Endless Online: Oblivion's Blade

by M. H. Johnson

  Skills of Significance

  Shadowmind Rank 2 (You fooled Solena, slipping free of her dominion. The other guy who tried to pull one over on her is now a decapitated head blinking away in a brain vat.)

  Psionic Perception Rank 1

  Arcane Perception Rank 1

  Cypher Rank 1 (Thanks to your aptitude for both psionics and magic, you have a knack for figuring out the meanings behind words without committing to hundreds of hours of language study. In your case, that's a good thing.)

  It was real. This was happening. All of it. It wasn't a strange dream. It wasn't a horrific nightmare. He really had matched wits with a character he never thought to see outside the movies. He really did jump through a portal leading to...this. Mad quarks of potential at the bleeding edge of reality, and even now he was a heartbeat away from slipping into the yawning chasm of oblivion, of dying probabilities that he sensed closing in on him even now.

  It was a herculean effort, reaching for that brilliant light that seemed to be fading ever faster. Dizziness unlike anything he had ever experienced before washed over him, through him, as the impenetrable fabric he was pressed against enveloped him entirely.

  Terrified eyes opened to milky whiteness. Val tried to breath, only to find liquid, not air entering his lungs, coughing, choking, terrified of death after struggling so furiously to live, hands pressed against something clear, solid, blinding light above... his lungs burning with panic... desperate to smash through the ice above when strange grinding filled his senses, reverberating through him as the crystalline slab atop of him finally slid off with a crash, Val lurching up, coughing, wheezing, gasping, blinking in furious disbelief and wonder at the sight before him.

  9

  He was in a chamber. He could see that immediately. Vast, made of what looked to be shimmering rose quartz, he nevertheless had a sense that he was underground for all that the ceiling, covered with strange, darker tinted hieroglyphics, sparkled as if from sunlight above.

  Wheezing, he lowered his head, beholding four individuals staring at him with equal amazement, their expressions frozen in states between horror and awe.

  The smallest was almost gnomelike with short, silver-white curls sprouting wildly from his head, a man in desperate need of a comb. With bushy black brows and a pointed nose, he wore an expression of horrified disbelief. In his hands he held a strange silvery gold contraption beeping even now. Val saw both sword and blaster strapped to his waist. The gnome wore an odd shimmering lab coat, and Val immediately wondered if it was armored somehow. He could all but sense the strange silvery strands of energy emanating from it.

  The normal sized man beside him frowned, and Val couldn't help but blink in wonder, those handsome features strangely familiar. Val could all but imagine the explorer's roguish smile when he wasn't glaring. "Gregor?"

  "Yes, Captain?" said the smaller man, Val shivering as the worlds rang perfectly in his ears, taking only a second to register, and then it was as if he knew them as well as the introductory Spanish vocabulary he had struggled to memorize years ago. No, more than that, he understood the strange, melodious language, some cross between French and Mandarin he was sure, as if he had known it all his life.

  "All those tomes and chips you had me spring for, tracking down this ancient trove, do you remember what you had told me?"

  The smaller man's brows furrowed in consternation. "That it had been lost to time."

  The man smirked, eyes all but flashing with mirth, for all that he held what Val was dead certain was a blaster pointed at Val's own chest, with sword hilt and a buckler at his hip, the latter translucent as if made of tough polycarbonate. He wore what looked for all the world like a bomber jacket decked in shimmering plates of what Val could only assume was some sort of protective alloy. "This tomb here doesn't appear to be nearly as empty as it had just moments ago. Strange, that."

  "Damn strange," nodded a massive man nearly seven feet tall, wearing a shimmering suit of plates, larger and thicker than his companion's, a crystalline helmet upon his skull, one grey eye peering curiously at Val, the other clearly a cybernetic implant, glowing like an angry red coal as the lens dilated slightly. In his hands he held a massive blaster that gave off a constant hum, and Val could all but feel the strange currents emanating from it. He had no doubt that it could blast him to a crisp. Val didn't even see the reason for the sword strapped to his back with such a large weapon already in his hands. "Just popped up out of that vat of Silbion, Captain."

