by P. R. Adams
“He should. We’re the wrong people—”
“You’re hardly the first Outworlders to seek to destroy him.”
“We…” Riyun swallowed. “Did they have…” He nodded at the orb.
“Prophecy, as you like to say, is tricky.”
That was a sobering thought. The old woman’s confidence had been a little more infectious than Riyun had realized. Now, though, she seemed rattled, maybe not even assured of her own words. It was probably the result of seeing Outworlders blessed with the sheen of inevitability given an impossible task. For someone who believed in all the nonsense she was spewing, it had to hurt.
But he had been the one thinking they could just blow this other wizard away. How could he have ever thought that they were assured of victory? “So, this Chaos Abyss? Where is it? Halfway across the world, hidden beyond unclimbable mountains protected by acid-spitting bears?”
“Actually, it isn’t so far from here. If your concern is about time lost, it won’t divert us from the tower by more than a week.”
A week. So much could happen in that time. “And this tower?”
“Another week beyond that, maybe two if the dragons patrol the skies and we’re forced to take a more sheltered path.”
Weeks. How much time was passing in their own world while they wasted weeks in this one? What he would give for an assault-modified Crow aircraft. Some heavy guns, explosive or even depleted uranium rounds—how would the dragons stand up to something that could tear through inches of metal? And he could get anywhere he wanted to be within hours.
But they were looking at weeks. On foot.
He dragged a booted toe across the stone floor. “I’ll get the team ready.”
The old woman straightened, and a satisfied look settled on her scarred face. “I will wait for you at the base of the hidden stairs.”
She hurried out of the chamber with startling energy. It occurred to Riyun that maybe he shouldn’t be so surprised. Had she even been affected by the orb? She had been awake when he came around. It seemed more likely that she had been untouched by the wash of energy that had dropped the rest of them.
Tawod patted Naru on the shoulder, then walked up to Riyun, bright-eyed and steady. “Hey? You’re not serious, right?”
“Serious about following her to this abyss?”
“Yeah. About this whole ‘follow your destiny’ thing.”
“You have something else in mind?”
The young man snorted. “Yes. What you’re talking about is crazy.”
“Naru’s the one who dreamed about it.”
Tawod glanced back at her. “She’s caught up in all of this…” The young man let out a frustrated growl. “It’s a cycle. If this is all being driven by a big computer, and it’s all some sort of structured story, what we’re doing—that’s just feeding the cycle.”
“And you want to…?”
“Break the cycle. There are other ways out of here, right? That Aliat guy found a way out?”
“Maybe. You want to make a run for it?”
“Yes! Look, we’re supposedly protected from this guy and his dragons, right? Because we’re not tough enough to fight him, right? So we make a run for it while they can’t attack us.”
“Did you talk to Naru about this?”
“I asked her some questions.” Tawod twisted around to glance at the hacker, who was busily adjusting her backpack. The way the young man looked at her, it was clear he cared for her. “She says heroes would march off to fight the bad guys. That’s what the software expects, isn’t it? So let’s not be heroes. Screw the software. Let’s be survivors.”
“It’s a good idea, Tawod.”
“But you’re not going to listen to me, are you?”
“I’m listening. And I agree with you. It makes sense.”
“You’ve already made your mind up, though.”
Riyun lowered his voice. “I know you have feelings for her. You don’t want to see anything happen to her.”
“Yeah, well, she’s got a guy back on the other side.” The young man bowed his head. “It’d be different if this were war, you know? But this is just some stupid game. We’re supposed to be looking for this Zabila—”
“We are. We will. But the team comes first.”
“Well, then let’s make a run for it. Find another way out and go.”
“I get what you’re saying. And you’re right.”
“But…?”
“Let’s go to this abyss. Let’s see what’s there. If it’s not what we’re looking for, then we try to find out how Mr. Dachul escaped and make a run for it. Okay?”
Tawod’s jaw clenched tight. “We should make a run for it now.”
“Let’s get a look at this abyss first.”
“You’re letting yourself be manipulated by the game. Beraga is controlling you, and you’re putting us all at risk for no good reason.”
“I’m not going to put anyone at risk unnecessarily. You’re going to have to trust me on that.”
The demolitionist’s eyes darted around the room, taking in the rest of the team. Did he realize no one else would stand against Riyun? “I guess I don’t have a choice.”
Riyun caught Javika watching out of the corner of her eyes. She arched her eyebrows. Was she challenging him? Was she supporting Tawod’s idea that they should make a run for home? Or was there more to it? The orb had just healed Lonar and Symbra. Wasn’t that conditional on them doing as they’d been told?
The absurdity of it hit again at that point: Riyun was letting the game manipulate him, just as Tawod had said.
But there didn’t seem to be any better options. They had become prisoners of fate.
