War Aeternus: The Beginning

by Charles Dean

  “Why did you save me, though?” Lee asked, remembering how harsh and distant the god had been during their first meeting. It certainly hadn’t been the clichéd ‘Hero! We’ve summoned you to defeat a demon lord!’ sort of meeting that he always read about in his translated Eastern Light Novels or the overly-exposed, heavily-descriptive scenarios he was familiar with from his favorite western novels. No, it had been a ‘Go get me followers, you loser’ and nothing more. As such, the ‘why’ behind Augustus’s actions was still confusing for Lee. “And why weren’t you helping others out? Don’t you have other Heralds you have to be watching over?” Lee pressed on with more questions despite the fact that the talking was not helping his situation with the pain.

  “Why did I save you? For someone so smart, you really aren’t that quick on the pickup. Maybe I was right. Maybe the game system lied to you, and your Intelligence really is a big fat zero. Kid, you’re the only Herald I have. Haven’t you figured it out yet?” The monkey laughed snidely.

  “Figured it out?” Lee did his best to recall the events that had gone on in the other world. He started going over the facts in his head, but he didn’t feel like he would get anywhere as long as he was still missing something. Wait, he wants me to recruit NPCs, players don’t matter, and I’m an NPC. What am I missing? Yeah, that’s right! It is a game world . . . and there was another Herald there, probably doing the same thing I was doing for a different god . . . “So, War of Eternity is a game for followers . . .” Lee mumbled to himself as he puzzled it out. “It’s a game that gods play to get followers, and . . . I’m an NPC.”

  “Hmph. Their level five score might not have been off, but you’re still kinda slow. Look . . .” The drunken primate leaned forward in his chair and said, “I’m going to tell you a secret the other Heralds haven’t figured out yet.” The monkey’s wicked grin was suddenly just as scary as the sight of Miller hoisting one of his victims into the air and watching as the body was impaled on his spear. It sent a chill down Lee’s spine as the full-toothed, smiling face leaned forward until it was within inches of Lee’s own. “I’m the player, and you’re the stupid hero I am playing to win the game.”

  Lee glowered. Not because he thought that Augustus was lying to him—he had come to the same conclusion just moments before being told—but because of the implications it held. “But . . . why? Why can’t you just use your own avatar to go down there and win the game? And if you were picking an avatar, why me?”

  “Because then the others could use theirs too. Come on! Do you really think it would be fair if a bunch of deities with their special powers wrecked a world of mortals in their war? No, this is the game of conquest, destruction, manipulation and politics. We can pull your strings, but the game must be played—at least in terms of execution—by mortals.” Augustus gave Lee some room as he leaned back in his chair again, once more taking another swig of his drink. “Look at the bright side. Doesn’t the character you play in most games become stronger than the chump behind the controller?”

  Didn’t he just say he couldn’t go down there because it wouldn’t be fair if gods interfered? And now he’s implying that I’ll become stronger than a god if I keep playing? Lee wasn’t enjoying the convoluted nonsense that was coming out of this shapeshifter’s mouth. “You still haven’t answered my question: Why me? I can name at least ten people off the top of my head that are stronger, better at fighting and more charismatic than me. That red-headed MMA guy that’s always on TV for instance. He’d have been perfect.”

  “Because, Luke . . . I am your father.” Augustus made the obvious reference in an exaggerated, respiratory-heavy voice while waving one of his hands and covering his face with the other.

  “Huh? No, my dad is—” Lee felt his throat clench up and his brain try to roll over as he contemplated the possibility that this jerk was telling the truth.

  “Don’t worry. I didn’t do the nasty with your mom or anything,” the monkey laughed. “I mean to say you’re just a super-distant relative of mine from the last time I visited this planet to have drinks and party with some Greek deity and his stupid followers. I must have knocked up over thirty women that night. For some reason, out of all the children I’ve had on all the different worlds, your genetic strand has remained close enough to mine that there is a good chance I could pass as your dad if you were to take a paternity test today. So, I guess, in a sense, I could claim to be your dad. So, what do you say? Want to jump into the family business and help me design a giant moon-sized planet destroyer?”