  The captain frowned. "That priceless vat of Silbion worth a vast fortune, or, in our cases, an exclusive pardon."

  Val frowned at that, feeling more confused by the moment, before his eyes fell upon the final member of their group. Long silver-blond hair framed delicate, almost elfin features, and Val caught only a glimpse of the shimmering silver weave snug against generous curves, flowing down to her colt-like calves before he was arrested by her piercing violet gaze. Exotic, beautiful, and oddly familiar. He lurched in his vat, overwhelmed by the sense of pain and potency washing over him as her very psyche seemed to reach out, questing tentatively for the strands of his mind.

  Instinctively he flinched his psyche as well as his body, probing tendrils of curious thought that had come so close to peering into his confused and vulnerable mind suddenly blocked by massive black walls of shadow and death, recollections of terrified eyes and desperate screams. Echoes of times long past, when he had been nothing and no one at all as he stalked prey that could, it seemed, sometimes feel the eyes burning into the back of their heads, unless those eyes belonged to a gaze as benign and impersonal as night itself. Everywhere and nowhere. In that moment all intention would be carefully and perfectly shut off, until the very instant it was time to strike and he would come to himself in a blinding flash of planning and fury before fading back into the night, once the deed was done.

  The young woman whose name was Elise, once an aspiring student of strange arts who had been betrayed in the worst ways possible furrowed her brows, and Val wondered how much she had read of him, just as he had read of her before he had slammed down his darkest sense of self, tearing his gaze away from her own.

  "His mind is closed, Captain."

  The roguish looking treasure hunter frowned. "I know your talents, Elise. How is that even possible?"

  She sighed and shook her head, right hand dancing upon the hilt of what looked to be a migration era sword strapped to the swell of her hip, Val careful not to look her in the eyes a second time. "I don't know, Sten, why don't you ask him? He understands us, I know that much, just as I know he's only existed from the time we entered this chamber."

  Val himself lurched back and shuddered at those words. The way they looked at him. As if he weren't even a man, but rather just a thing. As if what had struggled so fiercely to emerge into reality, surviving the vat whose silver-blue liquids ran down his naked form even now, was not a man so much as a freak accident of creation. The frantic struggle and kidnapping he had fled from, his desperate struggle to rescue Julia, whose very soul seemed to have been pulled from his grip the moment he had jumped through, the twenty years of his action-packed and far too violent life... all of it suddenly no more real than a dream. Reflections of memories that had never been. Memories of a world that had never been.

  "No," he said, his first word ever spoken. "You're wrong. I'm real, I'm as real as anyone!" He lurched to prop himself out of the vat, trembling as he tried to free himself, four pairs of dispassionate eyes leaving him as flustered and shaken as he had ever been. Now he was desperate to slide out of the vat, as if he could pull himself wholecloth into existence, becoming every bit as real as he desperately strove to be. "I did not die," he said, voice rising to a shout. "I did not die!"

  A sudden lurch that turned to a slip. "Don't spill that!" cried the panicked gnome. "That vat's worth a fortune!" The strange substance Val had been immersed in left his hands slippery, his feet finding little purchase as he strove to escape the vat that he real
ized to his horror was actually a sarcophagus, eventually collapsing to the ground in a heap.

  He hissed in sudden pain, bruised, shaken, utterly confused. -1 temporary damage to health. Val grimaced, shaking away the odd voice in his head, so strangely like his own.

  The massive giant bent down. Val shrank back, before seeing the hand lowered in a gesture as old as time, the massive face gazing so fixedly into Val's own before brilliant white teeth shown not in a grimace, but rather a smile. "You look confused and green as a new recruit, kid. I don't suppose you have a name?"

  Val blinked, swallowed, realizing so much rode on those words alone.

  To give the truth to unknown strangers in a world not his own, with enemies who might or might not be in a position to track him down, might be the height of folly. But for some reason he couldn't quite define, he felt that now, at this metaphoric moment of his birth, nothing was more powerful than the truth. "My name is Val. Valor Hunter. Forgive me if I seem confused." He swallowed, forcing himself to say it. "Because, you see, this world... well, I don't think it's my own."