28
After a week, the gentle hills gave way to flatlands broken up by inexplicable outcrops, gulches, and escarpments all of the same black stone. Riyun couldn’t make sense of the topography. There were no rivers to explain the cuts through otherwise level land, and there were no consistent signs of seismic activity to explain the other odd features. Rock formations just randomly appeared to have occurred, and more sensible formations that should have been there apparently never formed. Tarlayn wasn’t surprised by the inconsistencies. In fact, the way she kept glancing toward him, and the team made it seem as if she were gauging their reactions to what they saw.
But it wasn’t just the strange topographical features that made the place feel wrong. The deeper in they marched, the stranger the sunlight behaved. It was late afternoon, but the shadows were as stunted as midday. Winds spun up suddenly, then died just as quickly. There was no consistency to where they came from—one moment from the north, the next from the west, and then they might just burst from the south.
Odd smells accompanied each change, but the worst originated from the direction they were headed—this Chaos Abyss. It was like being downwind of a charnel house. Even when the wind changed direction, the stench lingered, clinging to clothes and leaving a rotten taste at the back of the throat.
And then there was the howling.
Javika scowled as the noise rose up again. “Like babies—tortured and miserable babies.”
It was a pretty good description of the sound. Riyun nodded toward what looked like a butte. “From behind that.”
“Always the same—from a shallow gulley or behind a thick boulder. But there is never anything there.”
“Don’t let it get into your head, but don’t let it lower your defenses either.”
“I always assume the threat is real.”
And with that, the Biwali warrior returned to her scouting. Her dark purple armor shifted to night-black as she jogged away. Slender, long—she was a perfect fit for the blasted land. There was no grass, no brush or trees. No animals moved over the broken surface.
But she could be mistaken for a long shadow, yet another pillar of midnight stone.
Out in the open as he was, Riyun felt exposed and vulnerable, and it left him itching for the relative safety of the temple ruins that w
ere now days behind them. They hadn’t seen dragons—or anything else—for some time, but in the cracked and barren land, there would be no hiding should a threat descend from the sky. It was a tactical nightmare.
He hustled over to Lonar, who now carried his full complement of gear. There was no indication the heavy weapons expert had ever been close to death.
Riyun slowed. “How’s it going?”
The big man smiled. “Never felt better.”
“Better than belly-crawling through tall grass or hoofing it through the jungle?”
“Nothing to hide us on the move, but plenty to get behind in a firefight.”
“I’m not sure we have to worry about a firefight here.” Riyun scanned the strange landscape. It had grown warmer the deeper they’d gone into the peculiar territory, possibly because of the black soil and rocks. He was pretty sure there was something more to it. “At some point, we should spot this abyss.”
“Any idea what it looks like?”
“Just what Tarlayn tells us: some sort of pit, lots of scarred rock walls.”
Lonar shifted the weight of the machine gun. “Sounds like a great vacation spot.”
“Maybe it is…for someone.”
Riyun sidled over to Hirvok. “What’re you thinking?”
“Nothing good.” The sergeant’s face was pinched with concentration. He kicked a rock away, wincing at the loud crack when it careened off a larger rock. “This what you were expecting?”
“I’m getting to the point that I don’t expect anything in this place.”
“Good idea. Seems like whoever designed it wanted to produce a completely foreign experience.”
“Or they couldn’t control things as they expected.”
The sergeant squinted. “Some super-powerful artificial intelligence can’t control how a world forms?”
“There’s no telling what limitations the system was up against. If everything was evolved on some rapid scale like Naru and Quil think, it seems inevitable they would miss some of the developments happening in the background.”
“That’s good to know. That what you three whisper about every night?”
“We talk about a lot. Naru says she thinks this might be an unformed part of the world.”
“What’s that mean—unformed?”
Riyun shrugged. “Like maybe there’s a direct connection from this place to the pocket dimension gateway.”
“Another way out?” Hirvok sounded excited by the prospect.
“Maybe. But not a good one. She said the sort of power that would be passing through the gateway would be destructive.”
“This guy Meriscoya, he gets power from that?”
“Quil thinks it’s possible. He agrees with Naru that it would probably require extreme finesse to navigate through this place without touching the power directly.”
“So these wizards, they’re drawing power from Beraga’s systems? What—his reactors?”
“Indirectly. Those reactors feed whatever creates the magic the wizards use. At least that’s what Naru thinks. But Tarlayn says there’s a component that’s in the wizard, too.”
The sergeant chuckled. “Oh, this is a great mess you got us into, Riyun.”
Riyun held his breath for a moment. “You had your chance to walk away.”
“I should’ve.”
“Maybe you should have.”
“Have you been paying attention? All those settlements we passed?”
“Three cities, two towns, and at least seven villages burned to the ground. I’m paying attention.”
“Then you should know we can’t take this guy on.”
“Command isn’t as easy as you think. Remember that.”
“I’ll remember you said that.”
“I hope you do. For everyone’s sake.”
But Riyun could tell that the message still wasn’t getting through to his second.
The others marched on, each alert and ready. Symbra had gotten over her sudden healing and the fresh patch of skin that was already darkening to match the rest after the first few days of travel. Now she seemed focused once more on improving her soldiering. She watched Riyun constantly, and he imagined he could see her making mental notes. He wasn’t so sure about her learning anything valuable from him, though. Hirvok was right—the decisions that had brought the squad to this place could all be drawn back to one source: their lieutenant.
