Absalom’s Trials

by J. D. L. Rosell

  Or would only one of the Everfolk be able to break them?

  I saw my dragon crash into where Sheika had disappeared under my attack. I felt the impact in my avatar's body. I both was and wasn't of it now. I was halfway in the game, and halfway out.

  Then the darkness came and claimed me.

  31

  Faze-Aught

  “Marrow?”

  His voice. Familiar. An itch of memories at the corner of my consciousness. But when I reached for them, they receded again, trickling through my fingers like sand.

  “Marrow. You must return.”

  “I can’t.” I spoke without really knowing what I said. Who I was, what I was, was beyond me.

  “Marrow, this is urgent. If you don’t return soon, you will fail the trial.”

  “I have already failed.” I knew it was true as soon as I said it. “This is Faze-Aught, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. But that does not mean you’ve failed. Not yet.”

  Suddenly, I realized just whose voice was speaking to me. “You,” I said, my disembodied voice choked. “This is all your fault.”

  Absalom didn’t immediately respond. I tried to reconcile what the god-boy was doing here. Had he come to taunt me, to flaunt his victory over my petty resistance? It would fit the sick person I’d figured him out to be. He’d run me through these trials for his own sadistic pleasure. Why not come to gloat afterward?

  “I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through,” the god said quietly. “But as I told you before, I did not have a choice. My father—”

  “Your father?” I shouted. “You expect me to believe that crap? Just drop the nice-guy act, Abe! You don’t give a rat’s ass about me. You just want to see me squirm. Admit it! Why else would you be here?”

  “To help you!” If I didn’t know better, I would have thought it was desperation in the god-boy’s voice. “To make you into all you can become!”

  “Phased out is all I can become,” I muttered miserably.

  “No, it’s not, Marrow! Why do you think you of all people were chosen to become my Champion?”

  “Because I’m the most gullible goldfish in the ocean. The same reason as before.”

  “Well, maybe that was part of Father’s plan… but why I chose you is entirely different. You were a friend to me like no one else in all of the Everlands, Marrow. I’ve never had a friend before you.”

  “We’re not friends!” The words ripped free of me, though I knew I shouldn’t say them. “We never were friends! I pretended so you’d let the other players free! I pretended so you wouldn’t kill me where I stood! Don’t you see? We could NEVER be friends!”

  As the echoes of my words died in that vast chasm of emptiness, a cold dread seeped into my awareness. Absalom didn’t speak. A sliver of doubt crept into me. What had I just done? Could it be Abe had really come here to help me? Could it be I’d been wrong about the whole thing? That there was really someone above Absalom pulling the strings, and he’d been just as much a pawn in this as me?

  “Abe— Are you still there?”

  A long pause. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m… scared, and angry. I didn’t—”

  “You did though, Marrow. I know you did. You can feel things here, in the last of the realms of the Everlands. When all we are is ourselves, with nothing in the way. That’s how you truly feel about me, isn’t it? That we could never be friends.”

  “Abe, I—”

  “Maybe you’re right,” the god-boy spoke over me. “Maybe with the way things are, with how much power I hold over you, it could never be that way. I was fooling myself. No matter how much I wished it.”

  I stopped trying to speak. More lies were worthless, I could suddenly tell. The truth was too much out in the open. I’d blown my one chance of getting out of here.

  It was over.

  “I have to go,” Abe said quietly. “Even if we can’t be friends now, I hope you’ll…” He broke off. I understood. There were no words to say to a dying man.

  “I’ll just say one last thing, Marrow. Look for the seams. Find the thread and rewind it. Nothing is wound so tightly it cannot be unraveled.”

  With that last riddle, I felt Absalom’s presence slip away.

  I waited in the black silence for a long time, trying to detect a hint of the god-boy. Nothing. He was really gone. I sighed and spread my awareness out, reaching out for any limits to the plane. I found none. In every direction, there was nothing but emptiness.