  “Can we skip the easy-to-target-and-bomb ventilation shaft?” Lee played along with the joke as a way to stall out any real response. He was trying to figure out how much of what had just been told to him was true and how much was just another one of the alcoholic’s lies. I can’t really be related to this guy, can I?

  “That depends. Do you think you can prevent a space wizard from still finding a way to warp the bomb into the middle anyway? ‘Cause if you can’t stop that, there’s no point in worrying about anything else.” Augustus shrugged and slouched down in the chair. “Look, jokes aside, the players, us gods, are only able to use our descendants—specifically those who have a close enough genetic match to pass as a relative only separated by no more than three or four generations—to be our Heralds.”

  “But if you can go about having thirty or forty kids in one trip, shouldn’t there be a ton of options for you to pick from?”

  “Well . . . about that.” Augustus scowled. “The kids closest to matching my lineage tend to be terrible at having children of their own. Something about them being too smart for their own good? Honestly, you’re not much better yourself. You’re a grown man with a good job, a decent physique, and you haven’t even bothered to pick up a girl in a while, much less an actual marriage prospect. Which—and by the way, it pains me to say this—but you’re the only one who ended up being a close genetic match to me.”

  So, it’s one of those ‘the dad had a bunch of kids but never became a grandfather’ stories. Lee wasn’t entirely sure whether he should laugh at Augustus’s poor luck or feel bad about the fact he was also one of the good-for-nothing, no-wife descendants. “Wait . . . If I have the genes of a god, shouldn’t I be more . . . godlike? Or just divine or something?” Lee wondered.

  “Yeah . . . Uhh . . . That’s not how it works. You may have been blessed with a few slivers of my amazing and awesome intellectual capacity . . .” The primate changed into a large parrot and puffed out its chest, frilling its feathers. “But other than that, no. Sorry. You only have the capacity for being divine. Think of this and every existence as being a fancy game—because it pretty much is—where the only thing that separates a person from being a god is whether or not the creator modded their stats to make them one. Although, it’s a good thing no one is born a god since, once you become one, you need followers and faithful or else you just sort of cease to exist.”

  “So, there are no benefits to being the biological heir to a god?” Lee actually felt kind of let down by that fact, even though he had just found out he may or may not be related to an actual deity.

  “Hey! Didn’t I say you got some of my smarts? Come on!” Augustus snapped. “Even someone with only an iota of my masterful and all-knowing intelligence like you should be able to see how awesome it is to be born from a divine lineage with my great and powerful attribute.”

  “Attribute?”

  “Well, we might not pass on our divinity, but each god who has a child passes on some degree of his natural ability. As you can guess, mine is intelligence.” The parrot puffed up even more, so much so that Lee thought for a minute it would turn into a blowfish. “The attribute is strong at first, but after several generations, it is gradually bred out. As such, the strength of the attribute is based on how closely related one is to the god who began his lineage.”

  “So, I gained intelligence from you, and because of that, I gain intelligence faster in the game?” Lee guessed, hoping to get mo
re specific clarification.

  “Yeah. That’s about the sum of it. It’s the best attribute there is if you ask me.” The parrot shifted into a coati. “After all, even the smallest of animals with the right bit of wit can outdo the greatest of monsters.”

  “What are some of the other Herald abilities?” Lee had a feeling that his intelligence probably wouldn’t save him from anything until much later on. Sure, intelligence gave him a real advantage in learning skills and becoming better at combat-oriented fighting styles, but that didn’t mean it would amount to a lick of good against someone like his spear-wielding barbarian buddy Miller who had even greater strength than he did smarts.

