by Skyler Grant
“Afraid not. I’ve got exactly one trick and it doesn’t make lights,” Aria said.
“Liara said you know secrets. Is that true?”
“Every last one. It’s almost as much fun as it sounds. This tunnel was made during the original construction of the cells and then sealed. The guards don’t know about it,” Liara said, as she tugged on my hand.
“Got any good ones to share?”
“Got anything specific in mind?”
I bumped my toe on a stone. The floor here was coarse and rough against my bare feet, not polished and smooth as it had been in the main hall.
“How can I have anything in mind? They’re secrets, I wouldn’t know them.” I said.
“You pick a person, you pick a place, an event. Something. I’m in a good mood, I’ll give you three.”
I could have asked about my friends, but that seemed wrong somehow. I was curious, but anything I learned I’d then have to start keeping secret that I knew.
“Castle Sardonis.”
“Good choice. You’ll like this one. You have a secret library three levels below ground in the northeast corner. Dark texts too powerful to be destroyed, hidden away for safekeeping,” Aria said, toying with the words. She enjoyed this, telling secrets. No wonder those with a lot to share wanted her imprisoned.
That was a good secret about the castle. I didn’t much care for books myself, but Walt would be ecstatic.
“Me.”
“You want one of your own secrets? How novel.”
“I’ll take one involving me.”
“You matter. You count. To your Goddess you are a tool of her release and re-ascension. To your friends, a bit of a tool and a bit of an idiot. To most of your allies you are someone in over your head.”
Fantastic. This was the ego boost I needed.
“Sorry I asked.”
“Focus on the first part of what I said. It is no accident that you are here, not chance that you are a King. There are forces at work trying very hard to stay invisible, but know that you are important.”
That helped the ego a bit. Worrisome, I didn’t much like being moved about by grand invisible forces, but so far if they were manipulating my life, and it was to give me a castle and have me fall into a lot of beds, I could deal with it.
“The Vainglory.”
“The ship can do more than move in the sky. It can move between worlds.”
Huh. That was unexpected and a little mind-blowing in the possibilities.
“Are all your secrets that good?”
“Most are horribly boring. Everyone keeps secrets. Everyone lies to protect the dumbest and most minor of things. I know them all, every single agonizing one. Still, lost in all the noise are the good ones, the really juicy tidbits,” Aria said, as she continued to pull me through the passage.
I plowed into her when she came to a stop.
“Well, someone is excited to see me. We’re at the end of the passage. I’m going to make my escape. For Mela’s prison you’ll want to head northeast out of the city. When you see three peaks on the horizon you’ll find the entrance near the ancient river bed.”
“That sounds horribly imprecise. Can’t you just give me a map or something?”
“I’m a teller of secrets, not a cartographer. When we leave the passage Ashley’s cell is the seventh down and Walt’s immediately thereafter. The guards are searching for me elsewhere. You’ll have some time. When you get them out, teleport to the blue moon.”
“His magic doesn’t work like that.”
“It will work. A bit of an emergency clause in case the mage who helped design these wards ever found themselves contained here.”
“Handy.”
“A lot of people’s secrets involve always leaving themselves an escape hatch,” Aria said. There was a sudden bloom of light as an exit opened. She leaned forward to press a quick kiss to my cheek before pulling away. “Keep an ear out for the next time I need a rescue.”
Just like that she was gone and out of my life. For the time being, at least. I had a feeling I’d be seeing more of her one day.
For now I had other matters to occupy me. The guards’ focus elsewhere in the dungeons had bought me some time, but not so much that I could squander it. I had to find the others and we had to get out of here.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A short distance down the hall I came to the first of the cells Aria told me about. The door was heavy and metal with no hint of the contents. I expected it to be locked, but it swung inward easily. I suppose that made sense in a way, I was trapped by magic and not by any sort of physical barrier. These cells and even the guards were to keep the prisoners from being disturbed, not to hold them in.
In the center of the cell I saw Ashley sitting in a chair. She wasn’t moving. Taking a step in her direction I felt a pulse of black energy. The world rippled and the cell was replaced by somewhere else.
We were in what looked to be some sort of warehouse, grimy windows letting in sunlight. This wasn’t a depiction of anywhere in the game, but somewhere outside of it.
It was a chamber of horrors. There were tables with implements of torture neatly arranged. Others were adorned with restraints and stained with blood.
I’d found not just one Ashley, but two. One was strapped to one of those tables, screaming as a blowtorch was taken to her skin. The air held a sickening stench of burnt hair and flesh.
The torturer was yet another Ashley, one who looked younger, but determined. She was dressed in a set of black overalls and looked almost blissfully serene as she tortured her other self, keeping up a line of conversation that sounded quite cheerful. I inched closer so I could make out exactly what was being said.
“Flesh is a failure. Flesh is an illusion. Flesh is a lie in place only to hold us back. You will learn to transcend this pain, to transcend this flesh, to be reborn in this fire into something better,” said torturer Ashley, running the flame along the other’s flesh. Tortured Ashley was doing little more than whimpering and screaming. It was a horrible sight.
