The dungeon of Ingress was relatively quiet on this clear, sunny day. Few adventurers showed interest in venturing into its damp, shadowy depths, when today, the famed Poetaster was performing one of their esteemed concerts. At the heart of the urban sprawl that was the city of Egress, what was typically an expansive empty street had now transformed into a bustling sea of humanity. The throngs gathered eagerly, erupting in cheers and animated conversation, their eyes fixed on the imposing stage at the street's center.
A steady stream of people continued to pour into the city center; impromptu rooftop gatherings were formed on the surrounding buildings, offering an elevated view of the spectacle, and the jubilant crowds below spilled over onto adjacent streets.
The anticipating crowd needed not wait long as, without preamble, a sudden burst of multicoloured light shot upwards from the stage, piercing the sky and instantly captivating the crowd's attention. Within this towering beam of light, countless sparkling projectiles were launched in every direction, erupting into a booming kaleidoscope of brilliant colours. The explosions would send a hearty sound reverberating through the body, shaking one's very core. The crowd recovered from their stupored awe and cheered on the light display; some oohed and awed while many others clapped and whistled on the show.
Then, as abruptly as it began, the lights suspended in the sky as if frozen impossibly in place. The echoes of their boisterous explosions lingered for a few moments longer before gradually fading to silence, along with the crowd.
With a sudden immediate fervour, the entire array of lights hurtled toward the stage with astonishing velocity. Some in the crowd jumped and gasped, a hint of fear fluttering within them. The lights converged and amassed at the center of the stage, accumulating and building, eventually forming the unmistakable outline of a human figure.
Then, in a dramatic climax, the glimmering figure exploded with the deafening blast of a volcanic eruption. Such was its magnitude that the brilliant light washed over the audience in a wave of colour. The force of the blast struck their faces with a gust of multicoloured wind, whipping their hair into an erratic dance. And where the light had once congregated on the stage now stood a living, breathing person.
The entire city erupted in applause at the sight of this miraculous being at the heart of the stage. The figure was tall and sleek, the very picture of health and fitness.
Addressing the enraptured crowd, the being's words resonated crystal-clear, from the haughty nobles in the front-row seats to the humble urchins concealed in the dim alleyways afar, as if the speaker were orating directly into the ear of every individual in attendance. "Everyone watch!"
The person allowed a brief silence to fill the city's air with anticipation, a practiced dramatic flare to accommodate the announcement. "watch and see I, the great Poetaster!"
Once again, the crowd erupted into applause. Poetaster stood center stage for a while and allowed the powerful adoration to flow over; Poetaster took a moment to appreciate the stares, the feelings, the senses that filtered through and fed every fibre of their being. Everyone in this crowd was lending themselves, their time, their energy, their attention; it was all being given to Poetaster.
"Of the entirety of my grand tour, and don't let the other cities know this, but I did look forward to your lovely city of Egress the most!" A deluge of woops and cheers exploded in response, their voices confluxing together as if Egress herself was shouting back with triumphant pride.
Poetaster grinned widely and let the patriotism suffuse the square for a while before with a simple gesture, quelling the raucous crowd. "And yes, I did say that at every city I hosted-" Poetestar spared a calculated pause to insert the audience's laughter, " -But I do genuinely mean it this time. Your city is perhaps the most inspiring and powerful piece of history I could ever imagine."
The sky suddenly darkened, and everyone's attention tunnelled to the only light beaconing at the center stage.
"Long ago, this land we now stand upon used to be one of terror, a dungeon of Ingress they called it! It was the whispered nightmares from parent to child. It was the warnings issued in the cold of night, the fear calling out to stay inside and hide during that first horrifying mogwai war."
Poetaster gingerly cupped their hands before the audience, "Deep within the abyssal recesses of this Dungeon of Ingress, which hath spawned from the seeming nothingness, was an eternal onslaught of mogwai." In Poetaster's hands, a small orb of seeming absolute darkness pulsed rhythmically. As Poetaster mentioned the onslaught, the dark sphere began to bleed a bright shimmering white liquid, which leaked onto the stage, staining a matted glow onto the scene with this impossible phosphorescent light.
