Endless Online: Oblivion's Blade

by M. H. Johnson

  A span of mere seconds that felt like endless minutes, and the room was utterly still, save for Solena's ripe chest expanding with each heaving breath, licking a drop of blood off her fingers, ruby red lips curving in a glorious smile. She gave a condescending shake of her head; cold, professional eyes carefully making sure no mercenary was moving, or even capable of moving, though Val knew already that her assault had left no survivors, every single man either headless, or cleaved in twain.

  She then turned to Val, her smile only growing, leaning over to kiss the top of his head, stroking his sweaty hair in passing. "And that, my pet, is what happens to those who dare to cross a Highlord." She gave a satisfied nod, pleased, it seemed, to see her cyborg assistant had resumed his work, not phased at all by the gore and dismembered body parts all around. Nor did the collection of vacant-eyed captives seem bothered in the least, lost in their own blissful paradise or nightmare, Julia among them, completely unfazed even though more than a few were now covered in sprays of crimson, a sharp contrast to their otherwise pristine white skintight outfits.

  Val allowed himself to embrace his odd stupor once more, to dip his psyche into that seductive trance, energies about Solena stronger, more terrible even than when she had first used her strange gifts to compel him back in the computer room. Yet some part of him stood ready, however futile that might be.

  Shadowmind Rank 2 Achieved.- To deceive even in the throws of submission is but one way of cloaking your true self.

  Val shivered, pushing the odd, skittering thought away.

  Solena, practically bouncing on her toes, flounced up to the container filled with gold, and poor Yuri's head. Val shivered in horror as Solena whispered odd words that seemed to crackle through the air, and Yuri's eyes suddenly opened. Poor Yuri, who had already stilled with death was brought to life once more, even as his eyes rolled in unspeakable torment.

  Solenal smiled, forcing his eyes to meet her own.

  "Poor, foolish Yuri. To have come so close to earning a truly grand prize, only to throw it away with treachery at the bitter end. It is a poetic justice, I think. Oh, I knew you were selling secrets. I could taste that deception in your mind. A mind I was perfectly willing to let go, foolish and gullible, rich in treasure and prestige, had you held back on your mad desires, taken the gold and left." Her gaze hardened. "For one avaricious fool is not reason enough for me to betray a sacred oath that has allowed Highlords to make use of mercenaries and specialists no matter their alliance or allegiance, so long as they serve us honorably and well, so long as we pay them in credits or gold!"

  She exchanged glances with the doctor, who nodded, his cybernetic eyes flashing crimson to some unspoken query. "Your betrayal has been duly documented. No agent can ever say I employed in poor faith." Her smile was all teeth. "Do you finally understand the depths of your folly? You have lost everything. Everything you could have ever hoped to have or be, your brain shriveling to oblivion even now. You live on only because I wish it. So that you may eternally taste the bitter fruits of your own folly. YOU did this to yourself, Yuri, and you have only yourself to blame. Blink once if you understand."

  And blink he did. Desperately, frantically, as if hoping for some final surcease, some end to the hideous agony Val sensed screaming forth from his desperate, dying, drowning mind.

  Solena nodded once, gazing back at the cyborg. "It is time, Doctor," she said, gazing at a still madly blinking Yuri with the awfullest of smiles. "Bring me the vessel."

  The cyborg bowed and what looked to be an oblong glass container of clear glass or crystal was presented, filled with yellow-green bubbling slime radiating a constant stream of something that left Val's nerve endings itching with an odd tingle, much as he had felt close to various electrical experiments in science class, a lifetime ago.

  It was then that Val noted the heads bobbing inside.

  All of them possessing bloodshot eyes rolling in hideous pain, faces twitching and writhing, mouthing silent screams.

  Agony without end.

