“How are we going to get out of here?” asked Kale.
“Bendi knows, Bendi called for help, back through tunnel behind throne, shortcut to the outside, come follow,” Bendi said showing us a shortcut out of the palace. We were back in the open when an airship that looked like a giant metal bus fused with a hot air ballon appeared above us. Jace smiled, “that’s our ride home.”
Chapter 28
The airship approached us slowly landing on the snow covered ground. Even though I was a genuine Cryomancer I still felt cold standing around waiting in the thin air that surrounded me. The airship ran on magical energy. A pilot sat plugged in like a battery to the main console. His name was Galen, though occasionally he went by Gale, and he was the last member of the Five and the only one I had not met.
“Have you heard anything from Croon?” Jace asked as we entered the airship.
Galen looked at him with regret, “they were wiped out, the entire army, I got there as quickly as I could but I couldn’t find any survivors,” he said. Jace and Ariane sat back in their seats made of leather. Ariane began to cry and Jace placed his arm around her. Kale and Ethan sat in the back while Bendi climbed up near Galen. I took my seat beside Jace and felt the airship shake as we took off surrounded by a cloud of steam.
Galen made a few comments about how all of the Trolls in the area that had sworn allegiance to the king had turned to stone. There were a few others, trolls that swore allegiance to no one that still wandered about but they were few and far between. The Troll king had made deals with all of his minions when they swore allegiance to him. He had tethered their live’s to his own so that he could stay alive. It would have worked back in the palace too but between Bendi’s attack and my own we drained his health too fast for him to regenerate. Galen congratulated us on our victory and told us that Croon would have been proud.
In several hours time we were leaving the Valley of Decay high above the clouds. I could see huge winged beasts flying outside my window.
“What are the gates?” I asked.
“The gates are how many of the different species got to this world,” said Galen, “to be more exact, we aren’t sure who built them or why, they are also how humans came to this world. We were running, fleeing Earth and we found a rift, a gate in space, we took several of our starships through and came out here crashing on this world 200 years ago,” he finished.
“So the gates have been brining different species to this world for thousands of years, opening and closing, and yet no one knows why?” I asked.
“That’s about right, the gates are a mystery but they are the reason why so many species exist on this world, more than you’d expect but you’ll understand that when we reach Arcadia, Croon filled me in about you in one of our messages, I know you are new here, which means a lot of people are going to be going after you, especially if they here what you did to the Troll king,” Galen said uneasy.
“What do you mean, shouldn’t people be happy the Troll king is dead?” I asked.
“You would think but it was his crystal throne that kept the Valley separated from the rest of Eda, it was kind of a magic force field and now that he’s dead the power he was using to keep it charged is gone and many of the monsters here will be trying to escape, I guess that’s good business for adventurers and guilds like ours but many are going to blame you, us, for that,” Galen said, “by the way I would like to officially invite you to join the Five’s Guild, also known as the Five’s army, we’re a relatively small adventurer group now but we’ll have our numbers back up in no time, in the meantime we have a base camp in Arcadia and the Hub that you can use at your disposal, we just require that you share loot with us and help us in times of need, more of the same of what you have been doing,” he finished.
“I’m not sure what to say, I’m not sure I accept,” I said. I was flattered they had invited me to join their guild, well, what was left of it, but at the same time I was still focused on finding a way home. I could probably use them to get me where I wanted to go but that felt like cheating. They owed me and I owed them. If the Troll king was a player than that meant there were others out there and if I helped the Five, if I joined their guild I could learn a lot more about this world and feel a bit safer at the same time.
“I’m honestly trying to get home, I need to make my way to Arcadia and see the witch,” I said.
“I understand, take some time, you can give me your answer after we reach Arcadia and you’ve had some time to settle in, till then we will consider you an affiliate member and you are welcome to use our resources in Arcadia, just no access to our vault or weapons,” Gale finished.
“How many guilds are there?” I asked.
“Different guilds for different things, farther North you go the more you see, here in Arcadia there are three types; the adventurers like us who loot dungeons and take on missions for commoners, than there are the smithing and weapons guilds who loot only firearms and technology, and the third type in Arcadia are the Merchants who do all the trading and own most all the shops. As far as how many there are there are hundreds, some have as little as one or two members while guilds like ours can be made up of hundreds,” Gale explained.
Just then I could see below the clouds what looked like a massive starship sunk into the coastline half buried underwater with parts of it stuck on land. “Welcome to Arcadia,” Gale said smiling.
We descended into Arcadia, which was actually a village surrounded by a metal wall tucked between the hull of the starship and water. Homes and businesses were made of small metal and wooden buildings along the coast inside the wall. I could see dozens of ships both large and small in the harbor. Some of them looked like they were straight out of the 1800s with masts and sails while others were steamboats and a few looked like Navy destroyers that had been bludgeoned to hell and back. We landed in an small airstrip on the side of town where we were greeted by members of the Five’s guild who were stationed in the area. They were kind to say the least offering all of us food and medical attention the moment we set foot on the ground.