"How those wretched beasts made their way from across the ocean in their derelict badlands to the bottom of that miraculous dungeon, you may never know, but nor did any of you care!" Poetaster yelled and stamped down on the stage; the darkness immediately abated; a flourish of the day's light flooded into the city and highlighted each individual citizen with somehow equal honour.
"For while the rest of Trammel ran and hid from this spontaneous terror, it was your ancestors who came to this empty patch of land," With that declaration, the entire city melted away, leaving the stage and audience alone in an empty field. Just between the stage and the audience, a dark, ominous tunnel sunk below into the depths of the land. Those few viewers who once thought they were lucky for getting the front row reservations then apprehensively pulled back as they swore they could see the menacing glows of hungry eyes from within that darkness. "And in this land sickened by feted evil, your ancestors built the defensive fortress of Egress!" As the dark eyes started to slowly crawl outwards, a wall quickly sprouted around the hole, and from there, miraculously, impossibly, an entire settlement began to form before the audience's eyes. It grew up and around, the city encompassing everyone once more, but different. Egress was now small and quaint, militaristic and nothing at all like the bustling metropolis everyone was familiar with. A jarring sensation tugged at the audience's mind, and they couldn't help but stumble about fighting against vertigo as a view that looked down upon the city's totality from a bird's eye fought with their own grounded stance in a dizzying mélange of horizontal and vertical perspectives. They could see both the stage before them through mortal eyes and the city below as some strange omniscient voyeur. Poetaster allowed a brief lull in the soliloquy to allow the crowd to acclimate to this bewildering experience.
Once the crowd steadied, Poetaster resumed with a grandiose declaration, "This inviolable bastion had started out as a wretched warzone!" The wall that had blocked the ominous hole below them on the stage suddenly crumbled, and out forth poured an angry swarm of ravenous mogwai. The crowd broke out into immediate hysteria. Everyone jostled and pushed each other to escape their attackers. Panic grew as hungry razor claws pierced through stone with every malicious step forward. As the first beast approached the crowd poised to claim its prey, a sparkling bolt of prismatic force blasted straight through the mogwai, killing it instantly. Poetaster's voice boomed out, piercing through the crowd's veil of fear, "As a warrior's stand!"
That first bolt had been merely a declaration of will, as soon after, Poetaster leapt off the stage and unleashed an unrelenting assault of luminescent violence. The mogwai turned to face the clear priority target, but each foe was felled. Poetaster matched the opponents' ferocity and animalistic furor with a contrasting graceful elegance. Each perfect sway of movement was accented with a brilliant spark of mighty force accompanied by the sonic deliverance of death. Poetaster turned the chaotic battle into a mesmerizing ballet. As this silent choreography played, the mogwai thinned, and the audience, bolstered by the ease of retaliation, began to push back inwards, cheering on the show.
"No matter the conniving trickery of those damnable mogwai, humanity would fight back. No army, flank, or threat could ever oppose the unstoppable tenacity of the will of humanity!" With one final blast, the remaining mogwai, feeble and fearful, ran back to the hole whence they came, and the defensive wall rose up once more, segregating it from the crowd.
Poetaster dramatically looked about themselves, drawing attention to the plethora of odd objects left on the ground. "What was once but a military outpost was soon fed fat with the riches of coveted mogwai pelts, glistening horns, and other stranger yet prized resources." Once again, reality bent its will to each word uttered by the great Poetaster, as if that narration was more truth than what even the Tian-Hu had deigned of this land. The audience could do nought more than swallow flies as they gaped in awe at the quickly sprouting merchant metropolis they had grown up with. "It was a new frontier gathering the awe of merchants and ambitious families alike, expanding, building, morphing: Flourishing! Until this humble outpost rivalled even Proselyte as a foundational megalopolis behemoth of our society!"
Then, without sound or fanfare, the audience and stage swept through the streets of Egress, twisting and turning around corners to finally stop before a familiar building. A massive cathedral-esque hall, lavished in great tapestries of heroic figures battling evil. "And from that chaos, a guild was established. A guild that would methodically shape what had once been a daunting cave teeming with inscrutable monstrosities-" Poetaster regaled while hopping back onto the stage, and from stage left, out came a terrifying mogwai. The crowd tensed in worry as they identified the creature: A Papinijuwari, a great ghastly figure that stood on two legs as thick as trees, with muscles practically bulging out of its leathery cerulean skin. It had one gargantuan eye that wrapped around its broad head, which only emphasized the otherworldly inquietude of the thing. This was an enemy of a whole different class than the rabble faced earlier. Still, emboldened by the confidence of Poeataster the crowd stood firm.