  "Welcome to your new home, Yuri." With that, Solena smiled wide into the horrified face she held, before dropping him unceremoniously into the vat, gazing with pleased satisfaction as the heads bobbed about, Yuri's agonized rictus and frantic ocular gyrations only heightening, and somehow Val could sense the hideous forces now coursing through Yuri, keeping him alive and in a state beyond the simple concept of pain. His every severed nerve now screamed a concert of unending torment, thanks to the unholy energies crackling through that crystalline vat.

  Psionic Perception Rank 1 Achieved - Taste the pain! Just be glad you're not Yuri.

  Arcane Perception Rank 1 Achieved - Synergism between Arcane and Psion fields sensed. It's not easy keeping 'a head' of your competition!

  Solena then turned to Val, chilling smile still in place. "Some might consider it a waste of Elementium and energy, but I find a particular satisfaction in being able to gaze at my enemies writhing and suffering for eternity." She then winked. "It's also a wonderful prize to have on display alongside their confessions when entering negotiations with agents for the use of their tools. It helps to keep things... honest."

  She waved languid fingers in a come hither gesture. "And now it is your turn, my delectable prize. Heed my command, pet. The pain you feel is nothing. Now stand and approach the doctor even now preparing my chattel to be gated through. He will strip you and put on your slimsuit, and you will allow him to do so. Once your chrome plate is in place, I promise you, my prize, you will know only bliss and sweetest agony from this day forward."

  Val felt his heart lurch in his chest, even as he forced himself to rise, showing no sign of the pain he felt, or how odd he found it to hear what almost sounded like tenderness from the vision of beauty and death gazing at him so intently.

  The screams of every man who had died the final night he saw action roared in his skull as he moved tormented legs as freely as he had since the day they had been kissed by flame.

  "Vo ru tak?" (Are the coordinates set?)

  "Aye ko tak." (They will be soon.)

  Val shivered as words formerly incomprehensible seemed to spear his mind, somehow sensing the heart of Solena and the doctor's conversation, words and their meanings both then lodging in his brain.

  Cypher Rank 1 achieved. - It's about time you finally listened!

  Ignoring the strange whispers in his mind, he focused on what mattered. Julia, bleeding tears as she gazed at the world with the most blissful of smiles, closest to the gate. Val stole a glance Solena's way, leaving his mind carefully blank, looking both within and outside himself, his own body a piece he directed and withdrew from, judging the moment, closing on the doctor fiddling with an odd wrist brace on the skinsuit Val was but seconds from donning, the same as that worn by everyone else.

  Now!

  A shout, a roar, stillness that was noise, acting in a motion that was both premeditated yet without thought, a stealth missile striking where no radar could pick up his signal.

  Not until it was too late.

  "Valor? Stop this instant! I command it!"

  A wave of terrible will and fury roaring through the chamber, all the collected boys and girls freezing up in sympathetic obedience. Yet the voice could not touch emptiness, the odd shadow flowing towards the porthole crackling an eldritch violet hue. The closest girl gasped once as she was suddenly in the grip of nothing at all, and Val pulled them both through.

  8

  Endless blackness, as if lost in all the infinities of space. Julia, who he held so tightly, slipping from his grasp in directions he couldn't even begin to fathom.

  Flashes of color, all the hues of the rainbow, every color he had ever seen, and more, so many more. The colors of magic, of possibility, the endless colors that true gold had, elements and forces he had no name for, couldn't even comprehend, washing over and through him, stretching him in ways that would have left him screaming in endless agony, unimaginable ecstasy, if he even had lungs with which to sc
ream.

  But he had nothing.

  He was nothing.

  Just a spark, a single flicker of dying possibility pressing against an impossibly tight fabric, squeezing him against it, crushing him like a trillion trillion other potential particles just on the cusp of existence, about to be forced into white nothingness for eternity.

  He screamed his defiance, his determination, his desperately held hope to exist, to live, to rescue his friend... just to be. Just to exist. Just to take a deep breath and keep on breathing, keep on feeling, experiencing, existing, for so long as he could.

  And he was definitely a he.

  His sex defined.

  Name.

  He blinked eyes not yet formed, barely able to comprehend the question.