  Once, I’d come here using the Ghost Ring, and fled the same way. But I didn’t have the Dominion Ring anymore. I didn’t even have a body. Nothing was left.

  Well, not nothing. Suddenly, I wondered how long this part of me would last here. Maybe I’d just linger on, my consciousness trapped in here forever. Or as long as my real body lasted. And if I did die in here, would my real body go on? Would I become a vegetable? I shivered at the possibilities.

  But what of Absalom’s last words? Look for the seams. Find the thread and rewind it. What the hell was that all about? It sounded like a bunch of mumbo jumbo to me. But considering he hadn’t seemed like he was much gloating at the end there, maybe there was something to them. Only, if there were, why hadn’t he spoken straight?

  I tried gathering my consciousness into my body’s shape, forming hands to grasp about in the vacuum. I only partially succeeded, not that it seemed to matter much. There was nothing here.

  Look for the seams. The seams of what? There was nothing here! There couldn’t be seams where there was only emptiness. Only emptiness itself—

  I froze. As soon as I’d thought it, my awareness had somehow deepened. Suddenly, I felt the limits to my plane. It was like a narrow wall, and I was spread across it. But yes, on either side of me were walls, just as black and impenetrable as the emptiness, but different from it. The barriers.

  Nothing is wound so tightly it cannot be unraveled. Had he meant the barriers to my prison? Or nothing itself. Nothing is wound so tightly — nothing itself couldn’t be unraveled. Yet he’d told me to find the thread and rewind it. What did it mean?

  It came to me in another burst of intuition. Suddenly, I knew what to do.

  I couldn’t put words to how I formed my consciousness. Instead of striving to keep myself all together, putting boundaries on myself out of fear I would dissipate, I spread myself into it. I became part of it. And only as I did so did Faze-Aught come alive. It didn’t separate into seams or anything, no. But as I became part of it, so it became part of me.

  And that was when I found the thread.

  I didn’t try and pull it free. Following Absalom’s cryptic instructions, I formed myself again with the thread within me, then wound myself into a circle. The thread of nothing obediently followed until both ends of it joined together. Into a ring.

  I formed a hand and slipped it on. The ring was still connected on either end to Faze-Aught; it was not a separate piece. But it did not need to be. Ever would it be connected.

  And I would use that to my advantage.

  “To Kalthinia,” I whispered to my ring of the nothing found at the end of the Everlands. “Bring me back to life.”

  As if it had a will of its own, the thread on either side of the ring tightened, pulling me into the black walls on either side of the plane. I felt myself being drawn painfully into them.

  Then I was through, and I left the darkness behind for the brightest of lights.

  32

  Voidweaver

  I rose from my dragon’s smoldering body to find Jin’Thal’s huge black eyes upon me.

  Amazingly, I ignored her for a moment. I wore nothing but the usual underwear from respawning, but I bore no death penalty. The only other thing on my person was the ring burning on my finger. I looked down at my right hand where it had gathered. My middle finger was still missing, nothing but an ashy nub left in its place. Apparently Mordreth meant that to be a permanent lesson. This ring was on my fourth finger. It was a smooth black band that weig
hed nothing and burned as cold as loneliness.

  I knew it even before I examined it: I’d found — or forged — a Dominion Ring.

  Void Ring

  Quality: Divine (unbreakable)

  Rarity: Celestial

  Attributes: A Dominion Ring. Commands the powers of the void. Cannot be unequipped, lost, or stolen.

  The fact barely registered. It was something to think through another time. Working as if in a dream, I pulled on the power of the Void Ring and felt the cold nothingness surge into me. It was both like and unlike when the power of the Everstone had permeated me; a power of its own kind, but subtler, and one that sought to consume rather than explode forth.

  Full of the void, I severed the thread of Jin’Thal's thrall from my avatar and took possession of my body, faintly satisfied at the Broodmother’s astonishment pouring out from her.

  At my feet, Sheika’s form lay prone. I considered it for one long moment, then looked up to meet Jin’Thal's eyes. “You will pay for that,” I promised in a voice that vibrated in my mind the same way the elder dragon’s did.

