Lyris’s Excursion (Anya’s Odyssey 2)
By MagnusMagneto ( https://www.magnusmagneto.com )
Version 1.1
Retouched December 2018
1.) Immediately After Chapter 1 (Anya’s Odyssey)
Lyris stepped into the darkness of the mysterious entryway before her. Upon crossing the threshold, she found that the light from outside did not penetrate the sheet of black obscuring her vision. Confused, she retrieved a flashlight from her pocket and turned it on, but even its artificial beams were useless – the darkness remained ubiquitous.
Lyris heard the stone door behind her rumble again as it descended back down. She considered escaping, but while she hesitated the entrance closed with a crash.
There was no light whatsoever – Lyris was surrounded by total darkness. She had never seen anything like it before. There had always been some form of illumination, be it ever so faint, from natural or artificial means. Most concerning, her flashlight was actually on, it just produced nothing. She reached into her pocket and grabbed her cell-phone. This too, made no light, and Lyris could not see its screen, rendering the device effectively useless.
Fear set in. What would Lyris do? With no other option, she trudged forward with careful, measured steps, careful to not accidentally trip on something in the process – such a misstep could prove fatal in this situation.
Eventually Lyris stumbled upon something at her feet. She reached forward, and her hands instinctively moved towards an item in the darkness. She soon found what felt like… ‘an amulet?’ she thought.
Suddenly, a purple light projected from the mysterious item – the darkness finally gave way, and the room became faintly illuminated. The true shape of the amulet revealed itself to Lyris: A tremendously large violet gemstone lay in its center, connected to a gold chain.
In fact, it was the largest gemstone Lyris had ever seen. Her knees quivered slightly, and chills ran down her spine. Having spent years of her life breaking into museums to steal objects like this, her eyes grew wide with childlike glee at the sight of such a magnificent find. “I can only imagine what that baby is worth…” she mused aloud.
Before acting, Lyris looked around her now-visible surroundings and noted that the room was small, very small. It seemed to be some kind of shrine, but her education on the topic wasn’t nearly as vast as Anya’s, so she could only wager a guess at best.
Lyris saw a series of letters above the amulet’s resting place on the wall above it. A normal person wouldn’t be able to make them out in the dim light, but her enhanced eyesight allowed her to see them clearly. At first, they looked like gibberish: various letters from entirely different alphabets, and even some hieroglyphs. This seemed strange to Lyris, but unlike Anya, she lacked the education to understand the mishmash’s significance.
Lyris continued to stare at the symbols, racking her brain to see if she could find any discernable meaning to them. After ten seconds of intense thought, something happened: in Lyris’s vision, the letters seemed to… move. They shifted and whirled until eventually they spelled out a message in plain English: “She with the Blood of a Goddess, take The Amulet if thou seeketh power. But beware, for The Amulet is one that helps seal The Darkness, remove it only if you are prepared.”
Lyris scratched her head. She had no idea what the message meant about darkness. She guessed that this ‘Darkness’ must have referred to how dark the room was.
“Well… I DO seek power. I’m seeking as much as possible since I have to defend myself from that madwoman Anya. Plus, power is fun. Really fun. That darkness was a bit scary, but I think having more power would be worth it – so long as I can figure out how to get out here. I came this far, so may as well, plus just look at the size of that gem…!” she monologued to herself before grabbing the amulet.
As Lyris grasped the artifact, its light dimmed, and the eerie, impenetrable darkness of the room returned. Fortunately, she had extremely good coordination from her thieving experience, which was enhanced further from the ‘Goddess’s Blood’ she drank a few weeks prior. She clasped the amulet around her neck. To her surprise, despite the hefty gemstone in its center, it felt weightless.
Suddenly, a strange sensation overtook Lyris: she felt, ‘Good. And energetic,’ she concluded. Even better and more energetic than she usually felt. She heard a whisper in her head: a mysterious utterance from an unknown dialect. Despite not knowing what the words meant, Lyris could sense their intent. They were urging her towards action. She concentrated on generating light.
At that moment, the violet light from the amulet returned. And this time, it was brighter than before, better illuminating the room – and it was emitting directly from Lyris’s chest! She glanced down and was shocked to find that the gemstone was inside her chest! She gasped and stumbled backwards before collecting herself. She reached up to feel the gemstone. There was no denying it – the amulet had somehow… fused with her.
What did this mean? What was that voice? Realizing that she had willed the light to turn on, Lyris focused on making the light brighter, and the gemstone did as she willed: fully illuminating the room.
2.)
To Lyris’s surprise, the mysterious words on the wall disappeared.
Thoroughly freaked out with the events that had transpired, Lyris wanted to, ‘get out of this weird shrine thing and figure out what exactly having a gemstone fused into my chest really means.’ She turned around and headed towards the exit. The stone door was still down. Lyris pushed against it to no avail. Then the noise started again: the familiar stone rumbling.
This time however, the door wasn’t moving. Worried, Lyris quickly looked around the room and found… ‘the walls are trembling!’ A few moments passed – slowly, but surely, the walls were moving, caving inward towards the room’s center.
Lyris’s eyes widened. She had seen enough action movies (the very ones that had inspired her to become a thief in the first place) to know what was coming next: the walls were undoubtedly going to cave in, crushing her in the process.
Unsure of what else she could do, Lyris continued to futilely push against the stone door. The walls continued to slowly and ominously close around her. Desperate and frustrated, she ran over to the right-hand wall and shoved against it, trying to preserve her life.
Lyris dug her feet into the ground. Her thick, powerful legs swelled from the effort, reaching trunk-like proportions with thick sinews of definition coating them.
