Masters of Fate

by A. K. DuBoff

  “It looks agitated,” I said to my friends, then added louder to address the nimbus, “We’re friends. We don’t mean any harm.”

  The nimbus’ lights stuttered and then initiated a new pattern of colored dots and zigzags.

  “I suddenly wish I spoke Cloud,” Kaiden quipped.

  So did I—at least enough to know if the creature meant us harm. “Maybe we should get out of here,” I suggested, backing away.

  Four additional nimbuses glided from behind windows near the first, fanning out to frame us in a semi-circle.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Kaiden murmured, his staff still glowing. “Three more just appeared, Toran.”

  “Stars! Why can’t I see them?” Toran flushed.

  I hadn’t sheathed my sword since entering the higher plane, and I now wondered if I should. Perhaps if the nimbuses didn’t see us as a threat, they’d leave us alone. On the other hand, I’d be at a disadvantage if they chose that moment to attack. I decided to try for the middle ground, lowering my weapon into what I hoped was a non-threatening position.

  “What are you doing, Elle?” Kaiden hissed.

  “We’re the invaders here,” I reminded him. “These things look like the opposite of Darkness. Assuming they’re not connected to the other aliens, there’s no reason for us to make new enemies.”

  Hesitantly, Kaiden lowered his staff.

  Toran adopted a neutral stance with his gloved hands at his sides. “I hope they can sense our good intentions.”

  “They might not be dangerous at all,” Maris said. “They’re just big, puffy cloud things.”

  At first glance, maybe, but I disagreed with her assessment. These were intelligent, higher-dimensional beings, as far as I was concerned, and I didn’t want to get in a fight with them. Now that we were on their turf, we couldn’t rely on our experiences; we’d essentially entered a new reality with its own rules.

  “Let’s just back away slowly,” I said, trying to stay calm. I made the first move and my team followed.

  After we’d gone only two steps, violent pulse of light radiated from the four nimbuses, and they began to swell, electrical bolts of energy crackling inside.

  The calm and steady approach was off the table. I spun on my heels. “Nevermind. Run!”

  8

  “Shit, this is not how I thought this was going to go!” Kaiden exclaimed as we barreled through the maze of mirror-like windows.

  All of my thoughts about keeping track of our exit point were forced aside as the storming nimbuses chased us through the endless prism faceted corridors. I tried to keep track of the turns, but the strange angles made it impossible to maintain any frame of reference.

  In that moment, I didn’t care. We were being chased by angry cloud monsters, and I had no intention of finding out what their electrical bolts could do to me.

  The view through the windows lining the walls changed from the ruined cityscape above the caverns to open plains. We couldn’t have run far enough to have left the city in our spacetime reality, supporting my instinct that distance and scale followed different rules in that place. If we kept running for long enough, we could find ourselves near gateways to an entirely different planet.

  Even though we managed to stay ahead of the nimbuses, they tailed us step for step. “How can we shake these things?” I asked, once it became clear they weren’t going to stop following us.

  “And why haven’t they just jumped in front of us?” Kaiden questioned.

  I’d been curious about that part, too. The other higher-dimensional beings we’d encountered had been able to glide through the planes and seemed to know everything we were about to do.

  “I wish I could see what you’re talking about,” Toran said while running alongside me. “But I can maybe explain their movement—they’re likely native to this plane.”

  “Native to here?” Maris said.

  Toran nodded after we made another sharp turn through the maze. “Yes, seventh- or eighth-dimensional beings, wherever we are. They can’t jump in front of us because they don’t have access to a higher plane to use as a shortcut. I don’t quite understand the rules of this place, but they are bound by them in the way we’d be back on our plane.”

  “Except with our magic,” I pointed out.

  “Yes, we do seem to be able to bend the rules,” he admitted.