  The exotic beauty gave a solemn nod. "He speaks the truth, Sten. He left his mind purposefully open, I think, so I could see it for myself. He is a babe in the water and utterly out of his depth. If we leave him here, it would be like leaving a child to die."

  Sten furrowed his brow even as the giant's human eye widened in odd sympathy. "If that's the case, then how does he know our language?" Sten asked, even as Halvar - that's his name - snapped free a cloak of odd mesh and fastened it around Val's shoulders. Val nodded his sincere thanks, only then gasping and stepping back in wonder.

  "Well, Valor?" Sten asked, his voice curt. "If you truly are this babe in the woods, how is it that you speak as fluently as anyone from the most cosmopolitan of worlds? How were you able to block Elise's probe? And why, by Talon's silver scales, are you dancing a jig?"

  Val's grin was infectious. He beamed with his whole heart. "Because I can walk! I can dance! By heaven's grace, I'm not in pain!" For some reason this cause Elise's cool gaze to soften into something strangely gentle, sensual lips curving into a grin.

  "What do you remember?" Elise asked.

  Val swallowed, stilled, lowering his gaze, suddenly afraid.

  A heartbeat of warmth now replaced by growing tension as Val floundered, desperate to say what he could without being caught by Elise, who might feel nothing but sympathy if he told her the truth, assuming he wasn't being led down a primrose path, a trap only moments from being sprung.

  "I was almost kidnapped," he said at last, before the tension turned palpable. "There was a group of people determined to kidnap us. To enslave us." All of which was true. "I was desperate to escape. There was a doorway before me made of crystal, obsidian, and crackling blue light. Within it was a terrible storm of lightning, and, well, nothingness." He swallowed, gazing down at his own trembling hands. "I... I knew I might be risking my own death, but anything was better than to face what they were going to do to us. Controlling our very bodies..." he snapped his head up, catching Elise's unguarded gaze, windows to the soul, and he had a sudden flash of the horrors she had endured. He lowered his eyes, grateful his hunch was correct, yet feeling horrid for what he had seen, for so stealing Elise's own privacy. But he had to know, had to know before he laid his own soul bear, put his own psyche at risk before strangers.

  "Valor!" Sten snapped, somehow knowing Val had seen something in her gaze, protecting her as a good leader should.

  "That's not all," Val rushed on to say. "They weren't just going to kidnap our bodies. They were getting ready to enslave our very minds." He swallowed. "So we would be their slaves. Forever. Body and soul."

  Dead silence filled the room. Val forced himself to raise his eyes, meeting Elise's angry gaze with his own, hiding nothing.

  Her angry glare turned to horror. She hissed, shaking her head, looked at anyone but him.

  "Elise!" Sten's voice was curt. "What the hell is going on?"

  "Darklords," she whispered. "They found a virgin planet to harvest. Val has the gift, as did a dozen others in that room." She trembled, swallowing. "They weren't harvesting them as forced disciples." She clenched her eyes, shaking her head. Val was chilled to see silvery tears leak from her eyes. "They were harvesting them as chattel. Mindslaves. To be squeezed of every last drop of Psion potential, forced to endure sweetest agony that devours them from the inside out. In a few short years, their bodies and minds will become shriveled husks with nothing left to give."

  The gnome hissed, lurching back, gazing at Val with an odd mixture of horror and pity. Halvar' lips hardened into an angry line, even as he shook his head. "Bastards."

  Sten's own gaze hardened. He shook his head, though whether in pity or disgust, Val wasn't sure. Perhaps it was a mixture of both. "How is that even possible? One thing I know is that Highlords are damn careful not to break their own carefully forged accords. It's the only thing keeping the peace. Their administrators send their cut up to the ships, they hire mercenaries to protect their interests, then spend all their time doing whatever it is Highlords do, not bothering with the peons under their thumb save for personal amusements, so long as they get their monthly tithe." He frowned. "Risking a panic, stirring up an entire world's populace harvesting citizens when they already achieved their much vaunted stability makes no sense." He shrugged. "We all know they find ways to pluck undesirables from the shadows, people no one is likely to miss, but so many with Psion potential harvested not to be initiates, but forced to become mindslaves? How is that even possible?"