“If only I was stronger!” she yelled out, grunting and groaning with effort as she put everything she had into trying to stop the wall’s slow, deliberate march.
The amulet inside her chest suddenly brightened threefold, illuminating the room and intensifying the pleasant sensation of energy Lyris was feeling. ‘Feels like my muscles are tingling…’ she thought.
The more Lyris pushed, the more the incredible sense of energy welled within her. Was it possible? Was she becoming… stronger? “YES! MORE!” She yelled, “MORE ENERGY! MORE STRENGTH! MORE POWER!”
Despite her efforts, Lyris was still being pushed back by the walls that threatened to take her life. Her focus sharpened, and she pulled internally for more inner strength. The sensation continued to surge, and a moment later, Lyris heard a strange fleshy ripping sound; it was her.
Lyris’s muscles were growing, slowly and surely. She was too preoccupied to see the changes, but she sensed she was becoming stronger. “Have to keep pushing…” she grunted, pulling even more strength from within.
During all of this, the gemstone fused into Lyris’s chest glowed brighter and brighter. Had her eyes not been shut she would have shielded them from the light she was producing.
The sound of muscle fibers ripping and instantly rebuilding themselves intensified. Lyris felt her meaty biceps and deltoids pushing against the rest of her body. The sound of fabric slowly tearing joined the other sounds, creating a symphony of flesh, cloth, and stone, all grinding together.
The entire shrine had transformed into a machine that would test Lyris – either transforming her into a living goddess, or unceremoniously ending her life.
Lyris’s growth continued. The hems of her shorts split open as her trunk-like legs, brimming with new power, required room to breathe. The back of her vest tore apart, as her growing back demanded more fabric to cover it – fabric that didn’t exist. Her arms were comparable to Anya’s, and their thick veins glowed with the same violet color of the gemstone within her bosom.
The wall Lyris pressed against seemed to slow down, though it was still gaining ground. She glanced over her shoulder and found that the other wall was drawing nearer still. She continued to desperately push against the first, culminating in another growth spurt, and the wall slowed down ever so slightly.
‘This isn’t good enough’, she thought, watching the second wall come with an arm’s reach of her, threatening to end her life in a mere few moments. Unsure of what else to do, she placed one hand on the wall she was pushing against, and the other against the second wall.
Her muscles continued to quake, shake, and grow ever larger with each passing moment. Strength was flooding into her, but it still wasn’t enough.
With both walls simultaneously pushing against her, Lyris spread her legs out, which were still flexible despite their musculature, and pressed with all four limbs, two against each wall. Her life on the line, she screamed as she begged – no, demanded- that her body continue to grow and adapt to the task at hand. It did exactly that, and her strength skyrocketed.
Despite these efforts, Lyris was still being slowly crushed, and she had to allow herself to cave in slightly to prevent her bones grinding to dust.
Lyris’s muscles were becoming so immense that the clothing covering her continued to shred and fall off bit by bit. A few seconds later, her back had become so broad, so wide, so ripped, that her vest turned to shreds, gracefully falling to the floor. Her bra followed suit, revealing her tremendous body: An upside-down V of muscle so exaggerated that it looked impossible; lats absurdly wide juxtaposed to her model’s waist; biceps larger than her head next to a face more beautiful than any other living woman.
Between her physique and the gemstone fused in to her chest, Lyris looked more like a comic book character than a real human being.
The walls’ progress slowed down. The grinding sound of stone became less pronounced. Lyris let out another scream, and her shorts fell to shreds to give way to her obscene lower body; her undergarments quickly followed suit. All of the other possessions Lyris brought with her fell likewise.
Fully naked and brimming with more muscle than any normal human being could ever hope to possess, Lyris finally started pushing the walls back. Slowly, the stone yielded to her tremendous strength. After pushing them back as far as her limbs would go, a large clicking noise rang out. The walls had stopped entirely.
With a sigh of relief, Lyris fell to the ground and gathered herself.
Lyris didn’t have long to rest however, as she heard another stone rumbling. Dust fell from the sky, ‘Oh god, now the ceiling is falling!’
The small amount of stone above her was quickly descending. Lyris later posited that by defeating the first trap, she had activated a second one.
Lyris considered attempting escape, but the ceiling gave her no time. She raised her arms up, and stone met her hands. She had hoped that her triumph over the walls would translate to instant success against the falling ceiling, but her hopes proved false. Slowly, the ceiling pushed her down, forcing the blonde onto her knees.
“I need more power!” Lyris shouted. Her muscles slowly grew once more, as ever greater reserves of strength made themselves known to her. The descent of the ceiling was slowing slightly, but she was still losing.
The battle raged on, and Lyris grew stronger just to preserve her own life. If she failed here, if she did not ascend to godhood, then her existence would end.
As the ceiling pressed down against her broad back, Lyris finally mustered the strength to halt its descent. Summoning even greater power, she slowly began to push the stone upward, gradually rising to her feet in the process.
Lyris’s back and quadriceps exploded with new muscles, and a later, she was holding the ceiling in place. But it didn’t stop. There was no clicking sound to indicate that the trap had been defeated. Instead, she had to hold the ceiling in place while moving forward. She alternated the placement while taking deliberate steps toward the door.
After a painstaking process, Lyris finally made it to the front door of the shrine. It was closed, but she refused to allow this obstacle to stand in her way. She lifted her right leg, and with one mighty blow, kicked the stone door wide open with her bare feet.
The entryway finally open, Lyris let go of the ceiling while diving forward through the exit in one swift motion. Behind her, the tremendous stone that threatened her life fell to the ground, sealing the shrine forever.