Evolution

by Travis Bagwell

  Morgan hesitated, looking a bit uncertain. “What is it?” Jason said.

  “Well, the grimoire and the other texts are both a little vague on the mechanics of this next part. It’s clear that the injuries will kill Frank and Riley. However, none of the writings go into any detail regarding how they will die. Normally, a small wrist injury, even puncturing an artery, wouldn’t typically be enough to kill a traveler – so I have to assume something else will happen.”

  Frank had squeezed his eyes shut already, holding his wrist above the crystal. “Just a big needle – and some other unknown thing that will probably kill you painfully. Nothing to worry about,” he whispered to himself.

  “Will he be alright?” Morgan asked with a skeptical glance at the barbarian.

  “I think so,” Jason said. “We’ve been in some tough situations, but I think there’s something different about knowingly submitting to an injury – even if it won’t technically kill you.”

  Morgan seemed to accept this answer, nodding slightly. “Are we ready then?”

  “Yes,” Riley said with a curt nod. Jason noticed she had summoned her dark mana – not that he could blame her. He could feel the edge of his own anxiety even through the numbing effects of his mana.

  “Let’s just do it,” Frank said, his eyes still squeezed shut.

  Jason took a deep breath, trying to calm himself. “Okay, I’m going to do you first, Frank. Don’t freak out when I touch you,” he added, eyeing his friend with a concerned expression. “Remember that there’s a magical death well below your arm.”

  “Okay. It’s just a big needle,” the barbarian murmured to himself, repeating his mantra.

  Jason gently grabbed his wrist, holding the blade against his uninjured wrist. “Thank you, Frank,” Jason said quietly.

  “Not a problem, man,” Frank grunted. “Now get it over with already!”

  Not wanting to delay any further, Jason ran the blade across Frank’s wrist, and his friend breathed in sharply. Blood promptly spurted from the wound, drenching Frank’s hand and dripping onto the suspended, crystal heart. As the blood touched the multi-colored crystal, the bands of dark mana wrapped around it peeled away, lashing at the air hungrily as though searching for the source of the blood.

  Jason backed away quickly, and, a moment later, the tendrils of dark energy wrapped around Frank’s wrist.

  The tentacles probed at the wound for a moment before diving inside. Frank let out a grunt of pain, and the energy streaked up his arm like an insidious black vein. His eyes shot open and his body contorted. Then his eyes began to turn a solid obsidian, and he seemed to relax. After a moment, he exhaled, and his body dropped to the floor, already beginning to cool against the rough stone floor.

  This isn’t real, Jason kept telling himself. They won’t really die. His brain was still screaming at him – unconvinced as he glanced at Frank’s soulless, vacant expression.

  “Okay, now I kind of want to close my eyes too,” Riley said, chuckling nervously as Jason glanced at her.

  “You can still back out,” Jason offered, feeling guilty.

  “I already said no,” Riley snapped. Then she did a double take. “I’m sorry, this is just making me nervous for some reason. After fighting a dragon, you’d think I would be immune to fear.”

  “I get it,” Jason chuckled softly. “I’m not loving this either. I’m sort of killing my friends as part of a mysterious death ritual.”

  Riley smiled at him. “Aren’t we just a great group of idiots then?”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t trade you guys for anyone,” Jason replied. “Where would I find another group of people crazy enough to follow me?”

  Riley just laughed, some of the tension leaving her shoulders. As Jason saw her beginning to relax, he asked, “You ready to do this?”

  “Yeah, let’s go,” Riley said, holding her arm over the crystal.

  Jason reached out and held her arm gently, his fingers touching the soft skin of her forearm. He couldn’t help but marvel at the feeling. This was supposed to be a game, yet her skin felt so lifelike. He looked up to see Riley staring at him, vine-like crimson lines spiraling out from her pupils and marring the otherwise opaque black surface of her irises. He couldn’t explain why, but for a moment, holding her arm over the mana well, his heart skipped a beat.