Those decisions—what other choices could have been made? Not many.
The problem wasn’t taking the case to find Zabila. It was the string of decisions Riyun had made before that, the actions that had left them without job opportunities and forced them down this path. Would a good commander have antagonized a superior officer, especially one as flawed as Kozmut?
It had saved Quil’s life, probably Lonar’s.
And it had meant walking away from tasks that had grown progressively more questionable.
Perhaps Riyun wasn’t an ideal commander, but he was human. That mattered more.
He fell into step beside the pseudo, who had the appearance of one absorbed in study. Riyun cleared his throat. “You have a chance to think about what we discussed?”
The young man blinked. “About the possibility of escaping this world through this Chaos Abyss?”
Riyun glanced back at Naru, who was engaged in what appeared to be a flirtatious chat with Tawod. “Yeah. If this is the way Beraga’s systems connect into the pocket dimension—”
“That is only a theory, Lieutenant.”
“We have anything other than theory in this place?”
Quil glanced furtively at the hacker and scowled. “Nothing but flimsy and weak theories, it would seem. This one, though, troubles me more than others.”
“The idea of escaping through the abyss? Why?”
“The lack of data. The level of jump in the hypothesis. It is less a scientific approach being proposed and more something born of the faith you seem to despise.”
“But what we know—this is the source of his power, and this place is nothing like the land around it—seems to support the idea that this is a gateway. Right? You and Naru agreed on that.”
The pseudo cringed. “It makes a certain sense. But the risks…”
“What risks? That we could get blown to pieces by this energy? We could get blown to pieces by this wizard or his dragons.”
“It’s not just being destroyed. There is also the chance that we could be sucked into some other world.”
Riyun almost stumbled. “What world? I thought this was—”
“Another like this. Perhaps something not quite as safe. Who is to say this is Wholesale Fantasy version 1.0? What if the earlier attempts were too lethal?”
“Earlier attempts…?”
“The development cycle would be rapid; the attempts to create the ideal world would run in parallel. A failed world might be destroyed. It might also be changed, kept as a testing ground.”
What would they test? Something to kill the dragons? “Did you talk to Naru about this?”
“We have discussed the concept. She believes the risk is not that great. But she believes that once a world is instantiated, the amount of power necessary to maintain it would be too great to justify keeping multiple worlds.”
“Doesn’t that make sense?”
“It could. The problem is that it means the reactors are constantly working just to keep this world running. It seems more likely reactors are used to create the gateway to the pocket dimension and to create the world, but the world has permanence.”
“Permanence as in even if the reactor shut down, this world remains?”
“That would be the point of creating something inside the pocket dimension: permanence. It is a universe of its own.”
“So, if they’ve created a whole bunch of worlds as testbeds for ideas…”
“They would exist until destroyed.”
How many worlds would Beraga and his people create? Was there any cost other than the initial
power outlay? Were they creating people and creatures, or were they literally just manipulating natural evolution to arrive at solutions? How could something like a dragon ever evolve? Even with magical energy flowing out of something like this Chaos Abyss, evolution had to make sense. Dragons were nonsensical. They had to have been created specifically for the game.
But there was also the reality that people from his own world were here. Outworlders. Like the innkeeper. The investigators and Zabila. Kozmut’s people—motherless knights.
How many others had come through?
There were so many questions and so few answers. “Just how much fantasy is there in this Wholesale Fantasy? Wizards. Dragons. What else?”
The pseudo closed his silvery eyes for a second. “There is no reason for this sort of thing to be exclusively fantasy.”
“Meaning what?”
“Your lack of awareness of modern entertainment—”
“What passes for entertainment.”
“Yes, of course. The point is, other things have become just as popular as fantasy. There could be stories about mercenaries like us. That has become popular as well.”
“Stories about mercenaries. Popular. When have the entertainment systems even acknowledged—”
Quil brightened. “Ah! Yes, I understand. You think all military engagements have been suppressed from public knowledge.”
“For years now. The only wars I’ve ever heard about as a kid were sanitized versions of the struggle against terrorists. Migra Rutai and their buddies—”
“Many things are changing, Lieutenant. There have been shows—”
“Shows?”
“Scripted interactions and sometimes operations. An entire reality is crafted for the consumer. Popular mercenary groups are tracked months at a time.”
“Real mercenary groups?”
“Yes. Apparently, two have been lost in battle during production.”
Riyun groaned. “Production? You mean when they’re creating these stories, they have people die? And the public accepts this?”
“No. These can be real mercenary groups. The fiction is around what happens when they are not in the field, or when they are getting ready to go into the field. The production is creation of drama. They build tension through romance—” The pseudo glanced at Naru. “—and struggles for command, or sometimes they create storylines to make a character more engaging. From what I have read and seen, they might focus on a family struggling financially or a child hoping to attend university. This puts more emphasis on the decisions made by the group.”
