by Rick Scott
“It’s a bit fuzzy now,” Becky says. “But I remember falling and then Val trying to reach me. I remember feeling like… like I was losing myself. Like something was draining me…and then I found another person I thought could help me. But it turned out to be a Shard Wraith and she killed me. I woke up in that pillar, feeling my life draining from me second by second.”
I wonder if maybe she ran into that same Alexi person that we did. I nearly ask her, but it makes no difference now.
“How long have you been in here?” Aiko asks.
Becky shakes her head. “Feels like a day or so to me.”
I’m hopping around like I have ants in my pants. This sounds important and all, but I can’t afford to lose Gilly again.
“Guys, we don’t have a lot of time left. We really need to go!”
“Please,” Becky says imploringly. “I know you need to save your friend, but there is some really bad stuff happening here. I saw something when I was trapped in the crystal. Something I don’t think is supposed to be here. My friends, they all saw it too. It’s what’s feeding on us. They called it the Other.”
My heartbeat quickens and I’m almost afraid to ask my next question. “You said you saw it? What did it look like?”
Becky grimaces. “Like a demon with black skin and a skull for a head.”
“And a throat made of fire?”
Her big brown eyes shift to me and open wide. “You’ve seen it too?”
I swallow the lump in my throat, trying to keep the images at bay.
“Only he has,” Aiko says. “When we fought the Shadow King again, that’s what it looked like to him. But he saw them elsewhere too.” Aiko looks to me as if for confirmation. “Down in a mine in the real world and once more when he nearly died.”
The whole thing is getting confusing. Is this the place where everyone ends up when they die? Is this the place I saw? But no… it doesn’t seem like it.
“What the heck even is this place?” I say. “And why did you end up here when you died? Why did the Builders even make it? Or did they?”
Becky shrugs. “Dillard once said that everything we see in the game has a function based on the game code. He said this place was built to protect something. Accessible but locked away. Like encryption.”
Aiko nods as her violet eyes light up appreciatively. “Ah, right! I never thought of it like that. But yeah… the platforms and even the jumping quest. It’s like a puzzle.”
“But what’s it protecting?” Val Helena says.
“That, I think.” Becky looks up at the orb again. “Dillard said he doesn’t think it’s supposed to belong in this world. He said that he didn’t even think this entire place was even on Earth.”
My stomach drops through the floor and I get another flashback to Planet Hell. That didn’t seem like Earth either. Did that mean these two places were connected? Are they even one and the same?
“Dillard said that orb is like a dungeon core. Like its heart. He said that if we could ever get out of the crystal and destroy it, it’ll get rid of the Other. Maybe even free us from the labyrinth too.”
I look up at it, heat blinding and oppressive like a sun.
Becky has lost a level!
Becky is now level 16.
Holy crap!
“Becky!” Val Helena shouts and rushes to the Halfling’s side as she stumbles.
“I’m okay,” she says, steadying herself. “They’re going down faster now. The levels….”
I guess that would make sense. The experience point gap between the lower levels are really close. That means she’ll be heading towards Level 0 much faster now. But that won’t be the worst of it.
“If you drop two more levels,” I say. “You won’t be able to raise Gilly.”
That thought scares the heck out of me.
“I understand,” Becky says. “And I’m not forcing you to do anything. But that thing is evil…whatever it is. I could sense its thoughts. It wants to eat us. All of us. It needs to be destroyed.”
Val Helena and Aiko both look to me for an answer.
I check the timer.
7:58
I gaze up at the orb. We could be risking Gilly’s life again by trying to destroy it, but the echoes of Amanda’s screams as she was devoured endlessly by those monsters reverberates in my mind. There were millions of them on that planet. If this place is somehow connected, some kind of conduit in space perhaps, then I can’t just leave it be. Not when it could be responsible for bringing those same ones I saw down in the mine to the surface of our world.
We’ve gone through too much just to get here. The Shadow King, the Labyrinth, the Jumping Quest. We might not ever get this chance again. I grimace as I stare up at it. “How do we destroy this thing, Becky?”
Aiko’s sister smiles up at me, but merely shrugs. “Just hit it?”
Val Helena chuckles. “Hopefully it’ll break as easily as those pillars. I could maybe try throwing my axe at it?”
“How about toppling one of the pillars onto it?” Becky says.
“I wish Rembrandt were here.” Aiko shades her eyes as she gazes upward. “He could blow that thing right out of the sky.”
I materialize my old Darksteel kunai in my palm. No time to waste on complicated plans. Gilly’s life is still on the line. That thing needs to be destroyed and destroyed now.
“I’ve got this,” I say.
I pop Sprint and dash up one of the pillars using Wall Run.
“Reece, wait!” Val Helena calls to me in shock.