  I had no clue where my abilities came from, ultimately, but I could sense that the hyperdimensional component of my consciousness that regulated my abilities was still above my present place in the dimensional hierarchy. That meant that we had an advantage with our abilities over the nimbuses—even if we were ‘lower beings’ in every other sense. If they wouldn’t leave us alone, then we’d need to fight.

  “Do you think they’re a security guards of some sort?” Kaiden questioned. “Or, maybe they can recognize we’re lower life forms and are trying to exterminate us like we’d kill ants in our house.”

  I wasn’t crazy about those possibilities. Either way, it wasn’t looking good for us.

  “Let’s take a stand,” I said, preparing to stop so we could face our would-be attackers. “Try not to hurt them, but we can’t keep running forever.”

  “I’m not even tired,” Kaiden said. “But you’re right, this is pointless.”

  Maris nodded.

  “All right,” Toran agreed. “You’ll have to tell me what to do.”

  “Just hang back. We’ll handle this.” I looked to Kaiden and Maris. “Okay, now!”

  I leaned back on my heels to stop my forward momentum and pivoted to face the nimbuses, raising my sword. They had expanded to more than twice their original size, now oblong four-meter-wide clouds with an internal lightning storm. Bolts of electricity struck the reflective walls, leaving no signs of damage. As my friends and I closed the distance between us and the nimbuses, the bolts lanced toward us.

  Toran ducked and ran to the side. “Now that I can see!”

  I gauged the reach of the bolts and halted just out of range. “Maris, haste!” I instructed.

  “You’ve got it.” She waved her hand in the usual fashion to initiate the spell.

  My surroundings were unchanged. “What happened?” I took rapid steps backwards to keep myself out of striking range of the enemy electrical storm.

  “Stars, of course!” Toran said. “We’re higher than the fourth dimension—of course time manipulation wouldn’t work here.”

  “Oh, that’s bad.” I ducked and dodged to the side as one of the lightning bolts came dangerously close to striking me.

  Kaiden retaliated with a wave of his staff, and the outer layer of the nimbus started to freeze.

  “Good thinking with the ice!” I said.

  The nimbus had slowed, but it was far from disabled. The others continued advancing toward us, the colorful light patterns taking on a decidedly menacing quality.

  “There’s has to be something I can do.” Maris waved her arms again, and a purple shield appeared around each member of our team in addition to the silver forcefield around herself courtesy to her new shield.

  Before I could wonder about if Maris’ magical shields around us would stop the hyperdimensional creatures, I got my answer. One of the lightning bolts branched outward and struck the edge of my protective dome. The electrical current was reflected off the dome’s surface, to my relief, and then struck one of the innumerable windows. I was surprised to see the reflected electrical bolts left singe marks—that hadn’t happened when the nimbuses’ bolts hit the mirrors directly.

  “Their bolts are interacting with our magic!” I exclaimed.

  “So they are,” Toran concurred. “I wouldn’t have expected that.”

  “Wonder later. We need to take these things out!” Kaiden urged.

  “Killing them is a bad idea,” I insisted. “We have no idea what they are. We’re the outsiders here.”

  “I know, but they’re trying to kill us.”
Kaiden dodged another bolt, then expanded his freezing spell to all four.

  The lightning continued to bounce off the protective domes, striking the walls and ceiling. None of the bolts had yet hit the creatures. Given that the electrical attack had come from inside them, I figured it might not be a deadly blow, but maybe it would offer the kind of stun attack we needed to allow us to escape without killing the nimbuses.

  “Maris, can you use your new shield to reflect their attacks back at them?” I asked.

  “Yes, I’ll give it a shot,” she confirmed.

  “Kaiden, keep that freeze ray going,” I went on, moving forward now that I knew I was protected by the shield.

  “Elle, what are you doing?” Toran asked.

  “I’m going to provoke them,” I said. “Stir up an electrical storm so they shock themselves.”

  “What should I do?” he replied.

  “Be ready to grab me if I get electrocuted, I guess?”