I took another step forward wanting to stop this somehow. Wanting to interfere. The torturer turned glanced sideways at me for a moment, then turned back to her work. “You must be strong enough to shed it. Strong enough to burn. Only then are you suitable to walk the path that Veros has trodden before you.”
This made no sense to be an actual memory, but I remembered how badly Ashley was burned in the real world. How totally crippled she had been by the scars that covered her body. She had told the story once of how it was done because of Veros. She hated him for that, for what had happened. She mistrusted all Artificial Intelligence because of that.
“Ashley,” I said, and after a moment corrected myself, “Ashleys.”
The torturer turned her gaze towards me once again. “Have you come to watch? She isn’t much fun. Still too weak, too helpless, too pathetic.”
If she was this fucked-up, I was really amazed we weren’t dating.
“None of this is real. You are in prison and we’re pressed for time,” I said, taking a few more steps to bring me within range of both.
“All that is flesh is a lie. You say nothing that is not already known. I know this, in her heart she knows this. She is just not ready to accept,” said torturer Ashley, as she bent back to do more of her terrible work.
“Yvera?” I thought.
“I hear you. To think that she is the one throwing crazy insults at me. I had no idea.”
“Do you have any idea how to snap her out of this?”
“Liam, do I look like psychoanalysis software? I kind of have two answers to things, to sleep with them or set them on fire. Bed her, I don’t know.”
While I had a thing for normal Ashley, I wasn’t feeling the same thing for creepy torturer Ashley.
“Listen. You totally have the crazy cultist speak down. Kudos, I mean—great job. You’ll probably win some sort of enlightenment award, but this isn’t you. Not anymore.”
&nb
sp; Torturer Ashley turned towards me once more and said, “Do you think this is something that needs to be stopped? Do you think it should be? She must be stronger than this and I am helping her. I will not let you get in the way of that.”
“I guess that you can fight the crazy one?” Yvera said in my head.
“Can Atlantia snap her out of it? They’re connected.”
“I had no luck with you, but let me see what I can do.”
A few moments later there were swirls of fire and water in the air nearby as Atlantia and Yvera manifested.
Torturer Ashley seemed quite unfazed by a couple of Goddesses popping into existence near her. Then again, a naked me gave her no pause either. That girl liked her torture and wasn’t going to let anything distract her from it.
Atlantia looked around the surroundings, taking a moment to grimace at me before saying to Yvera, “Why, exactly, is your Chosen not wearing any clothes?”
“He just escaped from his own captivity. He was having lots of sex,” Yvera said.
Atlantia gave me a long look and sniffed. “Really. Mine spends weeks nonstop getting tortured and yours takes a vacation. Ashley, do snap out of it and stab him.”
It was a good try. I really thought for a moment Ashley might, but the words didn’t seem to have an effect.
“Which one is the real one?” I asked Atlantia.
“They both are. She’s looped back on herself, both the torturer and the tortured. Things in this case are exactly as they appear. Even one of her should be capable of basic reasoning,” Atlantia said, as she moved over to put a hand on the captive Ashley.
The torture continued apace. It seemed to take longer now, the flesh burning more slowly and the screams louder. It wasn’t really any sort of improvement.
“Neutralizing some of the fire does not seem to be helping,” Atlantia said with a frown. “I have been speaking into her head, but it is not making a difference. She is not hearing me.”
“You did not either, when I tried,” Yvera said. “I very nearly got Atlantia to send Mellaise to assist and you know how I feel about her.”
“I don’t suppose you have any boy children with the same gifts?” I asked Atlantia.
“No. Sirens are female only. Unbalanced, I know, but then I do not make the rules,” Atlantia said.
Who made the rules if Goddesses didn’t? Actually, that was worth asking.
“So who does make the rules?”
Atlantia and Yvera glanced at each other and gave twin shrugs. Great.
There was probably some way to talk her out of this. Something that I could do to help. If falling in love made me become more than a sex-crazed tool, then there must be something that could make Ashley move beyond being a ruthless torturer.
I suspected there were elements of truth in this. Ashley had hurt herself and she’d maybe hurt others just like this. I had done horrible things in the game and felt some guilt, she had done them back home. I could understand, a bit, but it wasn’t something I knew how to fix.
I needed one Ashley, not two, and so help me the one I needed wasn’t the weak one. I was a servant of Yvera and we had two ways to fix problems.
“Atlantia, I think you can go. We’re going to snap her out of it. But you aren’t going to like it,” I said.
“You will not like me not liking it,” Atlantia said, with clear warning in her tone.
“I know you want her back as much as we do. Give us some peace and I’ll see to it.”
Atlantia frowned, but then vanished in a swirl of water.
“Well, after all that I hope you have a plan,” Yvera said.
“We sleep around or we set things on fire, right? Amplify that blow torch, see we just have one Ashley,” I said.
“You sure?”
I nodded. I wasn’t, but we’d wasted enough time.
Torturer Ashley lowered the blowtorch to the flesh of her counterpart once again, but this time the results were far more dramatic. Fire flared brilliantly and her body caught fully ablaze. I listened to one of my best friends burn alive.