Poetaster posed themselves before the mighty monstrosity and charged a familiar bolt of prismatic energy, but whereas before the devastating magic would annihilate all before it, this time the attack fizzled to nothingness halfway to its target. The Papinijuwari roared out with uncontained fury, and the audience fearfully gasped as it swung towards the showman. Poetaster frantically dodged, tripping and tumbling to the ground, somehow still missing the mogwai's deadly fist.
" -into a training ground for fledgling fighters to hone their skills." Poetaster wobbled upwards like a newborn fawn. The Papinijuwari leaped at Poetaster, who clumsily fumbled away, letting the monster crash through the wooden stage, sending splinters and dust flying into the air. Poetaster continued to blunder around the mogwai's attacks, too panicked by the creature's assault to notice the expansive damage to the stage. The audience couldn't help but break into hysteric humour as Poetaster's incompetent fumbling somehow constantly avoided and guided the foe about the stage, destroying any concept of intimidation from the mogwai. Waltzing and weaving through the fight, Poetaster's steps grew confident, and attacks became firmer. However, Poetaster's furtive glances at the crowd's reactions irritably noticed that eyes started lingering primarily on the Papinijuwari. A surprisingly flamboyant strike felled the mogwai and awkwardly cut the scene short.
Regaining the crowd's undivided attention, Poetaster turned and bowed, taking a brief respite to enjoy the applause. Then, the lights rearranged to highlight the guild hall behind Poetaster. "A guild so successful in its endeavours that it expanded out of Egress and became one of the most influential governing bodies in the world. A guild that overfloweth in power and riches, so much so it has expanded even further, beyond the mere lands of Trammel, it has delved into our minds and hearts..." The light ratcheted down to focusing again on Poetaster themself, "and don't think I am simply being flowery with my words because the adventurer guild has so kindly funded my tour." A chorus of laughter broke out from the entertained crowd.
At this moment, Poetaster's excited and mildly frenetic disposition melodramatically sullied. Poetaster's shoulders dropped, and their smile faded. "Unfortunately, I can not, with good conscience, tell you that everything is perfect within the Adventurer's guild." Once more, the sky darkened, the only light left being from that white liquid that had oozed out of the dark orb earlier in the play, which nearly everyone had long forgotten about. Though most were wholly enraptured by the show, those few who stood uncomfortably close to buildings noticed in the dark that their whole surrounding instantaneously snapped back to the town square they had all started in.
"You see their golden goose; you, the city of Egress, have been holding out. The general public doesn't know this yet; the powers-that-be don't want you to know this yet; yet still, I will tell you this: as of late, the seemingly inexhaustible flow of mogwai from the depths of the dungeon of Ingress had begun to dwindle. They simply aren't coming back; their influx no longer a match for the rate at which they are farmed. The worrying theory whispered among the few elites in the know was that whatever source had been sending the mogwai from their badlands to here: stopped." Poeteaster knelt down and whispered conspiratorially, "But I know the truth. I know what really happened."
The entire city, en masse, leaned forward in desperate anticipation of the great Poetaster's coveted answer. Poetaster smiled mischievously, "So let me tell you the story of the Immersion at the bottom of the Dungeon of Ingress."
Poetaster's statement was emphasized with the chime of a bell, and the crowd ubiquitously released a disbelieving gasp. Poetaster's brow furrowed upon hearing the unexpected queue. Poetaster was irked to find that the crowd was not watching the play but instead transfixed on something behind it. Poetaster turned around to be confronted by a strange pink object.
Before Poetaster, there was what seemed to be a small pink rhombus, or it was a rhombus, but its body would reject any stable state. It would shift and transform, shrink and grow, continuously morphing into other shapes. The pink shape finally locked into a form resembling that of a featureless human with only one limb. The arm was outstretched towards Poetaster holding a glowing parchment: It read.
You have been invited to
The Tournament
You are The Flare