I fly through the air as I reach the top of the pillar, jumping towards the glowing orb. It’s as big as a beach ball and this close, nearly blinding, the heat from it searing my skin. I pull back my arm with a Charged Attack and hang frozen in midair as the meter builds.
Be gone, you fiends…
I unleash my blade and thrust my kunai deep into the orb.
A blare of static flashes across my HUD.
And the world goes black.
Chapter 16: The Monster in the Room
“There’s no way around it,” Dennis said, pacing the boardroom as he delivered the finale of his presentation. “For the short term, there is simply no hope for conditions to get better. With the loss of the last excursion team we are now at the mercy of fate. And I, for one, do not like the odds. It’s time we took measures to preserve ourselves.”
Bruce grimaced at his mention of the excursion team. Intentional perhaps?
“We must adopt a mindset of survival,” he continued. “Status quo will not get us through this crisis. By imposing full immersion, we give ourselves a second chance, maybe our only chance. Only by drastically reducing resource demands and lowering our physical profile, do we enable ourselves to perhaps send another team, live another year and perhaps give us enough time to find a better solution.”
Dennis ended on that point, pausing for dramatic effect.
Heads nodded around the table.
It was a good speech, Bruce had to admit, but the true implications were still yet unknown. Bruce cleared his throat. “Thank you, Dennis for that very thorough overview of the proposal. We’ll now begin the official debate on the topic. I’d like to start by bringing up an issue of physical logistics: stasis pods. We don’t have enough to house everyone.”
“True,” Dennis said, taking his seat. “The plan would require using half of our current nano reserves to produce the hardware we require for the population.”
An uncomfortable silence took hold.
“So it’s a one-way ticket?” Bob Shultz said. “Losing that much nano would mean we’d have to follow through no matter what.”
“That’s why this decision is so important,” Dennis said. “But please, poke holes in the theory. As Bruce said, we need to ensure we’re making the right one here.” He then gave Bruce a grin. “But make no mistake, one way or another, by end of this meeting, a decision will be made.”
* * *
Darkness and cold.
; I’ve felt this before.
Have I died again?
Please, no….
I try to speak, but I have no mouth, no body.
Rivulets of light stream toward me and then all at once I fall onto something hard.
I cry out and can hear my own voice again.
I have a body once more. I stand on what feels like cold tile or glass, but I can’t see it clearly in the darkness. I look down at myself. I’m still in my underwear, my sole kunai clutched in my palm. What the heck happened? I don’t remember taking any damage.
Was I transported somewhere?
Was I trapped?
Your Awareness increases by 0.8.
Skill Up! Your Awareness is now 45!
I sense something. A menacing presence filled with hunger and hate. I don’t know how I can even sense it, but I do. A footfall sounds from in front of me and I back away in a defensive stance, raising my blade in a reverse grip across my chest. I activate my HUD and just like before on Planet Hell, it’s there but garbled.
Am I back there? Was that orb and Planet Hell truly connected?
I jump, startled as the phrase forms in my mind, but the thoughts are not my own. It’s not even words I hear, or a voice even. Just pure thought that gives me the impression of meaning, funneled straight into my brain.
A sharp screech fills the air and my heart jumps again.
Fiery eyes emerge from the darkness, revealing the skull-like face of one of the demons from my nightmare. It looks about the size of the adds that spawned during the Shadow King fight, perhaps 8 feet tall, but it’s hard to tell exactly how tall it is by the way it bends over and walks almost on all fours. Unlike the adds, its body is thick and muscular and in one of its hands is a huge club.
I check my HP.
HP: 122/1032
Holy crap… I’m not prepared for this. My heart jackhammers inside my chest as my knees go weak with fright. I have no armor, barely a weapon…I can’t fight this thing!
I back away from it, my mind scrambling to find a way to escape.
I shudder as the alien thoughts form in my mind. It’s terrifying. Yet, somehow, knowing this thing has the ability to communicate makes it slightly less of a monster in my mind, but no less dangerous. I’m still scared as heck of it, but I don’t feel like it’s going to mindlessly savage me like I’ve seen the others of its kind do before.
At least not right away.
I focus on it and something pops onto my HUD.
Name: XoXalt
Sex: Other
Race: Other
Class: Warrior
Level: ???
Guild: Other
What the…? It’s not giving much information, but it popped up with the template for a player, not a monster. Was this indeed something different than what I’ve seen before? And it has a class too. If this thing is what Becky and her friends saw, then I can see now why they dubbed it the “Other”.
It screeches at me again, making my skin crawl.
Holy crap. Was this the Shadow King? The same one we defeated?