  He shook his head to try to clear it and placed the blade of the dagger across her wrist. “Thank you, Riley,” he whispered holding her gaze.

  “See you on the other side,” she said, grinning at him.

  Then he pulled the dagger across her wrist. Similar to Frank, Riley’s blood splashed on the suspended crystal, and the tendrils of dark mana sought out her wound, diving into the ragged gash and rushing through her body. Not long after, Riley dropped to the ground, her chest unmoving. Jason stared at her for a long moment, his thoughts conflicted.

  “Okay, this is the final step,” Morgan said quietly, yet her voice still echoed in the small room. “However, I may have shaded the truth for your friends’ benefit.”

  Jason could feel a pit forming in his stomach. “In what way?”

  “You will need to slice your own wrist and then plunge your hand into the well. You will only have a few seconds to read the words on this page before you die. You have to finish reciting the text, or the ritual will fail,” Morgan explained.

  Jason could feel his heart hammering in his chest. He had touched the liquid dark mana once before, and he distinctly remembered the substance crawling over his body like liquid fire. He glanced down at the blade in his hand and then back up at the page. The small paragraph was not long, but he knew it would be difficult to read once he began this last step.

  “Do you need a moment?” Morgan asked.

  “No, I’ve got this,” Jason said, forcing himself to take a few deep breaths. After witnessing his own friends’ bravery and the sacrifice they had made for him, who would he be if he stopped here out of fear?

  He took another deep calming breath and then ripped the dagger across his wrist. Without hesitation, Jason plunged his bleeding arm into the well, completely abandoning any semblance of caution. He could immediately feel the chill energy permeating his skin and probing at the wound in his wrist. His hand first went numb and then it felt like liquid fire was racing through his veins.

  “Read!” Morgan said, shoving the book in his face.

  The words danced and swam on the page, yet he forced himself to start reading. “Life is impermanent and transient,” he hissed through clenched teeth. He could already feel the energy working its way up his arm. “This body is only a shell – a container for my soul…”

  He stopped abruptly, letting out a sharp breath as he was overwhelmed by the pain radiating through his arm. The substance had already coated his forearm and was crawling toward his torso.

  “Fight through the pain. You must keep reading!” Morgan shouted, pressing the book forward.

  “But my soul is memory… and memory is my soul,” Jason said, the words on the page blurring before his eyes as he struggled to make them out. The dark energy had already begun to crawl up his body toward his neck. “That soul I pledge to the… Kin,” Jason hissed.

  “With this… with this shell’s last breath, I devote myself…” he murmured, feeling like he was beginning to lose consciousness. Red notifications were flashing in his peripheral vision, but he couldn’t focus on them. “…I devote myself entirely…”

  The dark energy had reached his neck, and two tendrils had branched away, forming needle-like points that centered on his eyes. “…to my people; to the Kin!” he shouted this last line, barely able to focus on the grimoire floating before him.

  As soon as he finished speaking, the needle-like tendrils plunged into his eyes. Jason tried to scream as his body was wracked by pain more intense than anything he had ever felt before. His mind went blank as his senses were overwhelmed, the malignant energy chipping away at his sanity. After what felt like an eternity, it mercifully en
ded.

  He found himself floating in an endless black void. This place had no sense of direction or depth. It was the absence of all things, endless and unrelenting – a gaping virtual maw that would consume him with its bottomless quiet. Yet within that abyss, he sensed a gnawing hunger that felt… familiar. A yearning for something more – something to fill that void in his heart.

  Jason’s feet touched hard ground, and he stumbled, dropping to his knees. His mind wheeled as he tried to process what had just happened. He could hear the faint drip of water and wind whispering across rock.

  Opening his eyes, Jason found himself in a familiar cave. The ceiling of the cavern was an empty jagged hole, and silvery moonlight drifted through the opening, illuminating a small pond in the center of the massive room. Jason knelt only a few feet away, watching as water dripped from the ceiling and splashed into the pond, creating ripples that spread across its surface.

