by Sam Ryder
She laughed again as I stumbled to explain, the sound full of an alluring kind of grit. “It’s fine. I kind of like it. Minnnn.” She drew out the nickname, as if she was tasting it. Then nodded. “Yes, please, call me Min from now on.”
“I will? Anyway, I have something to tell you. I don’t want to reveal the source of this information, because you won’t like it, but you should know the Blacks are—”
“Getting longer,” she said, finishing my sentence.
“Wait. You already know?”
“Mortals,” she said. The way she said it was affectionate. Like referring to a cute puppy dog. “You always want to solve mysteries when there are none. How quickly you forget how long we’ve lived. Before the Morgoss defeated us, we’d lived a thousand lifetimes. We would’ve lived a thousand more if we hadn’t been so arrogant.”
“Speak for yourself,” Persepheus muttered.
“I am, sister. And for you. And for Air—” This time, Minertha cut herself off. For some reason speaking her other sister’s name was hard for her, almost as if…
“Is she…” I said, unable to finish my own question.
Minertha shook her head. “No, but she will not last much longer. She’s been saving her strength.”
I nodded, though I couldn’t truly understand what any of them were feeling. Was there any hope left? I needed to find out. “How do we stop the Blacks from getting longer?” I asked.
“You cannot. Only a Protector Level or above can.”
“But you haven’t chosen the next Protector.”
“It must be unanimous.”
“Lace has been here the longest,” I said. “She’s the best Warrior.”
“The best Warrior doesn’t always make the best Protector,” Min said. “Lace didn’t get any votes.”
“What? Then who?” I wasn’t trying to be modest. I really didn’t think I deserved any votes. I’d barely just arrived on Tor. Then again, so had Beat, and Millania was even greener. “Beat?”
“Beatrice received Perspheus’s vote.”
“And yours?”
“You.”
My heart pounded, and I couldn’t help the swell of pride. I dashed the pointless feeling away. “Listen, you should change yours to Beat. She would be a tremendous Protector.”
“I know, but she isn’t the right choice.”
Once again, I was forgetting someone. “What about Airiel? Does she have the strength to cast a vote?”
Minertha nodded, a half-smile curling on one side. “She’ll vote with me. Persepheus is the lone holdout.”
My heart sped up. I was one vote away from leveling up. But is that what I wanted? To lead? I couldn’t make speeches like Kloop had, and I couldn’t fight the way Lace or Beat did. Then again, I knew if I was chosen I would do everything in my power to protect the goddesses. Hell, I’d had a chance to leave forever just last night and yet I’d come back. Maybe that counted for something.
“I will do what is asked of me,” I said.
“Not going to happen,” Persepheus said. Her eyes were glowing again.
“I’d better go,” I whispered. “Thank you for listening.”
“Any time,” Minertha said. “You can visit me without being summoned. I don’t mind the company of someone other than my sister.”
Persepheus entered the water with a small splash, apparently tired of her sister’s jabs.
EIGHTEEN
NEW BLOOD
I was explaining the catch-22 to the other Warriors when Eve returned.
“Wait, so they can’t agree on the new Protector, but only the Protector can stop the Black from getting longer?” Beat said. She was digging a small hole in the ground with her strong fingers.
“Exactly,” I said. “Well, almost. A Protector Level or above.”
“Which is the same thing,” Beat said. “We’re a bunch of Level 2s.”
I didn’t think it was the right time to point out that my good Lri-Ay buddy, Vrill, was a Level 4. Because she didn’t seem exactly keen to help us anyway.
“They should just pick someone already,” Lace said. “Who are they deciding between?”
Although she asked it evenly, it was a loaded question considering there were only four of us left. “I don’t know,” I lied. I felt bad about the deception but knew Lace wouldn’t take the news well. She most likely assumed she was one of the top candidates, given her experience.
Luckily, I didn’t have to answer any more questions, our attention shifting to Eve as she descended the hill toward our camp.