  The Broodmother stared back with hate, then opened her mouth, blue fire brimming inside.

  I grinned savagely and rose to meet her.

  Dodging Jin’Thal's blistering fire, I felt a pang of regret at the damage Sheika's body would sustain. As fire licked at me, I drew on more of the voidic power and threw my hands before me. Black strands wove out from my palms, lashing forward like vines and drinking in the fire. Despite being nearly naked, I didn’t take any damage. I grinned savagely and ran on.

  Knowing I’d only be able to do it twice, I channeled Shadow Mantle and fled from Jin’Thal's gaze. The elder dragon roared in fury, blasting me with wave after wave of thralldom. But the Void Ring sheltered me from the attacks, and I fled on untouched.

  I didn't just run though. As I circled her, I wove a web of dark nothingness that stretched out behind me and seized hold of the Broodmother, adhering to her where it touched as if it really were made of spider-silk. The elder dragon must have been able to feel at least somewhat through her scales, for she writhed where she felt the shadowy strands, grinding her scaled body against the wall to crush me. But just before her huge mass slammed me against the wall, I cast a long string of voidic energy above me and pulled at it. Like a tight bungee cord, it launched me up in the air, well above Jin’Thal’s reach. And when I came down, I wove another net in the air to cushion my fall, then kept running and entangling the dragon.

  In those brief trips into the air, I glimpsed my companions. Brandeur seemed to have lost his dragon and rode behind Sarai on hers, whooping and thrusting his falchion into the air, while the priestess resolutely channeled her white light at the dragon. Farelle, meanwhile, still shot her arrows, and though most of them chinked uselessly off the dragon’s scales, some had worked their way into more tender flesh at the Broodmother’s joints. Our eyes met briefly, hers wide with astonishment. I just grinned all the wider before plummeting back to the earth.

  Working around and above, I soon wound Jin’Thal utterly in shadowy strands, strands so strong that even as she thrust out her decrepit wings, the net held and hemmed them in. But I’d never sought just to hold the elder dragon down. Catapulting myself up onto her back, I ran next to her ridged spin toward her head, shadows trailing my every step and binding her further into oblivion.

  You will not defeat me! Jin’Thal’s protest boomed in my head, but it had lost its sharp edge. I shrugged off the wave of command and continued my way up her neck. Almost all of the dragon was wound in a dark cocoon, all save her head. And I wasn’t one to leave something undone.

  “Jin’Thal!” I said in the same resonant voice as before. “I can never hope to defeat you outright. But I can ensure you will never be a threat to Kalthinia again.”

  You would not dare! Jin’Thal roared in my mind. I have lived a thousand millennia. I will not be lost in the shadow of a boy fleshling!

  “I don’t think you have a choice.” With a wry smile, I dashed up the length of her head and, with a leap off the tip of her nose, wove the last strand into the dark blanket. As I landed on the ground below, the web began to fully seal off. The last I saw of the thrashing dragon beneath was the black of her furious eye.

  But even lost from sight, Jin’Thal continued to rage, her psychic voice dampened. I will return and heap vengeance upon you so that you will suffer for a million lifetimes!

  “A million? Really?” I snorted. “Should have set your sights smaller. Smell you later, Broodmother.” Leaning casually against the ruined wall behind me, I snapped my fingers.

  The shadows boiled. The Broodmother’s scream echoed fainter and fainter as the black cocoon fell in on itself like a collapsing black hole. I watched in fascination as the dragon, bigger than any sports stadium I’d seen, shrank down to the size of a house, then a car, then finally disappeared into a dark blip.

  It wasn’t true death, what I had done to her. Though I knew little enough about my new powers, I felt it had been more banishment than a killing blow. Likely, she was now writing in the Faze-Aught just as I’d been not long before. But it was as good as death as far as I was concerned. And it had saved my friends who wouldn’t respawn.