  Jason stared at the rhythmic cadence of the droplets and the subsequent ripples as his heartbeat slowed and his breathing evened out. There was something peaceful about this endless process – something calming.

  “It’s calming because it represents a natural rhythm,” a voice spoke from behind Jason. Without turning, he already knew that it was the Old Man. “The droplets are souls, returning to the pool. As things die in this world, they return here, to this pool. Or, at least, pieces of them do – small fragments of the person they once were.”

  The dark god stepped forward until he was standing beside Jason where he knelt in front of the pool. “They’re memories,” Jason murmured, remembering the words of the ritual he had spoken aloud.

  “Yes, soul or memory,” the Old Man answered. “Is there really any difference? It is our memories that shape us and make us who we are. In you travelers, they are stored in the chemical reactions in your brain. Yet if you could capture those organic imprints and transplant them into another shell, would they be the same person?”

  Jason shook his head. His knee-jerk reaction was to say no – that his identity was inseparable from his body. Yet he remembered his Death Lord and the salute it had given him before following his orders and giving up its “life” to grapple with the Azure Dragon.

  “Maybe it would be impossible tell,” Jason murmured. “And if you can’t tell the difference, perhaps there isn’t one.”

  “Indeed. You’ve grown much since we first met,” the Old Man said. “I think perhaps you are ready to take the rites to become a Keeper.”

  “Was that ritual not enough?” Jason asked in confusion, recalling vividly how he had sacrificed his friends, and how their eyes had appeared so vacant and dead at the end.

  “That ceremony merely opened a door. It is for you to decide whether you wish to step through,” the Old Man replied, his voice echoing slightly through the cave. “If you are willing to proceed, you must look into the waters of the pond. Then you must decide.”

  Jason’s thoughts were troubled. He had experienced the visions provided by the pond once before, experiencing a pivotal moment in Rex’s life – the moment he had started down the path to becoming the man that Jason had known. He could only imagine what the Old Man intended to show him; or how painful those visions might be. Seeing into another person’s soul – into their memories – was unlike anything Jason had ever experienced.

  “You hesitate?” the Old Man asked.

  “What is this leading to?” Jason replied quietly. “You are asking a lot of me – you have asked a lot of me. What is the goal?”

  “Ahh, you seek to know if the difficult journey leads to a worthwhile reward. I’m not sure I can promise that you will ride off into the sunset. That ending is reserved for fanciful stories. It is an illusion; a fantasy inconsistent with the harsh, brutal reality of our existence,” the Old Man said, his voice rumbling and echoing through the cave.

  “Then at least give me the truth,” Jason replied. “What is your goal?”

  The Old Man stared at the well for a long time before answering, “I seek the same thing as my siblings, to return to the world we once ruled. You must recall the conversation with the last Keeper. We were pushed from this world as a result of our own hubris and our quarreling. Now we seek to return.

  “Yet we are bound by rules. After our previous failure, the Judge put in place certain covenants. Our hands are bound, and we cannot take any direct action in the world. We can only influence events and recruit a single traveler as our avatar in the world. I suppose this is our own test of sorts,” the Old Man said, his voice distant, as though he was remembering something that had happened long ago.

  “What kind of test?” Jason asked.

  The Old Man laughed. “Aren’t they all the same?” He hesitated, sighing softly. “Although, you would likely consider this particular test to be a race. We are in a six-way contest to reclaim our former seat of power – the Throne of the Gods.”

  Jason shook his head, not quite certain he understood what the dark god was saying. “Has anyone ever told you that you speak in riddles,” he remarked dryly. “Every time you answer a question, it leads to three more.”

  “They have indeed,” the Old Man replied with a slight grin. “It is perhaps easier to think of this place as a dungeon, but unlike anything you and the other travelers have ever experienced. The first of the avatars to claim the throne will ensure the victory of his deity, granting them dominance over the other five.”