  What is your name?

  "Val, Valor Hunter," he said into the blinding light, to that voice that sounded so much like his own.

  Endless silence. If you would be, think of all that you have been, all that you are.

  Somehow, Val realized that his very existence hinged upon willing his own reality, feeling his own inner self, and projecting it. Much to his surprise, after a few seconds of desperate focus, the events of the day, the year before, and all the days he could remember somehow swelled inside him.

  He shivered as symbols formed before him. To say he saw them would be a trick of perception. It was more like he felt those symbols blossoming inside him. Quantified metaphors for his own ephemeral state of being.

  Strength / Vitality / Finesse / Quickness / Perception / Scholarship / Willpower / Charisma / Luck

  It occurred to him in that moment that perhaps this wasn't mimicking any game he had ever played. Perhaps it was the very potency of this universe, its extra fields of reality that were somehow bleeding into the 'vacuum' of lesser dimensions like his own, bringing order and advancement, at least in symbolic form, into a universe that had none.

  He was struck by another wave of horrific dizziness, spinning in directions undefinable and strange. Desperately he focused himself, somehow realizing that he must project himself into that metaphor if he was to have any hope of survival at all.

  Valor Hunter

  Human

  Strength 12 (Your years of rigorous training have left you more muscular than 74% of men your age. Many professional athletes are far more powerfully built, but your frame is compact and you haven't fried your testicles with steroids.)

  Vitality 13 (Genetics and the rigors of combat have allowed you to pull through where lesser men would have succumbed to their injuries. The agony on Earth you already experienced exceeds what a weaker man would have felt before death claimed him at last. Your vitality exceeds 84% of mundanes)

  Finesse 13 (You're good at feeling out your opponent's weaknesses in the bind, pivoting with his shifts in balance. Your balance is excellent, and you are a good marksman, though no sniper. Your natural finesse exceeds 84% of mundanes. Of course, you still can't play the piano for shit, but you knew that already.)

  Val felt strangely chilled at the level of snark he was hearing from what he could only guess was existence itself as he fought for the right to his own being. Or perhaps it was just an echo of his own messed up psyche. So be it, as long as he had a chance to live.

  Quickness 16 (Better quick than dead. Lightning reflexes. More than out-finessing your opponent, for you it is the speed of your blade, reacting to your friends' tells, darting away from their swings before lashing out with your own, that lets you win your matches. And nothing helps a soldier survive the heat of engagement more than shooting first and asking questions later. After all, who can contradict your version of events if everyone else is dead? Your trained reaction time beats 98% of mundanes.)

  Perception 16 (Danger sense, combat intuition, seeing the shitstorm brewing, spotting work contracts disguised as release forms when you're the farthest thing from a lawyer. Spotting that telltale flicker of light and shade that screams 'sniper!' and ducking before your head gets blown clean off, as happened to the man next to you more than once. Your perception rocks, beating 98% of the poor sods who never see death coming. Too bad the same can't be said for your common sense, letting yourself get roped into black-ops there could be no happy ending from. Not even in the movies, Val. Get a clue.)

  Val winced. Definite sarcasm.

  Scholarship 10 (You're as book smart as half of all people, which really isn't saying much. You intuited answers on tests, you sure as heck didn't know it cold. Abstract concepts, unless they involved games, appealed to you as much as turd soup. And it showed. You might have great insights about a subject once you learn the basics, but it took you forever to learn the basics. Quantization brooks no fools, and you will find the learning curve in this realm very steep indeed. Better get studying, Val, and exercise that memory muscle of yours.)

  Willpower 15 (Better than 95% people. Your sense of self better be strong. Right now you're just a blip of potential, struggling for all it's worth to be born. Good thing that when the fury hits, your focus is off the charts. A trillion to one chance you're even registering these quantized blips you call words. Of course you spent the last six months in a pathetic depressed funk, so we'll average you at 15, even if you're strong enough to survive in nothingness for this long.)

