Lyria's Stillness Aura flared once more, so bright it cast actual light as the field covered all three of them and a bit more, creating a sphere of slowed space around them.
The attacks struck the barrier like rain before their momentum began fading as they slowed down. But the pressure blasts were hurled at faster speed, making them gradually begin to move through the aura.
Aether moved with perfect timing.
He stepped smoothly between attacks before they even formed. When a Pressure Claw pushed through the edge of the aura, he just shifted slightly.
The attack missed his shoulder by inches as he lifted his gun and fired.
Each shot hit its mark as blue bolts struck the Pressure Claws one after another. The blasts blew up early, before they could fully take shape. The noise was deafening as the blast wave rolled through.
They kept running as the air warped again and Aether saw the pattern forming. Without thinking, his body moved toward the safe path between the forming attacks.
Does this loop speed up the time of even those attacks?
Three Pressure Claws rushed toward his position simultaneously. But Aether didn't panic as he took one smooth step backward. The attacks crossed through the space he'd just vacated, colliding with each other instead.
The resulting detonation created a clear path forward.
Mila rushed toward the remaining distortions, her blade a blur of blue light as she carved through them.
The sword hacked, chopped and slashed, disrupting the formation of new attacks before they could fully manifest. Her movements were precise, each strike targeting weak points that shouldn't exist in invisible forces.
A Pressure-Tentacle lashed out from the ceiling at Aether's blind spot. But he felt the air move, the slight change in pressure and swiftly bent forward a little.
The tentacle missed his back by inches.
Then without looking back, he raised his firearm over his shoulder and fired. The shot hit where the tentacle connected to the wall and It vanished with a hiss.
Up ahead, the vault door came into view, changed from before. Earlier it had been pushed in, but now it shook and pulsed like it was alive. The edges melted, dripping something strange that pooled on the floor in shapes that hurt to look at.
"Almost there!" Lyria yelled.
They ran the last stretch while chunks of ceiling fell all around them. Aether moved between the falling rocks smoothly, predicting where each piece would land.
But then a huge section of ceiling crashed where he had just been, covering him in its shadow. He simply raised his gun and aimed at the debris falling down on him. Then he pulled the trigger and a blue bolt smashed the debris apart, scattering it as he rushed past.
The pillars made a high-pitched noise as they spun faster. The gravity-machine in the center finally broke down, its grinding getting louder until it suddenly stopped.
The quiet that followed felt worse than the noise and the gravity changed direction.
First they ran along the wall before then upside down on the ceiling and then back to the floor again.
Aether's stomach lurched but he forced himself forward, his body adjusting to each gravitational shift with minimal wasted motion. A grin spread across his face as the chaos, the impossibility of it all was exhilarating for him.
The stairwell appeared ahead.
Lyria reached it first, grabbing the railing and before turning to grasp onto Mila and throwing her through the door. She then held her hand out to Aether who leapt toward her and his fingers closed around her wrist.
Then Lyria kicked off the railing and moved through the door, landing on the chamber floor.
Aether blinked at the yellow and brown hallway in front.
This wasn't the Core Lock Chamber anymore but a new area.
Mila chuckled. "We made it to the Memory Isolation Corridor which is level 3 of the Vault."
"Great." Aether stretched his arm, rolling his shoulder. Even with the insanity that happened back there, it couldn't stop the fun he'd had rushing through it. He then glanced back at the door before saying. "So are the Nightmare Zone loops always that insane?"
"Not really, this vault is on the extreme side." Mila said with a light scratch against her cheek. "It's mostly because there is an extreme amount of magic in the area which led to the eventual growth of this."
"Still we did well to survive. Thanks for the help Lyria and Mila." Aether said with a smile.
They stayed in the white corridor for a moment longer before they continued ahead.