“How many?” I asked.
“Nice of you to show up,” Eve said coldly.
“It wasn’t his fault,” Beat said, coming to my defense. I wanted to hug her.
“Right. It never is.” To her credit, she didn’t demand an explanation or a doctor’s note or anything. She even answered my initial question. “Seven.”
“Really?” Lace said. “You’ve never brought back more than six new recruits before. At least not since I’ve been here.”
That’s when I noticed the subtle differences in Eve. She was trying to hide her fatigue, but I could see written all over her. Her eyes were hollow, her cheeks gaunt. Her blinks were slow and methodical, like she had to force her eyelids open each time. Bringing back that extra Outcast had taken a lot out of her. “You should rest,” I said. “We’ll be fine tonight.” I hoped.
“I can’t,” she said. “Not until after the Circle.”
The Circle. I’d almost forgotten. Or maybe just deluded myself into pretending it wouldn’t be needed anymore. After all, we were desperate, right? Surely we couldn’t waste potential soldiers just because any survivors of the Circle were statistically more likely to survive longer in the Black. “Can I talk to you?” I said.
“We’re talking now.”
“In private.”
“Anything you need to say to Eve you can say in front of the rest of us,” Lace said, looking none too happy about my attempt to exclude her from the conversation.
“Fine,” I said. “I don’t think the new recruits should have to face the Circle.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eve said, turning away as if I was nothing more than a pesky gnat buzzing in her ear.
“What if no one survives?” I asked. “What then?”
Eve stopped. “What if they all survive? If so, they’ll be the ones we need to defend the wards.”
“How many times has that happened?”
It was an honest question, but Eve took it as a shot to the mouth. “Learn to crawl before you walk, Warrior,” she said. She didn’t look back as she strode up the hill. I noticed she was moving much more slowly than usual.
“She’s right, you know,” Lace said when our Finder was gone. “A bunch of greenies who haven’t faced the Circle will be killed in their first Black.”
“Not if we train them well enough,” I argued. “Give them an idea of what to expect.”
“You can’t truly know until you’ve experienced monsters. And that pit of Slithers is nothing compared to what’s hiding in the darkness.”
All that was true, I knew. But still…there had to be a way to keep all the recruits without hurting their chances of survival. Figuring it out had the potential to change everything…
Unfortunately, I was drawing a blank. All I could think about was training them, which, as Lace had pointed out, wasn’t the same as true experience. It was like taking a management course in college and then expecting to graduate and become the CEO of a multi-million-dollar company. Unrealistic, impossible and doomed to fail.
“Dammit,” I muttered. “How long do they have?”
“Half a day,” Beat said, looking up at the sky. The silvery sun was just below its peak. The new Outcasts would be soaking in the ooze in their cocoons until just before the next Black, when they would awaken in the Circle, their bodies changed, their minds confused and scared—and surrounded by monsters.
We’d be lucky if one made
it out alive.
~~~
I decided to take another shot at Eve, because I guess I’m a glutton for punishment. She looked none too happy to see me when I clambered down the vines into the gully.
“You have a death wish, Warrior?”
“Maybe,” I said. “I did come back, after all.”
She sighed. “If you’re going to say the same shit as before—don’t. It won’t change anything.”
“I’m not,” I said. It was hard to focus fully on Eve because I could feel Minertha’s eyes on me, staring from around the edge of the rock atop her boulder. Persepheus was nowhere to be seen, for which I was relieved.
“Then you can shut your mouth and help me with the last one.” She stepped aside to reveal a body. It was a lioness, her fur turquoise, the color of a cloudless spring sky. The beast was much smaller than the other two blue lions I had met on this planet. And not just because she was female and they were male. No. Because this was her natural size, just as I’d been an out-of-shape programmer, my gaming fingers the strongest and most agile part of my body. Like I was when I arrived on Tor, the lioness hadn’t been changed by the ooze yet. She rested in the same place I had awoken, dazed and confused, trying to figure out up from down and dream from reality. She was asleep. More like unconscious, I thought. That’s when I realized:
“I wasn’t supposed to wake up here,” I said. “After you drugged me or whatever you did in my apartment, the first time I awoke was supposed to be in the Circle, wasn’t it?”