My mind races to connect the puzzle pieces. If this is its true form, then the monster we fought must have been some kind of avatar, the same things that we are on the surface. A nano replica of our character selves. I swallow back the lump in my throat. If this thing can communicate to me, then maybe I can do the same.
And right now, it might be the only weapon I have.
“If you can understand me,” I raise my voice. “Then tell my why you’re here. What are you and what do you want?”
It screeches and I get a sense of bemusement from it—mocking. Like a scoff.
What’s it talking about?
It lunges at me with a howl, fire pouring from its throat.
Holy geez!
I jump to the side, narrowly missing a huge swipe from its club. I perform a Retreat, back flipping to gain some distance from the beast and casting Shadow Copy for protection. My heart is in my throat. I wasn’t expecting it to attack so fast. So much for trying to talk! I take another step back and choke up on the handle of my blade.
What the heck am I going to do?
It turns and hisses at me.
I’m not liking how this thing’s talking about me like I’m a piece of steak.
A flash of light engulfs its body and it transforms instantly from a behemoth lumbering on all fours to a spindly being standing upright on its hind legs. Razor-like blades lie clenched in its clawed hands. They flash across its body as it performs a martial pose.
XoXalt casts Shadow Copy.
What the heck? I can’t believe what I just saw.
I look at it again.
Name: XoXalt
Sex: Other
Race: Other
Class: Ninja
Level: ???
Guild: Other
I check it again.
Name: XoXalt
Sex: Other
Race: Other
Class: Celestial Mage
Level: ???
Guild: Other
Before I can even react to the change, a bright white aura surrounds it as it raises both arms.
XoXalt casts Holy Fire!
Bright white flames erupt beneath me.
Your shadow absorbs the attack!
Crap! I’ve got to fight! I dig deep and release a cry of desperation. I Charge Strike and slam my kunai into the wing-like appendage on its back.
XoXalt’s shadow absorbs the attack!
Dang it! I slash at it again.
You hit XoXalt for 243 damage.
It howls and loses 2% of its health, then hisses as it swipes at me with its clawed hand.
I duck under the swing and sense something new from it: surprise.
It wasn’t expecting me to dodge that hit.
A new vigor fills me. Gear or no gear, I’m still a Dodge Tank.
“I killed you once,” I shout at it, seething. “I’ll do it again!”
I fly into the monster with a series of quick attacks.
You hit XoXalt for 231 damage.
You hit XoXalt for 242 damage.
You hit XoXalt for 245 damage.
It screeches and I sense pain. It flashes again, becoming the muscular Warrior form. I use the opportunity to buff myself with Shadow Haste and refresh Shadow Copy. It’s down to 90%. I can do this! My HP is in the red, but I ignore it. Just like anything else I’ve ever faced, it doesn’t matter.
Just don’t get hit!
The demon bellows and charges at me.
I pop Active Dodge and flash to the side. Amazingly I don’t see any nano-dust. It feels more like I’m back in the Shards again, no restrictions or delays. I lay into its side with another string of blows, bringing its HP down another 10%. It whips about with its tail and I nimbly avoid it with a backflip.
“You were tougher on the surface!” I shout at it, taunting. “You slow piece of crap!”
A new emotion comes blasting from it. Rage.
It roars, fire pouring from its throat.
It flashes again, changing back to
its Ninja form. It crosses its arms in an ‘X’ pattern and becomes enveloped in a radiant blue light.
XoXalt uses Perfect Dodge!
What the heck…?
It flashes once more, this time to another mage class.
XoXalt uses Chain Cast!
Oh crap…I think that’s the Elemental Mage’s 24-hour move! A split second later the monster confirms it, casting spells so fast they shoot out like a machine gun.
XoXalt casts Thunderball!
XoXalt casts Thunderball!
XoXalt casts Thunderball!
XoXalt casts Thunderball!
XoXalt casts Thunderball!
A wave of blue lightning hits me in a massive ball!
Your shadow absorbs the attack!
Several more quickly follow it. I dodge, but there’s no way I can get out of range in time.
I’m gonna…!
The Thunderball hits you for 847 damage.
-725/1032 HP
You are defeated!
Excruciating pain shoots through me. My vision goes black and then suddenly I’m alive again, my HP restored to full.
You have lost a level!
You are now level 83.
The Thunderball hits you for 847 damage.
The Thunderball hits you for 847 damage.
You are defeated!
You have lost a level!
You are now level 82.
I scream uncontrollably as white hot pain tears through my body each time. I’m dying, but not. Not respawning or being transported to someplace else. My hell is the here and now! I feel my life’s essence leave me with every level I lose.
No…it’s just like with Amanda.
It’s killing me over and over again! My mind is numb with terror and I lose all sense of myself. Its thoughts invade mine with an intense hunger, like it hasn’t eaten for years. Decades. Centuries!