  Charisma 9 (Better than 37% percent of people. You didn't date much, but a cheerleader on the rebound fell for you when she actually took the time to get to know you. Your only real experience at a relationship. You never bothered again once you lost her. You have many traits some might find attractive, but they would have to take the effort to get to know you, to make you a part of their lives. You're unassuming, frequently disregarded, and are quickly forgotten. Great traits in an assassin, but if your father didn't already own the business, you'd never break middle management. Only when chaos abounds do you come into your own. You're a strange one, Val. Your charisma could be so much higher. Be the master of your own tale. Have others come to you. It’s time to stop hiding in the shadows.)

  Luck ?? (Don't you get it, Val? It's horrible. In the incarnation just ended, you were a burned, wrecked mess. A soldier you fought beside tried to get you all killed, your mother left you during childhood, your former principal deliberately preempted your scholarship to give to a girl he had seduced on the side, so she wouldn't sue him. She's doing quite well, by the way, as is the principal. Your former NCO is smoking hashish in an exclusive brothel somewhere, and the men who planned the execution of your entire squad are enjoying themselves immensely, as is their sponsor, who is casually considering hunting down and exterminating the rest of your crew who survived that final ambush, civilian identities compromised thanks to your wonderful NCO, and it's only a matter of time before they all end up dead. Everyone except you, because you're basically as dead as dead gets, conservation of matter itself broken when you jumped through that portal you had no business approaching, let alone jumping through. Your luck is beyond horrid.

  Yet you survived half a dozen ambushes and linger on even now, in the forces and fields of quantized space. You matched wits and minds with a Highlord and managed to survive, the only man to insult her and not get cut down by a toy that looks terribly familiar, doesn't it? How many famous playwrights have been inspired by this realm, do you think? And yet you live still. Even now. Your luck is horrid. Your luck is off the charts. You can add to it later, goodness knows you'll need all the luck you can get. But what it is? You'll never know.)

  A cold bolt of apprehension tore through Val, even as he exhilarated with a strange sense of coming into existence.

  This was no dream.

  It was as real as real could be.

  His mind flashed as his own self slowly came into being, becoming aware of other aspects of himself.

  Derived Traits - Directly Modifiable

  Health 10xVit+Str = 142 (You're healthier than the average fool, which is a good thing, because by all rights you should be dead.)

  Survival (Health+(10xlevel)+Luck) = 152+?? (Based off
health and luck and level. That extra knack that lets you keep going, somehow knowing just when to dodge to escape that bullet or shrapnel or swing, even when you should be long dead. Good luck, Val. You're going to need it.)

  Stamina 10xVit+1xStr=142 (Good stamina is vital in any soldier, you and your former comrades frequently hiking many miles to get to your targets.)

  Mana 100 (No sentience not in tune with all fields and forces could come into being from the primordial soup. Therefore, by definition, all potentials must be open to you.)

  Psion 100 (No sentience not in tune with all fields and forces could come into being from the primordial soup. Therefore, by definition, all potentials must be open to you. - Besides, didn't Solena already make it abundantly clear that you were a 'ripe fruit' begging to be plucked and savored? She sure as hell didn't fall for your looks!)

  Derived Traits, Non-directly modifiable

  Base Appearance 10. +0 (9 charisma) +1 (athletic) = +1 to reaction rolls. (Plastic surgery could make this much higher. But it's actually an artificial construct; any spell, even regenerative magics, and you will revert to your genetic ideal. Even without scars, your facial features are only average. However, your athletic frame is appealing to those who prefer a strong mate over a beautiful one. +1 to initial reaction rolls for above average strength, vitality, and stamina.)

  Insight 17 (Profound, and unexpected. Your perception transcends the physical, and more than one teacher who had scoffed at your declarations ended up quietly asking for your sources when the war everyone thought had abated flared up once more. Too bad your scholarship is nothing remarkable. If you had a significant body of knowledge under your belt, you might be a force to be reckoned with, in any field. Instead, all your insights went into surviving as a soldier.)