They took a look at Ethan and were amazed at how Ariane was keeping him alive with her own magic draining little by little at a time. They gave her a belt filled with potions. She couldn’t cast any spectacular spells or let her mana drain past 10 anymore but she was more than capable of holding her own without it. The potions would be an extra precaution she had already sent word for. She cared for Ethan and that was obvious. He was once her student after all but there seemed to be more there. They were family. She had been devastated by the fact that she had left him alone for so long and I could see it in her eyes; she was never going to leave him alone again. Ethan might have been undead but the more he lived in our world the more he was himself again and again.
Jace and Gale went straight to the guild office’s. The battle in the valley had cost the lives of hundreds of guild members and their families would have to be notified. There was also a serious amount of paperwork to be done about all of the loot that had been lost as well as Molto’s betrayal and of course Croon’s death.
Kale handed me a white owl mask to wear around town and told me to wear my hood up. Already word was spreading of a newcomer to Eda who had woken up from one of the old starships and it would be wise to not draw attention to myself.
Bendi led me slowly outside the Five’s HQ as we passed several different shops selling fish, fruits, herbs, swords, and more. The entire village of Arcadia was one giant market. The streets were filled with people carrying different sets of gear. Some were human, some had animal like features. Others looked like orcs or aliens. It was nothing like what I expected. I thought Arcadia would be just like any other fantasy village. This was more like a small city on an alien frontier. When we reached the center of the town there stood a giant statue. A stone monument that stood in resemblance of the tree of life. Below it stood an inscription that detailed the first war in heaven that took place after an end of the w
orld event called Ragnorak, a time before humanity in which all of the heavenly bodies had gone to war. The story went on to tell how the angels pushed back the daemons to another realm and created the Earth, humanity and how before long the daemons came back and the second war in heaven began. The statue detailed the destruction of three different realms because of the daemons and the creation of the gates to save the species of those realms. Eda was depicted as a seed of the great tree of life existing on its own.
“The witch waits for us,” Bendi said grabbing my attention and pulling me along. As we approached the witch’s home, a small wooden house set between a sushi bar and a rare antique shop my B.U.I. Indicated that my quest had been complete and I leveled up to 40 as several side quests indicated that they had been completed as well such as escaping the girl in the underground, flying a dropship, and exploring the derelict vault.
I walked inside the small home and saw an older woman wearing a black cloak sitting next to a tea kettle in the middle of the room. She looked at me and smiled as Bendi went over towards her. Bendi touched her hand and began to merge with the woman who became young. She looked no older than I was with pale skin, and hair that came down her shoulders, shaved on the sides with blue highlights. She had blue eyes that looked like they were glowing, they may have been augmented in some way. She was also wearing a raptor claw around her neck. In shock I picked up my rifle and pointed it at her. I was ready to fire when she began speaking, “Bendi was always a part of me, now Bendi has returned home, thank you for brining my familiar back to me, would you like some tea?” she asked. I let my rifle down by my side again and sat across from her.
A part of me wanted to cry when Bendi disappeared. It had been with me since the beginning and now it was gone. Snuffed up and made part of this woman I had never met. I was angry, terrified, but if she had answers, if she could help get me home, I knew I had to listen.
Chapter 29
“First let me introduce myself, my name is Vee, and I have been fighting this war against the daemons for a very long time,” she began, “for over 250 years in fact, before even coming into this world, this place you call Eda, I think you know it by another name in your world, though I’m not sure how you managed to come here,” Vee said.
“I’m not sure how I came here either to be honest, I’m trying to get back,” I said.
“Interesting, you see, this virtual world is our ark, yet somehow you and several others have started appearing here along with daemons like the ones we had been trying to escape.”
“How have you been trying to escape? What does that mean?”
“200 years ago we were fighting a losing war on our Earth, we built a ship, a starship as a last ditch effort to escape and created a virtual world, this world using a device known as the Protoss Engine, a quantum calculations system that when connected to a virtual reality device allows the construction of simulated environments containing unprecedented amounts of information directly synthesizing information of the users senses while cutting off feedback from the body. The reason all of this world feels real. All of the information is converted into a signal, including the users own mind. The VR environment becomes indistinguishable from the real world, lights, sounds, smell, touch. There are limits. As you have probably already experienced a user can only respawn so many times, around five give or take, Also the longer you live in this world the more it becomes a part of you. That’s because of the pseudo-signal coming from the outside connection being lost. Theoretically we shouldn’t have that problem but somehow the soul knows,” she paused letting it all sink in.
“So Jace, Ariane, Ethan, they are all real? Yet they don’t respawn like I do , they also don’t talk about the outside world?” I asked.