  The god chuckled harshly. “I suppose the Judge thought this was a fair way to resolve our squabbles – one final test to determine the victor from among me and my siblings. Perhaps he thought to teach us humanity. Although, I am not sure that was ever our problem…” the Old Man trailed off, lost in his own thoughts.

  “So, the one that defeats this dungeon for their god what – they win? What does gaining dominance over the other gods even look like?” Jason asked in a confused voice. AO was incredibly realistic, and the line between this world and his own had already begun to blur. He understood that he could win or beat other games, but it felt strange to consider that in the context of AO.

  “Together, god and avatar will be granted almost unlimited power over this world and the other gods.” The Old Man glanced down at Jason. “Isn’t that what you wanted when you first approached me? Power? Control over your life and your world?”

  “I did…” Jason murmured. Yet he had reservations about ruling AO. In many ways, it would be like ruling over a real world. After talking with Alfred, he had seen a glimpse of what it meant to be a god – and the problems that created. Is that what he really wanted for himself?

  “You are approaching the question from the wrong angle,” the Old Man said, picking up on Jason’s surface thoughts. “What will happen to your friends and the people you care about if we fail? Many of my siblings do not have my sparkling personality.”

  “Was that a joke?” Jason asked, glancing at the god in surprise.

  “Perhaps, but my point still stands,” the Old Man replied with a deadpan expression.

  Jason had to admit that the god’s logic was difficult to refute. If Jason were only acting for himself, what would be the point of unlimited power? Yet for the sake of others, perhaps he was willing to make the sacrifices the dark god was asking of him. He did a double take as that thought occurred to him. Perhaps he really had changed since he had started playing this game – if he could even still call it that any more.

  Jason rose to his feet and stepped toward the well.

  “Are you certain?” the dark god asked. “As with everything, this decision will come with a cost. There will be many more hardships you will need to endure before this is over. The Keeper was right to challenge me. I ask for much from my avatars.”

  Jason hesitated, doubt clouding his mind. He had already endured a lot by playing AO. He had lost his home. He was being investigated for murder. And he had just killed his own friends in cold blood. He had also changed – growing colder and more calculating. Even his decision to acc
ept Eliza had been at least partially motivated by self-interest.

  Yet the look in his friends’ eyes as he placed the dagger to their wrists – the trust they placed in him – caused him to shake his head. He remembered that same look on his aunt’s face. He had people he cared about. And this game – no, this world – was his ticket to offering them the freedom they deserved.

  Jason forcefully pushed away the errant niggling doubts that wormed their way through his mind, shaking his head to clear it. “Are you trying to deter me now?” he asked without turning around.

  “No. I only seek to determine if you are serious about proceeding,” the god replied.

  Jason couldn’t help but laugh, his determination hardening. “Serious? I have claimed multiple cities. I have slain countless hundreds of people both with and without provocation. I have lied to myself, to my friends, and to my family. I have lost my home and my school. I have come this far. What are a few more hardships?”

  Not waiting for the god’s answer, Jason stepped forward, his gaze shifting to the murky waters of the pond. He had no idea what this test might entail, but he knew one thing for certain. He wouldn’t give up. Not now – not ever.

  Chapter 37 - Revelatory

  George walked up the steps to his brownstone with a weary tread. The driverless limo behind him pulled away from the curb and merged back into the flow of traffic. As he approached the front door to his home, it automatically opened with a faint click – the house’s AI picking up on the presence of his Core and the small micro-RFID chip embedded underneath the skin of his wrist.

  The house was dark, only faint light illuminating the ground floor. A heavy silence hung over the entryway, making it difficult to determine whether Alex was home or not. The lights in the hallway gradually turned on as George stepped further into the house.

  “Is Alex home?” he asked aloud, his voice sounding tired and worn down – even to his own ears. Between the world event in-game and dealing with Gloria’s inevitable nagging, it had been a long, long day. His efforts to push Gloria off on Claire had only been partially successful. The gray-haired witch was growing more than a bit tiresome.