  “Careful, Elle,” Kaiden said softly as I pass by him.

  I flashed a daring smile. “I’ve got this.”

  “Ready with the shield when you are,” Maris said.

  “All right… now!” I raced forward with my sword while Maris simultaneously raised her jeweled shield so she could tilt the surrounding forcefield to the appropriate angle.

  The nimbuses reacted just like I’d hoped, sparking a new electrical storm. The bolts shot out all around them, many striking Maris’ shield and bouncing back. With Kaiden’s freezing spell, the nimbuses’ advance had slowed to a crawl, trapping them in the middle of their own storm.

  Their external patterns shifted again to a chaotic display of colors and lights, which was undoubtedly a sign of distress.

  “That’s enough!” I called out to my friends, wanting to gauge the damage to the nimbuses before taking more aggressive action.

  However, just as I started to back away, the nimbus in the right-center of the group broke free from its freeze and rushed toward me, releasing a flurry of electrical bolts as it ballooned to fill the corridor.

  I dove for safety, my sword arm flailing as I fell.

  As the nimbus expanded, a portion of it brushed against the tip of my blade. Light flared at the point of contact, then spread through the entire creature. With a bright burst, the nimbus vanished.

  “Stars! Did I just do that?” I exclaimed.

  “Your sword… why did it…?” Maris trailed off.

  “The others, Elle! I can’t hold them!” Kaiden shouted.

  My stomach twisted with the thought of potentially destroying these creatures, but my friends were right—it was us or them. I ran forward and glided my blade over the other three nimbuses while they were frozen. The magical shield Maris had cast around me offering protection from their electrical attacks. They each vanished like the first, leaving us alone in the eerie corridor.

  I lowered my weapon. “I didn’t want to hurt them.”

  “What happened?” Toran asked.

  “They came apart as soon as Elle’s sword touched them,” Kaiden summarized. “They picked the fight, Elle. We didn’t have a choice.”

  “Still…” I stared at my sword. Only a graze from the blade had disintegrated the nimbuses—no other creature had been instantly destroyed with so little contact.

  Toran followed my gaze. “That sword does seem to have some unique properties.”

  “Yeah, you can say that again.” I watched the flames ripple along the edge of the blade before sliding it into the scabbard at my waist, not wanting to think about what else it could do accidently. “I wish we hadn’t had to fight them.”

  “It might not be my place to speak since I didn’t see both sides of the fight,” Toran said in a fatherly tone, “but I can say for certain that our presence on this plane is about more than just the four of us right here, right now.”

  “Why couldn’t you see them? That makes no sense,” I replied.

  “I’m sure there’s an explanation, I just haven’t worked it out yet,” he went on. “What I do know is we have a mission to complete. To do that, we need to survive. More than that, we need to become masters in this place so we can use it to defeat the beings behind the Darkness. Other creatures may have been here first, but that doesn’t mean we don’t also have the right to be. We tried to leave them alone, they fought us, and you did what you needed to do for us to live. Maybe others of their kind will now regard us on their level so we can coexist. Either way, we need to establish ourselves as smart and capable—worthy of our place here. Sitting back and taking what we’re handed won’t get us where we need to go.”

  “I guess fighting and killing are the reality of our situation,” I admitted, though I still didn’t feel good about it.

  Maris nodded slowly. “Those could have been highly intelligent, evolved creatures.”

  “Maybe so, but this team beat them,” Toran stated. “Does that make us better? Not necessarily. Stars, I couldn’t even see them! But, sometimes the little guy comes out on top, like a wild cat taking out a hiker. On the whole, survival of the fittest causes species to fall into an unavoidable hierarchy. The rest of our people may never glimpse this place, but the four of us…”

  Kaiden nodded pensively. “What about the fight with the aliens behind the Darkness?”