“They were born into this world, digital constructions of consciousness, ghosts in the machine, NPCs with real artificial intelligence. They are the offspring of humans in the real world who came together here to have families. Born of Eda, born from the engine itself and the convergence of worlds. To us this world is a lie but to them, this is everything,”
“And the Troll king? What was he?” I asked.
“He was a human once who became disconnected, his body probably dead in the real world he lost his sanity and copied his consciousness again and again using the engines magic system losing parts of himself each time,” she answered.
“Why does this world have magic? Why the fantasy setting?”
“That was a weird hiccup, When we came to Eda we found it this way and adapted learning magic on our own. We’re still learning a lot of things here and there but given what happened on our world it wasn’t that much of a stretch,” she answered.
“Are there others like him? Like you? Me?”
“There are several like him but not many, none that pose that much of a threat to the world, least at the moment. There are still a few like me, Croon, he use to go by another name. Michael. He was my brother in the world we came from. Most are like Jace and Ariane, the digital children, conscious constructs. As far as others like yourself I am not sure, I know of one for sure, a few others I think may be from your world in the North but I’m still investigating,” she finished.
“You keep talking about your world?”
“How exactly this world functions is a mystery. It is theorized to be powered by technology from extraterrestrial beings. Here’s the kicker though, this world, all of its inhabitants, you, me, the guilds, the animals, the land itself, its all real. The Protoss Engine moves itself around the barriers that separate parallel worlds that balance one another out. It pierces the veil between one reality and another warping space and time itself creating a singularity. A convergence of worlds. We know it exists in a pocket universe. Something similar to the cloud used by computers and that it can exist with or without the the Protoss Engine itself, ” she paused and drank a sip of her tea, “try some, it really is just like the real thing,” she smiled and continued, “lately things have been spiraling down out of control.
“My world was just like yours until we came under siege by extraterrestrials known as daemons. Some like myself fell into deep comas, others gained special abilities, abilities that broke the laws of physics, when the daemons came they created rifts in our reality and for awhile we were winning. A group of special humans led an attack against the daemons in their own realm and closed the rift, they returned to our world and for a long time we were at war on our planet until the war became too much. That was when we fled, we built our starship and went into stasis uploading our consciousness into the Protoss Engine, into this world. Right now my real body is in stasis on the ‘Promised Dawn’. I believe that our ship went through another rift, possibly a side effect of the Protoss Engine and crashed on your world. I believe that you are a product of an experiment, uploaded into our ship’s Protoss Engine.”
I tried some of the tea. I could feel it burn against my lips.
Chapter 30
I tried to let it all sink in. Not only did their Protoss Engine create a virtual world for them to live inside but it bent time and space and crashed on our Earth. Our world with the closest wave function to their own. “This can’t be real, you have to be kidding me, this is all just a part of the game, like one of those creepypasta stories you find online,” I said. Vee replied, “believe what you want, I’m only trying to help you, I think you know this is real, you can feel it, your connection to the outside world is still very much there.”
She was right. I could feel it. Every so often especially when I was sleeping. I could feel Ellie’s hand clutching my own and I kept dreaming I am laying on a hospital bed, nightmares of a car crash, nightmares of drowning.
“I keep having dreams, no, nightmares where I feel like I’m back in the real world, my body hooked to machines being kept alive on life support and Ellie is standing there holding my hand with tears running down her eyes,” I said.
“If you were in an accident they are probably using our life support t
echnology and the Protoss Engine to keep you alive,” Vee said.
“I was… I was going to meet her for dinner, I was on a bridge,” I said remembering. Painful memories of it all flashed before my eyes. “There was an explosion and I was in my car, I was drowning, there was silence, I trapped in darkness… a stillness all before waking up here.”
“That’s it, you are probably in a coma, that or they have hooked you up inside a stasis pod on our ship. They are using you, probably monitoring you to see what happens inside the game engine,” Vee said. It was the harsh truth and I knew it to be true.
“Is there a way for me to wake up?” I asked.
“Not on your own, no, I’m sorry,” Vee said. She was nearly crying as I stood there taking it all in.
“Where are the daemons coming from?” I asked.
“They are a malfunction inside the Protoss Engine, well, more a drawback to using the engine. They are lost echoes, breaking through and if they become strong enough they will wipe away this world and all the worlds it connects to. Eda is a means to an end. Corrupt it and corrupt everything it touches. The daemons are the nothingness, creatures born of chaos and entropy,” Vee said.
“How do we stop them?”
Vee smiled. She could see I was all in now.
Eda wasn’t just the game Darkness Beyond, it was the first line of defense against the end to the world - - an end to the world that Ellie was alive in, and even if I couldn’t go back…
I have to protect her.
THE END.
Epilogue
Day 60
“Hey feelings are you ok?” Rebecca asked staring towards Ellie.
Glimmer, A Throne of Souls (Convergence Book 1) Page 20
