Death's Mantle: A Dark Fantasy GameLit Novel

by Harmon Cooper

  “Chill,” the dealer told him. “I called you because I want you to be the first to get some of this stuff,” he said, opening up his lunchbox.

  “What is it?” Connor asked as the man brought out a small bag of blue pills.

  “It’s the real shit, dude. Stronger than what you have right now. It’ll last longer. Kenny’s cousin over here tested the high, and he was feeling it for a good twenty-four hours.”

  “Hell yes, he was,” Kenny chimed in. “It’s the real shit.”

  “Just use a little. I’m serious, Connor. Just a little.”

  “But what is it?”

  Austin waved his question away. “This shit was banned in China last year, making it a little bit more difficult to get over here. You used to be able to just have it shipped over. But not anymore. But to sort of answer your question, what I got in the capsules here is cocaine.”

  “I don’t want cocaine,” Connor started to say.

  “Let me finish. This is cocaine cut with fentanyl, so what it will do is give you that pain relief you’re looking for, but also a little bit of a boost, so you’re not as drowsy. You’ve probably noticed the vikes you’ve been taking make you a little drowsy.”

  Connor nodded.

  “This has got a little bit of both, ‘best of both worlds,’ we like to say.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “Shit, if you want to give it a try then just kick it for a minute, you could do that. I wouldn’t offer it to you if I didn’t think you’d like it. I can get you something else too, but I don’t have any vikes coming in the near future. The dude who sold them to me is taking a hiatus.”

  “Don’t,” Lucian whispered, recalling what he’d watched about fentanyl on his TV at Old Death’s home. He wanted to scream at his brother, but he also knew that it would engage the parasite below, and he really wanted to see how this played out, however tragic things were about to become.

  Lucian shook his head as his brother considered his options, an overwhelming sense of helplessness coming over him.

  “I mean, how strong are we talking here?” Connor finally asked.

  “I definitely wouldn’t take a whole pill. Fuck no.”

  Kenny snorted. “Fuck that.”

  “Maybe like an eighth of one,” Austin suggested. “Just a key bump. This shit is serious, man. But if you use it smartly, it’ll set you straight.”

  “All right, all right, how much for a pill?” Connor asked, reaching in his pocket for his wallet.

  “Normally, I’ve been charging thirty-five, but if you buy three, we can keep it at a hundred.”

  “That’s a lot more than the vikes,” Connor started to say.

  “If you ration it out, it’ll last you a lot longer than the vikes. What were you normally buying? Seven or eight at a time? How long does that last you?”

  “Maybe a week.”

  “Damn,” Kenny said, still standing near the door with his firearm tucked in the front of his pants.

  “It’s my back,” Connor snapped, glaring over at the man. “I hurt it working on some stuff in someone’s basement. Fell damn near five feet backward. Fucked my spine up. The doctor didn’t give me enough pain pills for me to recover. This is just temporary; they won’t give me any more pain pills.”

  “We’re cool, we’re cool,” Austin told Connor. “And shut the fuck up, Kenny.”

  “My bad,” Kenny said, glancing away.

  “Just look at me,” Austin said, audibly exhaling. “You know what? Fuck it. I want you to experience this stuff for yourself, see if you like it. How’s this? I’ll give you three for ninety. But next time it’s a hundred. And I’m serious, man, you have to take this stuff easy.”

  “All right.” Connor counted out four twenties and a ten-dollar bill.

  “Take it slow. Just a little bit. See how it is, see how it makes you feel. If the vikes come back, you’ll be the first person I call, but you may like this stuff.”

  “Cool,” Connor said as the man handed him the plastic baggie. He stood, and they shook hands.

  “Just hit me up when you’re ready for some more, okay? You know the number. But text first.”

  “He gone yet?” Austin asked Kenny.

  His counterpart looked through the keyhole and nodded. “Sure is.”

  “Cool. You see what I mean?” Austin gave him a smug smile. “You promise these motherfuckers the stars and they’ll give you the Earth. That dude is gonna be back in three or four days tops, and he’ll want the same shit.”

  “And you had the vikes all along?”

  “That’s right.” Austin pulled out a small baggie of thick white pills from his plastic lunchbox. “Like I told you, we need to move the new stuff; it’ll make so much more money once these people try it. I mean, if he had refused, I would have told him to come back in an hour, and I would have given him the vikes. You don’t want to let them think that you’re trying to play them.”

  “I get it, I get it,” Kenny said. He sniffed, his throat bulging as he swallowed a lump of snot. “What’s that dude’s deal anyway?”

  “Like he said, he hurt his back, ran out of prescriptions, and then I became his pharmacist. He got my number from the guy he works with. Dude has money to burn, so I help him burn it. His brother just died too.”

  “Damn, that’s harsh.”

  “About his bro? Yeah, that shit sucks. He had some type of heart condition or something. Connor mentioned it once or twice. Maybe I just saw about it on social media or something. Shit, I don’t know. Anyways, we need to sell all these pills today, because I need to re-up before the weekend. That’s when shit gets wild.”

  Kenny pulled out his phone. “Hell yeah. I’ll see what I can find out. I know a few people that may know someone who needs something.”