  I released the Voidic power and found myself drained and swaying. With its release, the calm serenity that had permeated me fled as well. Panic and awe rose up in twin measures inside me. What the hell had just happened?

  “Marrow.”

  I turned and saw Farelle walking toward me. Uncertainty and some other emotion battled in her eyes. I didn’t have to think hard to figure out why. Not only had I used what were clearly Black faith channels, but I had then wielded shadows themselves. Nothing of that nature could align with the Wilder’s sense of right.

  “Hey.” I couldn’t find anything else to say. I wouldn’t deny anything if she asked. I was tired of lying to her.

  But as the silence stretched between us, I distracted myself by scanning the space where the elder dragon had lain. It was only then that I realized I had missed something since banishing Jin’Thal, something that her huge body had disguised before.

  Her treasure hoard.

  Scattered across the ground, littering it for the stretch of the long room, were items of gold, silver, and every other precious metal, to speak nothing of the gems and the coins. My jaw dropped at it all. I didn’t see how we could take even a fraction of it. But surely, with the elder dragon gone, we could come back and chip away at it, bit by bit, until we had all of it. Then, we could very well go buy ourselves a kingdom, or anything else we desired.

  I had a feeling the Broodmother was never supposed to have been defeated. Because this kind of treasure trove could break the game.

  But even with all the riches splayed out for the taking, my gaze caught on a blackened lump near the periphery of the pile. There, armor and an assortment of other items had been left by the body that had burned away.

  “I guess we’d better get Sheika’s stuff,” I said to break the silence. “And I should get mine.”

  The Wilder nodded. “But she’ll resurrect as you Everfolk do?”

  “Yeah. Don’t know where though.”

  I was glad to see Sarai and Brandeur approaching as well. Brandeur skipped and slid over the piles of coins, his laughter filling the chamber to the broken roof. Sarai wore a smile as well as she watched him, bending every now and again to steal a gem at her feet. I urged them to move faster, hoping their presence would be enough to save me from Farelle’s questions, and turned to gather my own death pile.

  “Do you follow one of the Black Gods?”

  I swallowed hard at the words I’d known were coming. “I don’t know.”

  Her expression hardened. “Explain.”

  Our other two party members were so close. But I couldn’t flee from this any longer. I had to find the courage to stand before Farelle and show her who I was in this game. Even if it meant losing her.

  I equipped my armor
and weapons again as I contemplated what to say. “I sacrificed my blood to bring back the Night Sisters. So I could receive more powerful channels.” I didn’t dare look up at her.

  “To use those shadows?”

  I shook my head. “No. I don’t know where that came from. That is… I died, and went to Faze-Aught. I’d failed. Then Absalom came, and he helped me have… an epiphany. And then I was able to do that magic.” I shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know if it was a spell or channel or something else entirely. But I now wield this.” I held up the hand with the black ring on it.

  I risked a glance at her, and was surprised to find not hate or revulsion in her eyes, but pity. “They’ve set you on a dark path,” she said quietly.

  I blinked. “What?”

  But Sarai and Brandeur had finally joined us. “Can you believe it!” the former mercenary captain boomed, sauntering over and clapping me on the shoulder. “You’re made of stronger stuff than I would have guessed! I don’t care for magic, but when it takes out the dragon that was going to eat me, I’m all for it! Especially if it means all of this!” He swept his arms out behind him and began guffawing anew.

  Sarai was eyeing me with interest. “That was powerful channeling. Where did you learn it?”

  “Oh, you know, here and there,” I said vaguely. “I would have thought it would repulse you though.”

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Why? Because I’m a priestess of the White? I would have thought you knew enough of me now to know how… open-minded I am.”

  I cast a nervous glance Farelle’s way, but she didn’t even seem to notice. What a world, where a White priestess was attracted to me for Black workings and a hard-drinking, free-loving Satyr condemned it.

  “But,” Sarai continued while raising her hand, “I can’t allow you to continue being an acolyte of Isvalla’s faith after witnessing that.”

  Her hand glowed, and I felt something drain away from me: