Neon Gaze Part 2: Frozen
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Xander shattered.
Not into blood. Not into bone.
But into fractal light, pixelated shards scattering through the air, his form frozen in a cascade of broken color. His visor flickered with static, his body caught in a corrupted loop like a VHS tape with bad tracking, replaying the last half-second before his collapse.
Then, something new spawned in.
A shape slithered from the hungry dark.
The Medusa with the Neon Gaze.
Not woman. Not serpent. A digital ghost bound in arcane energy, her movements sharp and flickering, her form trailing glitching afterimages like jpeg artifacts that never fully aligned. Her hair was a crown of writhing hyperlight-serpents, each strand a shifting line of jagged, violet plasma.
She had no pupils. Just a pure rainbow of neon light—a humming, hypnotic glow that drenched the air around her.
Lazul’s necrocrafted arm twitched, whispering old duels into her bones. The ruins pulsed, walls shifting in and out of focus, but she didn’t dare move.
The Medusa spoke, and her voice was a thousand voices at once.
"Your pack mule was careless."
The way she said it wasn’t cruel. Just matter-of-fact, like a system log reporting an error.
"Now he belongs to the ruins."
The Medusa lifted a hand, and in an instant—Xander was there again.
Standing beside her. His face unreadable, his body flickering in sync with the neon ghosts frozen in the dungeon walls.
He turned toward Lazul and Orrin, visor burning with arcane glyphs, and said:
"She showed me something.
"And she’s right."
The Dungeon Remembers
Orrin moved first.
His keytar hummed to life, fingers flying across enchanted keys. A pulse of sound rippled outward, distorting the air like heatwaves.
The dungeon shuddered. The neon afterimages staggered, desynced for a breath—just long enough for Lazul to move.
She dove forward, her necrocrafted arm flaring with violet runes, sword flashing upward—
But the Medusa was already gone.
A blur of light, a distortion in space. She reloaded somewhere else, shifting with the ruins like an untouchable phantasm.
Lazul skidded to a stop. Too fast.
A low hum rose from the walls. The dungeon was reacting.
And Xander was still standing there.
Not moving. Not speaking.
His arcane visor flickered, glowing with something deep, ancient, and wrong.
Orrin gritted his teeth. His music had broken enchantments before, but this was different. The dungeon’s magic didn’t just trap people—it downloaded them.
And Xander wasn’t just frozen.
He was syncing.
Break the Loop
"Don’t listen to her!" Lazul shouted, stepping toward him.
Xander tilted his head, slow and unnatural.
"You don’t understand," he said. His voice had an echo now, layered in distortion. Like a voice speaking from behind a screen.
"She’s protecting something. She’s keeping something out."
Lazul glanced at the Medusa, still hovering at the edge of the neon dark, watching.
"Keeping what out?" Orrin demanded, still keeping a bass rhythm on his keytar.
Xander didn’t answer.
The Medusa’s glow pulsed brighter, bathing the dungeon in violet and cerulean. Her serpents slithered through the air like light-trails, splitting and multiplying in impossible patterns.
"You think yourselves thieves," she said. "Heroes. Adventurers."
She gestured, and the walls came alive.
Defragmented afterimages flared, revealing every lost soul that had walked these corridors before.
Knights in flickering, pixelated armor, their blades frozen mid-swing. Sorcerers with glowing hands, their mouths parted in silent spells that would never finish. A cleric reaching toward a crumbling sigil, his form repeating the same half-second, over and over.
All trapped in the dungeon’s memory.
Orrin’s hands hovered over the keys. He met Lazul’s eyes.
"If she traps memories…" he said slowly.
Lazul’s grip tightened on her sword.
"Then we cut her out of the song."
The Escape Attempt
Xander blinked, his visor flickering. Something was still left of him.
Orrin twisted a dial on his keytar, switching to a new frequency. A binaural pulse rippled through the dungeon, a sound like two broken melodies clashing in perfect concert.
The ruins glitched.
A knight’s afterimage skipped a beat.
The Medusa’s serpents staggered.
And in that sliver of a moment—
Lazul grabbed Xander and pulled him through.
For half a second, his body lagged, caught between two layers of reality. Then, with a surge of dark purple haze—
He snapped back into place.
Gasped.
Stumbled forward, clutching his head. "Ow."
But there was no time to celebrate.
The Medusa flickered. Then snapped into focus, her gaze burning brighter.
"You do not break the cycle."
The walls rippled. The dungeon screamed.
Everything went white.