  Lucian floated to the ground, hovering over Austin as his cape lifted off his body. It immediately attacked the parasite, wrapping itself around the creature and squeezing the life out of it as Lucian glared at Austin.

  He dropped right in front of the dealer’s face, smiling, practically eye-to-eye with him. “I just signed your death warrant,” he said, his nostrils flaring.

  The parasite broke free of his cape’s grasp.

  It sent a spiked tentacle at Lucian that sent him flying across the room. He stood, baring his teeth as the peach-colored parasite tripled in size, bristled limbs forming along its body, two stingers pressing out of its thorax.

  “Let’s see what you can do,” Lucian said.

  His crow took off toward the parasite.

  It ripped through the parasite’s body and circled back around, doing it again and again until the creature flopped to the ground, spasming and spewing blood as a pool of its own life force formed around it.

  A blaze of light rose off the parasite, coiling into Lucian’s chest.

  “You all right?” Kenny asked.

  “Yeah, sorry,” Austin said, wiping his brow. “I just spaced out there for a second. Is it cold in here?”

  “It’s always cold in here.”

  “I started feeling extra cold, though. Might have to get bundled up over here,” he said, laughing.

  “Want me to get you that blanket?”

  The two of them laughed.

  “Sure, Mom,” Austin said.

  Lucian started to scream in front of the dealer’s face.

  He screamed until his voice was hoarse, until he was just about to equip a weapon.

  His crow broke his attention. Dropping down in front of him, his spherical creation tilted its body in a way that made it look like it was curious.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he whispered.

  The two vanished in a flash, reappearing in Lucian’s bedroom at Old Death’s strange home.

  Lucian paced for a moment until he could calm his nerves, his stats appeared before him.

  That guy had singlehandedly taken control of his brother’s life. But as much as Lucian wanted to blame the dealer for what was happening, he knew his brot
her also played a substantial part in his actions, pain or no pain.

  There had to have been a better answer than buying drugs off the street.

  “Time to get serious,” he told his crow as it moved over to the bed. His spherical creation dropped onto a pillow and rolled around for a moment. “I don’t want to say that was cute, but…”

  His crow tilted its face at Lucian again.

  “Right, time to create.”

  Lucian cracked his fingers, recalling some of the cooler guns he had used in video games. He remembered using an anti-personnel fully automatic carbine in a first-person shooter that took place on an alien world, a game that involved syncing up with large, gun-laden mechs.

  A copy weapon started to appear in his hands, the magazine already in place.

  Once it was ready, Lucian fired the gun at the far wall, instantly impressed with its power. But it needed something else, so after some thought, Lucian added an attachment that gave him a zero-point energy field manipulator, another thing he’d messed around with in that game.

  He grinned at his futuristic firearm.

  His new carbine was heavy but it packed a punch, and with his energy field manipulator, he would be able to do some pretty helpful things.

  He activated the EFM by toggling a switch, a blast of energy rippling out of the front of the gun, which Lucian quickly painted over one of his dummies.

  It lifted the dummy, allowing him to slam it into the wall without actually touching it. Another dummy rose from the floor, and Lucian lifted it, throwing it to the far wall and toggling to the carbine, filling it full of holes.

  “What do you think?” he asked his crow.

  His spherical creation simply rolled to the other side of the pillow, in an almost comical way.

  “I will take that to mean you like it,” he told it. “And you are really going to like what I pull out next…”

  Lucian imagined a weapon from a different game, a game he once played on one of the old NES system emulators on Connor’s laptop.

  His eyes closed, Lucian imagined holding the weapon, its weight in his hands, what it would be shaped like and what it would look like in real life, even if it was slightly pixelated in the game.

  He opened his eyes as the dark gray energy weapon took shape, the piece much larger than he had originally anticipated. Lucian adjusted his stance by widening his legs. Sticking the gun under his arm, he pulled back a lever attached to its upper receiver.

  A rippling blast of thermal energy fired out of his newest creation, searing a line through the floor.

  He pushed the lever forward to stop the thermal energy.

  “A plasma blowtorch,” he told his crow. “I figured this would help thin the herd if we run into too many parasites.” Lucian triggered the weapon again, burning another hole through the wall that healed up relatively quickly. “It definitely has some kick.”

  His weapon disappeared as he made his way over to the bed.

  He sat down on its edge, a beer materializing in his hand. Lucian took one look at the beverage, realizing he could get a little more creative than just a beer. The color of the bottle lightened, Lucian now holding a hard cider.

  “Cheers.” He reached his hard cider forward and tapped the bottle against his crow’s beak. With his first sip in, an image of his brother came to him.

  Lucian sighed bitterly, no longer enjoying the cider.

  If only his brother could see what was happening, how he was spiraling further and further down. If only there was a way for Lucian to get a message to him, to tell him he needed to get help before it’s too late.

  Setting his cider down, Lucian retrieved his smartphone and tried to send another email to his brother. The email went straight to the draft box, where it stayed, Lucian perennially out of touch.

  His other crow, the one that he had left in the library, came sailing into the room, chased by a cat. Lucian recognized the white cat with the black streak in its tail almost immediately, but couldn’t recall its name.