  Elise flashed a bleak smile. "The answer is simple, Captain. Pierce the veil. Find a world where no accords or formal treaties were ever forged. Then you can harvest to your heart's content and no one is likely to say anything, the planets under their rule just grateful that their own citizens have been spared."

  Halvar frowned. "No one can actually pierce the veil, Elise. We know we live in a multiverse because the forces and fields that make up reality demand it. But it can only ever be a theory."

  Elise flashed a bitter smile. "Actually you're in error, my friend. Remember, I was a quantum mathematician before my... talent fully blossomed, and life dealt me the hand it had. It is true we could never pierce the veil and engage another reality with the same forces and fields as we have. But we could, in fact, pierce the veil and peer into a universe with fewer. And if enough power is applied, we could change that realm forever."

  "Impossible!" Halvar scoffed. "Such a strange place wouldn't be stable at all. It wouldn't be anything like reality as we understand it. I doubt matter and energy would even be the same."

  Elise glared at the larger man. "The equations don't lie, Halvar, even if it is only theory. There are risks, grave and terrible. I don't like the idea of fools actually trying to breach it any more than you do!"

  "Enough!" Sten snapped. "We can theorycraft when we are done here. For now? We have a crypt to plunder, and we have to decide what to do with the boy here." He took a deep breath, gazing at Val. "Another lost puppy." He sighed. "Alright, kid, I'll offer you a standard contract. Elise will oathbind you if you accept. In return for getting you out of here, providing food, shelter, and orientation into which way is up in this, well, universe of ours... You do have up and down where you come from, yes? Anyway, in return for education and care, you'll intern with us for the next year."

  Elise smirked. "Basically you'll do as your told and learn what you can. We keep the profits of our expeditions, you learn what you need to know in order to survive. And if you impress the captain, you might even get a wage if we keep you on after a year."

  Sten nodded. "Or we'll drop you off at a stable planet and stick around for a couple of days til you get offered a second job contract, making sure you got a roof over your head that isn't too likely to see you robbed." Sten raised his arm as if to shake on it. "So what do you say, lad? Or you can stay here and in all likelihood die of exposure or thirst before you even find your way
to shelter, let alone food and a job."

  You have been offered a Binding Oath. - Oaths and contracts are very much the glue that holds this society together, and with a fallen Darklord to reinforce the point, far more binding than vows dependent upon honor alone. Captain Sten has offered to care for you for one year, should you serve him without pay. Do you accept?"

  Val shivered at the mental prompt he sensed, fearing he was suffering some odd sort of PTSD. Slowly, respectfully, he shook his head. He was more than a little afraid of being abandoned to his fate, but nothing terrified him so much as being psychically bound to any individual or oath. It smelled too much like walking with open eyes into the very trap of obedience and submission he had fought so desperately to escape.

  He swallowed, licking suddenly dry lips. "I'm sorry, Sten, I'm afraid I'm going to have to pass."

  Sten's bemused gaze hardened, the entire room seeming to drop in temperature as everyone's gazes turned indifferent. Did he make the wrong call?"

  "You sure about that, kid? We might be your only hope out of here, but I'm not going to be taken advantage of by loafers, free-riders, or non-bound souls that could stab me in the back and not think twice about it."

  Val's eyes widened. "Why the hell would I stab you in the back? I just woke up from the bleeding edge of oblivion. I could use a friendly face and some company. I sure as heck wouldn't betray it!"

  But Sten had already tuned him out, his voice clipped and cold. "Halvar, get the flasks ready. Assist Gregor in draining the second vat, assuming no other bodies spring up at us today."

  Halvar gave a crisp nod. "You got it, Captain."