“You’re not as moronic as you look, human,” Eve said.
Then how had I awoken? Eve had been arguing with Persepheus. Had she simply waited too long, thus allowing the drug to wear off? It explained certain things, but didn’t feel like the right answer. “Why do you use the word ‘human’ as an insult. Aren’t you human?”
Eve laughed. “Have you ever met a human like me?”
“I haven’t met a lot of humans,” I admitted, which made her laugh. Unless you count all the screenname friends I acquired over the years, I added in my head. “But no, humans that can travel between dimensions and abduct various alien races are hard to come by on Earth.”
“Lift her,” Eve commanded, and I obeyed, easing my hands beneath the sleeping lioness to get some leverage. Her fur was incredibly soft, like down. I could feel her heartbeat, steady and strong.
She was a magnificent animal. Talking animal. Whatever. She would make an incredible Warrior. If she could survive the Circle.
I lifted her. She was heavy, but well within my new limits. Eve busied herself with unspooling a tube of the cocoon-like material I’d awoken wrapped up in all those days ago. “Where does that stuff come from?” I asked.
“Airiel spins it,” she said.
Airiel, I thought. The mysterious third goddess who I’d never even seen. So weak she couldn’t do much other than rest and, apparently, spin cocoons.
“Like a caterpillar?” I asked. Outcasts go in and Warriors come out, I thought. Not dissimilar to caterpillars and butterflies.
“The comparison is close enough,” Eve replied. She laid the material flat on the makeshift bed, the long ends dangling to the ground on either side. “Down,” she said.
I placed the lioness on the layer of thin cocoon material and then stepped back. Eve shook her head. “Help me wrap her. Like this.”
Eve stepped closer to me and I could smell her. She smelled like perfume, which was odd, considering the place we found ourselves in. With surprising tenderness, she touched my hand, guiding it to the cocoon material. Together, we folded the material over the sleeping lioness, the skin of our arms brushing against each other.
Jesus. This place was trying to undo me.
Then her hip brushed against mine and I thought I was going to have to jump into the cool pool where Persepheus would likely devour my heart.
“You never answered my question,” I said, trying to distract myself from the lithe form working gently beside me. I’d never experienced this side of her before, so tender and…almost loving in the way she prepared this creature for the Circle. Was this how she’d prepared me? Or did she manhandle me, shoving me around angrily? I hoped it was the former.
In fact, I knew it was.
“I’m a quarter human,” Eve said. That, of course, begged the question as to what the other three quarters was. Unfortunately, she didn’t volunteer the information and I suspected her tenderness would wash away if I asked.
“Why’d you choose me?” I asked instead.
“I’ve been wondering the same thing myself,” she answered quickly.
“Hilarious. Seriously though. I know I was an Outcast, no job, no prospects, living alone with nothing but my stupid but awesome games to look forward to each night, but still…there are plenty of others like me on Earth. Why me?”
Eve seemed to seriously contemplate the question as we got started on the other side. She wrapped and I lifted the body so she could go underneath it. We settled into an efficient rhythm in the silence. Finally, she said, “You felt…right.” Which explained nothing and everything. I suspected the way she’d felt when she saw me was similar to how I felt on this planet, in this new body. Right, despite the fact that everything should’ve been wrong.
“So you have Finder radar?” I said.
She laughed, and my chest swelled at having been the source of the beautiful, musical sound.
“What now?” I asked when we’d finished cocooning our new Warrior prospect.
“The primordial ooze,” Eve said. She turned away and bent down—I swore the goddesses shone upon her backside as the edge of her little black dress rose to reveal her barely-there thong beneath—and picked up a stone chalice filled to the brim with a viscous-looking, clear liquid.