  Toran chuckled. “We’re at an important juncture, aren’t we? You could argue that being fifth-dimensional beings makes them superior to us, so maybe it would be fair to say that they should win. Personally, I think we have the right to fight for our survival. If we can overcome the odds, we will have proven our right to live another day.”

  “Considering the alternative is us dying, I have to agree,” I conceded.

  “There’s this bizarre thing about being the more evolved entity in a scenario,” Toran mused. “You can see everything the lesser forms are doing wrong, but from their own vantage, they’re lost and helpless. It’s like a bug getting trapped in the glass of an open window. You can see the path for it to escape—all it has to do is fly around the side and it will be free. But it doesn’t—just keeps beating itself against the glass. We need to see that alternate path, to earn our right to survive. We’re here in this place, we have the tools. It’s up to us the seize the opportunity.”

  “I’d like to think we’re more than bugs,” Kaiden said.

  Toran nodded. “Yes, but it’s still up to us to fly around the side of the open window.”

  “Debating morality isn’t important right now,” Maris stated. “We need to get back to our home spacetime.”

  “I think this fight may have given us a clue,” Toran said.

  “Please share, because I have no idea,” I replied.

  He nodded toward me. “Your sword. I didn’t make the connection until I saw how it affected those cloud beings.”

  “Let’s call them ‘nimbuses’,” I interjected. “Couldn’t get behind ‘cosmic jellycloud’, sorry.”

  “Stars, yes, much better!” Toran said

  Maris looked a little miffed but said nothing. Kaiden shrugged.

  “So, the nimbuses,” Toran continued, “I maintain are native to this plane since they didn’t just jump in front of us. However, since a brush with the sword disintegrated them, I believe the weapon must exist in a higher dimensional plane even than this—and that’s also why it disintegrated the creature we fought in the chamber before making the transition, because it was a higher-dimensional being rather than something native to our spacetime.”

  I suddenly had to urge to rip the sword off me. “Are you saying this is, what, an eighth-dimensional object?”

  “Possibly higher. I’m still not positive where we are now. I suspect our other artifacts may, likewise, be higher-dimensional items, though I’m not sure in what order.”

  Kaiden gaped at Toran. “What…?”

  “It explains how we have been able to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks in the past,” Toran continued. “For ins
tance, opening the Archive, creating the shield around our shuttle during the disruptor detonation, entering this plane—Elle’s sword is the common denominator. If she had been the one to touch the sphere, perhaps it would have worked, rather than when I did it alone.”

  My heart dropped. “But now we have no idea where that sphere is, relative to where we are now.”

  “I know, so that doesn’t do us any good now. But, I think your sword might be the answer to us getting back to our usual reality. May I have a look at it?” Toran asked.

  Despite our weeks of travel together, we’d never spent much time studying each other’s artifacts. Once we each had ‘ours’, that had been it—we guarded our personal items loyally and only gave them up for decontamination cleaning when necessary. In particular, Kaiden and Toran had always seemed a little wary of my sword, and the one time Maris had asked to hold it during one of our practice sessions, she said it made her feel nauseated.

  Even now, I didn’t like the idea of handing it over to Toran. All the same, if it might help get us home, I couldn’t decline. “Sure, here you go.” I drew the sword and handed it to him by the hilt, careful to avoid the blue flames.

  The moment it was in Toran’s hand, the flames extinguished, looking just like any other weapon. “That’s odd,” he said.

  Maris nodded. “Same thing happened to me. Give it a second.”

  Toran tilted his head questioningly, then his face contorted with discomfort. “Urgh,” he moaned. “That’s so disorienting—like I’m not connected to myself. Does this make you feel sick all the time, Elle?”

  “Really, you too?” I shook my head. “Not at all. Makes me feel great, actually—like, supercharged.”

  Still wincing, Toran hefted the blade and gave it a thorough visual inspection. “It really doesn’t seem that different, to be honest.” He held it out toward me.

  I took it back from him; the flames instantly reignited when it was in my hand. “Guess I just have a special bond with it.”