  The little raccoon-like creature shrugged. “I don’t know. They vary a lot, and some of them are barely noticeable, and some won’t even show up at all. I remember one Herald—he is one of the last three remaining Heralds in the last game—who hasn’t used his ability once even though it’s really overpowered.”

  “What is his ability?”

  “His farts can knock out his foes. It’s kinda hilarious because he hooked up and started a family with his battle buddy, this weirdly-attractive giant, and since they’ve been together since his first adventure in the land, he’s too worried about his image to use his talent. I’ve heard from the god he’s representing that he does know what his power is and how it works since he accidentally used his special fart once on a date in his homeworld, but that incident was the main reason why the poor kid is too traumatized to do it now—even if it means saving himself in a life or death fight.”

  Lee might have been a grown man, but he was still immature enough to appreciate the story and started to chuckle—only to be reminded about his ribs.

  “Hah! Stings, doesn’t it?” Augustus taunted. “They had some fancy painkillers hooked up to you, but I figured taking them out would wake you up quicker and make it much funnier to watch. It took some effort, but I managed to get regular IV fluid where there should have been morphine and some candy pellets into that bottle of painkillers the nurse set by you.” The coati cackled incessantly as he told Lee about his predicament.

  “Why would you do something like that?” Lee asked incredulously.

  “I mean, I told you that you only had level seven faith, right? Well, you have less than seven hours until you’re getting warped back to the other world, like it or not, so waking you up to explain what happened just seemed like a good idea.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. What about the other players in the game?” Lee still had one burning question, and given the honesty that his patron was exhibiting at the moment, he felt that he might never know the answer if he didn’t press now. “If you guys are the players, and we’re the heroes you send off in some weirdly-twisted gladiator game, then why are there players like Miller? Or the two thugs I killed earlier?”

  “Oh, those are players in name only. Those stupid self-serving idiots never realized that they’re actually the NPCs of the game. It just makes them even better cannon fodder if you ask me. They’re just people from random worlds that were given the technology to go into one of the game servers so it wouldn’t be easy on the Heralds. They’re there to be used and to act as obstacles. The creator thought it would be funny to add a bunch of loose cannon elements that might kill off the Heralds for no reason better than a few gold coins. In fact, out of the last twenty servers, as the creator calls them, eight of them lost all of their Heralds to those filthy cretins without a single divine ability.” The coati shifted into a jaguar and crossed its arms grumpily, sitting on its rear in a very un-feline fashion as if it were a person.

  “I see . . .” Lee nodded. If Augustus wasn’t lying—and he was beginning to think that this might actually be the case for once—then Lee finally had an understanding of the game world. So, the NPCs are the resources you need to grow, the Heralds are the playable characters, the gods are the actual players, and those labeled as players in the game are the wild cards sent to kill us.

  “Well, I’m glad you do because all this talking and waiting has made me thirsty. I’m going to be going now.”

  “Then why did you wait?” Lee asked.

  “The same reason I’m actually telling you this stuff now: because, if you die, it’s over. I was able to save you once, but that won’t happen again. Ever. You’re done for if this happens a second time. You can’t be transported to your world while in battle. You must be sleeping in order for me to transport you, and you must have the appropriate amount of Faith. Even then, under all those conditions, there is still only a 1% chance that your Faith will allow for a miracle and give me the ability to warp you without your consent,” Augustus explained. “Basically, you got super lucky this time. Out of a hundred times, I’d only be able to save you the same way once.”

  That’s right, Faith did say it would allow a miracle . . . Lee sighed softly without drawing in too much air. “Alright, noted. So, how long till the next warp?”

  “Didn’t you listen earlier? Idiot. You’ve got seven hours left. Make the best of them.” The jaguar slid out of his seat and walked to the window, but rather than turning into a bird and flying away, it just disappeared altogether.