I blinked to clear the memories of Eve’s body and focused on the substance in the container. “What is it?” I asked, watching as Eve began to pour it over the cocoon.
“Goddess spittle,” she said.
I choked slightly. “Seriously?” I pictured Minertha and Persepheus passing around the chalice, each hockaloogying until it was full. Spitting seemed like such an ungoddesslike thing to do.
“Yes. In small amounts—just a dab or two—it has healing properties, which is why you’re still alive after your run-in with that gargat. In larger amounts, like this, it holds the key to transformation. What we call levelling up.”
There didn’t seem to be that much ooze in the chalice. “Why don’t you just level us all up again and again until we’re invincible?” I asked. Doing that would be like using a cheat code to build up your character’s skills and experience without earning it. I would normally be opposed to such cheating, but this was different, right? This was real.
“It doesn’t work that way,” Eve said.
“Of course not. How does it work?”
“The goddesses know when someone is ready for the next Level. Until then, no ooze. Only the first Level is free, like I told you.”
“What happens if you level-up someone who isn’t ready?”
She shrugged. “The ooze becomes like a poison to them. They die painfully, shriveling up as their skin is eaten away.”
I looked at the ooze differently after that. As the spittle waterfall hit the cocoon, it spread out, meandering to all edges of the web-like material. It vanished through the tiny gaps, sinking into where the lioness lay hidden. “The goddess spittle expands?”
Eve raised a thin eyebrow. “Indeed. She’ll…marinate…for a few hours and then start to wake up.”
“To monsters.”
“To a challenge. To a test of her strength and mettle.”
“And if she manages to prove her strength and mettle, she gets to fight for her life Black after Black until she’s eventually killed in an average of twelve days.”
“You really want to do this again? Like I said before, she would die in one Black, two if she was lucky, if we didn’t do it this way. You really want to argue with over a hundred years
of experience.”
“No,” I said, raising my arms in apology. “Sorry. I just want to consider whether there might be a better way. Something in the middle. Look, I want to grow our group as much as you do.”
She studied me, but not with anger this time. “Fair enough, Sam Ryder. We can talk more when I get back. But this is going to happen just before the Black. The Circle is already prepared.”
That’s when I finally got to see how Eve did it. Brought new recruits back. Also, what made her so tired, requiring almost a week between trips. She placed her hands on the cocoon, her fingers intertwining. She closed her eyes and her hands began to glow.
And then she vanished, along with the cocoon.
Whoa. Yeah. Definitely not human. At least not fully.
She returned a moment later, almost toppling over. I reacted quickly, gripping her arm and holding her steady. “Eve?” I said. “Are you okay?”
She cringed, her head wavering from side to side like she was dizzy. “I will be. I’m just weak after my trip. Even the short distance to the Circle is hard. But she is the last of them. Now we wait.”
To see whether any of them survive, I thought. I didn’t voice my thoughts, however, because I knew Eve wouldn’t be swayed and it would only make her angry. She needed to rest. “Do you need any more help?” I asked.
She looked at me, and something in her gaze felt like gratitude. In a way, I felt sorry for her. Forced to spend all these years toiling to build an army only to watch your soldiers die one by one. How hard that would be.
“Thank you,” she said. “No. You should sleep. The Black will be upon us soon.”
~~~
I was unable to sleep. Not because I was worried about the next Black, though I was, but because I couldn’t stop thinking about that beautiful lioness. Soon she would wake up in the Circle, claw through her cocoon, and then—
Would she meet the same demise as the powerful blue lion that had been in my Circle? He’d had no chance. That was part of the problem. How could you tell how capable someone was when they were confused and lost and then a massive troll club squashes them? Shit, it was mostly luck and Vrill’s help that allowed me to survive. Did that make me any more prepared to face the Black than anyone else? Eve said the statistics proved her methods were the best, but the best is only the best because no one has figured out a better way.