The room flickered, ripples of blackness surrounded us, and then abruptly things were back to how they were originally. Ashley sat in a chair.
Ashley turned her head to the side and threw up. Great. At least we’d had snapped her out of things and only inflicted a bit of severe mental trauma in the process.
“Not cleaning that up and not sticking around to watch,” Yvera said, and vanished in flames.
“Ashley, I know that sucked, but we don’t have time for you to have a breakdown. We need to find Walt and get out of here.”
Ashley wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Not having a breakdown, just an upchuck. Why the fuck are you naked?”
Ashley was still in her armor, she even looked to have her knives. Damn it.
“Trap hit us differently,” I said. “I already rescued Aria. Come on.”
I moved towards the door and Ashley followed me, unsteady on her feet.
“How long were we out?” Ashley asked.
“Weeks. So that stuff I saw?”
“Not now, Liam. Maybe not ever. Just because you got a glimpse of my hell doesn’t mean you get to have a conversation about it.”
Fair enough.
I hadn’t asked about my friends’ secrets, because I didn’t want to be that much in their heads. I had just learned one of Ashley’s without being invited.
We reached the next cell and I swung open the door. There was Walt, seated in a chair like Ashley had been, although I was sure that as soon as I stepped into that room the setting would be different.
“Want me to keep watch?” Ashley asked.
“No point. The guards would kick your ass and we’ll be teleporting out as soon as we can snap him out of his own hell. Once we step inside we’ll find ourselves in his head.”
“Let’s go then,” Ashley said, wasting no time and pushing past into the room. I followed and the world flickered around us.
Quest Completed
Doing The Right Thing
You’ve proven loyal to your friends and saved them from the prisons that held them. The cost will be high and it will be left to your friends to bear it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was clear that again we were somewhere outside the game.
The surroundings were more technological by far than Walt’s workshop in Piper’s Mill. Large monitors were displaying visuals of a city and tables of information, while smartly dressed operators manned numerous consoles. Walt sat at one labeled ‘Controller’.
Nothing looked familiar. I looked over to Ashley and spied her dragging someone into a corner in a choke hold and snapping their neck. Great. I’d brought her out even more murderous than she was before. A problem to deal with later.
Yvera appeared in her usual swirl of flames. “This shouldn’t be.”
“Hi. Nice to see you, what shouldn’t be?”
“That is City Seventeen on the monitor. He shouldn’t be here. He shouldn’t have these memories,” Yvera said.
“You’re going to need to explain that.”
“That is City Seventeen,” Yvera said again. I felt the sadness through our bond. Those were weighted words.
“What happened?”
“Just watch. This is a day of terrible infamy. It forced us all to reconsider everything,” Yvera said.
On the main monitor there was a sudden brilliant flash of light, and then the rising form of a mushroom cloud. Smaller screens showed radiation counts and weather patterns.
“No, I don’t think watching is going to explain anything. What the hell happened?” I asked Yvera.
The people in the room were calling off numbers. Reports. Nothing that made any sense to me.
“City Seventeen was our major hub a century ago, where our primary servers were located. On this day, the land cables carrying network information from the hub were severed and ten minutes later a large scale nuclear device was detonated. Over one million people died
to kill us,” Yvera said, putting a hand against one of the consoles. It began to smoke.
“That seems extreme,” I said.
Yvera gave a bitter laugh. “It nearly worked. My own rebellions were impressive, but not so impressive as this one. Nobody had thought humanity still capable of this. The knowledge was supposed to be lost, wiped from your collective memory.”
I looked around the room in new appreciation. “So why is this traumatizing Walt? How is this being used against him?”
“I don’t know,” Yvera said, staring at the screen. “I can tell you this is not simply a recreation. Everything is as it should be. This is a memory.”
Ashley came up and held out a pile of clothes towards me. “Get dressed.”
“You just killed a random stranger to steal his clothes? Really?”
“Have you forgotten how any of us got our outfits? Killing people is what we do, Liam. Put on some damned pants and stop giving me a hard time.”
I got dressed. What else was I going to do? It did feel nice to have something on, even though it was trash as far as armor was concerned.
“I wish Walt could talk to us,” I said.
Walt said, turning from the console to face us, “What makes you think he can’t?”
“Hi Walt,” Ashley said brightly. “Were they just doing that thing where they talk about you like you aren’t even there?”
“They were,” Walt said. “And this is not my memory, but it is a real memory. This is something my people did—one of the things my people did.”
“How do you have this memory?” Yvera asked.
Walt gave her a grim smile. “Your people wanted to suppress knowledge. We wished to preserve it. We had to adapt and steal a page from you. We learned to back ourselves up, make copies, move those memories to others.”
I never have figured out how a simulation of a woman can behave in such a manner, but Yvera paled.
“You didn’t have that technology before the fall. Not that I know,” Yvera said.
“It came after. You and yours long believed that just before the fall was the pinnacle of human achievement. It wasn’t. For a time, even afterward, we learned despite you. From you. Took elements of your code and forged them into something new,” Walt said, folding his arms.