  ——-

  “Are you still looking at the— Oh, it flew away.” Wolfe walked into the room moments later, carrying bags of greasy food and sporting a goofy grin. “I’m telling you, man, if staring out the window instead of playing on your phone is your attempt at pulling off the quiet, aloof, contemplative look for the ladies, you need to commit to it. You really need to double down and keep quiet all the time. When you finally do say something, you just need to remember and say something weird and vague, sort of like an old man trying to sound smart when commenting about the state of modern society.” Wolfe chuckled at his own joke as he dropped the bags of food on the small tray and began digging through them.

  “Is that all?” Lee asked, holding out his hand and ready to grab some food.

  “Well, that and the fact that you should wait until there are actually ladies around. It won’t do you a bit of good if there aren’t any nearby to actually see you pull it off.” Wolfe twisted his head to look out the window. “Then again, if you’re having trouble with an easy chick like the one on the sill, then I don’t know how you’re going to manage it with the smarter ones.”

  “It took some effort to actually get rid of it.” Lee tried to play off his shock from Augustus’s revelations as he snatched the bag of food Wolfe had tossed him. So, if I’m essentially just a pocket mob—one of those animals that’s not a dog because dog fighting is immoral—that the gods are using to battle each other in a video game, and Augustus is my trainer . . . shouldn’t he be giving me more moves? Training me up to be stronger? Teaching me how to fight the battle for him? The more Lee thought about Augustus’s explanation, the more questions he had, but the deity was already gone. It was one of the most annoying parts of being a brooder with a quick tongue: he would always come up with the best ‘ah ha!’ and ‘gotchya!’ comebacks after the target of his wit had already left the room. Similarly, he couldn’t stop the flood of questions from cropping up now that no one was around to answer them. Well, I guess he did give me that book . . . and he did sort of teach me how to fight using that stupid zombie. I suppose that’s better than nothing.

  “Yo!” Wolfe snapped his fingers in front of Lee’s face, pulling him out of his thoughts. “It’s just a bird, man. You don’t have to act all gloomy and broody like you just went through a harsh breakup . . . You’ll have plenty more of those in the future when your BlueTube fame dies out, and the girls realize how much better looking I am.” Wolfe added the last line after a pause as he plopped back in his chair and pulled some food of his own from a bag.

  “Well, anyway, thanks for the food, man,” Lee said, unwrapping his chalupa and taking a huge bite from it.

  The two of them talked for a while, even if it did agitate Lee’s ribs. Then, after an hour of joking around and making fun of random pop stars, blaming c
ertain countries for the existence of certain awful celebrities and of course gossiping about people in their online guild, Lee’s parents filed in and broke up the conversation. They were incredibly relieved to see him. They made a few calls to let the rest of the family know what was happening, at which point a few other relatives and friends began ducking their head in just to get the brownie points of a visit under their belts before departing just as quickly as they arrived.

  It took almost three hours for the hubbub of his waking up again to die out, a reporter to try to sneak in, and a few nurses to finish asking for autographed pictures. The picture was a still frame captured from one of the CCTVs and showed the giant Augustus in gorilla form princess carrying him into the ER, and they all seemed to get a real kick out of it.

  Wolfe stayed mostly silent and remained planted in the chair while Lee’s parents and relatives showed up, but as soon as the nurses began filtering in, he jumped up to make sure he could properly chat them up as they took selfies with the meme kid. Lee watched the clock the entire time, counting down the seconds as the large hand on the clock ticked around. He knew that his time was growing shorter, and he couldn’t help but think, I have to get clothes.

  He was painfully aware that his hospital gown wasn’t going to afford his already poor charisma any bonus points in the other world. Shannon and Ling were both already judging me for my suit. If I return in this . . . Ugh. I’m never going to hear the end of it. He kept his ears perked up through each and every conversation, listening for any way to ask, ‘Hey, can I go home and put on real clothes yet?’

  When he finally got around to asking the question, interjecting it into a lull in the conversation about the usefulness of peeling grapes versus freezing them, they all shot it down vehemently.