  The cat hopped onto the bed, staring at Lucian curiously.

  “Here, kitty, kitty,” he said, reaching his hand out to the cat. It came forward and Lucian found it had a leather collar with the name ‘Ezra’ etched into it.

  “That’s a good Ezra,” he said, the cat purring as he scratched behind its ear.

  It struck him as odd that Ezra had been hiding out this whole time, but then again, cats were known to do things like that. He didn’t question it much after the initial thought; it was good to have company.

  His two crows floated forward to investigate Ezra. The cat ignored them as Lucian continued to pet him.

  “Got anything for me?” he asked the crow that had been in the library.

  The crow took off, its retractable claw pressing out of the top of its head as it left the room. It returned a moment later with a torn piece of paper from one of the books.

  The crow dropped it on Lucian’s lap, and once he picked it up, it pointed its beak at one of the passages.

  “Damn, you guys are smart,” Lucian said as he checked out the passage.

  Great fear and trembling shall seize them, even to the ends of the Earth, the passage read. The lofty mountains shall be troubled, and the exalted hills depressed, melting like a honeycomb in the flame.

  There was more to the passage, mostly having to do with a doomsday prophesy. But Lucian got why Old Death had highlighted it, especially the second line. If only he knew where this entrance to the South Wind was.

  “Good work,” he told his crow, “but it still doesn’t tell us how to get there.”

  His crow dipped its head in shame.

  “It’s not your fault; I’m simply stating the obvious. We’ll get to the bottom of it,” he assured his crow, “and soon.”

  Lucian’s stats appeared before him:

  He definitely had plenty of available Soul Points, and while it may be helpful to craft some more weapons, he also knew that it would be even more helpful to visit another mental institute. Lucian stopped petting Ezra, his smartphone reforming in his hand.

  “As much as I’d like to stick around, we still have work to do,” he told his two crows. And after a quick search, Lucian chose a mental institute in New York City.

  It was time to test out his new weapons.

  Chapter Nineteen: Pink Reaper

  With Salem’s proximity to Boston, Lucian had only been to New York City a few times. If he wanted a taste of the big city he had it readily available, and besides, there wasn’t much to do in New York that he couldn’t do in Boston aside from some of the more famous landmarks.

  Yet flying over Manhattan as he was doing now, starting from the financial district and working his way toward Midtown and the Upper East Side, gave him a newfound appreciation for the place.

  And because he was able, Lucian flew through some of the higher apartment buildings, through the penthouse suites and their rooftop terraces, shocked at how the other half lived. One of the homes he had to stop and marvel at was near the West Village, an absolutely stunning place with multilevel gardens, fountains, views of New Jersey, buildings sprouting along the horizon and new ones coming up.

  It made Lucian interested in the history of the area, how it had gone from a strip of land to the center of the world.

  But he wasn’t here for tourist reasons, and as he rose back out of the home, Lucian’s HUD took shape before him, giving him a directional arrow of where he should be flying next.

  This was something he had thought up upon arriving at the Statue of Liberty, where he had started his journey.

  Lucian knew that he could just teleport to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center, but he figured with his power, he might as well enjoy the trip.

  And it was enjoyable.

  One of the things he thought of as he floated over Times Square, people like ants beneath him, was how strange it was that the Grim Reaper was flying over the city. Picturing it made it even weirder for him, especially since he could look
to some of the buildings and actually see his reflection in their glass windows.

  Lucian certainly fit the part now.

  He wore all black, his face partially obscured by a hood attached to his cape. His robes were long, hanging past his feet. The parts of his arms that were visible were wrapped in black tape.

  As he flew, Lucian wondered what it would be like to change his image.

  With this in mind, he playfully turned his robes to a vibrant pink. Lucian laughed at himself as he spun once in the air, his reflection spinning next to him.

  A pink Grim Reaper wasn’t exactly what he was going for so he changed his robes to green, then electric blue, then back to black. Maybe he would play around with his look later, but the black suited him in some way.

  Perhaps it was a stereotype worth keeping.

  Lucian’s crow appeared, his spherical creation immediately moving in front of him, spiraling forward as Lucian tried to keep up. His other crow took shape, trying to catch up with the first one.

  “You guys are way too fast,” he called after them, his robes beating in the wind as he picked up his pace.

  He saw a long stretch of green on the horizon, Central Park coming into view. He started to fly over the park and his arrow veered to the right. Lucian followed it until he came to the Manhattan Psychiatric Center.

  He hovered before the building for a moment, almost intimidated by the structure.

  There was something very imperial about its design and the way the exceedingly tan building loomed over the park before it. It was a complex, for sure, and its massive size would give Lucian plenty of hunting ground.

  He floated down to the front entrance and made his way in, stopping in front of the receptionist.

  “Can you point me in the direction of the psych ward?” he asked the woman, who was busy pecking away on a computer.

  Her details appeared before him.

  Name: Tricia Johnson

  Date of Birth: 07/05/1993

  Date of Death: 10/19/2070

  “I guess I’ll just find it on my own.”

  His two crows looked to each other, and then back to Lucian.